Learning the Language of Teaching Writing
by Scott DeVries
|
| 'Relax.
Tranquilo. I want to teach you a new language." |
Relax. Tranquilo. You may be just
starting off on your own career in academics, you may have been hired
as one of those infamously abused PTL's or adjuncts, or like me, you
may have been recruited from another discipline to fill a vacancy
in that highly regarded English department of your university. You
are almost certainly experiencing a perception of high expectation--your
students need you to get their college careers off to an auspicious
start, the department needs you to debunk (or perpetuate) whatever
surely unfair myths persist about the university's writing program,
and you probably have some expectations of your own--after all, the
fortunes of young minds and your own cv are at stake. So you turn
to the teacher's manual and find this essay. You want some guidance
on how to actually undertake the project of teaching someone how to
write. Relax. Tranquilo. I want to teach you a new language.
As a sixth-year graduate student in the Department of Spanish and
Portuguese at Rutgers University, I had logged several years as an
instructor of everything Spanish from teaching students how to say
their name to leading discussions about feminist ideas in the essays
of Puerto Rico's Rosario Ferré. Yet as a sixth year student,
my financial support from the Spanish and Portuguese department was
used up and I was happy to have been offered the opportunity to teach
for the Writing Program at Rutgers. But now I faced the challenge
of how to go about teaching students to write effective prose rather
than conjugate the Spanish subjunctive or identify naturalist themes
in the texts of Spanish nineteenth-century writers. I was not only
going to teach in a different department, but for the first time,
I would teach in my native language. In teaching the introductory
Spanish course, it was easy for me to teach my students to do what
I could remember doing when I learned to speak the language: using
cognates to familiarize new vocabulary, making up anagrams to decipher
the convoluted world of the subjunctive, watching Spanish telenovelas
on Univision. But now, I was to teach English writing. Writing: something
I had been doing for so long, it had become almost reflexive. But
how to teach a reflex? When the doctor bangs you on the knee, either
your leg jerks or it doesn't. So how do I teach my students to jerk
their legs when they write? If this is your first time as an instructor
or if you come from a discipline other than English, the teaching
of an introductory writing class may seem to you, as it did to me,
both foreign and familiar at the same time. Familiar because it's
what you have been doing all along, but foreign because, like me,
you don't know how you've been doing it. So to familiarize the foreign,
I propose to teach you a new language. Not Spanish, but the language
of teaching writing. |
| |
| What does "argument" mean? |
I have found the most essential and challenging concept in the
teaching of writing is how to get the students to construct a solid
argument. I knew as an academic that I was required to provide compelling
reasons for a reader to judge the positions that I had adopted in
the text I was writing. I construct an argument to defend my position.
However the word "argument" is varied in meaning; its
usage in both formal and colloquial contexts practically guarantee
that any group of people who hear the word will imagine highly divergent
meanings. As an undergraduate, I came across the word in my introduction
to logic course where it invoked a series of premises that deductively
led to a conclusion. But an argument for your students can also
mean the fight they just had over the cell phone on the campus bus
with a parent/friend/lover/roommate. For me, it has also always
conjured the image of my mother sternly telling me to take out the
garbage and she didn't want any argument.
These "arguments" contain vastly divergent meanings: from
each other and from the meaning that you should employ in your class.
The type of argument studied in a logic class deals only with the
requirements of deductive thinking, convenient for learning the
operations of symbolic logic but rarely possible in the real world.
Yet the other kinds of arguments with which your students are familiar
will not be of much use to them in their writing. A cell phone argument
in the "real world" calls to mind images of an impassioned
exchange of accusations, conducted in a shrill tone of voice, characterized
by insults or appeals to reason: "Shut up." "No,
you shut up, you stupid *@#!" An argument like this is often
"won" by whomever speaks louder or establishes some other
advantage: the silent treatment, the storm-out, the hang-up. And
my mother had neither the time nor the patience for hearing why
I couldn't take out the garbage, she just wanted it to get done.
So what will the word "argument" mean in your class?
Argument: a series of reasons
given to convince a reader to hold a position adopted in the paper.
In writing their papers, your students (if they are like mine),
will often spend a great deal of space to provide facts culled from
the readings or summarize what has already been said in the essay
they have read. After all this, they are prepared to take a position
which will occur at the end of a paragraph and be left at that.
Consider the following representative sample culled from my students'
writing this semester. The writer is discussing one of the texts
found in the reader, "Playing God in the Garden" by Michael
Pollan:
"Refuge areas" or pesticide-free planting is one very
important aspect that Monsanto claims to enforce in the contracts
with their customers. But Pollan reports that "Monsanto's grower
contract never mentions the word 'refuge' and only requires that
farmers grow no more than 80 percent of their fields in New Leaf."
This contradiction is a major concern for the consumer because it
leaves one to doubt that Monsanto is adequately dealing with the
issue of insect-resistance.
To the student, the position in the last sentence is a conclusion
that requires no further elaboration: she doubts that Monsanto is
adequately dealing with the issue of insect-resistance.
In evaluating a piece of writing like this, it is important to emphasize
the importance of constructing a solid argument. It is not enough
just to hold a position, no matter how well a student has set it
up with summary, facts, and quotes. Rather, the student must construct
an argument that includes not only her position in relation to the
issues she has raised but must also provide reasons for taking that
position. Often the quality of the student's summary or the facts
that she provides demonstrate some careful thought in arriving at
her position, but the student has not constructed an argument unless
she provides explicit reasons. Consider a variation on the same
sample cited above as it may be revised to meet the criteria for
an argument:
The Monsanto company seems deceptive in the way it deals with the
issue of "refuge areas" or pesticide-free planting. The
company claims to enforce the refuge-area requirement in the contracts
with their customers, but Pollan reports that "Monsanto's grower
contract never mentions the word 'refuge' and only requires that
farmers grow no more than 80 percent of their fields in New Leaf."
This contradiction is a major concern for the consumer because it
leaves one to doubt that Monsanto is adequately dealing with the
issue of insect resistance. In his essay, Pollan shows that Monsanto
does not mention the word refuge in their contract but only a restriction
of 80 percent New Leaf potatoes on farms growing that crop. If on
the remaining twenty percent of his land, a farmer grows regular
potatoes and treats the area heavily with the same pesticide that
is found in the New Leaf potatoes, it would be just like that farmer
was growing all his land with the New Leafs and the problem of resistance
is not solved. In Monsanto's contract, they fail to anticipate this
possible circumstance and thus it seems that Monsanto is not adequately
dealing with the issue of insect resistance. Monsanto's inadequacy
is of great concern to consumers particularly if biotechnologically-engineered
crops begin to dominate global farming. If insects develop a resistance
to the pesticide found in the New Leafs, they might wipe out the
global potato crop. This will cause potatoes to be prohibitively
expensive if not impossible to find and will thus seriously affect
all potato consumers.
You will notice that this revision is considerably longer than
the paragraph it replaces, yet this is necessary to the construction
of a solid argument. Students will find that if they construct all
their arguments in this fashion, their papers will grow intolerably
long. Encourage your students to consider any possible summary or
superfluous facts present in their papers useful as pre-writing
exercises that allow them to finally take the positions that they
adopt but that can ultimately be excised from the paper. Writing
followed by a position does not comprise an argument; rather, an
argument consists in the series of reasons given to convince a reader
to hold a position adopted in the paper. Remind your students to
think of the audience to which they are writing--folks who have
already read the essays and thus are familiar with the issues raised
therein and do not need them summarized.. Above all, be sure that
the students are familiar with what is meant by the word "argument"--not
summary, not facts, not a position, but a position supported by
reasons that convince the reader to hold that position. It is an
important step in teaching writing to define terms like these so
that your students can visualize conceptually what is expected of
them and have the tools to construct the argument.
|
| |
| Not just the Facts: Distinguishing
between "Summary," "Criticism," "Interpretation,"
and "Analysis" |
In constructing arguments for their papers, students should be
aware of the distinction between "summary" or "facts"
and "criticism," "interpretation," and "analysis."
I have my students mark up each other's papers with letters in the
margins labeling each paragraph as being largely Summary or Criticism/Interpretation/Analysis.
But again, I found that I was using a language with my students
that they did not necessarily understand. They were often unable
to distinguish between "S" and "CIA," particularly
in their early attempts at peer revision. Subsequent to a brain
storming session in the class, we emerged with definitions for these
various terms which we used to advantage for the rest of the semester.
The main distinction between them emerges when the students have
a clear idea of the audience for which they are writing; I often
suggest that they are writing for everyone in the class who has
read the essay or essays in question. Keeping this in mind, we decided
that the distinction between Summary/Facts and Criticism/Interpretation/Analysis
could be determined with a simple test that can be applied to any
given sentence in a student's paper: would a reader who has read
the essay already know what is contained within the sentence? If
the answer is "yes," then the sentence is summary or a
statement of fact; if the answer is "no," then the sentence
may be criticism, interpretation, or analysis. But what do these
terms mean?
Summary is not a tricky concept
and its meaning is conventional; students seem to have little trouble
identifying summary when they see it. Students should be made aware,
however, that a prolonged statement of facts in a paper does not
constitute good writing. This passage is similar to many of the
statements of fact from my students' papers:
Drucker tells us in his essay that without knowledge, society
would never have advanced as far as it has today. According to Drucker,
"no century in recorded history has experienced so many social
transformations and such radical ones as the twentieth century."
Drucker is saying that society has changed a great deal in the last
century. Because of these brisk changes, society is forced to adapt--knowledge
workers will replace industrial workers. The more we advance, the
more society must change. The world is a "knowledge society"
as it feeds and grows on new ideals. What today seems of no importance
or significance was incomprehensible to people from only a few generations
back. To Drucker knowledge has made so many positive changes that
it rules out some of the negative effects.
In this passage, the student begins with a classic example of Expository
Writing summary; he makes a general statement about what Peter Drucker
has said in his essay, then the student quotes from the essay, and
finally summarizes what he has just quoted. In peer review sessions
few students will have difficulty identifying the first three sentences
of this paragraph as summary. It is however in the second half of
the paragraph, where the student-writer moves away from summary
and into fact-stating, that the writing becomes slightly more difficult
to evaluate. For many students in an introductory writing class,
the second half of the paragraph seems like good writing, good analysis.
But if students use the criterion discussed above--would a reader
who has read Drucker's essay already know what is contained within
the sentence?--the answer will come back "yes." After
reading his essay, readers know that "society is forced to
adapt" to change or that Drucker thinks that knowledge is more
positive than negative. The second half of the passage cited above
is nothing more than a statement of straight facts--anyone who reads
Drucker's text will "know" these as facts. The goal of
teaching expository writing however is to get students to critically
evaluate texts, offer penetrating interpretation, and move into
their own independent analysis. So what is criticism, interpretation
and analysis? Or better, what language can we as instructors use
to describe it?
Perhaps the easiest word of the three is criticism. Criticism
can mean a variety of things and will often connote interpretation
and analysis as well as disapproval. I think it is important to
define the three distinctly as different approaches students can
take in writing about the essays they will read. So when you ask
students to offer criticism, you will expect a student to disagree
with what she has read, formulate a position that communicates her
disagreement, and provide reasons for holding that position. Now
consider how a student might rewrite the last sentence from the
passage cited above and turn it from fact into criticism:
"Although Drucker might hold that knowledge has had a largely
positive impact on society, he fails to properly account for the
overwhelmingly negative effects that technological advances made
possible by the 'knowledge society' have had on the environment."
If the student follows the formula for constructing arguments, she
could then offer reasons to support her criticism of Drucker for
not properly accounting for the negative effects of knowledge on
the environment. Notice that this revised sentence passes muster
with the "does it tell me something I don't know?" criterion
discussed above. Any reader would conclude from reading him that
Drucker is sweet on the knowledge society and would consider it
a fact that Drucker believes that "knowledge has made so many
positive changes that it rules out some of the negative effects."
But that Drucker "fails to properly account for the overwhelmingly
negative effects" of knowledge on the environment is only something
that a reader will "know" after reading the student's
paper.
Although the concept of "interpretation"
has fallen on hard times since the post-structuralists have demonstrated
the lack of a privileged position from which the "right"
interpretation can be ascertained, I believe it is still useful
as a tool for teaching writing. When we brainstormed the concept
in one of our sessions together this semester, my students and I
decided upon a definition that avoids the post-structural difficulties
with interpretation. Of course, they didn't know we were avoiding
post-structuralism, but our definition works nevertheless. (They
might think that post-structuralism is where you go after shopping
at the mall-store Structure.) We decided that "interpretation"
was an approach to a text in which a student can discuss the implications
that might result from the issues raised by an author or an approach
in which a student takes an author's proposals to their logical
conclusion (particularly if the author herself or himself has not
done so).
A student might revise the sentence--"Because of these brisk
changes, society is forced to adapt--knowledge workers will replace
industrial workers."--to: "When Drucker asserts that knowledge
workers will replace industrial workers, he fails to acknowledge
the importance of unskilled labor in any society." Following
the formula for argument, the student would offer reasons to support
her position--the criticism that Drucker "fails to acknowledge
the importance of unskilled labor." The reasons for taking
this position would involve a discussion of the implications of
Drucker's ideas. In this case, the student might discuss how the
knowledge society, if it privileges knowledge workers, might improperly
discount the importance of such blue-collared workers like trash
collectors or farm laborers.
Finally "analysis"
is the third hallmark of the kind of writing we want our students
to master in the introductory writing course. Of course analysis
can be used to describe both criticism and interpretation, but its
meaning can also be expanded to cover a student's own approach to
the issues raised by the assigned essayists. In this type of writing,
the student does not just directly respond to the readings as in
criticism or interpretation, but she develops her own original ideas
in the context of independent analysis and commentary. Again, consider
this part of the passage cited above: "The world is a 'knowledge
society' as it feeds and grows on new ideals." The student
might use this position as the introductory sentence to a section
of her paper where she analyzes just how the world might conform
to Drucker's definition of the knowledge society and how this correspondence
might cause the rise of new ideals. The discussion of the ideals
of the knowledge society would represent a statement of the student's
own original ideas arrived at from her reading of Drucker. Her elaboration
of these ideas is the kind of analysis referred to in the criticism/interpretation/analysis
triad mentioned above.
|
| |
| "The Project" |
The last bit of this possibly foreign language that
I would like to discuss has to do with the goals and objectives of
writing a paper in the first place. Again, I have found the language
that we use in the pedagogy of writing to be incredibly confusing.
Words like "project,"
or "thesis," come to mind as words that are used to describe
what can be considered the objective of a paper: what is a paper trying
to do? Students will often have a vague idea of what they want their
paper to accomplish, but they will often only be able to arrive at
a point where they can begin to get down to it after several paragraphs
of summary and fact-giving. In fact, I have often found that my students
arrive at a good statement of what they wish to accomplish in the
very last paragraph of the paper. Often, poor papers include extremely
promising moments in the closing thoughts; the student could have
written something truly worthwhile if only he had cut all the summary
and facts and began with what was contained in the concluding paragraph;
this insight could have and should have been the basis for the "project,"
of the paper.
I maintain a website for all the classes I teach so that as the semester
goes on, I can communicate with the class as a whole just by updating
the site. I designed a "tips" page for those extra-motivated
students who just can't get enough of their writing class (or who
wouldn't survive without the extra help). On it, I included the following
definition for the "project" of a paper which should be
useful for any introductory writing course: "The project can
be defined as the main goal of your paper and should orient its focus;
think of it as the sun under a magnifying glass: it should be so intensely
focused that every part of your paper should be alight in the flames
of your project." The flame imagery should explain that all parts
of a paper must be connected to the project and whatever is not related,
should be revised or eliminated. These ideas are basic to most writing
classes, but the language you use to talk about them is essential.
Your students should be aware of what you mean by words like "project"
or "objective"; they are all rough synonyms that signify
what the goal of a paper may be.
Some students may have already learned in high school to include as
part of their papers the classic thesis sentence: the final sentence
of the introductory paragraph. That's fine. However, you will find
that most, if not all, of the essays found in the New Humanities Reader,
do not contain the classic thesis sentence. In this very essay, it
has taken me three sections to finally get around to writing about
it. Additionally, I have found that many students who include the
thesis sentence as part of their papers, propose a project that they
do not subsequently follow or which limits their writing to simplistic
conclusions about complex issues. Writing a good thesis sentence does
not, on its own, guarantee strong analysis or the construction of
effective arguments. If your students choose to include as part of
their paper a thesis sentence, let them. But insist on what will make
for a truly first rate work: a project that can be developed and sustained
throughout the whole of the paper. This technique will often require
students to undertake significant revisions, and that is what we want.
The process of revision provides students the opportunity to apply
strategies of "criticism," "interpretation," and
"analysis" to their own writing. Students might find that
the shape of their thinking over time has changed somewhat or even
radically from what they have written in the thesis sentence. My best
students found that as they revised their own writing, they let go
of the strict conventions of the thesis sentence and instead focused
on the development of a project throughout the paper. |
| |
| Teaching your Students this Language |
Any kind of teaching is much more than just knowing a few keywords,
but it is our hope that this essay has equipped you with a language
to communicate the skill of writing. Yet the communication of these
ideas via the language I have laid out above can only be effective
if your students can also understand this new language. There are
many ways that you can ensure that your students are aware of the
specifically new and different ways in which you may use words like
"criticism," "project," or "argument,"
in the writing classroom.
Allow students to brainstorm definitions and utilize whatever they
come up with inasmuch as it effectively communicates the definitions
I have discussed above. Reinforce these definitions by continually
referring to them in class discussion. My preferred technique is
to select passages from students' writing, photocopy them or put
them on a transparency, and conduct a workshop in which I remind
students of the definition of whatever term I want to focus on,
and then allow students to critique and revise the passage according
to our definition. This technique can be used to practice any writing
skill, but by using a specific language during the activities, you
ensure that your students are clear on what you expect from their
writing.
Another method that you can employ to ensure that your students
have learned this new language can be used in connection with the
evaluation of papers assigned during the semester. In order to ensure
the objectivity of your grading, construct a rubric that offers
a description of the qualities that can be found in "A"
papers, "B" papers, "C" papers, and "Not
passing" papers. (Writing instructors have a notoriously bad
reputation among students for subjective grading and the construction
of a rubric can reduce or eliminate the students' tendency to complain
that a paper was assigned a grade arbitrarily.) In the descriptions
of these qualities, reinforce the "writing vocabulary"
by including as much of it as possible in the rubric. Concepts like
"project," "argument," "criticism,"
"summary," or "interpretation" can figure prominently.
No matter what criteria you determine appropriate for your course,
be sure that the requirements are described in a language with clear
meanings that enable your students to evaluate and improve their
writing.
Another opportunity that you have to teach your students this language
is in the comments that you include in the margins and at the end
of your students' papers. Try to couch your margin and end comments
in the terminology of your "writing language." This will
not only offer you a chance to reinforce the meanings of concepts
that you are trying to teach your students, but it will provide
your students with concrete examples from their own writing of the
phenomena referred to in the writing language with which you conduct
the class. Having examples from their own writing of these concepts
should cement their meanings and offer the students the chance to
improve.
One final word, from a language teacher who hadn't taught writing
before this semester: you will be asking your students to do something
they also probably have not done before. From the third grade book
report to the high school term paper, our students' training has
been mainly to show the teacher that they have understood a reading:
summary. We must now retrain them, using the language of writing,
to take the next step: the development of a project sustained by
the construction of solid arguments consisting of criticism
|
|
|
|
