Irene Papoulis
CTL Fellows: Final Report
May 17, 2013
PROBLEMS: Here are the problems I find most salient when it comes to student writing:
1. Lack of intellectual engagement: Many students have learned to see writing as a chore they must get done with as fast as possible, not an expression of their own ideas. That leads them to write papers in one sitting, not bothering to polish and revise their ideas, which almost inevitably makes for unsatisfactory products. My years of teaching writing have taught me that effective writing requires that students take their own ideas seriously, and take the time to nurture them. Expressing their first opinions in an unreflective way, as many students do, can never result in good writing and thinking. Students must become committed to taking their own ideas seriously by cultivating those ideas through rethinking and analysis. Once they have that commitment, they will be willing to nurture the development of their drafts and will thus write more effectively.
The problem, of course, is how to get them to do that. The answer is not simple, and each CTL fellow this year has focused on answering it in a different way. In general, though, it is up to the instructor to take responsibility for structuring the students’ learning, and the suggestions I offer here represent some ways I have tried to take that responsibility. (A note on surface errors by students: Grammar mistakes come from lack of care—errors almost inevitably appear when anyone writes a first draft of anything. Many students write drafts in one shot and don’t revise them—no wonder they have surface errors! Of course, other students don’t know grammatical rules at all; some know them only intuitively. I’d be happy to talk with anyone reading this about dealing with that issue.)
2. Not understanding what it means to write an argument or a paper otherwise exploring nuances of an idea. Trapped in the five-paragraph-essay model, for example, even if they don’t use it, students tend to see their writing as static, as opposed to representing a process of analysis. For example, they might get trapped in essay-formats like, “here are 3 causes of the French revolution,” or “here are 3 techniques the author uses in the poem,” as opposed to, “one view of the dynamics underlying X cause of the French Revolution is….., and my thesis about the relationship among those dynamics is……” The latter format requires that students demonstrate analysis by exploring the nuances of a topic; the former, which many of our students can do almost by rote, virtually precludes analysis. For some, the journey from one to the other is vexing and very difficult.
3. Not being able to read well. Students say things like, “the author just repeats the same thing over and over, so I thought the book/essay was too long,” instead of appreciating the nuances of an argument. Further, they sometimes say, “the teacher just goes over it in class, so I don’t have to read it.” These attitudes tend to indicate that students have trouble reading closely and following subtleties of texts. I think this problem is the result of a pragmatic attitude toward reading: they read quickly, to find “the answer,” or “the point,” and ignore nuances. So much of the depth of their learning depends on those nuances, and cursory reading prevents students from getting the knowledge they want; it also makes it virtually impossible for them to write effectively about the texts they have read.
SOLUTIONS: Here are some of the practices and assignments I have been working on this year.
- 1. Informal writing: The most valuable habit I encourage in students is the most simple: make informal writing integral to each class, starting from the first day. I find it useful to encourage students to freewrite about an issue we will be discussing, or on a question from their reading, both as the class begins and as a component of class discussion. That way they have a “sketchbook” of written ideas to draw from when they write their essays.
- 2. Focusing on Progression of ideas: I have had success this year with shifting some of my assignments from asking students to write a thesis posing an answer to a question, to asking them to articulate a thesis that has to do with the intellectual journey they went on in the writing of their papers. Here are some specific components of how I do that:
—-Assignments that involve telling the story of their thinking. For example: “How did your thinking evolve as you considered this issue? What questions did you have? What ideas shifted your assumptions? Why? Etc. Essays based on such questions tend to be intellectually enjoyable for students, because they can find answers in their own experience of the issue and not only in others’ ideas. Furthermore, such essays are usually also much more interesting for the teacher to read.
—-Using the word “thread” as I discuss papers with students and in peer-review prompts. Yes, papers need a thesis, but they also need a thread that holds the paper together. That thread is reinforced with words like, “however….” and phrases like, “but once we accept this point, a question arises…”
—-Using the words “progression of ideas.” I ask students to read their introduction and conclusion after they have written a draft. How has the essay moved from its starting point? Does the conclusion demonstrate that a progression of ideas has occurred? What have the steps been in that progression? Etc.
- 3. Looking at student drafts in class to talk about what does and doesn’t work. I do this regularly in class, choosing a draft that illustrates something I am trying to teach about constructing a thesis, organizing paragraphs, etcetc. The more they read each others’ writing the better, because they are usually far better critics of each other’s writing than of their own. Working on other students’ writing, I often tell them, develops their ability to critique their own writing more dispassionately.
- 4. In the same vein, I have been teaching them more explicitly how to peer review to develop their own writing too. I tailor a different peer-feedback sheet for each paper, so I can focus on exactly what I’m looking for in the paper—examples below
- 5. Bringing the reading process into the classroom: this demonstrates the fact that reading is a process, and it contradicts the impression students sometimes have that reading deeply means reading once.
—-Explicit attention to what authors do in the text, in terms of arguments, conclusions, development of points, use of language and the conventions of whatever form they’re writing in
—-Writing on passages and explicating them in groups: divide an article into parts, give each to a group of students with some specific questions, and require that they work for fifteen minutes or so and then come back with specific conclusions and questions about the text to share with the class
—-Having them choose passages and do the same, or have them write about those passages in various ways
—–Asking them to lay out the progression of the author’s ideas in class discussion
—-Having groups come up with questions about the text that others in class then write on
—-Metacognitive assignments: how do you read? Where do you get stuck? What parts do you skip? How do you feel about the text we read for today? etc
—Assigning a re-reading of a given text after class discussion with a “what do you see that you didn’t see the first time” assignment.
RESOURCES: This year, I have found The Art of Slow Reading (Heinemann, 2011) by Tom Newkirk, who teaches at the University of New Hampshire, to be very useful. He discusses the reading process of his students, in terms of psychology as well as practical pedagogy, and makes many suggestions for faculty.