Adapting, Theoretically

DePalma, Michael-John, and Jeffrey M. Ringer. “Toward a Theory of Adaptive Transfer: Expanding Disciplinary Discussions of ‘Transfer’ in Second-Language Writing and Composition Studies.” Journal of Second Language Writing 20 (2011): 134-47. Print.

Discussions about the possibilities of writing/rhetorical skills to transfer from one context to another are common in both L2 and WAC contexts. DePalma and Ringer argue in this article that the discussions about transfer, as they are commonly framed, focus too narrowly on students’ abilities to reuse what they have learned about writing. Instead, they offer “adaptive transfer” as a theory that broadens the scope of transfer discussions to include how students alter those writing practices to fit new and different contexts.

In developing this theory and its potential applicability, the authors first trace earlier discussions of transfer in both L2 and FYC contexts, highlighting the limitations of these discussions. They note a lack of consensus about even the possibility of transfer, citing studies that show both its possibility and its impossibility. What causes this inconsistency is a matter of definition. Often, in writing contexts, transfer is deemed as occurring when “a writing skill taught in one context is consistently [. . . ] manifested as students move into other settings” (137, emphasis in original). This limited view of transfer limits the role of the author and suggests a great deal of stability in rhetorical situations across various contexts.

Because of the narrow views of transfer in English studies and related fields, DePalma and Ringer look to experimental psychology and education to add some greater depth to transfer. In these fields, they find views that emphasized adaptation and alteration. This leads them to a different way of thinking about transfer that they call adaptive transfer, or “the conscious or intuitive process of applying or reshaping learned writing knowledge in new and potentially unfamiliar writing situations” (141). Because it focuses on the dynamic ways in which writers reuse and reshape various writing skills/strategies, adaptive transfer allows instructors and researchers to consider how writers are trying to use and/or change their previous knowledge and experiences in new situations rather than focusing more so on what skills they fail to apply “consistently.”

They see a number of benefits in this theory, ranging from FYC curricular decisions to genre instruction. I also see some potential for the ideas presented here to be useful tools in helping writing instructors work with faculty from other disciplines to develop L2 writing strategies that allow for generic and rhetorical flexibility, negotiation of meaning, and attention to individual needs regarding writing. While I am not entirely sure how “new” their theory is (I see a few echoes of Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” as well as the New London Group’s multiliteracies pedagogy here), I do agree that it may indeed make us reconsider previous notions of transfer.