Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Topic Knowledge
If I'm reading her correctly Irene Clark thinks that it's important for students to have some knowledge of their writing topic prior to accessing information sources because "information without context and coherence does not result in knowledge; it remains an overload of undigested facts" (565). I tend to agree. Learning how to access, analyze, and evaluate sources of knowledge is hard enough without throwing an unfamiliar topic into the mix. After all, there is always more for students to learn about a subject they're already familiar with. Having some prior knowledge might help them to learn how to recognize good sources and steer clear of the questionable.
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It looks to me as if Clark is less concerned with whether or not a student has knowledge of her topic before she begins than with the fact that a student’s writing process must commonly have as a companion an “acquisition-of-knowledge process.” Her larger point, though, is that students need writing centers to help them learn to transform information into knowledge.
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