As I prepare to write my MA thesis in the field of EFL writing and as I am teaching a new class on Expository Writing, I am doing substantial reading on the topic. One of the most insightful writers about writing that I've read is Peter Elbow; below are selections from his article "Illiteracy at Oxford and Harvard: Reflections on the Inability to Write. (A version of the article is here.)
If you can’t write, you can’t be a student. But the inability to write doesn’t get in the way of teaching at all.
...falling in love with teachers is such an efficient way to learn because it solves all motivation problems.
Learning wasn’t enough for them; I had to be made to unlearn and then be built up from scratch.
These commentators emphasize not only how learning leads inevitably to resistance, but also that we can’t learn well without resistance. It seems clear that an important goal for teachers is to help students find fruitful or healthy ways to resist.
That is, in the very act of writing itself—at least if we want to be understood—we have to give in to the code or the conventions. The conventions. To write is to be conventional.
True excellence is rare because it consists of something paradoxical and hard to explain: the ability to be extremely assertive or even resistant while at the same time managing to comply very well with the requirements of conventions, teachers, assignments, and readers.
Elbow, Peter. Everyone Can Write: Essays toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing (pp. 8, 16, 17-18, 20-21). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. (Emphasis mine)
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