We’ll use Perusall to annotate and read together. RIP to the Essay
I loved Adam Banks’ 2015 CCCC Chair’s Address. His use of verse and rhythm made the speech fun and interesting to listen to. My favorite part of the speech was when he retired the essay, acknowledging the many other ways that writing and communication can be organized. Essay writing is a skill that comes pretty easy to me, but it’s not for everyone, and I really don’t think it’s necessarily the best way to communicate information to others.
In my Summer Orientation training course, I’m learning how to advise freshman on what classes to take and I’m being particularly relied on for advising freshman english classes. For a lot of students who are science majors or engineers or other majors that don’t require a lot of essay writing, I don’t think ENGL 130 is necessarily the best or most effective class for all students. If it’s only teaching them one form of composition, then it’s not effective. In my ideal world, each major would have a different composition class based on the types of composition that they would need to know how to do in their field. And for undeclared students, maybe they would have a class that was comprised of lots of different kinds of composition, like essay writing, movie making, blogs, and other forms of multimodal composition. I think it’s important for students to work with different forms of composition because it could open them up to different field, and/or allow them to express their ideas in the way that is most effective to get that idea across.
Outside of the classroom, essays are definitely not the most common form of communicating information. Videos, online articles, and social media, are much more effective in this day and age. So why aren’t we working more with these platforms? I feel like image sometimes is the best way to get ideas across and is often how I have to explain things, maybe because I’m a much more visual person. But I think that it’s important to realize that most of they ways people receive information is through image. Why not teach students how to communicate through image, video, diagrams, ect.? Why is the essay still the end all be all? English majors are some of the only people I’ve met who would ever admit they enjoy writing essays, and a lot of us don’t. It’s time to put it to rest as the only option for formal composition and communication.
One Reply to “RIP to the Essay”
I agree with you. At this point in my education, essay writing comes fairly easy to me. But it is definitely NOT the best way to communicate information.
You make a good point about the incoming freshman. Beginning comp classes aren’t really suitable or applicable to STEM students, so why are we forcing them to do so? If only there was some other option. :/
I also agree with you that we should be taking advantage of other platforms in this day and age. With the ever growing influence of social media and internet, it seems foolish to not address these platforms in a basic writing class. since these are the kind of things they will be dealing with in the future.
Good job! Keep pushing through April!