Teaching Multiwriting

Book excerpt: Formulaic ways to train students in composition and rhetoric are no longer effective, say authors Robert L. Davis and Mark F. Shadle. Scholar-teachers must instead reinvent the field from the inside. Teaching Multiwriting: Researching and Composing with Multiple Genres, Media, Disciplines, and Cultures presents just such a reinvention with multiwriting, an alternative, open approach to composition. Seeking to open the minds of both writers and readers to new understandings, the authors argue for the supplanting of the outdated research paper assignment with research projects that use multiple forms to explore questions that cannot be fully answered. This innovative volume, geared to composition teachers at all levels, includes sixteen helpful illustrations and provides classroom exercises and projects for each chapter.