“Fresh Eyes on Freshman Composition:
Energizing the classroom through techniques that let students ‘be
writers’”
April Carothers
In 1990, Robert J.
Connors described freshman composition instructors as a “…permanent underclass
… oppressed, badly paid, ill-used, and secretly despised.” Depressing words
that seem more true today than ever before. More and more colleges and
universities are hiring part time, temporary instructors where once there were
permanent positions, even tenure-track positions. Those of us who feel called
to teach composition find ourselves hitting the glass ceiling early and hard. To
compound the issue, freshman composition has always been a particularly
difficult course to teach, one that most students are required to take in order
to achieve a degree, so they are not there by choice. Often, we face a room
full of resentful faces. Working
conditions combine with student reluctance to create an environment that anyone
would find discouraging, with no relief currently in sight-- certainly, nothing
will change before next term starts. We have gone into survival mode.
Yet we have not
surrendered our responsibility to do our best for our students. How we motivate ourselves may lie in the long standing question of what
freshman composition is for. The simple answer—“to teach them to write
correctly”—is not enough. What students actually need has been demonstrated in
recent research: a sense of exchange between themselves and their teachers, who
represent the college environment. The freshman comp classroom should be a
workshop where students experience what it means to be read, heard, and
responded to as writers… not a gateway course but a bridge, creating
connections that guide students toward what It means to be a college level
writer.
Freshman Comp: What’s it good for?
In fall of 1994,
Paula Foster attacked the idea of the freshman composition course (sometimes WR
121 or ENG 101) as a service course, which is how the course is still widely
viewed today. This is the general understanding that most of the university
has, and I have to admit, I often tell students, “This course is intended to
prepare you to write for college.” But we’ve been asking for decades now, what
does that mean? Foster explains that as a service course, it is intended to “teach
freshmen, once and for all, ‘How to Write,’ so that when they reach the
classrooms of other professors, those professors can go about the business of
teaching their subjects…” (7). Freshman composition as service course, Foster
states, is based on the following false assumptions:
"a) that writing is not all
that difficult to teach, b) that college freshman have already attained a
certain level of competence by the time they walk into Freshman Composition, c)
that both the “writing process” and “academic discourse conventions” are
homogenous enough that they can be taught in one or two all-purpose semesters,
and e) that composition itself is not worthy of study in its own right" (7).
These assumptions create problems:
writing is a learned skill, one that takes years to master, just like any other
complex skill, and it takes skill to teach. Competency is another issue that
even writing instructors cannot always agree on. Process differs from one
writer to the next. And “academic discourse conventions” is a dangerously
misleading umbrella term. Yet other disciplines—engineering, business, social
sciences— all assume that a single writing course will leave students perfectly prepared. And
if it does not, why that must be the fault of the instructor.
Enter composition
instructors, in the role of martyr, feeling called to take their place in those
“permanent low-status [jobs]… not filled by upwardly mobile scholars” (Connors).
It’s been my experience that other professors seem deeply grateful that I have
taken on this job, even as they pity me for the lack of pay, lack of
permanence, and lack of status. Twenty years ago, Connors had hoped that
eventually things would change:
The fact is, as
everyone knows who has taught both, that composition is harder and more
energy-consuming than literature to teach well. Literature teachers do not
delegate composition instruction to instructors only because literature has
more cachet; literature is less work to teach. Because it is not required,
attracts upperclass students, and has infinitely variable content, it is often
more enjoyable to teach. Unless and until teaching and studying writing can be
made work the entire English faculty wants to share in, irresistible social
forces will maintain the underclass and all of the unhappiness and poisonous
inequality that have always followed in its train.
I fear that the problem with
Connors’ view is that as long as we view composition in this way, as a burden
to be shared, it will never be more than a chore for anyone who teaches it, and
it will never gain the attention it needs from the university in order to be
shaped into a truly useful and beneficial class. Foster’s view of freshman comp
as a subject course (a course taught for its own sake, because writing is a
complex skill worthy of study for its own sake) may be a more realistic way to work toward achieving
respect and thus more consideration for composition courses. As long as we view
this course as a service course, it will never be more than a one-stop fix-all
for incoming students, and as long as we try to teach the course with this
view, we will always struggle under unbearable pressure to achieve what cannot
be done in a single term or even a single year.
American culture
promotes the view that one should be able to acquire any number of complex
skills practically overnight. Look at martial arts films: the Karate Kid is only one example of a student reaching the level
of expert in only a few weeks. Having taught Taekwondo for over twenty years, I
can assure you that one does not achieve expert skill in martial arts in a only
weeks—or even a year, and one does not become an expert college writer in a
year. Yet colleges view writing as a skill that can be picked up easily and
quickly. Some courses are designed exactly for such a purpose, like CS 101,
meant to introduce students to Word, Excell, and other basic computer programs.
Learning to use a tool like Word is a concrete skill; a basic familiarity can
give students a boost toward mastering the tool later on their own. But imagine
if a more complex subject like math were taught as a single, eleven week
course… or science, or engineering, or business. A crash course designed to
teach a few disposable tricks is not sufficient when it comes to more
complicated knowledge… like the art of composition.
A June, 2007 essay,
“Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions,” addresses these issues
again, with frustration. “When we continue to pursue the goal of teaching
students ‘how to write in college’ in one or two semesters… we silently support
the misconceptions that writing is not a real subject… We are, thus, complicit
in reinforcing outsiders’ views of writing studies as a trivial, skill-teaching
nondiscipline” (Downs & Wardle 553). We as writing teachers have to stop
accepting the common view of writing courses as service courses. If change
doesn’t start with us, it will not happen at all. Like Connors, Douglas Downs
and Elizabeth Wardle call for improving the status of writing studies in the
university, but while Connors’ article calls for sharing the burden of teaching,
Downs and Wardle call for a complete change in attitude toward freshman
composition. Like Foster, they see serious problems with current views:
A number of
assumptions inform the premise that academic writing is somehow universal:
writing can be considered independent of content; writing consists primarily of
syntactic and mechanical concerns; and academic writing skills can be taught in
one or two introductory general writing skills courses and transferred easily
to other courses (555).
As we know, writing
within the university alone is a complex act, with each different community
demanding a different set of rules, different terminology, different tones and
audiences, different purposes. Downs and Wardle argue that even using the term
“academic writing” is dangerous, an “umbrella term” that suggests writing for
college involves a simple set of skills. If a student cannot absorb this simple
set of skills in a term or two, either the student must be incompetent, or the
teacher is. They offer a charming analogy, that the use of a single term for a
complex skill set is similar to philosopher Gilbert Ryles example of a category
mistake: “mistaking a single building on a university campus for the university
itself” (Ryles qtd. in Downs & Wardle 556). It is impossible to offer one writing
sample and say, “This is what all writing for college looks like.” So why do we
continue, after decades of arguing the point, to present freshman composition
as an umbrella course, a service course to teach “academic writing?”
Simple definitions
persist: A strong paper has a clear thesis, the body supports that thesis, and
the paper ends with a logical conclusion. At first glance, I think, “Yes, that
sounds right.” But Downs and Wardle demonstrate the holes in this explanation
by sharing what they feel is a more accurate depiction from Keith Hjortshoj:
Features of good
writing vary from one situation to another. These variations depend, for
example, on the subject of the
writing, its purpose, and the reader’s expectations. The form of writing used in a field of study
often structures those expectations. As a consequence, the features of good
writing in a literature course will differ greatly from the features of good
writing in business or astronomy, and what seems clear to one audience might
not be clear to another (Hjortshoj qtd. In Downs & Wardle 558).
It seems
deceptively easy to teach how to produce a paper with a clear thesis, a body
that supports that thesis, and a clear conclusion, but when we look more
closely at the definition above, we begin to realize the immensity of the task
in front of us. What students need is not a template or two but a deeper
understanding of audience and purpose. That kind of understanding can only come
from experience. What can we teach in a few weeks that might give students that
kind of experience? Downs and Wardle argue that instead of teaching one or two
genres and assuming that students will automatically transfer these skills to
other tasks, we should be teaching how writing is used in the world (558).
Which leads to another
problem, that even after so many years
of study, we still do not know exactly how writing skills transfer. We aren’t
entirely certain what students need from a writing course. What we need is
research into the experiences of students over years of university study,
possibly examining what kinds of teaching or activities led to improvement in
student writing over time. Actually, such research has been done recently, and it
is rather eye-opening: the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing (1997-2001), conducted
by Nancy Sommers and fellow researchers, followed four hundred students from
their freshman year through graduation. Researchers found that what led to gradual
improvement of student writing was feedback from teachers that gave students a
sense of exchange, a sense of being involved in a dialog with their teachers, being
a part of the “conversation” taking place in college writing. According to an
issue of the Harvard Writing Project
Bulletin, put out soon after the study to report findings informally,
Sommers reports
that freshmen who received feedback early and often during their first year of
college made the greatest gains as academic writers. These freshmen are best able
to make the transition from writing papers that are ‘a shot in the dark,’ as
one study participant puts it, to meeting new and higher expectations for
thinking and writing… Feedback also serves an important social function for
freshmen, Sommers suggests, giving them a sense of belonging and helping them
feel connected to faculty (HWP 2).
What students need most from their
instructors is to feel that they are members of the academic community they
have entered and that their work is really being read and considered. They need
to feel like writers.
Let’s take the
false assumption introduced earlier of considering writing “independent of
content.” According to the Harvard study, effective feedback facilitates a
student’s ability to move from “private and idiosyncratic” writing to work that
takes into account the needs of real audiences. Effective feedback takes into
account context, along with content. Additionally, “When their instructors
encourage them to confront opposing viewpoints and sources that don’t support
their claim, or ask them questions that enlarge their vision, students see that
their writing is being taken seriously” (Sommers, “Shaped by Writing”). This
kind of response encourages students to see what they are writing in terms of
audience and purpose: “who is your reader and will s/he accept what you are
saying?” “Is this source going to be considered acceptable by this audience?” For
example, the student writing about the evils of abortion will have to let go of
the statistics she found on a religious website and look at more scholarly
sources, and the student writing about texting and driving will realize that
while formal statistics and data are compelling, it is his own personal
testimony that will most convince young readers.
The instructor is
guiding the student to look again at their work and consider a concrete
audience, to consider the needs of that audience. This also happens to be an
effective way to explain why errors matter: errors confuse readers. Instead of
simply marking errors and problems and making
a student possibly feel incompetent, the instructor treats the student
as a junior colleague, demonstrating the way an experienced writer views their
work and the work of their peers. At the same time, we can communicate the
reality of what other professors in the university will expect as readers. Students begin to feel like
writers, and when they begin to feel like writers, they begin to behave like
writers: writers have a vested interest in audience understanding and
perception.
Freshman Composition as Workshop
Learning the ins
and outs of college composition, of academic discourse, even the writing
process itself is complex and takes time, time to build “habits of mind and
thought” as Nancy Sommers put it-- time to learn to think and behave like
writers. That is what the freshman comp course should be teaching: what it
means to be a writer. Currently, the course tends to teach certain skills:
process, how to clarify and shape one’s thoughts into something coherent and
worth sharing; content, how to develop and support a clear thesis, which
includes; research, how to locate, evaluate, then use outside sources,
synthesizing these sources with one’s own thoughts; how to get and give useful
feedback. But these skills are taught
with the attitude that students must master them before moving on. Instead, the
focus should actively and openly be on introducing these skills in order
to give students the experience of being
writers. Until they have an idea what that means, they cannot begin to
tackle the variety of writing tasks other professors will assign, tasks we as
comp instructors do not have time to prepare them for.
So
what does it mean to think and behave like a writer? My favorite discussion on
this topic comes from Alice Horning and Jeannie Robertson. They compare basic
writers (writers who struggle to communicate in the most basic way) with
professional writers. The latter have three kinds of awareness that most
inexperienced writers lack: metarhetorical awareness, or knowledge of the self
as writer and of regular practices the self employs to produce strong writing;
metastrategic awareness, or knowledge of the self as an individual who can
solve problems using whatever strategies might be necessary; and metalinguistic
awareness, or knowledge of the various features of language and how to use
these features effectively (Horning and Robertson 53). These professionals are established
members of the community in which they write. They have confidence in their own
expertise and a metaview of what “writing” involves: they are aware of various tools and strategies
available to them for problem solving, and they are aware of the choices they and
others make as writers, noting which choices, for them, result in effective
writing.
Inexperienced
writers (most students) often cannot see themselves as writers at all. They
usually lack confidence in their ability to create meaning at the college level,
and they lack awareness of what resources are available. I don’t mean that they
don’t know where the writing center is—I mean that they aren’t aware of just
how much benefit there is in using that writing center, or even in bouncing
ideas off of roommates. They lack understanding of or experience with academic
level discourse, and they know it, so they see themselves as outsiders. This is
not necessarily bad: first year students are aware that the demands of college
writing differ significantly from the demands of high school writing
assignments, and they struggle to find a way to cope with being asked to write
as if they were experts in a community they are new to. In the Harvard Study, those
who could accept their role as novices and could see that there was more to be
gained from each writing assignment than just a grade were most successful in
adapting to college—they were also more engaged. “Being a novice allows
students to be changed by what they learn, to have new ideas, and to understand
that ‘what the teacher wants’ is an essay that reflects those ideas” (Sommers
and Saltz, “Novice” 134).
Why
would a first year student resist seeing him/herself as a novice? Sometimes
just being in a new environment can trigger anxiety, even fear, and this can
interfere with learning. Fear can be masked as arrogance, as can boredom. A bored or anxious student may not be willing
to accept the vulnerability that may result from admitting to being a novice
(to themselves or to others). And this is another good reason to avoid making
students feel incompetent and exacerbating the situation: we can focus instead
on showing them how writers read each other’s work by providing feedback that
demonstrates this behavior and by guiding peer feedback activities.
It
is not a great leap to assume that if student writers behave and think more
like professional writers, they will be better able to adapt to different
writing tasks. For example, professional, experienced writers have a
knowledgeable view of possible audiences and of how audiences may differ from
situation to situation. Experienced writers can adapt to possible audiences
while remaining focused on their own purposes in writing. This is what it means
to take a “metaview” of writing, to step back from one’s work or someone else’s
and see it from an analytical standpoint… to write purposefully, not with
accidental skill. If a student writer is
able to imagine a real audience, their purpose becomes much more focused. I
have seen student papers transform drastically when I offered the student a
“real” writing task and audience, such as, “Imagine that you are writing this
essay as a newspaper article” or “Imagine you are writing an article for a
magazine… what kind of magazine would be appropriate to your topic, and what
kind of people would read that magazine?” Suddenly, with a concrete audience,
the student finds what s/he meant to say. Content and context cannot be
separated from writing; human communication does not happen in a vacuum: there
is always audience and purpose. But for students, teacher as audience and grade
as purpose is often too vague a context.
Yes, getting a passing grade (or an A) is a goal, but it is not a
purpose in terms of what the writing task itself is trying to communicate. The
goal of the paper may be an A, but the paper is not about getting an A.
I am not saying
that teaching freshman comp should be easy or that assignments within the
course should be easy. Foster makes an interesting point: she states that the
essay is the place to reflect and make meaning. The college essay demands
reflection on one’s own experience alongside that of others. She states that
while freshmen rarely have the life experience to draw from in making meaning,
“there is no better time to destabilize students’ fetishistic desire for fixed
boundaries and clearly defined tasks than when they enter college” (9). Now is
the time to show them how to think in new ways, how to see from different
angles… and that a college assignment cannot always fit into a template, no
matter how much they may prefer step by step instructions. Now is the time to
guide them toward becoming “sharp-eyed, self-directed questioners, analysts,
and synthesizers” (14). Foster clarifies that this can facilitated by teaching
the personal essay with research and making that essay a project done in steps.
This allows the essay itself to teach process, and the instructor, Foster
points out, gets a chance to view the students’ learning strategies as they
accomplish a series of tasks (12). The process of doing research, Foster
argues, the struggle itself must be part of the project, so that students can
overcome that misperception that “real writers” create strong papers in a
single sitting… and that they should be able to do so themselves.
In practice: Writers at Work
While
Foster focuses on the personal essay, Downs and Wardle argue that if we are to
teach freshman comp as a subject course instead of a service course, we must
teach it as an Introduction to Writing Studies, or writing and reading about
writing. Many of us have used a partial approach similar to this: many
instructors begin the course with a personal essay on the student’s own
literacy, how s/he learned to read and write or how s/he uses reading and
writing today. Such an essay is an effective way to begin to talk about the
elephant in the room: problems students may have transferring what they know
about literacy to writing tasks in college. Students can begin to develop a
metaview, as Horning and Robertson described above, of the way they think of
writing. By calling their attention to how they use language, we might
introduce them to the idea of seeing themselves as writers. I particularly like
Christine Harvey Horning’s literacy essay on discourse communities: I didn’t
understand clearly what topic a student might focus on until I imagined writing
it myself. Like the human beings around me, I belong to various discourse
communities: in martial arts we use language in specific ways just as my
colleagues and I used language in specific ways when we talk about teaching
writing. A church group or an athletic team are also discourse communities.
Each student will be able to identify a discourse community and begin to think
consciously about how that group uses language.
To
return to the idea of seeing writing as one with its content and context, Downs
and Wardle argue for three grounding principles for a writing-as-subject course:
“…the more an instructor can say about a writing’s content, the more she can
say about the writing itself” (559). In other words, writing instructors need
to be expert readers. I interpret this to mean that expert writing instructors are
needed who can diagnose problems in student writing and address those problems
clearly, not just mark errors but explain why something is considered a error. Second,
they ask that we not claim to be teaching students to write but to be
introducing them to “some activities related to written scholarly inquiry…In
this course, students are taught that writing is conventional and
context-specific rather than governed by universal rules” (559). We are
teaching them the dialectic qualities of scholarly writing. Third, they believe
that students should be treated like scholars and not told that there are two
sets of standards for experts and students. “For example, students learn to
recognize the need for expert opinion and cite it where necessary, but they
also learn to claim their own situational expertise and write from it as
experts do” (559). They are encouraged to behave like writers.
As
a comp instructor, I’m not sure I’m ready to completely revamp my course to
teach it as an intro to writing, but I can see the value of focusing on the act
of writing itself. I open the course with discussions about what it means to be
a writer and what problems students might encounter in trying to see themselves
as such. I’ve found three articles I’ll be sharing next term: “Good Video Games
and Good Learning,” by James Paul Gee discusses the ways students learn by
examining closely why video games, which are difficult and challenging, are so
engaging (and classroom activities often are not). He argues that all of us
need certain conditions for engagement, briefly: Identity, or the ability to see oneself as a member of the learning
community one is entering—in the writing classroom, the ability to project an
identity as a writer; Interaction,
or “words and deeds… placed in the context of an interactive relationship
between the player and the world.” In the writing classroom, feedback that
creates a sense of exchange. Production:
players sometimes modify the games they play, and their consumption affects
which games are produced; in the writing classroom students should have a say
in the curriculum. I’ll come back to this. Risk
taking and agency are two more
factors Gee considered critical. Students need to feel encouraged to take
risks, and students need to feel ownership of what they are doing.
Another
essay I’ll be using is “Shitty first drafts” by Anne Lamott. She explains how
freeing it was for her to realize that she did not have to produce something
intelligent the first time. Students may benefit from hearing from a real
writer that it’s good to let go and be messy at first. The third essay is one
by Terry Tempest Williams, “Why I write.” It’s a nice piece, almost a stream of
consciousness essay giving the various reasons the author chooses to write. I’m
interested to see how students engage with this one… or not. As we proceed into
the actual work of the course, the essays, I will have a way into the
conversation about how they will begin and how they will go on.
For
the formal writing assignments, I use a multi-step essay, with students
choosing the topic for themselves. One argument against letting them choose
their own topics might be the worry that free choice of topic is not something
that happens often in college. I address this issue by providing plenty of
in-class activities during which students must write on a specific topic or
prompt that I assign. Another objection might be the difficulty that many
students face when given the chance to choose a topic. It is true that many
seem to prefer to be given a topic and concrete guidelines, and it is difficult
to give exactly the same advice to all students when their topics vary so much.
However, as Foster pointed out, now is a great time to encourage new ways of
thinking about writing.
As they work
toward choosing their formal assignment topic, I encourage them to explore
their interests if they do not yet have a major. If they have a major, I
encourage them to choose a relevant topic. Granted, many need serious guidance
in discovering what interests them, and I have a library session (designed by
librarian Tracy Sharn) just for this purpose. This free choice encourages
engagement because students are interested in what they are writing and
researching. As they begin to shape their projects, and as I provide feedback,
they begin to feel ownership in their work. In a way, they have designed the
focus of the course for themselves. I have had many students approach me
halfway through the term to say that they had never realized they could enjoy
writing until they had the chance to write about something they cared about.
Inherent in this
ongoing project is the need to communicate with the instructor: we discuss the
essays step by step in the classroom throughout the term, students come to my
office, and some email with questions, so I have the opportunity to provide
feedback repeatedly and in different forms as the work progresses. This creates
a strong sense of exchange and connection between myself and each student—with
less work: in steps 1 and 2, I can prepare them for what kinds of sources are
acceptable and how to create works cited entries; I give guidance on the
exploratory essay in step 3; when they turn in the researched version, step 4,
I comment on how well they are developing their original ideas or how those
ideas are changing as they work. In conferences, I can quickly give verbal
guidance toward what kinds of revision would be effective in step 5 for that
student and that topic. By the time the final draft comes in, only a few
comments are necessary, mainly to do two things: call attention to what the
student did well this term, and offer advice for one skill to keep working on
in the future. It doesn’t feel like I’m spending much time writing comments,
yet students feel very satisfied with the feedback they are getting. Some of
that satisfaction, they tell me, comes from my enthusiasm for their topics, my
supportive attitude, and the atmosphere of respect in the classroom and outside
of it.
The
multi-step essay also encourages more in-depth research than three separate
papers on three separate topics would. Each step requires students to dig
deeper, and this process is aided by three library sessions, the later ones led
by Robert Monge or Tracy Sharn. Students locate a topic and find four relevant
sources, creating an annotated bibliography; explore the chosen topic from
three different points of view; write a researched, argument on this topic;
restructure the argument by addressing the opposing viewpoint first and by locating
and using two more sources.
Advantages: students are usually
emotionally invested in their topics, which encourages engagement and
ownership. Students are required to consider other viewpoints and are required
to consider an appropriate forum for their paper (newspaper? Blog? Magazine?).
They are required to explain how their chosen sources are appropriate and
effective, and finally they are required to consciously consider the structure
of their argument.
Disadvantages: as the term draws to a
close, I find that I have a hard time seeing the same topic repeatedly with
fresh eyes. It does make reading and grading much easier than having to digest
a new topic and a new thesis each time, but unless students are required to
submit all drafts every time, it’s easy to lose track of what changes they have
actually made from one version to the next.
What I’m looking
for as I’m evaluating papers is how students are revising, what skills they are
using, what information they are adding (or not). When I see the same paper
repeatedly, I experience what Foster earlier argued could be done with the personal
essay: I observe their learning strategies as they go through a series of
tasks. I’m better able to see patterns in their work, like problems with
run-ons or citing sources. I’m better able to see if they understand what I
mean by revision and whether they are developing the skill to do the kind of
revising I’m asking for. I’m better able to see what kind of research they are
doing, what kinds of sources they are using and whether they are understanding
the difference between a “good” source and a “bad” one. It takes less effort on
my part to target specific problem areas for each student. It also makes it
easier to develop a relationship with students as I work with them on this
single project instead of multiple papers, each of which represents, in a way,
starting over.
Conclusion
It’s an ugly
climate now for the teaching of freshman composition. Nothing will change soon.
We can only, as composition teachers, look at our own classrooms and what we
need to accomplish: we need to survive teaching this course, and we need our
students to get as much out of it as they can. At WOU, we have only one
required writing course, so we have only eleven weeks to create a change in our
students’ attitudes toward writing. Many of them come into the class with resentment.
We can try to relieve some of that negativity by allowing students to choose
their own topics and take some responsibility for their own learning. We can
demonstrate how real writers behave and think and act, the tricks we have up
our sleeves. We can show students what resources and tools are available to
them as writers.
It’s time to
change our focus to something more productive than getting rid of comma splices:
giving our students the experience of being writers in college. Teaching
freshman composition could be a more invigorating enterprise approached as a
subject course… with the focus on showing students what it means to be a writer in a university setting. They may not
make vast improvements in their writing that we can see, but it is astonishing
what can be accomplished by a change in attitude toward the task of writing.
When my students begin to act and think like writers toward the end of the
term, I can see how much more relaxed they are about their projects, and
conversely, how much more work they are willing to do. Whether the course is focused
on the subject of writing itself, as Downs and Wardle suggest, or focused on other
aspects of the art of writing, we may be able to actually make some inroads in
the time we have with students. It’s less important to worry about what
readings to assign or what kinds of essays to ask for than it is to focus on
the idea of guiding them toward thinking and acting like writers.
I had to smile at
one of the disclaimers at the end of Downs and Wardle’s paper: they warn that
“[s]tudents will produce imperfect work” (575) in a subject focused course. I
smile because what is implied is that anyone would expect perfect work after
only a few weeks ( it’s laugh or cry). It’s not necessary, they argue, to look for
flawless work: “…accepting imperfect work recognizes important truths about all
research writing: it takes a long time, is inevitably imperfect, and requires
extensive revision” (575). Expecting students to learn to think like writers
means demanding that they expect more from themselves… and puts more of the
burden of learning on them. In terms of future research, we need more
information of the kind Nancy Sommers’ study produced: how student writers
develop as they progress through years
of study. Not enough attention has been paid to the 2001 study nor to its
telling results.
Most of my
students, at the end of the eleven weeks of working on the multi-step paper,
feel proud of what they have created. They’ve thrown out some misconceptions,
and they have been introduced to the idea of taking a metaview of writing. They
have a little more confidence than they came in with. And they know where the
writing center is.
Works Cited
Connors, Robert J.
“Overwork/Underpay: Labor and Status of Composition Teachers since 1880.” Rhetoric Review 9. 1 (Autumn, 1990):
108-126
Downs, Douglas and Elizabeth Wardle.
“Teaching about Writing: Righting Misconceptions: (Re)envisioning ‘First Year
Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies.’” College Composition and
Communication 58.4 (June 2007): 552-584.
Foster, Paula. “What is Freshman Composition
For? Reasserting the Personal Essay and Retheorizing Academic Reading.” The
Writing Instructor (Fall 1194): 5-15.
Gee, James Paul. “Good Video Games and Good
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Harvard
Writing Project Bulletin. Special Issue: Responding to Student Writing. The
President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2000.
Horning,
Alice and Jeanie Robertson. “Basic Writers and Revision.” Reference Guide to
Revision History, Theory, and Practice. Ed. Alice Horning and Anne Becker.
Colorado: Parlor Press and the WAC Clearinghouse, 2006. 22 February 2007.
<http://wac.colostate.edu/books/horning—revision/>.
Lamott,
Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” bird by
bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anchor Books: New York, 1995. 21-27.
Retrieved online, 16 March 2012.
<http://buddha-rat.squarespace.com/shitty-first-drafts/>.
Sommers,
Nancy. “Shaped by Writing: The Undergraduate Experience. A brief guide to the
film.” Insert. Across the Drafts and Shaped by Writing (same
disk). DVD. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2005. The Harvard
Study of Undergraduate Writing. 2002. 1 July 2008.
---.
Laura Saltz. “The Novice as Expert.” College Composition and Communication 56.1
(September 2004): 124- 149.
Tempus
Williams, Terry. “Why I Write.” Writing creative
non-fiction: instruction and insights from the teachers of the Associated
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Forche and Philip Gerard. Writer’s Digest Books, 2001. Retrieved online, 16
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or <http://rvannoy.asp.radford.edu/rvn/312/whyiwrite.pdf>.
"Tarot Reading Night!"
by
Kelly Hunter
is licensed under
CC BY 2.0
