The author of the article, Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively, was Margaret Kantz. She was a professor in the University of Central Missouri. The article was published at College English in the year 1990. This is a journal that is used by teachers of English language. The main target is college professors who are teaching English. The audience is college students of English who have a great need for writing papers that are rhetorical. It’s also published in JSTOR; an online store for academic papers that serves to keep papers from the physical storage where they are prone to wear and tear. The main advantage with JSTOR is the ease with which one can search for materials without much ado. The main audience for this journal has a very wide scope since it focuses on all libraries and universities. The article being addressed in this paper was written in January 1990 but entered in the journal in 2009. This article entered into the journal specifically to be utilized by English teachers but being in JOSTOR its readership scope is wide.
I tend to disagree with Kantz when she argues that teachers should only teach students that facts are just but mere claims and that they should paraphrase information that they acquired. This sounds a bit unacceptable to me. However, in this same article we see the challenges that college students have in writing in their college education. He seems to conform to the needs of students by supporting their desire to paraphrase but fails to consider the code of academic writing which does not advocate for this. A key weakness I note with Kantz in this paper is how she consistently contradicts herself. She says her main objective was to make college students more creative in their writing and thus having a better experience with writing. Then am left wondering how an advocate of paraphrasing could possibly make such a claim. She goes ahead to claim that her advocating for paraphrasing was meant to help students have a connection with the text they were reading so that they will find meaning with ease. This too sounds more of a preventive mechanism over what she was advocating for, and probably she knew it was not in order.
I wonder why the article was specifically directed at the teachers of English as its major readership group. Claims by the author argue that the main objective was to change the method in which English language was being taught and also to make it known the problem that existed with students in their writing. My argument is based on the diversity in handling academic papers that exist across disciplines. However, this does not imply that I less appreciate English as the foundation for writing but that at least the art of writing good academic papers can be addresses across all disciplines. It could, therefore, have been of great benefit to the students and the author if the article could be a little generalized to incorporate other disciplines. Being the focus group, much should have been addressed to the students so they could feel in touch with the article when they put its claims into real practice.
Truth is told the article Helping Students Use Textual Resources Persuasively, by Margaret Kantz, helps to change the way teachers undertake teaching. But the main question remains, does it influence teaching positively or otherwise? On one side, it serves as an eye opener to the existence of unseen plagiarism and provokes teachers to help their students out of such a vice. On the other hand, its claims that facts are so mere and should be ignored at times put the teaching profession on the edge and may paralyze the whole system, especially if not given some urgency. By embracing originality expansion of knowledge in various research areas is guaranteed, otherwise creativity and innovation in the new generations’ minds may be colonized.
Use of an imaginary character, Shirley, to show the need for teachers to change the methods in which they undertook their teaching gives the renders some doubt on the reliability of this article. To me, using a real life case she might have come across could have helped so much in motivating the students that being an expertise in academic writing is not impossibility. It’s no doubt Kantz seems to have a mind that writing an original paper is impossibility. This s evident from the fact that she categorically states that “Shirley seems to have everything going for her, she experiences difficulty in assignments that require her to write original papers from textual sources”. This statement helps to underscore the problem that college students have but when analyzed critically is also used to support Kantz’s ideas that paraphrasing should not be condemned. The author of this article emphasizes so much on the originality factor as being difficult to achieve, leaving her readers wondering if her article itself has any sense of originality. However, she at least lets teachers know that such a problem exists so they can help solve it, if on earth they are not advocates of the same ideologies as .
I feel the article should have been directed to all English teachers instead of only college English teachers. By this strategy, the author could have probably solved the problem way before students get to college level and maybe the problem could not be as outstanding as it is in college. If students are taught how to write in a rhetorical way when they are still young, then they would be able to write in a comfortable way and will produce more original papers at a tender age. They would not have any issues with writing when they reach college level.
In conclusion, I agree with most of the claims of Kantz. I agree that college students should learn how to write more original content and should take all that they read to be claims so that they will be able to write more original content. I disagree at the stage where rhetorical writing is being emphasized. I strongly support that rhetorical writing should be taught at a much younger age so that students can get used to rhetorical writing at tender ages. There would be more benefits for high school students when they are taught rhetorical writing more than college students because they will learn how to write when they are just starting writing.
Works Cited
Jeffery, Christopher. "Teachers' and Students' Perceptions of the Writing Process." Research in the Teaching of English 15 (1981): 215-228.
Kantz, Margaret. "Originality and Completeness: What Do We Value in Papers Written from Sources?" College Composition and Communication. St. Louis, MO, 1988.
Kennedy, Mary Louise. "The Composing Process of College Students Writing from Sources." Written Communications 2.4 (1985): 434-56.
Kinneavy, James. Theory of Discourse. New York: Norton, 1971.
