Bad Ideas about Writing

by Cheryl E. Ball (editor), Drew M. Loewe (editor)

These essays, written for an educated public by a diverse group of writing scholar-teachers, provide a snapshot of major myths about writing instruction in order to spark debate and encourage us all to rethink our pieties and preconceptions.

Some of these bad ideas are quite old, such as the archetype of the inspired genius author, the five-paragraph essay, or the abuse of adjunct writing teachers. Others are much newer, such as computerized essay scoring or gamification. Some ideas, such as the supposed demise of literacy brought on by texting, are newer bad ideas but are really instances of older bad ideas about literacy always being in a cycle of decline.

The same core questions—what is good writing, what makes a good writer, how should writing be assessed, and the like—persist across contexts, technologies, and eras, but ultimately what emerges from the initial sense of exasperation is a hope that we can leave these bad ideas behind and start to write and teach writing in more productive, inclusive, and useful ways.

Genres: Writing, Teaching

370 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Elizabeth]

This is a fabulous collection of pieces that succinctly and clearly explain how many of the most common ideas about writing are, as the title indicates, bad. Any one of the essays in this open-access book could be easily used as evidence to provide to administrators, teachers, and anyone else who espouses such bad ideas.

[Peaches]

This book was an interesting premise. I enjoyed the idea of taking common ideas about writing and explaining why there are issues with them; however, the citations to other scholars were spotty and the chapters overall came off as loose ideas that scholars had and wrote in an hour or so.

[Ietrio]

Crap ideas from people who don't have to work for their pay, it's the taxmen and women who work for them.

[Tanyx]

Super insightful. I read (most) of this for a tutor training class, and although I ended up deciding that tutoring is not for me, I still learned a lot about how we write.

[Sophie Cornwell]

Many ideas

[Suhaib]

As the title says, every chapter in this book focuses on a misconception about academic writing.

[Julie Huskey]

I've been reading the blog "Curmudgucation" (http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/) lately; this open access ebook (https://textbooks.lib.wvu.edu/badidea...) is mentioned in a recent post.