Inventing the University

Inventing the university was an interesting article with a lot of information. I was able to better understand the article when we were broken up into groups during class. My group had the question about the "basic writer" and how that term was described in the article. In the article, basic writer refers to university students placed in remedial composition courses. Basic writers are writers that haven't been exposed to academic writing therefore don't know what academic writing is. That is why they offer advise in their writing rather than academic conclusion. Like saying "you should do this" or "you shouldn't do that". Basic writers also get confused on how to take the role of authority and talk down to their reader. They use a voice of authority of like a teacher or parent. It's hard for basic writers to take the role of authority but in academic writing and the voice of authority being rooted in scholarly knowledge. Basic writers also have a difficult time in writing conclusions. It seems like the basic writer has very basic skills and has a difficult time creating academic writing.

One of the topics that interested me a little bit more was code switching. Code switching is basically changing the way you speak or the way you write in different situations. Most people, if not all, change the way they speak when they are with their parents and when they are with their friends. In that same way, our writing changes depending on the audience. If we write an essay for our history class, it would be different and we would use different terms than if we wrote and essay for our communication class. People adapt to different situations to fit in and create a "common place". Common place is like a group that has the same common knowledge. Like knowing all the laws is common knowledge to students studying the law but not to students studying psychology. We all use common places. The article says the "common places are the controlling ideas of our composition textbooks, textbooks that not only insist on a set form for expository writing but a set view of public life. It is important to know who your audience is that way you know how to write. There are also two different form of writing: writer based and reader based. Writer based is when you are just writing for yourself. Reader based is when you are writing for the reader to understand. This also affects the way you write because if you write for yourself it will be different than when you write for someone else.

When people write, they must have a strong stance and know what they are talking about. We must be well informed of the topic we are going to write about. I don't agree with his assessment of the basic writer because just because you are in a remedial composition class doesn't mean that you'll fall into the description that Bartholomae gave of the basic writer and all the characteristics of one.