The End of Composition Studies

6. Transfer

Transfer 119 119 6 Transfer NOW WE HAVE ARRIVED at what I take to be the heart of the matter in learning to write. If writing is a complex number of related abilities that rely on very different kinds of knowledge, depending on the writer’s purpose and context, when writers learn any particular piece of knowledge or when they learn how to put a particular skill into practice, just what have they learned? Have they learned a general skill that can be applied any time they write again, or have they learned something that can be applied only in very limited circumstances similar to those in which they learned that knowledge or that skill in the first place? In psychology and learning theory, these questions are part of a process called “transfer”: in what sense can various kinds of knowledge and skill be transferred from one situation to another, or learned in one context and applied in another? And overwhelmingly, the evidence suggests that learners do not necessarily transfer the kinds of knowledge and skills they have learned previously to new tasks. If such transfer occurs at all, it is largely unpredictable and depends on the learners’ background and experience, factors over which teachers have little control. If learners do transfer the appropriate knowledge and skills from one context to another, they do so because they see the similarity between what they have learned in the past and what they need to do in new contexts. The only way teachers can help students with the process of transfer is to help them see the similarities between what they have learned before and what they need to do in new contexts. The implications of these claims for the teaching of writing are radical. In effect, the evidence suggests that writing teachers can claim only that students have learned what teachers have taught and evaluated, that in effect , writing teachers get what they teach for, instruction in particular kinds 120 Conceptual Limits of knowledge and skill and not broad-based writing ability. If we want to promote the transfer of certain kinds of writing abilities from one class to another or one context to another,then we are going to have to find the means to institutionalize instruction in the similarities between the way writing is done in a variety of contexts. I am going to present the evidence for these claims in the following order . To set the context for the empirical evidence, I will begin with David Russell’s Wittgenstein-like analogy comparing writing with games that use balls and then make a distinction between strong and weak strategies for learning. Then I will present the evidence of a number of case studies and ponder their implications. AnAnalogy Many different games are played with a ball. The originators of each game have appropriated this tool for the object(ive) of each, the“object of the game.” The kind of game (activity system) changes the form of the ball (tool)—large, small, hard, soft, leather, rubber, round, oblong, and so on. The object(ive) and the history of each game also condition the uses of the ball. One could play volleyball by using the head, as in soccer, but it is much less effective in achieving the object of the game than using the wrists and hands. (Russell, “Activity” –) When we teach someone to use a ball, just what are we teaching? If we teach young people to use a ball in one kind of game, would we expect those people to use any kind of ball in any game? Well, we might say, it depends on the ways the balls are used in the two games. Exactly. We would expect people taught to throw a small hard ball overhand in baseball to be able to throw other round balls overhand as long as they could grip the ball with one hand. We would expect people skilled in throwing baseballs to also be able to throw softballs, for example, but we would not expect them to necessarily be able to pitch underhand or to throw basketballs or soccer balls or volleyballs with two hands. We would expect people trained to dribble and kick a soccer ball to be able to also control a basketball or a beach ball if it were used in a pick-up game of soccer, but we would not expect the skill of being able to control a soccer ball with the feet to carry over...