Fulkerson

Main point: Fulkerson talks about what goes on in composition classes via four philosophies.
Formalist theory: some teachers judge students' work based on form and errors. Students' work tend to be evaluated based on what's wrong (spelling & punctuation errors, a paper being too short etc.), rather than what's actually written.
Expressionist Theory: explores why people write and what makes for good writing. Maximizes self-discovery. Values personal writing with an honest and credible voice.
Mimetic: a clear connection exists between good writing and good thinking. Student writing tends to not be well thought out. Teachers must help students learn as much as possible so that the students have something worth saying. First mimetic approach emphasizes logic & reasoning. Second mimetic approach says that students don't write well on significant matters because they don't know enough. Students must read about all aspects of a topic before they can write about it.
Rhetorical Philosophy: good writing achieves the desired effect on the desired audience. Judge writing based on its effect on the targeted audience.

Quote: "The paper was returned with a large D-minus on the last page, emphatically circled. The only comment was 'Your theme is not clear-you should have developed your first paragraph. You talk around your subject.' From the perspective of my four-part model, there was a conflict of evaluative
modes at work here. The assignment seemed to call for writing that would be judged expressively, but the teacher's brief comment was not written from an expressivist point of view."

The quote above demonstrates that many composition teachers fail to apply the correct philosophies when grading a paper. If the philosophy was clear, the writer would know how to structure her paper in order to receive a good grade. This situation affects classroom structure because there is no authoritative instruction as to which philosophy to base your paper on and this leads to confusion.

Defining the formalist theory: deciding how good or bad writing is based on it's form. For example, does the paper have grammatical errors? Does it not meet the required length? Do the sentences and paragraphs flow?
It was easy to define this because Fulkerson describes it in a straightforward way. It was a bit challenging to write it in a way that is different from what Fulkerson writes.