Fulkerson and the Definition of "Good Writing"

If I could boil Fulkerson's essay down to one idea that struck home for me, it might be that, in the field of teaching composition, the discourse ought to surround the question of what makes one piece of writing better than another. He begins his inquiry by asking:

1. "Who [are we]?"
2. "What do we wish to achieve with students?"
3. "How [might we] go about it?" (654)

These are valid and necessary questions; though, the ones I find myself asking first, as I teach remedial English students are:

1. How do I engage my students and get them to care about writing in the first place? And,
2. How do I overcome their memories of high school English as boring, complicated, and often frightening?

My gut reaction is that the answer lies not necessarily within cultural studies (gendered, Marxist, etc) and controversial research subjects, but in helping the students to overcome the fear of writing and learn to explore themselves and their world through this medium. (I do have to share, however, that I found it interesting that some writers thought "their courses would not necessarily need to be in English departments" (661) and wondered if such a thought would ever be considered by an art teacher simply because he or she encouraged their students to create with a social conscience.) In the end, the goal has to be to convince the remedial student that there is no one definition of "good writing," and we can do this by allowing them a say-so in choosing their language and personal style of writing - at least to a point.

It might be easier to get students of English to relax and open up if they were sharing and exploring their own experiences and viewpoints, in a language style that makes sense to them, talking about subjects they know and might feel comfortable sharing in written form for a small, well-defined audience (e.g. their teacher, class peer-groups, etc). I also believe the "close reading of texts" (675), should be introduced at the remedial level, using reading material possibly outside of traditional canonical choices, but more relevant to the student's lives. Not only do such readings of material "serve as discourse models" (677), they could be a key component in teaching the students the critical thinking skills they need to successfully create their own compositions not just in the English class, and not just at one point in time, but moving forward into the rest of their college careers and beyond. "The goal is to allow students to read, write, and reason as they will be expected to do in other college courses" (678). Communication is key and mechanics secondary, so that students may walk away with the understanding that “good writing” is just conversation with punctuation.