语言工作与写作教学

Language Work and the Teaching and Learning of Writing

本文认为写作课程应当被视为语言工作的场所和场合,而不是教授写作技能的场合。有关学习迁移的研究以及写作多变性及多样性的特征对写作技能的传输模式带来了挑战,笔者逐一综述这些挑战后提出了一种新的写作课程模式,该模式根据写作课程在维系和修正语言中的作用来定义写作课程的目的和价值,被称为语言工作。跨语言理论表明语言工作不但必要且应该坚持不懈;此外,写作课程为有意从事此项语言工作的人提供了物质手段。学生作文有助于阐释学生如何能够并且确实在完成语言工作中发挥重要作用。

The paper argues that courses in the teaching of writing can best be approached as the site and occasion for work on language rather than as sites for the transmission of writing skills. After reviewing challenges to the transmission model of writing skills posed by scholarship on learning transfer and by the fluctuating and diverse character of writing,the author poses an alternative model for writing courses that defines their aim and value in terms of the work such courses accomplish in contributing to sustaining and revising language: what is called language work. Translingual theory is shown to demonstrate that such work is both necessary and ongoing,and writing courses provide the material means to take up such work deliberately. Student writing is used to illustrate howstudents can and do play a significant role in accomplishing such work.