In A New Writing Classroom, Patrick Sullivan provides a new generation of teachers a means and a rationale to reconceive their approach to teaching writing, calling into question the discipline’s dependence on argument.
Including secondary writing teachers within his purview, Sullivan advocates a more diverse, exploratory, and flexible approach to writing activities in grades six through thirteen. A New Writing Classroom encourages teachers to pay more attention to research in learning theory, transfer of learning, international models for nurturing excellence in the classroom, and recent work in listening to teach students the sort of dialogic stance that leads to higher-order thinking and more sophisticated communication.
The conventional argumentative essay is often a simplistic form of argument, widely believed to be the most appropriate type of writing in English classes, but other kinds of writing may be more valuable to students and offer more important kinds of cognitive challenges. Focusing on listening and dispositions or “habits of mind” as central elements of this new composition pedagogy, A New Writing Classroom draws not just on composition studies but also on cognitive psychology, philosophy, learning theory, literature, and history, making an exciting and significant contribution to the field.
New Writing Styles for English teachers to try on! The book is very helpful in guiding me with my thesis about writing. Thank you!
Such an important book, offering a sharply different approach … Such an important book, offering a sharply different approach to teaching writing than some of the most well-known (within writing studies) approaches (such as genre studies or a rhetorical approach or an expressivist approach or WAW) but one that, for me, centers those things that ought to be centered, things that, often, are not considered specifically about writing, habits of mind, the practice of listening to others, and so forth. I am so grateful for this book. I am reworking my classes in…