Blog #4 Letter

Falyn,

After finishing this weeks reading, these are my thoughts and questions. I had a little bit of difficulty reading Britton physically and mentally. His theories about these poetic discourse and it being the language of literature(pg 154), I don't know if I really believe that the poetic function is dominant in everything . I would agree maybe that the form maybe found in all discourses, but as far as it being dominant, I'm not so sure. Also, I like the question he poses--What are the factors that shape the literary works as a whole? I was also very interested in the section called The London Writing Research Project. In the section he discusses the research him and some colleagues had done. Taking children's writing and analysing it into questions. And then he breaks that down to Transactional and Expressive types of writing( pg 158). This, to me, ties into what the editors of WAC for the New Millennium say in Chapter 1. They are introducing Writing Across the Curriculum as an educational reform movement(pg 1), but is that what it really is? Britton wants to separate the literacy and non literacy discourses (pg 151). WAC is meant to bring them together. Bean (pg 1-3) also talks about this WAC movement in the classrooms. If so many people are trying to bring writing into all the discourses why is Britton trying to separate them? What could be his reason for wanting to? Bean makes great arguments by saying teachers in other subjects don't know the English subject matter as well as there own, so how could they teach something they don't know fully about? Maybe Britton would agree with this. My debate against that would be if you're teaching any subject you should know at least the basics of every other. Wouldn't you want a well rounded teacher? Let me know what you think.

Joey Scarpa