"Inventing the University" by David Bartholomae - Summary

The interest of the paper “Inventing the University” by David Bartholomae, is in the errors of basic writers and how their lack of knowledge of a discourse community prevents them from effectively becoming a part of that academic community and succeeding in their academic interests. Bartholomae is explaining the struggles of basic writers, the way expert writers write, and the difference between these two types of writers.

Bartholomae shows these differences through various examples of former student essays. The author used two essays: one full essay and a conclusion. He also quoted “The Discourse on Language” by Foucault and he used ideas from Linda Flower to state his points. Although his points are supported, this study has limitations in the sample area. The author has limited observations using only one full essay and a conclusion of another. Also, the limitation exists in the origin of the student’s essay, meaning, which high school did the students attend and what are the academic ratings of those high schools.

In the paper, the author states that a student has to “invent the university” (pg. 456). The meaning of this phrase comes from the idea that every freshman college student faces a new community in which the student has to adapt to new ideas, language, and ways of doing. With this new adaption comes a challenge of a new discourse academic community in which the student has to develop and formulate a new way of speaking and writing to be a part of and understood in a certain academic community.

The “commonplaces” establishes a setting for writing. The commonplaces are the points given to which a writer could follow up or focus his or her writing on. These commonplaces are self-sufficient or self-explanatory, and they are helpful in keeping focus of the writer’s point.

A major difference between an expert writer and a beginning writer is the detection of the audience. Most of the time, a beginning writer does not take into account the type of audience and writes unaware of the reader’s ideas or understanding. An expert writer does not only take into account the audience but understands their position, knowledge, and strive to write for the reader and not for the writer.

The author is suggesting that a reason why basic writers fail to convey a message or write effectively within a certain academic community is because of their lack of knowledge of that community. And this lack of knowledge occurs because many teachers do not to create involvement of the students in the community and do not create ways that the student can interact in a discourse effectively.

After reading this paper, I agree with the ideas and points of the author because I do not feel a part of my biology community yet. I struggle to communicate effectively and to understand theories and ideas within the community. A way to use the author’s ideas so I can become a more effective writer would be to look for ways to get involve in the biological community or to find peers who understand the discourse of biology. The ideas of Bartholomae relate to our current class subject in the way the in order to write effectively, a person has to have at least basic knowledge of the community he or she is in.