Teaching Style, by Edward P.J. Corbett

I just finished reading Corbett’s article, published in  Style in Rhetoric and Composition (a critical sourcebook) edited by Paul Butler. The article seems to be mostly about why students are unable to analyze style, along with a few suggestions of ways to do it.

What’s interesting is that Corbett seems to believe that the reason students are unable to analyze style is as simple as just not realizing that they can do it. That students don’t quite understand what style is, seeing it “represented as a curious blend of the idiosyncratic and the conventional” (210). He seems to think that students don’t understand style mostly because teachers don’t know how to teach it.

The Question that keeps on asking

I remember when I was a little kid. People used to ask me the same question they ask every kid. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I used to tell them the same thing (Writer or teacher), but as time went on, the question became more serious. No more smiles when the question asked, no more glazed look in the eyes while listening to my answer. No more promise that I’ll be able to do whatever I want. If I said “Writer,” I’d get “You better have something to fall back on.” And when I said “Teacher” I’d get a follow up question about what I’d want to teach.

I got older still, and now the people asking me were either teachers themselves, or guidance counselors and advisers of some kind. I had to pick a major, after all. Then graduation was coming, and I had to figure out what I was doing after graduation. Then graduate school started, and I needed a topic for my Master’s thesis.

It’s a question that keeps on asking. It keeps coming up. What do I want to be when I grow up?

Recently, it’s started asking itself again.