Paré.+Writing+Matters.

= Anthony Paré. "Writing Matters: Back to the Future with Rhetoric." = = = //Education Canada// 49.4 (2009): 4-8. //OmniFile Full Text Mega//. Web. 5 Mar. 2011. -- = Abstract = The past four decades have seen dramatic developments in the study and teaching of writing. Theorists, researchers, and teachers have created a complex and detailed account of writing by drawing on a rich variety of sources, including the classical rhetorical traditions of Greece and Rome, contemporary studies of cognition, the sociology of knowledge, research into academic and workplace writing, and new literacy theories. The result is a body of knowledge about writing that has profound practical and pedagogical implications for teaching, thinking, and learning across the curriculum. = Argument = These five things we know about writing can have an effect across the curriculum and the grade levels: writing is heuristic; the written text is improved by a well-supported writing process; the finished product is structured in particular ways to have certain types of effect; texts have consequences, they make things happen; and texts (process and product) reflect their contexts. We want our students to grasp the best of what is known in our subject areas, but we also want them to take part in the practices and procedures that make disciplinary knowledge. Writing is central to that process. Aristotle's definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion" might well serve as a definition for learning more broadly. When we learn to be engineers, or scientists, or lawyers, or doctors--when we learn to participate in the intellectual life of any discipline or enterprise--we are learning to assemble the accounts, the arguments, the available means of persuasion. Because of this, we are all teachers of rhetoric. = Annotation = Anthony Paré’s purpose in writing “Writing Matters: Back to the Future with Rhetoric” is that writing is important and is closely tied to rhetoric. He urges teachers to create environments for students that promote writing in a constructive way. Teachers can help their students succeed by working to not just instill knowledge, but to “make knowledge.” To make knowledge, students need to be able to write things out. It can help them discover things and solve problems. Paré also urges that not only do teachers need to foster the basic writing skills, but continue to expand and grow those skills within their students. This will help students learn whatever it is they want to learn. It is the base on which knowledge in a specified field is built.

Paré says that everything involves rhetoric. When someone is learning a new field, he learns “the arguments, the means of persuasion.” Because that process occurs in the learning of every field, and because the base of acquiring that knowledge is writing, writing is important. Teachers are not just teaching writing, they are teaching rhetoric. This, says Paré, is why “writing matters.” The point of the article is to move teachers to focus on writing.

= Key Passages = WRITING IS HEURISTIC WRITING IS A PROCESS WRITING BECOMES A PRODUCT WRITING IS A SOCIAL ACTION WRITING IS SITUATED = Selected Works Cited =

Paré, Anthony. "Writing Matters: Back to the Future with Rhetoric." Compendium2. 2.1 (2009). Web.