EVERYONE CAN WRITE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction xiii

1 PREMISES AND FOUNDATIONS 1

Illiteracy at Oxford and Harvard: Reflections on the inability to write 5

A map of writing in terms of audience and response 28

The uses of binary thinking 48

Fragment: The believing game - A challenge after twenty-five years 76

2 THE GENERATIVE DIMENTSION 81

Freewriting and the problem of wheat and tares 85

Closing my eyes as I speak: An argument for ignoring audience 93

Toward a phenomenology of freewriting 113

Fragment: Wrongness and felt sense 137

Fragment: The neglect and rediscovery of invention 141

Fragment: Form and content as sources of creation 142

3 SPEECH, WRITING, AND VOICE 145

The shifting relationships between speech and writing 149

Voice in literature 168

Silence: A collage 173

What is voice in writing? 184

Fragment: On the concept of voice 222

Fragment: Audible voice: How much do we hear the text? 223

Fragment: Voice in texts as it relates to teaching 226

4 DISCOURSES 229

Reflections on academic discourse: How it relates to freshmen and colleagues 235

In defense of private writing: Consequences for theory and research 257

The war between reading and writing -- and how to end it 281

Your cheatin' art: A collage 300

Fragment: Can personal expressive writing do the work of academic writing? 315

5 TEACHING 319

Inviting the mother tongue: Beyond "mistakes," "bad English," and "wrong language" 323

High stakes and low stakes in assigning and responding to writing 351

Breathing life into the text 360

Using the collage for collaborative writing 372

Fragment: Being a writer vs. being an academic: A conflict in goals 379

Fragment: Separating teaching from certifying 386

Fragment: What kind of leadership is best for collaborative learning? 392

6 EVALUATION AND GRADING 395

Getting along without grades - and getting along with them too 399

Starting the portfolio experiment at SUNY Stony Brook (w/ Pat Belanoff) 422

 Fragments:

  Problems with grading 435

  The conflict between reliability and validity 438

  How portfolios shake up the assessment process and thereby lead to minimal holistic scoring and multiple trait scoring 441

  Multiple trait scoring as an alternative to holistic scoring 443

  Tracking leads to a narrow definition of intelligence 444

  The benefits and feasibility of liking 447

Writing assesment in the twenty-first century: A utopian view 453

PUBLISHED WORKS BY PETER ELBOW 471