After reading two pretty different pieces on transfer, you are going to apply your understanding of transfer to yourself as a writer and learner. According to Bergmann and Zepernick, students tend to *not* transfer knowledge from a first-year writing course because they don't see the relevance outside of the classroom. Why do they believe this? What are some ways to help students transfer from first-year writing to other writing contexts? What is the importance of transfer?
Pulling on what you did in class on Monday, please continue to project forward: what can you *specifically* take from this class and apply to other writing situations? Continue to theorize about writing, writing practices, and your identity as a writer this post as well making sure to pull from the reading to ground your thinking.
DUE: by class time on Wednesday, July 9, 2014. Please don't forget to respond back to at least two peers.
According to the article Disciplinarity and Transfer, Bergmann and Zepernick believe that students taking first year composition (FYC) are only learning "how to b.s. their way through an English paper by using a lot of flowery adjectives" and thus are not able to transfer what they have learned to writing for other courses in other disciplines. Students perceived that the writing done for English classes was much more personal and subjective whereas the writing for a more technical class was more objective and fact based. Thus, they concluded that the writing done for FYC or an English class was not disciplinary or professional and offered few features that could be transferred to other classes or even to a future workplace setting. Bergmann and Zepernick concluded that "the primary obstacle to such transfer is not that students are unable to recognize situations outside FYC in which those skills can be used, but that students do not look for such situations because they believe that skills learned in FYC have no value in any other setting."
ReplyDeleteIn order to help students transfer what they have learned from first-year writing classes to other writing contexts, Bergmann and Zepernick believe in "teaching students to recognize where differences occur, and how to adapt to their practices accordingly, building upon their intuitive rhetorical awareness and the writing lore they share with their peers." Transfer of knowledge is important because we need to be able to expand or build upon what we have already learned and apply it to new situations in future classes, careers, and our everyday environments.
I believe that by taking this class I will specifically transfer what I have learned about rhetorical situation, rhetorical appeals, reflection, and your target discourse community. I know that there will be rhetorical situations created in any class I am taking and how well I respond to them through my writing will determine the reaction or discourse of my target audience. The rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos) need to be used effectively in my writing in order to elicit positive discourse from my target audience. I also have learned the importance of reflecting and revising throughout my writing process instead of just at the conclusion of a rough draft. I think that as a writer my identity will always be a work in progress just as I, as a person, am constantly changing and growing throughout life.
I agree with what you had to say about transfer and how it really builds up our future. It's hard to see sometimes how a specific situation or learning experience will transfer, but I think a good thing to do is be open minded and think about how things you learn will help you. I think this is also apparent in writing, to build as a writer you need to be able to transfer ideas from your previous writing experiences.
DeleteIn the article Disciplinarily and Transfer, Bergann and Zepernick stated that student don't use what they learn in their writing classes of High School or required to the college into their course classes, specially the ones under engineering majors because they trend some problems with organization and addressing the audience. they said that students are only using what they learn to write the assignment and they don't transfer it to outside the class, and the authors also stated that one of the reasons that sustain this is the lack of ability of the students to evaluate whether or not he should use the skills that he learned in the writing class.
ReplyDeleteA good ways to help the students to transfer the knowledge that they learned during the writing class to their course classes, would be built students self-perception, which I connect to the idea that teachers have to teach them to recognize the different situations that students are exposed to, therefore it requires teachers to certify that the students were completely able to understand the concepts that he learned in class.
The transfer is important because by transferring what we previously learned might help us to get a better understanding of what we are learning or what we have to do, in that way it we can easily organize our ideas and work, doing in that way a more concise job.
I like that you mentioned that by transferring knowledge it helps us gain a better understanding of what we are learning. I couldn’t agree with this statement because I think happens all the time. We are always building on our prior knowledge and using that knowledge to help us learn more. I think the skills we’ve learned throughout this course specifically on knowledge transfer will help in the future.
DeleteAs an engineering major student, I can understand what you say. Just learning is not enough, we also need to understand why we are learning that, how and where we can apply that knowledge.
DeleteI agree with your idea that students need to learn and apply what they learned in other courses. It is important because only in this way they can know how to use their knowledge by themselves.
DeleteI do agree that transfer is very important in our study because it's just simple that we can't learn everything and making good use of transfer can enhance the efficiency of our study.
DeleteAccording to Bergmann and Zepernick, the reason why students restrict to transfer knowledge from a first-year writing is that they already set up their own preconceptions about writing, which limit them to learn new skills or conceptions in writing. Students don’t do writing well in different courses. Most of them use their own experience, think as personal writing, and do not apply writing knowledge from one course to another, etc. All these concerns contribute to the restriction to transfer knowledge in writing.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard for students to accept academic writing and knowledge. According to Zepernick, it seems to be indistinguishable for students to learn. However, there are some actions to change the situation. We can add their knowledge and experience or change a professor because different teacher have different requirements to students.
In my opinion, it is common for the first-year student to restrict some new writing skills. But it is also easy to change this situation because students can learn the new knowledge when they keep doing writing. In my experience of writing course, I learned rhetorical situation, genre that are all new for me. But I also would confuse with my former writing experience. So I get rid of some former ideas which are not suitable for American writing and restart to do writing like a Native American. What’s more, most other courses also require writing skills, like business, history, etc. So, when I get the task to write a paper in business or history, I know how to show my main ideas, how to explain my analysis to audience, and how to convince them. I can transfer my knowledge to other courses when understanding the new writing skills and knowledge.
I can relate to you in that I too have had to forget some of the things about writing that were no longer of use to me, I only hope that doing so won't come back to hurt me later. It's hard to get past old ideas and I think a big part of taking classes like this is to help us do that and fill up with new more practical means of writing.
DeleteI've also had the same experience as you. There is a lot about writing that I learned which made me confused. Especially when I had to move from the ELC to another ESL school, the knowledge I gained from both places seemed to be conflicting.
DeleteAgree with you that it is not difficult to transfer the knowledge we learn from writing course to other courses because what we learn in writing course is some basic but vital concepts and these concepts are also essential in other courses' writing.
DeleteIn the article by Bergmann and Zepernick they state that students don't transfer what they learn in high school and first year English classes because they don't see its relevance outside the class room. Many students think that these writing courses have a personal feel to them that's not in the factual writing they do in their other classes. In fact some students said that audience never occurred to them in their writing for other classes. "when facing a new and more sophisticated set of expectations for their writing--particularly when we heard students actively reject the possibility that what they learned in high school English classes or FYC could be applied to writing in their disciplines" this phenomenon described by Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb backs up Bergmann and Zepernick, it's exactly what's happens too. Students feel they don't really take much out of writing an essay about a book they were forced to read, so it stands to reason that the techniques they used to go about writing such an essay would be forgotten as well. Students need to take what they learned in these classes and rather than not apply it at all they could at least look for how what they learned in first year writing could apply to their specific situation. It's very important that students have this transfer of first year writing skills to other things. While factual writing might pass, people look for writing they like and can relate to in the end.
ReplyDeleteAs far as what I've personally done in this class that I will carry on to other writing situations is my awareness of audience. It is much more easy to write to a general audience but when you can write to a specific one it conveys a point more effectively. This class, along with my high school classes, have given me insight on writing that others I feel might not have, or have disregarded as not important.
I completely agree that I will, as well, transfer knowledge about being aware of my audience. Learning about the effectiveness of conveying a point to a specific audience I think will really help me in the future. We’ve also learned how valuable the art of argumentation and persuasion is when writing to an audience and I think that knowledge will transfer to future situations.
DeleteI also agree that figuring out who (your audience) you are writing to or for drastically changes how you write and the outcome of your writing. I think that once you research your audience you will have a good idea of how your writing will be perceived.
DeleteAccording to the article, “Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students Perceptions of Learning to Write” by Bergmann and Zepernick students are not transferring the knowledge they’ve learned in their first year writing courses to the rest of their college careers. The only thing most of these students are taking away from these courses is “how to b.s. their way through an English paper.” These students believe that in these required writing classes all they are expected to write is about subjective and personal topics that don’t apply to their intended disciplines/majors. Bergmann and Zepernick concluded in a study that students are not transferring the knowledge acquired in these first year courses because they are not able to “to recognize situations…in which those skills can be used.” Also students were found to have difficult time transferring the knowledge learned in these courses because before they begin taking these courses they already have created their own ideas about writing and thus limits them to absorb the skills taught in these first year writing courses.
ReplyDeleteTo help students transfer the knowledge learned in the first year writing courses Bergmann and Zepernick believe that within these courses the professors must help their students understand how the learned skills can be applied to different disciplines and they also must articulate to their students the importance of adapting. The students need to learn that the skills they learn in the first year writing courses can be adapting to fit any writing assignment in any discipline. The knowledge transfer is crucial because it helps us build on what we have already learned and it helps us contribute to the knowledge community.
I think I will end up transferring a lot of knowledge from this course into other writing courses as well as any future writing situation. I’ve learned so much about rhetorical situation and the importance of audience that I think I will be able to adapt to any writing situation and complete the task effectively. Any future writing situation will be directed towards a specific audience and my knowledge from this course will definitely transfer to help me succeed. Also my knowledge of reflection will help me continue to become a better writer because I will be constantly evaluating my writing and trying to improve.
I also think that this writing class has served as an excellent stepping stone and I will be able to transfer what I have learned in this class to my next writing class as well as to other course/disciplines. I agree that knowing more about the reflection process will help me to continuously revise and improve my writing.
DeleteAccording to the article, students tend to not transfer what they learn in writing classes because they thin that those classes are all about being more personal, and also because they consider writing classes as not very academic. An example of this are the students from the Engineering majors that considered that unlike the writing they did in their classes which was more facts and evidences related, in the English writing classes what seemed to be more relevant was one's opinion and that the feedbacks from the teachers was not really what they expected.
ReplyDeleteOne way to help students to transfer the knowledge they get in the writing classes is to teach them and make sure that they understand the concepts that would be important to use in other classes. By doing this, students will be able to identify and adapt the knowledge gained in writing classes to other classes.
I consider transfer important because learning is a progressive activity. We don't learn everything in one day. We learn and continue learning everyday of our lives. However, we need to be capable to apply what we learn and relate it to other things to be able to make further discoveries. From this class, I will definitely transfer the knowledge of genre, audience and the two R's ( rhetoric and rhetorical situation). Until know the lack of knowledge about these two seemed to be my biggest flaw. Now that I know about them it will be easier to make more concise and targeted texts, independently of the class.
I totally agree with you in the idea that learning is a progressive ad why the transfer is relevant to the learning process and that the understanding of the concepts is what make it easier to successful connect with concepts from other classes and learn them.
DeleteAccording to the article Disciplinarity and Transfer, Bergmann and Zepernick point out that students are not likely to apply the knowledge they learn from their high school's writing class to other class. Instead, students tend to use their own experience or what they learn from other peers. To explain this phenomenon, authors state that "the primary obstacle to such transfer is not that students are unable to recognize situations outside FYC in which those skills can be used, but that students do not look for such situations because they believe that skills learned in FYC have no value in any other setting."
ReplyDeleteI think it's understandable that students have difficulty in transferring the knowledge they learn from writing course to their other course because every class has different requirement for writing. Also, in high, students had few chances to have the concept of transfer, so for first-year students, they may need time to do these adjustment and adaption.
However, I do think it's possible to transfer what I learn from writing course to my other courses and even to my daily life and career. For instance, the knowledge about genre and rhetorical situation is useful in any area of my writing. I need to write different papers in different genres. Also , I need to accomplish my projects with my understanding of rhetorical situation. So I don't think the application is very hard, instead I think everyday we are doing the transfer, even when we don't realize it.
I like what you said about being difficult for the students to transfer the knowledge from writing classes to other classes , because of the different requirements for each class, and we also have to have in consideration that most of the writing concepts are abstract so if we don't successful transform them into something that we are comfortable with, makes it harder to understand.
DeleteI agree with your idea that it is not easy for students to transfer knowledge but it is possible.I do like the word that the process of transferring knowledge is in our lives everywhere.
DeleteThe first piece about transfer adopted a positive view of transfer, that students would engage in it naturally with prior knowledge. The first article, in essence, claimed that any prior knowledge leads to transfer, and that any student with prior knowledge will tend to engage in knowledge transfer, and that it is an active process.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile Bergmann and Zepernick adopt a more realistic view of student's ability to tansfer knowledge, stating that students are presented with little more than optimistic fiction in first year composition courses. Students who responded to their study were not practicing effective writing, but personally considered themselves good or effective rhetors and it did not indicate knowledge transfer.
I think that to some extent both views are very polar, and for that reason the real situation reflected by classes is probably somewhere in between. I also believe that this class especially doesn't really fit the typical model of a first year composition course, in that many members of this class have had experience out side of school with real life situations which have expanded abilities without the rubric of a formal educational environment.