Project 1 Revised Proposal

Revised Construct Proposal

                For the first assignment, I wish to explore the use of first person pronouns in academic writing. The beginning of my research was focused on how students, across disciplines, are sent mixed messages about the first person in research writing: some scholars believe that it is impossible to be impersonal when writing, while other think self-inclusion is a slippery slope into “unchecked self-references and narcissism” (Berube 1063). The mixed messages leave students feeling insecure and lacking authorial presence (Tang and John). In I-Writing: The Politics and Practice of Teaching First-Person Writing, Karen Surman Paley discusses an “expressivist pedagogy,” which she describes as including “an openness to the use of personal narrative, a particular type of the narrative mode of discourse” (Paley 13). Like Davis and Shadle in “’Building a Mystery’: Alternative Research Writing and the Academic Act of Seeking Author(s)”Paley sees genre exploration as a way to transfer the ability to write personally into other, more “academic” forms of writing. Moreover, Paley contends that expressive writing-writing that includes the first-person- engenders self-confidence in the writing because the writer knows of what she writes. Perhaps if all students were able to explore various genres of research writing (personal narrative, cause-and-effect, etc.), then they would gain more confidence and authorial voice. One problem I have found, however, is that while some scholars, such as Margaret Kantz, Paley, and Tang and John, advocate for creativity in academic writing, others warn against students reading scholarly articles as stories. It seems incongruous and potentially confusing to suggest a pedagogy that encourages creativity, self-expression, and, essentially, narrative, and also teach students to avoid reading similar articles as stories.