Forget the Rumba, Lets Ramble Instead

Adverbs, run-on-sentences, comma after comma, fancy vocabulary and the use of the phrase “As well” = my old writing style. After reading David Bartholomae’s article, “The Study of Error,” I began to think about the presumption that basic writing is bad. I have found in my own experience and also in correcting the papers of some of my friends that as a student gets more advanced in a subject or attempts to write to impress their audience more, overwriting becomes inevitable. The best examples of this I can find are in my writing from High school, when I started believing that in order to prove to my teachers that I was a good writer, by sentences needed to be beyond “Basic Writing” and mirror the sentiment and language of more serious academic pros. Although my intent was good and the product of my doing so was a paper that showed a closer attention to detail and language, what I ended losing as a result was clarity.

            As a student, when I am supposed to read a primary source document for a class, there is one thing that always makes a difference between my being able to fully extract ideas from the text and not being able to do so: clarity. I am not saying that I wish the documents I am reading to be geared to the audience of a middle scholar, but that when an author removes all the unnecessary detail, vocabulary and subject matter that is not essential to their piece, they end up with a more finished and polished product. As a result of this, they are not taking away from their work, but adding too it, increasing their chances that their work will be understood and thus, appreciated. Talking in a straightforward and accessible way in academic writing should not be considered elementary or unscholarly, but praised because of its ability to grasp a larger audience. The same reason Wikipedia is preferred by most students and even many adults alike is because of its desire to be straightforward and to do so in the most concise and well tailored language possible. An encyclopedia however, uses jargon and highfalutin language that often further confuses the reader, defeating the purpose of the text in the first place.

            It is with this thought in mind that I turn to look at how “basic” writing of students is viewed. As a result, I come to the same conclusion, that when a stigma is attached to a students writing that is basic, it does the academic community a disservice. If a point can be made eloquently, but as tightly as possible, that is in my opinion the most successful type of paper. With that said, I think that a good teacher values the analysis and synthesis of ideas more than they value anything else. Bartholomae says in his article, “if we learn to treat the language of basic writing as language and assume, as we do when writers violate our expectations in more conventional ways, that the unconventional features in the writing are evidence of intention and that they are, therefore, meaningful, then we can chart systematic choices, individual strategies, and characteristic processes of thought.” I agree with Bartholomae in the sense that we as writing consultants and teachers as educators, should not be judging a paper immediately by what is wrong or different (whether that be they have made a mistake or their writing might not sound as elevated as one might hope). Instead, by looking for the strengths within the paper and seeing where the author might have a desire to really go, we can truly assess the author’s individual thought and abilities.