The Position Problem:
An Exercise in Revision
by Alexandra
Socarides
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| "Teaching
writing has shown me that more than anything else our students want
to know how to do things, and I find both
other teachers' and my own resistance to that call particularly interesting." |
One of the biggest challenges of teaching expository
writing is figuring out how to move from theorizing "the position"
to teaching students how to formulate one. Teachers do a great deal
of talking about what the position is (usually in terms of its similarities
to, or differences from, an "argument" or a "project"),
but no matter how well we understand the complexities that distinguish
one from the other, they can sound like nonsense to our students.
Teaching writing has shown me that more than anything else our students
want to know how to do things, and I find both other teachers' and
my own resistance to that call particularly interesting. Is our resistance
based on the fact that "how to do things" is something we
overlook because it is already so clear to us? Do we think that if
our students can't figure out how on their own, then they aren't
doing the intellectual work that our classes are demanding of them?
Are we having a hard time understanding how ourselves?
Because the writer's position is the most integral part of any piece
of expository writing, many of us cannot remember what our reading
and writing lives were like before we understood it. Because, for
many of us, this knowledge may have come naturally, we often assume
the same will happen for our students. Although many of us would never
dare to say that we rest our teaching practices on the "hope"
that students learn spontaneously, by not giving our students actual
ways of proceeding, we implicate ourselves in a snobbery that our
teaching practices should, ideally, help remedy.
But our resistance to our students' calls for models of how are only
partly based in our inability to inhabit their positions (or reinhabit
our past positions) and in our hope that they will be "smart
enough" to figure things out for themselves. The other large
part of this resistance seems to lie in the fact that we are not really
sure how to tell them how. We lack our own models for teaching as
our conversations become more and more theoretical, which leaves us
in the very same position that our students are in when writing papers
in our classes. This collapse of teacher and student position is a
perplexing one, especially when we feel the collapse happen as we
stand in front of our students trying to explain something that seems
so simple to us.
This happened to me on the day when I assigned the third paper of
the semester, the day when my students could no longer handle not
knowing how. |
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| Constructing the Assignment |
I had encountered a tremendous amount of resistance to the idea
of the position in the first two papers, not because the students
were resisting doing the work I was requiring, but because they
simply didn't know how to do what I was asking of them. I had spoken
briefly about the position early on, defining it vaguely as a "stance"
that they needed to take in the paper. At the time, I hadn't thought
to do more than that. Because I had not wanted my students' papers
to embrace either the "competitive or collaborative" arguments
that Lynch et al. describe in "Moments of Argument: Agonistic
Inquiry and Confrontational Cooperation," I had decided that
the word "position" was a more suitable term for what
I was asking them to do (391). Yet by using the term as a way of
preempting debate, an activity that I believed was far too prevalent
in their other courses in the University, I situated them on unfamiliar
ground. In some cases, this may serve as an empowering disorientation,
but the first two papers of the semester proved that my students
were floundering in that space and needed more guidance.
On the day I was to assign the third paper, it dawned on me that
I was about to ask them to put three difficult essays in conversation
with each other, while taking a position on a topic that they might
initially see as unrelated to any one of the texts (to say nothing
of all three!) in question. (The assignment was to construct an
argument about the relationship between knowledge and control, using
Pollan, Drucker, and Becker's essays.) Clearly my cursory definition
of the position was not going to get me off the hook any longer.
Thus, I thought of a project. I said to them:
For your rough draft of this paper, I would like you to write
about how you think each of the authors thinks about the essay question.
Spend a page writing how you think Pollan would answer the question.
Then do the same for Drucker. Then do the same for Becker. What
you will then have is three pages of ideas on the subject. By being
able to say what each one thinks, you will have started to figure
out what you think. So, then, in a conclusion, give your perspective
on the essay question, based on what you have written.
The students were very excited about this because I had given them
a tangible way of proceeding and sent them on their way.
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| Finding the Positions |
In the next class I received back a bunch of what I
would normally think of as horrible rough drafts. They were everything
I tried to get my students to work against: A + B + C = answer. They
were sloppy and unsophisticated analyses that relied mostly on summary.
They were exceedingly linear. They hadn't overtly started making connections
yet so many paragraphs swelled with irrelevant information. But sitting
at the end of each tedious rough draft was a simple, beautiful, well-crafted
position.
My task at this point was to lift each position out of the paper and
give it to the student, only to then point out that each had given
it to him/herself. As I wrote these positions on the board, they looked
at their own and each others' in amazement. Some were straightforward
and simple, like Jack's--"If you do not seek to gain knowledge,
you give control over to someone else"--while others had multiple
parts and intricate thoughts guiding them, as in Kevin's--"You
have to have knowledge in order to get control, and the only way to
maintain control is to keep deepening and expanding your knowledge."
By the end of that class period every student had re-understood the
position to be something that is "made" by the writing he/she
had done. This is a definition I could never have given them on my
own. They had to do it to understand it, and I had to give them a
way of doing it.
But the joy of this success wore off when they realized that a position
does not make a paper. I informed them that if they passed in these
papers as final drafts, they would fail. Therefore, the exercise had
not only forced them to make positions, but it now made revision necessary.
I told them that in revising their papers, the first thing they had
to do was put their positions in their introductions. Once it was
there, it should work to guide the discussion that would take place
in the rest of the paper. The work they had done in the first three
pages of their rough drafts did not have to be completely scrapped;
they could use some of their points, but, on the whole, this was not
going to be a cut and paste job. Really, they had to re-write. |
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Assessing The Exercise
"When asked to explain what they
used to think a position was and what they thought now, the students
were able to articulate their own theories on the subject."
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The day they turned in the final drafts I passed out
a questionnaire in class, asking them about this exercise, if they
thought it had helped them, and if they now understood the position
better. When asked if the exercise helped them in writing their final
drafts, eight said yes, nine said sort of, and three said no. Yet
when asked if they now understood what a position is and how it is
supposed to function, twelve said yes, four said sort of, and zero
said no; four said that they had already understood before. These
numbers show that even if all of the students weren't confident enough
to answer yes to the first question (for fear that the paper they
were passing in would have to prove it), they did believe that they
better understood what the position was and how it was supposed to
function.
When asked to explain what they used to think a position was and what
they thought now, the students were able to articulate their own theories
on the subject. Several students had thought that a position was the
same as a thesis statement, and this was confusing to them because
many had never fully grasped the idea of the thesis in high school.
In trying to articulate the difference, Jen said "Even now, I
think the position is still like a thesis, but at the same time, provokes
arguments and interactions between authors and myself." Another
student made the distinction that "it's more of a stance than
an opinion and it has to be evident throughout the paper."
This idea of the position being something that had to become part
of the rest of the paper, something that would guide everything else
that would be written, was very clear in these questionnaires and
makes sense to me now based on the way I structured the exercise.
Because they had to say a lot of stuff before taking a position in
the rough draft, and then had to invert the placement of material
in the final draft, they began to understand the relationship of part
(position) to whole (paper).
Whereas their previous introductions had sometimes been unrelated
to the bodies of their papers, writing and rewriting under this new
structure allowed them to see all material as connected. This is evident
in what Kelli wrote: "I knew that a position was a point you
try to make. I thought that it would be more of a conclusion though.
[But now I know] the position goes first and the rest of the paper
is meant to back up the position, show why others might disagree and
then show how they are wrong." And even more interestingly, Natalie
wrote, "I thought your position was your own opinion on the essay
topic. I know now that your position is the stand you make which you
back up with examples and quotes from the text. You can also have
a strong argument and it might not be how you personally feel."
Natalie's final comment shows that the exercise helped her not only
understand how she felt about the essay topic, but that it also helped
her to understand the position abstractly (as something that is not
necessarily always personal, but a concept she could engage with for
the purpose of expository writing). Alternatively, other students,
like Tommy, embraced the idea that the position could be personally
empowering. He wrote: "I thought before I had to go along with
whatever the writer or writers thought. Now I realize that I can manipulate
their essays to go along with how I feel." For others it served
a very practical purpose, as Brad makes clear when we wrote, "I
always sort of knew what a position was--the topic of your paper,
how you feel on the subject--but I never would have known what to
do for a 3 author essay." |
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| Defining Success |
In grading the final drafts of these papers I felt very confident
that many more students would pass this paper than the previous
papers, even in light of it being a more demanding paper assignment
in itself. And on this point I was right: Twelve students had not
passed the first paper and eleven students had not passed the second
paper, while only three students did not pass the third paper. Not
only did eight students lift themselves out of failing territory,
but four students brought themselves from a C to a B, and two students
did A-level work. Not a single student did worse on this paper than
on previous papers.
If I were to judge the success of this experiment on the grades
of this paper, though, I would be misreading the expectations of
the exercise itself. Students received a tremendous amount of help
from me on these papers. When some couldn't initially "find"
their positions, I helped them dig them out of those messy rough
drafts. When others couldn't think theirs could be more solid, I
argued with them and helped them see complications.
In a sense, I had really held their hands through this task, and
I realized deep into the next paper, when we had new issues to tackle,
that there was a very good chance that the issue of the position
would be forgotten. I had asked them on the questionnaire if they
wanted to do the same exercise while working on the fourth paper
and almost seventy-five percent of the class said that they could
do it on their own. Therefore, I did not ask them to write the same
kind of rough drafts for the fourth paper, but let them start to
think about how to make and integrate a position independently.
I realized at this point that if they could retain what they had
learned from the exercise, if they had come to understand the position
to be so integral to their thinking and writing processes that they
couldn't imagine writing the paper without one--in a sense, if they
had come to think about the position in the way I had previously
been thinking about it--then there had been success. And, again,
and to my great satisfaction, grades on the fourth paper continued
to go up, albeit not at the same rate as with the third.
While the majority of students were able to take what they learned
from this assignment and continue to use it to write stronger, more
compelling papers, the students who benefited the most were the
students who had been in the C range at the time that I assigned
this exercise. The students who had been really struggling were
unable to perform the rewriting part of the task and it took them
until the fifth paper to be able to process the lesson of this exercise.
The students who were already writing very successful papers also
did not benefit as much as the others because the exercise relies
on a model and those students were trying to push beyond models
to the A paper. It was the students in the middle for whom the effects
were most obvious.
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Re-Positioning Myself
"By allowing the issue of how
to guide us, we approached the discourse and expectations of the
University from a place of personal and communal privilege."
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However they imagined the transformation of the position taking
place in their own thinking and practice and however that was made
manifest in their grades, the large majority of the class registered
a transformation at some level. By refusing to stand for my inadequate
and disembodied definition of the position, they forced me to give
them a task which would show us both how such a thing is made. By
following their needs, I made myself vulnerable to my own lack of
models, imagined a simple exercise which might get them there, and
then revised and added new criteria to the exercise as it seemed
to demand it.
This process made me aware of how important it is for teachers to
be constantly re-positioning themselves in relation to their students'
needs. While I strongly resist the classroom atmosphere that David
Bartholomae describes in "Inventing the University"--one
in which students feel they have to "learn to speak our language,
to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting,
evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse
of our community" (511)--I realize that I perpetuate this model
when I do not take the time to look at the discourse I expect my
students to understand and be able to apply. In this case, though,
the students gave me the opportunity to help them un-make and re-make
the terms of the University with them, so that we could all understand
the issue of the position better.
By allowing the issue of how to guide us, we approached the discourse
and expectations of the University from a place of personal and
communal privilege. The terms of the exercise were clear to every
single student. No one was unable to complete the initial task.
We celebrated in their achievements together. And, ultimately, they
came to understand the position both in theory and in practice.
This experiment made me realize that it is essential to allow students
to understand the University through acts of un-making and re-making
the discourse for themselves.
In every successful experiment lie the seeds of multiple successes.
As most students continued to do better and better as the semester
progressed, I continued to think of our experiment with the position
as the initial turning point in a series of important successes.
After our hands-on study of the position, student were able to make
deeper connections, to give papers a greater sense of coherence,
and to understand better the essential work of revision. After this
experiment, I was able to step back multiple times from my own initial
resistance to their demands and try once again to collapse our positions
as I struggled to help us all understand how to do the things I
once took for granted.
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Works Cited
Bartholomae, David. "Inventing the University." Literacy:
A Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Ellen Cushman, et al. Boston &
New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 511-524.
Lynch, Dennis A., Diana George, and Marilyn M. Cooper. "Moments
of Argument: Agonistic Inquiry and Confrontational Cooperation."
On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa
Ede. Boston & New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. 390-412.
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