Thoughts on The Discovery of Competence: Teaching and Learning with Diverse Student Writers by Eleanor Kutz, Suzy Q Groden and Vivian Zamel

Suzy Q Groden begins the book with a short story of how she recued two birds that were stuck in a catwalk between two buildings at the university where she teaches.  It was a powerful metaphor of the struggle new writing students go through finding their place amongst an academic discourse community and how composition teachers have to guide them in learning what the authors refer to as a new language. Eleanor Kutz, Suzy Groden and Vivian Zamel explain how all teachers must contribute to helping their students, but a majority of the responsibility falls on composition teachers. With their book the authors have taken an action research approach with the aim to help students recognize that they bring a certain amount of competence from their outside lives into their new discourse community.  The three teachers explain that teaching is an ongoing learning process and that composition teachers need to adapt to their changing classrooms as well as question traditional curriculum that does not address diverse student’s needs. 

Kutz, Groden and Zamel find that theories of cognitive and intellectual development are not as useful for them because they are faced with students with many different backgrounds that will not fit neatly into such molds. The authors hope they can create an environment where the students can realize their potential and develop as writers. Like Bartholomae and Petrosky’s they argue that students need to be immersed in an academic community to then become a part of it.  I also see similarities in their theory that the academic discourse community speaks an academic language that new writers must acquire.  The authors even compare the process to that of 1^st language acquisition.  They look at students writing in new ways thinking of the possibilities of their writers rather than focusing on errors.

I feel like I can really relate to what the authors are proposing and I think it complements Bartholomae and Petrosky’s model.  I see both cognitive and socio-cultral elements in this teaching theory.  I like how it addresses ESL and other diverse members of the student population.  I truly believe in immersing students in the academic discourse community so they can be a part of it and I want to build my unit plan with this in mind.  I also agree with the authors that academia has its own language that needs to be acquired by the novice writer.  The only thing I found missing in this book so far was the practical way to accomplish these goals.  I would have liked to see more of a unit plan showing future composition teachers how to use this model.  Perhaps I will find that by reading the remaining chapters.  The past two weeks reads inspire me that we can possibly create composition unit plans that will address the needs of the current diverse student population and help them acquire the language of academia