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"There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist...lead through...the jungles of the self, the world, and of craft." - Jessamyn West
As much as I try to explain writing as a process, my students are not having it. After conducting a weeks worth of individual conferences, with thourough explanations to each student, extensive endnotes and suggestions, I get back the "revisions" and they are highly disappointing., It makes me sad. What did I do wrong?
The majority of the changes that the students made fall under the category of editing, and not revision, which tells me that I must explain the difference between them better for next time, though I thought I had. I noticed that the only elements that were improved upon were the areas I had marked direcly, and sometimes not even all of those. That too, made me sad, especially since I had explained to them all that I would like them to consider the entirety of the paper, not just my notes.
In addition to all this, I have had anti-writing sentiments expressed in many of the student blogs. Since ENC 1101 is a class required for all freshmen regardless of their intended major, I have quite a few students who claim to find writing (and the process) a waste of time. That is what makes me the most sad. As a person who writes every day and enjoys it, it is hard for me to come to terms with the fact that some of my students do not care about a subject I feel passionately about. I realize that it is unrealistic for me to expect all of my students to care about writing in general, and even sometimes their own, I do get upset when they don't seem to respect it as a subject that can be applicable in their future.
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Everytime I look at student essays, I tend to find an awkwardness in paragraphing - from the vague introduction (often not related to the general paper, with a losely defined thesis) to a conclusion that repeats the mistakes of the intro. Most students understand the concept of a paragraph ("a distinct unit of thought", "a group of logically and thematically related sentences"), but are shaky when it comes to the application of this idea.
Though traditionally, paragraphing signals similarity of thought, I find that students often break paragraphs up not by ideas, but by length. A paragraph may simply look too long to them, and instead of revising it or spliting it into two coherent paragraphs, they hit the enter key in the exact middle of the text. Though the teachers as readers are accustomed to seeing indents every so often (we all hate reading the paragraphs that go on for a page and a half), random breaking does not solve the problem, as many of my students seem to think. I have heard from many of them that they have been taught that a paragraph contains from five to seven sentences, and that is how they have been taught to write. Hmm...I wonder where these obscurities come from, and how to teach them it is okay to have nine, ten, or fifteen sentences in a paragraph, as long as they elaborate on their topic sentence.
I see that a lot of my students concentrate strictly on the form of the essay (five paragraphs, five to seven sentences per paragraph) instead of giving more attention to the content. As writers, they should be more concerned with the message of their paper. I try to tell them not to worry about the concept of the five paragraph essay, but I get a bunch of blank faces looking back at me. I tried to propose considering a six paragraph essay (adding an extra body paragraph), but that created confusion - they didn't know how to incorporate the extra information into a thesis (which they have been taught has three parts). Urgh. I am so frustrated with this idea of form...
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I was recently talking to a collegue of mine who also teaches composition (though at a different school), and since she has done it for a bit longer, I was asking for general contributions of her wisdom. I was surprised and rather disappointed when she claimed that studies have shown teacher comments (such as endnotes) to have little impact on student writing, mainly because the students don't read them. After going through twenty-some papers and making sure I write specific endnotes, emphasizing particular strengths and weaknesses, was very frustrating. I can tell just by watching my own students that, at least initially, they flip straight to the back to look at the grade, ignoring the comments. I see that a lot of them do read the comments if they had gotten a surprising or low grade (they are probably looking for justification of the grade in the comments, which is not what I had intended the endnote to be...urgh). Even if they are looking for justification rather than a way to improve their future assignments, there is still that chance that maybe some of them will try and implement my suggestions.
I think the nature and presentation of the comments is key in getting the students to read them. (I swear, I am going to start illustrating my comments, or making them into comic strips or something)
I have heard suggested that teachers limit their comments to one or two of the student's problem areas (choosing commas, organization or word choice for example, as opposed to mentioning all three). This method seems rather efficient to me; it makes sense to focus on a handful of errors at a time, as it is important not to overwhelm the student. Narrowing down the scope of the comments to the major issues of the paper and asking the student to work on those first will give him/her a realistic and clarified area to develop and improve. Once the student masters the first handful of errors, the teacher can start reading the paper for other mistakes (in the order of importance), adding to the list of excercises for the student to work on. I think in this way learning becomes more maneagable, and, therefore, more efficient, and we can tailor learning to the specific student more easily.
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It seems intuitive that instructors comment on both the positive and negative elements of the student's writing in the endnote section, but looking back on some of my old papers, I was surprised at how many of the comments my own teachers left me were negative (they mainly dealt with areas of improvement and the like). In one of my other classes, I came across a reading that discussed the student views about teacher comments on their paper. The author writes: "Although comments may accompany the grade, most students interpret them not as 'feedback' but as justification for the judgment we've made. From the student's perspective a graded paper is 'finished', and additional work won't change either the grade or their feelings about succeeding or failing". I wish I had read this earlier, it would have explained to me how to better approach my students during the individual conferences I held with them last week.
During those conferences, I noticed that as soon as the students saw I had written anything on their paper, they went into defensive mode. I got comments like: "Oh no, I did that bad" or, "At least this is less writing than the last time, I must be improving". I didn't know exactly how to communicate to them that my comments were not necessarily due to their errors. A lot of the time I had written questions to help guide their paper, and rarely did I make a note that was entirely correctional in nature. Nevertheless, ink on their paper is perceived as bad. I had even managed to shock a student when after reviewing the comments with her and talking about her paper, I told her she received an A-. She didn't understand why there was so much writing on her paper if I thought it was good enough to get an A- (it wasn't until later that she noticed that a great deal of the comments were me pointing out the positive areas I wanted her to emulate in the rest of her paper). I was trying to tell her just because she followed the assignment well and wrote a clear and interesting paper does not mean that there can be no room for improvement in it.
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I was reading an article by Erika Lindemann (with exerpts from Edwar M. White) on the question of standardized tests being an effective way to measure the student's writing ability. She writes: "many people believe that we can solve educational problems through legislatively mandated competency tests", while at the same time expressing her skepticism for this proposed solution. Never having been a fan of standardized tests (both from the perspective of a student having to take them, and as an instructor evaluating the scores of the students), I would argue, similarly to Lindemann, that test performance is not the same thing as competence, especially when it comes to evaluating writing ability. The most we can get out of the standardized test results is the student's ability to answer a prescribed set of generic questions under a specific testing environment, and to me that doesn't seem like the best way to look at writing, especially since the majority of standardized test questions are in a format that interprets the takers writing efficiently.
White claims that standardized writing tests "measure only editing skills - choosing the best sentence, recognizing correct usage, punctuation, and capitalization", and as a composition instructor I know that there is much more to writing than grammar. The main element that is lacking in standardized testing is creativity, with the majority of the questions coming in multiple choice formats. MC may be a good way to test trivia or factual information in subjects that definetly have right or wrong answers, like math or some history, but it fails at evaluating writing. Very little of the test, if any, deals with the student's own writing. Instead, often times they are asked to look at the writing samples of others, with mistakes included for them to judge. To me, this does not seem like a thourough way to look at writing ability, since I know a lot of students know the rules of grammar, just are unclear about the applications, same as most students understand that papers should be clear and organized, but not all of them are able to produce that when it comes to their own writing.
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I just started conferences with my students this week, and to tell the truth, I was really nervous about it. I am always wondering whether or not my students can tell that this is my first time teaching, and that I am probably learning just as much as they are in our classroom (though different kinds of lessons). Though I have a lot of writing experience, it has always been difficult for me to explain the details and make it known what it is that makes good, bad, or mediocre writing. Being only a couple years older than my students, I am constantly wondering if they take anything I say seriously (I have previously blogged about a student that disagrees with practically everything that me and John say in class).
The conferences were mostly successful. I handed back papers that they had turned in the week before, and we talked about their grade on that, as well as the topic and research for their literary analysis paper. My plan was to talk about the suggestions I had for revising the graded paper first, and then letting them know what grade I had assigned it, but I noticed that a lot of the students were just nodding agreement until I had given them the grade. I thought that hearing the grade last would make them listen to my suggestions, but I didn't find that to be the case. Most would ask about mid way through my explanations: "so, what did I get". I am not going to lie, I was a little frustrated with that. The whole point of the conference was for them to hear the comments that I had on their writing, and for them to ask me any questions that they had. Getting them to ask questions was like pulling teeth, I think most of them wanted to get out of there as soon as they got their paper back. I didn't really get a lot of vuluntary communication. Very disappointing.
A few of the students were not entirely understanding the comments that I had. They didn't know why I found their sentence structure confusing (after all, they knew perfectly well what it was they were trying to say). I suggested reading those sentences to someone else, to see if that person was able to understand the message, and if not, maybe they would have some more suggestions for clarification. I directed many of them to the handbook and other online excercizes in order to teach them to write more complex sentences and fix their comma usage. I didn't want to throw all their problems at them at the same time, knowing realistically they will only try to fix one or two issues the first time around. All in all, I wasn't comletely satisfied with the reception I got from the students, but at the time I couldn't think of a way to make them pay attention more.
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Friday in class, I was reiterating the importance of blogging and writing regularly in order to improve the quality of one's writing (and I thought I was rather convincing too), when a student stayed after class to discuss his theories on these types of enforced writing excercizes. We will call the student Bob, and the following is a paraphraze of our conversation.
Bob: "I don't agree that writing a blog three times a week and doing numerous revisions teaches a person to be a better writer. All I am doing is repetition and monotonous tasks. I write much better when I write sporadically."
Me: "Well, a lot of studies have been done that show the benefit of regular writing. Most (if not all) professional writers will tell you that they write daily and encourage anyone that wants to become a good writer to do so as well. Plus, when you do the blogs and revisions, you are not merely repeating yourself. Every blog has a different topic, which asks you to evaluate, respond to, and comment on different situations, which in turn makes you use different approaches to the writing as well as different words and sentence constructions. If anything, you learn to write on a number of topics and the blogs help you to think critically."
Bob: "I still think I am repeating myself and this is useless."
I tried to give him so more examples (personal and statisitical data), but he wouldn't listen. Is there something else that I could have said to make my argument stronger? I don't like arguing with my students, especially over things like this.
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I liked how this article gives a variety of options for reaching students, commenting on their writing, and elicite communication with the student. I particularly found it useful that Kiefer suggests the teacher to take on a "supporting role" in the writing of the student, particularly since we are always told not to copy edit or co-write the papers for the students.
I also thought the idea of more feedback and revisions to be interesting. What I gathered from the annotation is that Kiefer is suggesting re-writes and revisions, accompanied by conferences, to improve the writing of the students. And we all know that practice makes perfect (As an aside, I did have a student argue with me that he is not learning anything new by writing three times a week - in the blogs for example - since it is all repetition...maybe I will blog about that later). I like the idea of incorporating "creative, impromptu types of writing" into the classroom, and having the teacher comment on those. Marie points out that "'perfect' writing is not the goal of this informal type of writing, so the instructor can focus on particular areas of a students writing and not affect the writing negatively as a whole", which can be very helpful in helping to polish a student's writing and thinking processes.
The most important point of this article, to me, is Kiefer's statement that it is the job of the teacher to "evaluate, as best we can, how a piece of writing will fare in a real-world transaction with target readers". This is key for Comp teachers like us, since we are dealing with so many different disciplines and students who intend to go into many various fields of study. It is also important why we teach our students to write for a proper audience and be aware of the voice that they present in their papers. Audience awareness can often strengthen as well as weaken a piece of writing, and is a key element in persuasion and the message of a text.
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I was really interested in the article that Tiffany found on "Punk Pedagogy" in the classroom. I have never heard of anything like it, and was curious to see such an approach outlined. I think it is interesting to ponder, though I am not too sure about its applicability.
The first principle that Kahn-Egan gives is: "The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic, which demands that we do our own work because anybody who would do our work for us is only trying to jerk us around", which I think can be a good motivator to encourage students to do their own work, however, I am not sure if it will convince everybody. I suppose the teacher can explain that if I student has someone doing their work for them, it only hurts them in the long run, since they will not know how to do the process in the future. There is also the issue of payment for work, which can become unaffordable in the long run. There is also something to be said about hierarchy in a relationship when one person is doing the work of another. It is generally the case, that the person actually doing the work has the power over the person that isn't, and what Kahn-Egan, I think, is suggesting, is that this dynamic can become destructive.
The remainder of the approach is tinted with the kind of angst characterisitc of punk culture: "A sense of anger and passion that finally drives a writer to say what's really on his or her mind; A sense of destructiveness that calls for attacking institutions when those institutions are oppressive, or even dislikable; A willingness to endure or even pursue pain to make oneself heard or noticed". Though I find the questioning of authority, critical thinking, and passion to be an important part of writing, and of life in general, this alternative approach must be handled with care. I think, especially to beginner writers and freshmen students, a sense of authority in the classroom is necessary (sometimes I feel like my students have no care for what I have to say, and the classroom turns to anarchy without me intending it to). I think that the "punk pedagogy" might be undermining the teacher's role in this particular classroom setting, and may serve a more productive function in classes that are at a higher level. I like the principle of Kahn-Egan's approach, and would love to see it work effectively, I just think it takes talent to make it work.
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I was really interested in Taylor's annotated bib on Westbrook, Steve. "Visual Rhetoric in a culture of Fear: Impediments to Multimedia Production." It seems like the article raises the important issue of technology in the classroom. Taylor writes that "the public and academic sectors of life are connected through technology therefore, the power of technology should be offered to the student of composition and creative writing" which I think speaks to the compositiong program at USF trying to incporporate online materials, research tools, and blogging as part of the curriculum. The fault that Westbrook notices with many composition programs seems to be over-emphasis on the five paragraph essay, and complete disregard for "visual rhetoric" (which I am assuming deals with internet, advertising and the like).
At first I was sceptical about having my students use blogs, but reading this annotation i have come to understand why technology in the classroom is a necessity. The more technology the student is exposed to, the more familiar they will be using it, and the better they will look as future job applicants. Though the essay may be a great form to evaluate the students writing ability within the context of the composition classroom, it does not have as much bearing across curriculum. Teaching visual rhetoric and using technology in the classroom prepares the student not only for future english classes, but for all parts of their academic and professional careers.
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I have found that a great deal of the students treat the outlines and drafts that we ask in addition to their papers as something to be done after composing their paper. They treat the outline as another assignments, completely separate from the paper that they were writing. Instead of using the outline as a prewriting, brainstorming and organizing excersize, they are completing it after they had written the paper. In my reading this week for Prof. Metzger's Contemporary Composition class, I found this very problem addressed. In A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers by Erika Lindemann, the author offers a couple of strategies that serve as the prewriting exercizes we want our students to do, without demanding an outline from them (something they seem to be reluctant to take seriously). She suggests a number of activities, some involving writing, and some not. For example, free writing for a couple minutes and then getting into groups and discussing what has been writen. acting out debates or various situations, reading an example of the type of writing the assignment asks for and having a class discussion (with or without outlining) are all ways to get the students to think about their topics. She also suggests staying away from the form of the outline (with all the roman and arabic numeral, all the parallalism and structure) and instead ask the students to do "messier forms of outlining", such as blocking, with questions that consider not only the material of the paper, but audience and purpose as well. Maybe ask them to comment on the effectiveness of their blocking or outlining: how do they feel about this organization or this approach? divide it into information/persuation sections...etc. I think because of all this, I am going to plan a class demonstrating the various methods and ways to prewrite and organize, using my own papers as an example. (I was also thinking of having the students do an in-class writing assignment detailing their writing process...might be interesting. Then after the lecture they can go back and see if they want to change how they work at all).
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Last week, I had the pleasure of observing Caitlin Fahey's ENC 1101 class. Since the first project she is having her students write is the biograpgy, the first half of the class was spent going over an example paper from a student that her co-teacher, Ms. Chow, had previously. Caitlin indicated the strengths and weaknesses of the paper, pointing out exemplary passages and illustrating the effectiveness of the thesis statement (I thought this was particularly good, since I tend to find a great majority of the students have a problem with thesis statements). She then invited the students themselves to go through a similar process, and point out both the positive and negative elements of the paper. This fascilitated a rather intellectual discussion, and allowed the students to test out what they had learned, instead of just being lectured.
The second half of the class was take up the students writing the thesis statements for their biography project on the board. Caitlin corrected the grammatical errors in the sentences, but let the students as a group suggest changes concerning the content, language and clarity. I thought this was an interesting and productive approach, considering that we were told during training that the students are often wrong about grammatical issues. I think that by giving the students an agency in their writing and an opportunity to collaborate in the writing of others, she made them feel like they has something to contribute, even if their thesis was not the most exemplary on the board. I was pleasantly surprised at the level of discourse in the class, it seemed like everyone was eager to help and accepting of the suggestions of their peers. Good job Caitlin.
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Nancy Fletcher wrote an annotated bib on Michael Berube's "Teaching to the Six", which resonated with me in a couple of ways. "Berube reports that he was hired, 'to teach-but also to write' (4). He further contends that while his research sometimes contributes to his teaching, his writing always helps him to comment on his student's papers (5)". I thought this was very interesting, in that I believe that writing teachers should also be writers themselves. The practice, the knowledge, and the experience with writing makes it easier to relate to students and aids in the explanation process. I personally like to tell stories about my own writing; whether it be the process, the editing, or the result, the students seem to enjoy hearing the real life examples of the principles that I am demonstrating in class. It sounds like I know what I am talking about, if I give examples, and makes me feel like a more confident teacher.
Also, I like Berube's correlation between writing well and being able to comment on student papers. With the first batch of papers, I found myself marking a lot of technical mistakes as well as overarching errors. It helped a lot in explaining it to the student if I could describe the mistakes to them and perhaps suggest a way in which they could fix it. Knowing the terminology definetly helps, and though I was first afraid that my comments would be too pointed, I felt more comforable with providing clarity and direction for the paper. I tried to make my comments as specific as possible, without being too wordy (which was tough on some of these papers). Going into the grading, I didn't want to sound like a broken record on each of these papers, so I made sure that my comments were concise and specific to the students' mistake patterns.
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I was reading Jaime's annotated bib of Fred Arroyo's "Models of Authority: So the Spell Cannot be Broken", and I liked the fact that the article seemed to be structured like a memoir. Not only does this help with the memoir project that we have our students doing, as mentioned by Jaime, but I think it helps those of us like me, new teachers, so see what kind of experiences other have in the field of teaching. There is something to be said about learning from experience, but there is nothing wrong with learning from other people's experience.
I have always been fascinated in the way that people view, use and talk about language, and in this article, Arroyo seems to be talking about language as not only a tool for communication and social connection, but something to be taught and matured. Jaime points out that experience alone does not make one proficient in language, which I think is interesting. I myself recently read an article that presented students as natual users of language, but lacking the skills to use it in a formal academic setting. I have noticed that many composition students do not respect the writing process mainly because they believe themselves to be proficient in speaking and writing. They think that sitting down to write the paper the night before is as effective as doing it a week before and revising, It is important to point out that while the students know language, mainly in the spoken manner, they are not always aware of the rules of written language. Another problem I have found is that the students will write just as if they were speaking, using an informal voice with tons of vague pronouns, as well as jargon. I think the statement "models of authority authorize our language as we compose" plays an important role in here. Some language does not belong in the classroom.
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Two weeks into the semester one of my students brought me a note from the Accomodations office, informing me of his special needs. I was initially very worried about this particular individual because of his behaviour during the first in-class writing assignment. While everyone else was busy wrting, he was staring off into space, making disruptive noises and fervently writing fragments and busily scratching things out. Hepainted a very dramatic picture and I can tell that he was disturbing everyone else (they all kept looking at him, wondering what was going on, myself included). Mid way through the class I went over to talk to him and noticed that he had written less than a paragraph, and I suggested he get more organized and try to produce an essay (at this point I had no idea he was a special needs student). He just gave me a blank stare. At the end of the class period he had not produced any more writing...I was worried. He defienelty seemed flustered at being asked to write on the spot, and acted in a rather disoriented manner (he was so confused he was asking me what his next class was and how to get there). I didn't know what to do or how to help him.
After everyone had left the class, this student came up to me and gave me the Accomodations form. I had never seen one before and quickly reading over it I noticed that it is not very specific (which is probably a good thing), but I really didn't know what this student was asking me to do. All the form said is that the student doesn't work well under pressure and needs more time to complete assignments. Not knowing his particular circumstances and given only what was on the paper, I really didn't know what to do to help this guy (besides not to expect him to write in class). Now, I went over the paragraph that the student wrote in class and aside from it being only a paragraph, it was really good. It was the best sample of writing in the entire class, the word choice was amazing and the concepts were detailed and complex.
This was all set up...anyway...this student continues to be very distracted and distracting in the class room environment. He has very obvious mannerisms and hand movements that come sporadically (usually when he is thinking or processing an idea) and I can see other students whispering about it. In addition to that, he feels the need to constantly question everything that my co-teacher and I do. We have started to ignore some of his more unneccessary remarks, but it continues to be a problem. Plus, this boy has the tendancy to blurt out the answers to the questions we ask before anyone else gets a chance to speak. I have talked to him about this, telling him that we want to give everyone a chance to participate, and his opinion is that the other kids are stupid for not answering as quickly. I am at a loss as to how to deal with him sometimes. Any suggestions?
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