I am beginning a study of two artifacts: the Ready Writing Handbook of 1965, by Powell Stewart, and the Ready Writing Handbook of 1983, by Charles Robert Kline, JR. and James L. Kinneavy. The purpose of the study is to identify elements of the two works that reflect the intellectual milieu in which they were written.
The original: Stewart, Powell. The Ready Writers Handbook: For participants in the University Interscholastic League Ready Writing Contest. Bureau of Public School Service, Division of Extension, The University of Texas, Austin Texas, Numer 6504, Sixth printing, February, 1965, 16 pages.
The revision: Kline, Charles R., Kinneavy, James L. Ready Writing Handbook: A manual for Ready Writers, Sponsors, and Judges, The University Interscholastic League, Division of Continuing Education, Austin, Texas, 1983, 126 pages.
The two images below represent word clouds made of the main instructional text in both works. These were created in Voyant-Tools, a text analysis platform. As a beginning of the study, these broad brush-strokes of the text can tell us something about the teaching approaches used in the two works.
Over the next few months I will expand this analysis by looking more closely at the texts, and also contextualizing the two works against the backdrop of library holdings of the authors' papers and collections of archived materials pertaining to the changes in pedagogical approaches to composition teaching in the 1960s and 1970s and to the intellectual, cultural, and social climate of the two eras.
1965
1983
