Kratzke

Kratzke frames his article around the concept of “recopying to revise;” however, his main argument is that teachers must train students to remain (or become) independent of computers. Instructors cannot be Luddites; technology should be used as a tool provided that it assists and does not interfere with students’ cognitive and composition processes. The notion of drafting was interesting for me because I’m young enough that I always remember being able to save documents, whether on a thumb drive or floppy disk. I’ve never had to rewrite multiple drafts, but imagining this leads me to the conjecture that, although painstaking and time-consuming, drafting in the old sense must have done much more to improve student writing than the current revision process. As Kratzke claims “much student writing lacks a certain human quality” (authors emphasis) (15). The major issue is that students are skipping the entire cognitive process: spell check and grammar check make most of the corrections for students, and the corrections the students do make on their own are superficial. If real, in-depth revisioning is not completed, then students are unwittingly tweaking the same first draft over and over.

One issue brought up by Kratzke is the notion that student achievement in composition is not increasing. For scores of years instructors have lamented over their students’ declining writing skills. If these instructors are never satisfied can it possibly mean that good writing is simply not easy to do? I personally believe that great writing takes incredible amounts of time, effort, and practice (and possibly a little natural talent). All other writers, whether poor, mediocre, or good, can always improve, but I’m not sure that it is possible to have a massive quantity of great writers.

Kratzke quotes Jane Healy pondering the Ongian possibility that “the act of reading itself may be on the way to obsolescence” (13). NPR had a report this morning of a university in Mississippi that has made the transition to all computer-based textbooks. The benefits and disadvantages will continue to be argued, but the fact remains that physical texts are losing ground in many ways. I agree with Kratzke that the “transactional” nature seems to be missing when you read a text on the computer; however, I’m sure that new modes of cognition will develop with technology. The important thing is that this metacognitive process does not become obsolete.