Response to Letter Blog #4

Dear Scarpa,

I definitely agree with you, but I found the reading more physically difficult than mentally, specifically on my eyes which effected me mentally by giving me a headache. I will make an attempt to respond to your questions to help clarify the authors' thoughts to the best of my ability. I believe Britton was saying that in general verbal messages are dominant or I could even interpret it further by saying that any communication through words is a dominant discourse. "The verbal structure, depends primarily on the dominant function." (Britton 152) I kind of agree with his theory of poetry being a dominant discourse because I believe anything can be considered poetry if you are creating it with the use of language. I think Britton is looking at literature and the use of words as poetic and if you look at it that way words are everywhere and dominate.

Britton states that there are three types of categories which are transactional, expressive and poetic. There seems to be a fine line that defines each category individually and personally I would not separate them as so because communicating is one discourse there are just different levels of communication. Maybe that is what he is trying to say also. I personally do not understand if he is trying to separate the literacy or non literacy discourses but I think he is stating that people use the different discourses for different communicating purposes.

I do not consider writing across the curriculum as an educational reform because teachers use writing and reading in every subject. If they incorporate the fundamentals and importance of writing in the classroom then it will make it a simple transition because in actuality teachers teach more than they think they really are.

I do not agree with Bean because English is not rocket science and no one is really asking the Science teacher to become the English teacher and teach their own subject in 45 minutes. Teachers of other subjects can incorporate short paragraphs as mini in class or homework assignments and just grade them on content first and grammar last, every little bit helps. A teacher should be happy to learn better writing and grammar techniques to help their students, because if writing is the dominant discourse then it will help them in their everyday lives and studies anyway.

I do not think Britton would agree with Bean's belief that all teachers can not teach English because Britton understands the difference of each discourse and since the poetic discourse is dominant teachers will naturally use their training to teach students to "make something with language." (Britton 158)

Most teachers are well rounded because they graduate from college and universities that prepare them with multi subjects. I believe teachers are more prepared to implement writing across the curriculum then spectators give credit. It is not like they are teaching students the new alien language it is just writing across the curriculum.