1. Introduction In most lower-division university writing or composition courses in Korea, the primary focus is placed on sentence-building techniques. Students learn to practice basic sentence patterns and learn how to express their thoughts in writing. Needless to say, such activities are a fundamental step toward mastering the written English language. When a student has acquired a satisfactory command over the written language, however, he or she can profit further by looking at the composition process from a holistic point of view. In upper-division writing courses, ideally, an important part of class time and the writing task should be devoted to the rhetorical analyses and strategies of writing.
Thus the instructor can initiate many activities such as “invention” to stimulate the students’ interest and discuss the various writing assignments in depth. In recent composition studies, the significance of “invention” or p rewriting exercise is greatly emphasized. Invention is designed to help the writer to choose an appropriate topic, test his or her choice and define its significance to the writer (The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing 49).
Before writing the essay itself, the writer goes through various steps to ensure that the topic he or she has chosen is the right one and will generate enough material to write a satisfactory paper. Both in the United States and Korea, I have had the opportunity to teach composition courses which dealt with rhetorical and thematic writing problems rather than grammatical ones.
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Of course, the basic premise of such courses was that the students had already acquired competence in the written English language to the degree that they did not need remedial work. However, I feel that their experiences and the structuring of courses can serve as a guide and a possible heuristic device for upper-division composition courses in Korea as well as abroad. Writing should be considered as a discipline rather than a skill or a tool (Rose 341).
I hope this disciplinary approach to writing might be of some use to teachers of composition. In addition, the trend in recent composition studies emphasizes teaching and practicing autobiographical writing. Autobiographical writing, because of its unique format, is a convenient way to encourage students to write and think about possible rhetorical strategies.
As a genre, autobiography has received increased recognition and become a subject for continuous research. Reading autobiographies greatly challenges the writer’s creativity. The maxim commonly used in a writing course, that strong readers are strong writers, is very much applicable to a course designed around autobiographical writing. The readings “often direct you to test what the author is saying by measuring it against your own experience” (Bartholomae and Petro sky 11).
Additionally, there are many advantages to autobiographical writing. First, student writers “learn how to regard themselves as a subject for their own writing, and how to write about [themselves] with authority” (Lyons 3).
Second, they ultimately realize that some amount of self-disclosure is a necessary requirement for a good autobiographical essay. Disclosing hidden facts about themselves or emotions broadens their intellectual horizons and help them to become mature writers. Lastly, autobiographical writing easily lends itself to group discussions and group critiques about the writing in process. Since students share same interests as the authors and can readily understand their emotions, autobiographical essays can be intensively discussed in group workshops in class.
This results in a student-centered class rather than a teacher-centered one; the instructor and the students enjoy more lively discussions and the students’ input can improve both the content and style of the writing under discussion. 2. The Significance of Autobiography as a Genre Traditionally, autobiography has been considered as occupying a rather low position in the hierarchy of literary genres (Lauter 71).
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Yet the impact of autobiography in university writing courses cannot be underestimated. If the purpose of the readings used in writing classes is to set a standard of excellence at which we encourage students to aim, then the readings which usually work best are those that spark their interest and share common values. Usually, these readings tend to be autobiographical.
Autobiographical essays dramatize a remembered event and turn it into a suspenseful story. Some book-length autobiographies, such as Russell Baker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Growing Up or Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time, an account of his boyhood in New York and Florida, are records of coming of age. Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior look at life from a woman’s and a member of a racial minority’s point of view. Similar racial themes and problems of assimilation into “mainstream” American society emerge in Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez and Amiri Baraka’s The Autobiography of Leroy Jones, a powerful and sometimes heart-wrenching work. These readings may be of particular interest to the Korean reader who might be unaware of the racial problems that the United States faces. Moreover, they can enlighten him or her to the fact that American culture can be best understood not as a division between “mainstream” and “ethnic” cultures but as a heterogeneity of various cultures (Lauter 48).
A more profitable way to understand American culture than the conventional approach is the so-called “comparativist model,” which views the United States as “a heterogeneous society whose cultures, while they overlap in significant respects, also differ in critical ways” (Lauter 48).
A false impression that a Korean student might have about America is that her racial minorities constitute inferior elements lacking any kind of cultural accomplishments. By directing our attention to the richness and variety of marginalized cultures in America, autobiographical writing can educate the student writer to take account of the multiplex nature of modern global society. In case in point is Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This book can easily be used in the classroom as a guide for autobiographical writing, but its emotional impact on students who overwhelmingly sympathize with the writer’s struggles and conflicts is crystal clear. This autobiography by Angelou, who is also a noted black poet who read President Clinton’s inauguration poem, never fails to generate lively discussions in the classroom.
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One particularly memorable episode in the book is Angelou’s graduation from an all-black high school in Arkansas in 1940. She recalls how proud she felt about her graduation until a white superintendent of schools made a condescending and discriminatory speech. He insinuated that the best accomplishments that the black people could hope to attain were in the field of athletics, not science or art: He went on to praise us. He went on to say how he had bragged that “one of the best basketball players at Fisk sank his first ball right here at Lafayette County Training School.” The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileo’s and Madame Curies and Edison’s and Gauging, and our boys (the girls weren’t even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owens es and Joe Louise’s. (Lyons 130) This speech inspires self-hatred in her; she realizes that African-Americans “were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous” (Lyons 131).
The worst feeling that she experiences is, however, the feeling of solitude and isolation. She keeps thinking that she is alone in suffering until she hears the restrained applause to the white man’s speech and recognizes the proud defiance in the way the valedictorian gives his valedictory address. The scene ends with everybody singing “the Negro national anthem”, a poem by James Weldon Johnson:.
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