Teaching Rationale -- English
Writing is a skill that can be taught. But composition teachers do more
than just teach students how to put down words on a piece of paper without
making many errors, in some meaningful fashion, for some rhetorical purpose
(sometimes not the student's own). Teachers should also be helping
students learn how to think, recognize interesting and original thoughts, and
express these thoughts in an effective manner, because then the resulting essays
will be significant, relevant, meaningful, interesting, creative, original, and
profound. This is the harder of the two tasks to perform. Students
need to learn to evaluate other writing (both professional essays and other
students' papers) to help them determine what is effective, what constitutes an
interesting subject or approach. They also need much practice in writing
their own essays and hearing/ seeing/getting feedback from others on whether
they were effective, interesting, and clear.
Reading and discussing professional essays and participating in the
generation of evaluation criteria will help students be more aware of what makes
for an outstanding essay.
To help students know what to expect in this class I would like to review
my philosophy about writing and what makes good writers and what I hope to
accomplish for my students in a writing class. Writing is a process which
generally proceeds from some form of prewriting, to writing the first draft, to
multiple revisions and proofreading, to a final copy and a final proofreading.
It is usually more successful for the student or non-professional writer to
concentrate first on content itself (generation of and choices of what to
include), then on organization and development of these ideas, on awareness of
audience and purpose, and only after all this (and usually after several drafts
to improve the communication), on grammar and diction. In this class
revision does not mean correcting grammar errors only, but rather re-seeing,
revisioning the paper to see if it could accomplish its purpose more
effectively.
Writing involves a writer, an audience, a subject to be discussed, and the form or style in which the ideas are presented (poem, play, essay; cause and effect, narrative, argument; informative, ironic/humorous, satiric). Good writing should concentrate on all aspects, certainly content and meaning, but also structure, emphasis and interest (and how they affect content and meaning). Students should be taught how the two interact--not just that bad grammar adversely affects the perception of content or meaning but also that well-organized structure and effective emphasis can enhance the possibility that the audience will understand and be swayed by the message. Thus to the triad of writer-subject-audience, I always add form. I still suggest that different types of essays focus more on different aspects: description and narration--expressive essays--on the writer; process analysis, classification, definition (sometimes comparison/contrast and cause and effect)--explanatory essays--on the subject; cause and effect, comparison/contrast (usually), and argument--persuasive essays--on the audience; and often literature (especially modern) on the form. But since all essays should integrate all parts, it is easy to see why many essays are hybrids of different forms.
Though I have been teaching for many years (over 25), my teaching style is still evolving (and hopefully always will be). I strive for a balance between instruction--providing the expert advice, knowledge, guidance that I was hired for--and involvement--getting students to think out, discuss, resolve problems on their own. I do believe in as much personal contact as possible through workshops, interaction with students working in a group, classroom interaction in a discussion, email communication, and of course written response to written assignments. I believe in making the students take responsibility for teaching each other. I am working on being more of a listener and less of a leader/authority. However, I also confess to a bias against totally student-generated/oriented/run classes. Though I admit to the theory that if a student discovers truths on his own he is more likely to remember and utilize them, I don’t believe there is time in a one-semester or even a one-year course of composition for students to discover entirely on their own the best techniques of writing. Besides, there are many excellent models to use and professional discussions of the techniques and problems of writers that it seems a shame not to at least expose students to these. I am working on an integrated system of instruction-on-theory through reading and discussion of appropriate articles and learning-by-doing through practice in applying the theory and in evaluating other students’ papers to see how well they, too, have applied the theories. I would like to find a way (and the time) to also include more individual encounters with each student because individual problems and weaknesses are so diverse and other students are not as well trained in spotting the patterns of weaknesses and strengths as I am. I do not believe it is my responsibility to lecture on grammar in a freshman composition class, but I have little “10-minute mini-lectures” available on most grammatical problems which are occasionally asked for by the students.
I’d like to maintain another important balance: between reading and writing. I do believe in using texts, especially a reader. I have used Guth’s Words and Ideas and McCrimmon’s Writing with a Purpose, but I no longer use a rhetoric text. The students rarely read them thoroughly, nor did they provide much instruction that could not be learned from practice and in-class discussion. I still use a reader to begin focusing the students’ minds on what makes essays interesting and effective. To encourage more diligent reading of the texts, I ask students to take notes on the essays (underline important points, make marginal comments in reaction to the content by testing it against personal experience or logic, raise questions, make analogies to other works they have read). Also, after my demonstrating the “teaching” of an essay the first article, I put individual students in charge of leading the discussion on the other articles. This system is working well as the discussion on those readings have been more lively because of the active involvement of the students. I am very happy with the Norton Reader because it has many essays that are excellent examples of various kinds of essays, and also it has many essays on the nature of knowledge, the evaluation of ideas or experiences, the power of language. For our text in the learning community, we are using selected essays from the Norton Reader and from a psychology text of opposing viewpoints and some articles from Psychology Today.
After the class has discussed the first few essays, I have the students develop a rubric or a list of grading criteria and use it to evaluate each others’ papers. I also use evaluation forms for the peer evaluations. Most of the class has demonstrated an increased awareness of what aspects of a paper weaken its effectiveness and what strengthens the paper and makes it more effective. By the end of the semester, each student should have developed his own rubric, a list of criteria which he believes makes for a good/effective critical paper. Students should write to fulfill the requirements of their own rubrics, not to please some instructor.
Having discovered that the biggest problem students have with writing is not providing a clear thesis to develop or not providing concrete support, I have designed my writing assignments to give students practice in providing different kinds of concrete support. The first assignment, the self-evaluation, allows students to use personal observations and experiences as support. Subsequent assignments focus on concrete details for the analyses; logical arguments, facts, figures, statistics, case studies, hypothetical situations, as well as personal experience for the argument essay; and finally authority for the term paper.
I have begun asking students, for one paper only, usually the 2nd paper, to identify their own thesis statement, topic sentences, concrete details, and to verify that they have proofread the paper for specific grammar errors. I also ask students to consciously attempt to write “A” or “B” papers using criteria agreed upon in our rubric, and to be able to articulate how their papers have gone beyond just answering the assignment.
The term paper is a work of significant length that is researched and well-supported, on a topic narrow in scope. A series of term paper assignments--a working bibliography, summary, paraphrase, paragraph with quotes--make sure the student has begun early and continues to think about the term paper. I assign an annotated bibliography to be due at least two weeks before the term paper is due. I have had trouble with plagiarists and I want to avoid that possibility if I can. Also, I can see that their research is well begun or almost done. Then I require a rough draft and list of work cited rough draft. For this learning community, we are asking for 2 versions of the term paper, one using MLA formatting, one using APA. We will see if having to differentiate between the two forms will help students learn both formats more easily.
I would like to find a way to compromise on what I mark on a paper. At present I mark everything on the theory that since I may be the last writing teacher these students have, it is my responsibility to at least make each student aware of what his individual problems are on the content/structure/ development and form/style/grammar levels. However, I also believe I might be more effective if I didn't overwhelm the student with all his problems at once. My technique is still evolving. I usually ask the class and receive the response that most students would like everything marked.
My philosophy of teaching writing includes the belief that if
I have done my job well (by providing practice, individual instruction, and
feedback), if each student could evaluate his own papers and know what is
effective and what needs revision, could then successfully revise and polish the
paper without my help, I have made myself obsolete by the end of the class; then
both I and the students in the class have truly succeeded.
