Addressing Written Work During Office Hours
by Samantha
Reid
|
| "While
I had meticulously prepared for my time in the classroom and for my
time commenting on and grading papers, I had not planned for a crucial
aspect of the teaching of composition, the time dedicated to one-on-one
discussion with my students about their individual writing concerns."
|
After much planning and, I admit, some anxiety, I entered
the classroom this September feeling somewhat prepared to teach my
first semester of Expository Writing. Because the Writing Program
of the university where I teach so clearly lays out its pedagogy and
criteria for successful writing, I felt very clear about my objectives
in the classroom and the possible ways in which to reach them. There
was, however, one thing for which I was not ready: my weekly office
hour. In fact, it was not until I sat in my office waiting for my
first student to arrive that I gave it any thought at all. While I
had meticulously prepared for my time in the classroom and for my
time commenting on and grading papers, I had not planned for a crucial
aspect of the teaching of composition, the time dedicated to one-on-one
discussion with my students about their individual writing concerns.
My immediate concern when discussing with my students either the essays
from The New Humanities Reader or their own writing is finding a way
to offer guidance without directly instructing them on the ways to
approach and ultimately write about our texts. While this proved to
be one of my greatest challenges in the classroom, in the office meeting
it proved to be even more difficult. In the beginning of the semester,
both the direct call to respond to students' questions about their
specific piece of writing and the more intimate bond that I felt with
them as we worked together caused me, almost unthinkingly, to tell
them what I would like them to say and how I would like them to say
it. While I tried to answer such questions as "how should I fix
this?" or "what should I say here?" with broad suggestions,
quizzical and frustrated looks or comments more often than not got
the best of me and, I admit, I offered specific examples or techniques.
Perhaps predictably, I soon noticed that the papers of the students
who had come to my office hours and who had incorporated the specific
suggestions of mine were not exceptional but in fact demonstrated
a lack of understanding of the suggestions I had given. Often the
student merely "plugged" my idea into an otherwise undistinguished
paper, and frequently the misappropriation of my suggestion detracted
from the paper's overall argument or structure. If the purpose of
office hours is to offer supplemental, more individualized help in
moving my students towards independent and analytical composition,then
I knew I would have to find a way to amend my tendency to simply "fix"
students' writing problems. |
| |
| Reading aloud during office hours |
David Bartholomae's 1981 essay, "The Study of
Error" provides a valuable example of a means with which to direct
students towards such independence. Primarily discussing the problem
of grammatical error, Bartholomae seeks ways in which to understand
"what a writer does rather than what he fails to do." He
suggests having students read their papers aloud, in order that they
might "share in the process of investigating and interpreting
the patterns of error in their writing" and thus be placed in
a position to study their own writing and "to see themselves
as language users, rather than as victims of a language that uses
them."
Although I was more concerned with the development of projects and
the specific connections the students make between textual passages
than with grammar, the idea of "oral reconstruction of written
work" seemed as if it might help my students take responsibility
for their writing, and might free me from the impulse to give a "correct"
solution to their problems. I hoped that that the mere physical transfer
of the student's paper from my grasp to theirs would serve as a cue
that I would not and in fact could not resolve their concerns with
a simple answer, and would circumvent their tendency to start the
meeting with the dreaded question: "what should I do?" I
didn't think that students would have sufficient time during our meeting
to read their entire first draft aloud, so I decided to have them
verbally summarize their project.
Sometimes, when a particular paragraph or passage in their papers
was especially troubling, I asked students to read aloud that section.
After the summary or reading, I would ask students open-ended questions,
such as "what do you think is not working there?" or "what
do you consider the focus of this paper?" Most often, instead
of the blank stare I had seen in previous meetings, the students came
up with insightful solutions, usually ones I would not have thought
to offer myself. I attribute this response not only to the fact that
we were further along in the semester and the students were more familiar
with the goals of the course, but also to the renewed concentration
upon their work that rereading had allowed them. |
| |
| "In making
the office hour a space in which my students come to "workshop"
their papers, I move away from the impulse (of mine and of my students)
for a quick fix to writing concerns and hopefully demonstrate to my
students they are themselves the best critics of their own work." |
I came to believe later, however, that it was more than that. Interestingly,
as the semester proceeded, more students would not even finish their
summary or recitation before they would voice their recognition
of a problem or solution. Much like Bartholomae's example of a student
(John) who, while reading his paper, substitutes correct forms for
the incorrect forms of words he reads, the mere process of verbal
reconstruction caused my students to immediately think about their
work in new ways.
I began to also wonder if like John, my students' instant self-correction
reflected that their concerns were "problem(s) of performance,
or fluency, not of competence." While they were aware of the
conventions of academic discourse and even knew how to apply such
conventions, doing so was not yet a comfortable, automatic activity.
There was something about the act of oral reconstruction during
office hours that gave my students the ability to tap into that
knowledge and to relate it to their composition.
I believe that this ability can, at least in part, be credited to
the comfortable, intimate environment that makes up the office visit.
In this space, I took great pains to make my students feel free
to discuss the texts and their papers in a relaxed manner. Instructing
students, for example, to put texts' central arguments in their
own words or to describe a certain paragraph as if they were telling
a friend, I tried to help students develop their individual analytical
argument without the burden of using the vocabulary or grammatical
constructs common to academic writing, but often utterly foreign
to students in Expository Writing. Seemingly paradoxically, temporarily
ignoring certain conventions of the University actually seemed to
help students to focus on the more pressing aspects of the discourse,
such as identifying what constitutes a "meaningful connection"
or how to successfully articulate one's own position in relation
to the texts.
I realize, however, that there is a danger in such encouragement
to abandon--albeit only briefly--certain aspects of the discourse
of the University, as students' ability to move within this language
will most likely dictate their future academic and professional
success. While students may successfully articulate their paper's
project in an informal verbal manner, what is most important is
their ability to transform this oral construction into a clearly
stated, organized piece of written text. For this reason, I usually
end my office conference by asking students to take five or ten
minutes (depending on time constraints) to write what they have
just related to me as they construct it in their next draft (i.e.
in a formal tone). I then ask students to read their text to me,
and the process of reading and self-editing begins again.
This combination of writing and reading aloud, of talking informally
and writing formally, has produced some really wonderful results
in students' final drafts, and, I believe, has left students feeling
more satisfied after office meetings. In making the office hour
a space in which my students come to "workshop" their
papers, I move away from the impulse (of mine and of my students)
for a quick fix to writing concerns and hopefully demonstrate to
my students they are themselves the best critics of their own work.
|
|
|
|
