Dr' Peter Elbow

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Dr. Peter Elbow
elbow_at_english.umass.edu By Pei-Ju Wu
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Education

• Ph.D., Brandeis University

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Professional Experience

• Teaching
• 1. English Department of University of
  Massachusetts
• 1)Started to teach at UMass since 1987
• 2)From 19962000, Director of the Writing
  Program
• 3)From the fall of 2000present Emeritus
  Professor of English.
• Notes Peter Elbow retired from the University in
  August 2000. He will remain in Amherst, will
  sometimes teach graduate seminars, and will often
  be able to consult with and advise graduate
  students in Rhetoric and Composition.

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Professional Experience,Continued

• Teaching
• 2. M.I.T. (for two stretches)
• 3. Franconia College
• 4. Evergreen State College
• 5. Wesleyan University
• 6. SUNY Stony Brook ,where he directed the
  Writing Program for five years

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Research Interests

• Writing and the teaching of writing
• Voice in writing
• Assessment and grading
• Learning and teaching

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Other Interest

• As an amateur viola player, he plays in the
  Pioneer Valley Symphony and particularly love
  playing string quartets.

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Professional Employment

• Executive Committee of the Modern Language
  Association
• Executive Committee of the Conference on College
  Composition and Communication.

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Selected Publications

• As a writer
• Writing with Power Techniques for Mastering the
  Writing Process (Oxford UP, 1981)
• Embracing Contraries Explorations in Learning
  and Teaching (Oxford UP, 1986)
• Writing Without Teacher (MLA/NCTE, 1990)
• Everyone Can Write Essays Toward a Hopeful
  Theory of Writing and Teaching (MLA/NCTE, 1990)
• Being A Writer (McGraw-Hill, 2002)

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Selected Publications, Continued

• Essays on Learning and Teaching
• Oppositions in Chaucer
• What is English?
• A Community of Writers (with Pat Belanoff this
  is a text book)

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Selected Publications, Continued

• As an editor
• Voice and Writing
• Co-edited
• Nothing Begins with N New Explorations of
  Freewriting
• Writing to Learn Strategies for Assigning and
  Responding to Writing in the Disciplines.

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Selected Publications, Continued

• Essays published on writing and teaching and
  evaluation
• In 1986, he was awarded the Braddock prize for
  "The Shifting Relationships between Speech and
  Writing."
• In 1994 he was awarded the James A. Berlin prize
  for "The War between Reading and Writing-and How
  to End It."

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Elbows ideas in composition and assessment

• His main ideas and theories are freewriting,
  less ranking (or grading) and more evaluating,
  more writing, contract grading, portfolios, and
  liking, all of which may arouse some readers'
  interest in student-centered pedagogy.

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Annotations of Elbows works

• Elbow, Peter (1986). Embracing Contraries
  Trustworthiness in Evaluation. Oxford Oxford UP.
• This article represents his early ideas of
  evaluation. The methods he suggested were
  embryonic as compared to the methods he proposes
  right now. The term of portfolios emerges not as
  a fad but as a necessity at that time and extends
  up to the present.

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Elbow, Peter (1991). Nothing Begins with N
Toward a Phenomenology of Freewriting. Ed. Pat
Belanoff, Peter Elbow, and Sheryl I. Fontaine.
Carbondale and Edwardsville Southern Illinois
UP.

• This article, unlike the other articles that
  Elbow publishes, is written in an descriptive and
  expressive way. The whole article is centered in
  the theme of "freewriting." It describes what
  benefits freewriting can contribute to writing.

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Elbow, Peter (1991). "Reflections on Academic
Discourse How It Relates to Freshmen and
Colleagues." College English 53 135-55.

• Perhaps the best way to introduce students to
  academic discourse is to have them familiarize
  nonacademic discourse first. As they are used to
  putting their thoughts and experiences with their
  own language in writing, they are ready for being
  inculcated the conventions of academic discourse.
  When writing for academic discourse, they won't
  just mimic surface stylistic features instead of
  elaborating organic contents.

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Elbow, Peter (1991). "Some Thoughts on
Expressive Discourse A Review Essay." Journal of
Advanced Composition 11.1 83-94.

• Perhaps Harris makes strong criticism against
  expressive discourse nevertheless, she has her
  own stance. On the other hand, Elbow, in his
  review essay, defend expressive discourse by
  pointing out the wrong concepts of expressive
  discourse she has.

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Elbow, Peter (1993). "Ranking,
Evaluating, and Liking Sorting Out Three Forms
of Judgment." College English 55.2 187-206.

• This article demonstrates the most concrete
  ideas that Elbow has ever elaborated. We can get
  a rough picture of what and how Elbow thinks a
  good assessment in students' writing. This
  article is a miniature of his entire pieces of
  writing.

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Elbow, Peter (1993). "The Uses of Binary
Thinking." Journal of Advanced Composition 13.1
51-78.

• Dichotomies exist no matter whether they are
  external or internal. People tend to stand on the
  side where they think is right however, most of
  the time there is no right or wrong but either
  side is right. If someone insists on his or her
  priority, conflicts may occur. The primary point
  that Elbow makes is to respect differences while
  differentiating them.

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Elbow, Peter, and Kathleen Blake Yancey
(1994). "On the Nature of Holistic Scoring An
Inquiry Composed on Email." Assessing Writing
1.1 91-107.

• In this article, Elbow has a dialogue with
  Kathleen Blake Yancey through email. The
  following viewpoints mostly belong to Elbow's.
  Reading is socially constructed. Divergence and
  convergence are the two opposite skills that
  well-educated readers have to develop. Divergence
  is a skill that intelligent readers see something
  that others haven't seen.

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Elbow, Peter (1995). "Being a Writer vs.
Being an Academic A Conflict in Goals." College
Composition and Communication 46.1 72-83.

• In the English academics including professors
  and graduate students, there is few or no
  conflict between the role of writer and that of
  academics. By contrast, most students, especially
  the first year students do not inhabit themselves
  in the discourse of academics. Instead of
  pressing them to fit in the discourse promptly,
  it is better for students to have somewhat a free
  choice of writing and a sense of pride,
  self-absorption and even arrogance when they
  write.

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Elbow, Peter (1997). "Taking Time Out from
Grading and Evaluating While Working in a
Conventional System." Assessing Writing 4.1 5-27.

• Elbow differentiates grading and evaluation by
  pointing out that grading gives explicit, simple,
  and quantitative symbols while evaluation
  includes a much wider spectrum of activities and
  modes. Grading is a small subset of evaluation.
  In an overall view, he seems to reject the
  grading system and support narrative evaluations.

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Elbow, Peter.(1998). "Grading Writing
Changing Grading While Working with Grades." The
Theory and Practice of Grading Writing. Ed.
Frances Zak, and Christopher C. Weaver. State
University of New York P.

• One question here is that if Elbow
  incorporates minimal grading and criteria into
  portfolios because portfolios possess the
  features of carrying comments and suggestions
  that criteria have and the postponement of
  grading which is not the same as but similar to
  minimal grading.