Dear Ritter,

My letter to you has to contain questions and concerns; therefore, I chose to write to you about Berlin. I don't know where to start. He mostly speaks about four groupings of pedagogical approaches. He expresses how three of these groupings are limited in their theories, ideas, and approaches to writing, language, and the teaching of writing and language. He puts the grouping called New Rhetoricians superior to the other three. He speaks highly of this grouping and says many things that I would consider as positive characteristics such as: "It is a relation that is created, not pre-existed and waiting to be discovered.", "Truth is always truth for someone standing in relation to others in a linguistically circumscribed situation"(774), and "...learning to write is not a matter of learning the rules that govern...we must be discoverers of new truth as well as preservers..." (776). A lot of what he says about this specific group seems to be agreeable and convincing; however, others can be open for debate. I sometimes felt as if he was being vague in his descriptions and definitions. I didn't always understand what he meant with these statements which read: "Truth is impossible without language, since it is language that embodies and generates truth" (774), and "The numerous recommendations of the 'process'-centered approaches to writing instruction as superior to the 'product'-centered approaches are not very useful" (777). Some of his justification for New Rhetoric just seemed a little off balanced. I wonder, why he would choose to describe a pedagogical approach in such and unparallel, and inconsistent manner? His language, organization, and style were extremely difficult to follow. There were many things that I agreed with, and other things that (because of its wording or vagueness) were up for debate. If you can clearify some of his general argument that will be very helpful.

-Crystal Rios





Reflection:
I really enjoyed the letter writing. I feel as though I'm connecting with a peer who is facing the same difficulties as I am, and when we speak about these difficulties, we can come up with conclusions, ideas, thoughts etc, together. I can definitely use this assignment in class. It's a great way to get students involved in reading the assignments. I also appreciate this assignment because it involves the active participation of a both you and a peer. There are some students who will probably consider skipping an assignment or two, but knowing that someone else's grade depends upon you writing them a letter, can function as motivation to complete the assignment. This idea can work as a motivation, or the student can chose not to do the assignment, which will make assessing the assignment more difficult for the teacher. If I were to assign this, I would give a due date, and if the letter writer has not yet written to their partner, I will tell their partner to write the letter in order to receive full credit. I also really enjoyed that as the letter writer I was not asked to summarize the readings, instead, we were to raise questions and concerns in our letters. I found this approach to be very helpful.