Meg Pemrick

English 110

Jessica Zerr

March 20 2017

Conceptual Analysis

After reading “Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians’: Genre Systems and the

Contradictions of General Education” I think this relates very clearly to McCarthy’s “A Stranger

in Stranger Lands: A College Student Writing Across the Curriculum”. Both articles study

students, in McCarthy’s essay it was only Dave but in the David R. Russell and Arturo Yañez

article they study three students, they take a special interest in one particular student, Beth. This

relates to Dave in McCarthy’s “A Stranger in Stranger Lands: A College Student Writing Across

the Curriculum” they shared similar problems like Dave not be interested in his poetry class

because it was hard for him to get anything done without being able to talk to his peers and

discuss what is going on in the class. This relates with that is being talked about in Russell and

Yañez's article which states that people are more motivated to do well in things that they are

interested in other than things that they are not interested. This includes the general educations

classes that college students are forced to take in order to graduate from college. To make this

easier students and teachers could use the activity theory. The theory is made up of a triangle that

can help a person better understand or make assumptions about how they can organize their

academic curriculum. For Beth her Irish history class she was using prior knowledge that she had

from being a journalism major. Unfortunately, the same rules for journalism did not apply to the

rules of the history class. This made it hard for her to obtain good grades or really get anything

out of the class. The activity theory helps to recognize the tools, subjects, rules, communities,
division of labor and the overall outcome of the class. From here Beth can better understand the

rules of her history class and do better overall, without the confusion of mixing up the different

rules of writing applied in every class that she takes.

General education classes are meant to broaden one’s civic life and professional life by

teaching the basics in everything. But this brings the question as to why we take the same classes

in our high school careers to have to take them over again but have it be taught to us in a harder

way that makes it overly complicated than it needs to be. When in high school you are not taught

that there is a separate set of rules for each different class you must take. Overall this must be the

reason that students are made to take the same classes over again in college. In a way the high

school classes are a prep for the college classes that are taught harder, but only to make sure that

students are able to grasp the concept of the rules, the prep from high school helps to not

overwhelm students for when they are taught the subject in a way that makes them fluent in the

generals because as much as students don’t want to admit it is actually very helpful to have all of

the general background knowledge. The rules of the writing game are different in every class as

discussed by McCarthy. Dave had to learn the different rules to the game in each of his classes.

For him it was much easier to catch on in his Biology and English composition class because he

was often asked to summarize instead of having to think critically like he was asked to do in his

Poetry class. David R. Russell and Arturo Yañez’s discuss how Cory, makes sure that the

curriculum he was teaching was beneficial to his students, so that they didn’t just feel like they

were forced to take the general education class but maybe that they wanted to take it.

Cory forces students to use their critical thinking skills. According to the three students,

“It’s just a memorization. You can’t apply it to other parts of your life.”, “It was a waste of time,

useless, just busy work, a painful chore.” And finally “I don’t get it. These are his writing tasks
and he wants me to write his way”. Many high school teachers want to prepare their students for

college. In each class there is a different “language” (Russell, Yañez 334) being spoken. This

may seem unnecessary, but it is important because having the knowledge to be able to write in

many different ways is going to make an individual look more desirable on your job applications

or any applications in general because you are versatile and open to things.

After the three students had taken Cory’s Irish history class they had changed their minds

about how they felt earlier on. The students have a much greater sophisticated understanding of

how writing differs from classes and work fields. When a student can get interested in a subject

that doesn’t apply to their field, such as any general education courses, it makes it a lot easier to

do well. The students that were being taught by Corey were lucky that they had a professor that

pushed them to think outside of the box. It made the class interesting and not feel like a chore to

sit through and to complete the assignments.

In McCarthy’s article when she states that she was more interested in how the students

were absorbing the information other than how the teachers where teaching it. She did this while

watching Dave and a few of his classmates in their Freshman Composition class because she is

also an English teacher, she wants to make sure that the curriculum she is also teaching is

meaningful and helpful for her student’s future writing obligations. This connects to both

because Beth and Dave were closely studied to see if the effects of the classes were meaningful

or useful. An interesting point was made that helps better connect both. Russell and Yañez’s and

McCarthy’s is “Writing is a container for knowledge, and learning Is putting knowledge “into”

individual minds to be put back “into” writing for assessment” (Russell, Yañez’s 335) This states

that professors who put the right knowledge into the student’s minds and make it easy to

understand then they will spit that knowledge back out and make it useful for their professional
and everyday lives. But every different thing that is asked of students to write about will

probably require the different rules. So if the student properly understands what is being asked of

them then they will have successfully understood the rules or different language of the class.

While understand the “Activity Theory” there are many different things that this covers,

this has to so with more than just school work and also includes things to help your everyday

common reading and writing activities.

AT emphasizes tool-mediated action. Human begins not only act on their environment

with tools, they also think and learn with tools. At a primary level these tools are

material, “external” --- Hammers, books, clothing, computers, telecommunications

networks. But we humans also fashion and use tools at a secondary or “internal” level---

language, concepts, scripts, schemas, and (as we will see) genres. Both kinds of tools are

used to act on the environment collectively (Wartofsky, 1979)

This shows that everything that we read and write about is someway connected to the “Activity

Theory” this shows that outside of academic writing is it necessary to know how to do things and

you need to be able to learn from the theories that end up being very beneficial and helpful in all

aspects of reading and writing and other everyday tasks.

  Finally, I think that the activity theory is very helpful for everything that relates to school.

Using the activity theory even helped me write this paper. The activity theory can somehow

adapt to almost every academic situation to help organize homework. If only Dave would have

been informed about the activity maybe, he would have been able to better navigate around his

poetry class. If he could have set up the triangle, he could have looked outside of his little box

and he could have done better by understanding the dynamic of the class. Every person that is

struggling with a school subject should use the activity theory as a templet to start with. The
activity theory helped Beth successfully so it can help everyone, it is proven from the Russel and

Yañez’s article to be useful.

 Work Cited

McCarthy, Lucille. “A Stranger in A Strange Land: A College Student Writing Across the
Curriculum.”, 1987, pp. 233-265

Yañez, Arturo, Russell, David R. “Big Picture People Rarely Become Historians’: Genre
Systems and the Contradictions of General Education”, 2003, pp. 331-362