Jakobson's Diagram and Time

Jakobson's Diagram and Time

Roman Jakobson’s diagram—or his solution to the traditional rhetorical triangle—is interesting. I like that it breaks down the different parts of the writing process that we want our students to consider. However, I wonder how much time we can honestly dedicate to this process when some schools have minimum word counts that students have to write by the end of the course. Dedicating time to the process makes sense, but how can we do this when administrators demand that students produce x-amount of words within 16 weeks? I feel like in Eng 99, for example, it becomes more about moving from one writing assignment to the next without giving students much time to develop their ideas let alone think about their role as the addresser, their reader as an addressee, etc. When writing and if they have enough time, students will typically ask themselves three questions: Do I have a thesis? Are my examples good? Is it long enough? With the exception of the last question—to which my response is always “it should be as long as it needs to be to respond to the question”—I don’t think these are necessarily bad, but the problem is that the students care more about completing the product than the steps necessary to get there because of the emphasis on quantity over quality. So again, aside from allowing revisions, is there a way to build in enough time so that students become acclimated to and comfortable with most of the elements in Jakobson’s diagram?