Summary Of Inventing The University By David Barholomae
The article “ Inventing the University” is a piece about the association of student writing capabilities and their familiarity with the discourse in the communities of those who are reading their writing. This work was published in the Journal of Basic Writing in 1986 by David Bartholomae. The text is centered around Bartholomae’s thesis that “They (students) must learn to speak our language(CITATION)” David Bartholomae evaluates many excerpts from student essays to show the reader the importance of writing as if one is part of the community one is writing to.
He addresses errors students made in their writing and writing style and provides helpful solutions to remedy these problems. Bartholomea believes that for students to speak with authority
they have to “speak in the voice and through the codes of those of us with power and wisdom.” ( CITATION pg 17). This means that writers must imagine they are on the same level as members of the academic community they are addressing creating a greater chance of acceptance in the said community. He also discusses the skills expert writers have to manipulate their audiences by anticipating the response they will get from their writing and restructuring their papers around the response. ( CITATION pg 8)
For basic writers, Bartholomae offers solutions to the divide between writers and community discourse such as teaching community conventions or “examining the essays written by basic writers.” ( CITATION). These solutions allow students to discover where other students go wrong when writing and provide them with conventions to implement in future writing. The curriculum surrounding writing is also flawed in that they assume that the biggest problem with beginning writers is sentence errors. Instead, the problem is that these beginning writers do not have enough practice in writing to eliminate sentence error.
He addresses errors students made in their writing and writing style and provides helpful solutions to remedy these problems. Bartholomea believes that for students to speak with authority
they have to “speak in the voice and through the codes of those of us with power and wisdom.” ( CITATION pg 17). This means that writers must imagine they are on the same level as members of the academic community they are addressing creating a greater chance of acceptance in the said community. He also discusses the skills expert writers have to manipulate their audiences by anticipating the response they will get from their writing and restructuring their papers around the response. ( CITATION pg 8)
For basic writers, Bartholomae offers solutions to the divide between writers and community discourse such as teaching community conventions or “examining the essays written by basic writers.” ( CITATION). These solutions allow students to discover where other students go wrong when writing and provide them with conventions to implement in future writing. The curriculum surrounding writing is also flawed in that they assume that the biggest problem with beginning writers is sentence errors. Instead, the problem is that these beginning writers do not have enough practice in writing to eliminate sentence error.