Peter Elbow

Arguments for teaching nonacademic discourse in freshman writing classes
1. very few students will have to write academic discourse after college.
         -the best test of a writing course is whether it makes students more likely to use writing in their
          lives by choice.
         -if colleges only teach academic discourse, they will fail their students in helping them to write
          by choice throughout their lives
2.  take a larger view of human discourse
          -students leave college unable to find words to render their experience
          -discourse that renders often yields important new cognitive insights
3. nonacademic discourse helps students produce good academic discourse
           -"The use of academic discourse often masks a lack of genuine understanding. When students
            write about something only in the language of the textbook or the discipline, they often                       distance or insulate themselves from experiencing or really internalizing the concepts they are             allegedly learning. Often the best test of whether a student understands something is if she can             translate it out of the discourse of the textbook and the discipline into everyday, experiential,               anecdotal terms."
**The above quote is proof of the fact that colleges produce really good bullshitters. Students learn to write papers using the language of their textbooks and this language makes their papers sound as if they know what they're talking about, but if you ask the writers of these papers, most of them will have no idea what any of it means. Teachers believe that since students are using the "right" words, they understand them, but that's simply not the case.

-Professors are not qualified to teach academic discourse if they don't have experience in the specific area.
**So should students who do not have experience in academic discourse be required to write in it?

-Academic discourse's language is more confusing and convoluted than it has to be.
"For example, academic discourse leads Berlin in just one paragraph to say "full significance of their pedagogical strategies" rather than "implications of how they teach"; "mode of operation" rather than "how they act."

-Academic discourse can exclude ordinary people.
         -by using formal language, academics are basically saying that they are professionals who don't
          invite conversation with nonprofessionals.
                -Ex: doctors don't say "thumb bone," they use the correct medical term.

-We want to impress people, so we use fancy language to show off.