A Little History

 

Left Brain/Right Brain

Years ago a professor at my university conducted a study of incoming freshmen and English faculty. The professor gave the freshman class and the members of the English department a “Left Brain/Right Brain” questionnaire, the score from which indicated a tendency in us to favor the “right brain” (seeing things holistically, being creative) or the “left brain” (seeing things linearly, being structured).

 

Students vs. Faculty

What the results suggested was that over 95% of the freshman class tended to use “left brain” thinking, while 100% of the English faculty tended towards “right brain” thinking. Even though this is an overly simplistic way to characterize thinking, we were surprised by the results and felt that they could tell us something about how we teach writing and how students learn to write.

 

Adjusting the curriculum

After looking at the typical methods we tend to use in writing classes and listening to students describe how they perceived these methods, we found that there was a disconnect between faculty and student assumptions about writing. Faculty favored lots of reading, and discussing topics, “discovering” ways to write, brainstorming, writing processes, and so on. Unfortunately, students tended to see all of this as “dancing around the subject” and not very valuable for their own writing. Students overwhelmingly requested a “step-by-step” approach, one that gave them much more direction while they were drafting their papers. Outlines and the like seemed to help, but there were still vast (to them) blank spaces for which they had many questions.

 

Coaching

One breakthrough idea that emerged from listening to students was the request to have writing teachers present while drafting their papers. They wanted to do their drafting during class. This was revolutionary for some of us, but we tried it anyway. As you can imagine, it presented a number of problems. What do they write? Do they write for the whole class? Does the teacher teach each student individually? What do other students do while the teacher is with one at a time? Many of our methods seemed almost counter-productive, but we experimented with writing in class as much as possible. During one of these “writing with the teacher present” classes, a student said that these classes were more like athletic practice than class. We were practicing while the coach was around to break steps down into smaller and smaller elements and to help us learn the skills “in real time.”

 

Elements

At this point, we were forced to think about what makes up smaller segments of writing than essay, genre, and so on, but found that working with sentences and paragraphs (topic sentences, concluding sentences, etc.) was very difficult to do on the fly. At the same time, we noticed that, as they wrote in class, students consistently stopped after a sentence or two and asked, “What do I do next?” This forced us to identify elements that make up, for example, an introduction, or a summary, or a conclusion, and so on. It also forced us to identify elements before students began writing.

 

Orthographic vs. Rhetorical

The more we identified “elements” of sub-essay parts, the less we dealt with “types” of sentences. In other words, identifying types of sentences did not help in generating the parts of a narrative, for example. What did help was identifying key phrases that indicated that it was a narrative. This led to a major paradigm shift: elements of an academic essay – at least elements that help generate new writing – are not based on sentences and paragraphs (the orthographic system), but more on the modes (the rhetorical system) inherent in an essay. And how did we know which mode we were using (or wanting to generate)? A mode (narrative, argument, description, summary, procedure, comparison, and so on) is revealed by key phrases within that mode. So our job became identifying key phrases – something we could do in advance – to help students know what comes next in a typical mode and what phrases they could actually use.

 

Prompts

So how do we present these key phrases in such a way that allows the freedom to create content and generate ideas – within an academic structure – without telling each student individually how and what to write? After some experimenting, we developed a series of prompts for each element of each mode – each prompt containing a key phrase for that element. From the prompts, we also developed some examples and templates, and then we created checklists and tutorials from the same prompts.

 

Using the book

 

Computer room

This system works best in a computer classroom where students work while in class. Once students arrive at a topic (or you give them one), they can write nearly 100% of the time they are in class by answering the prompts in each section. The aim of this book is for each student to create a draft by answering the prompts for each section. In a computer room, they are drafting while you are present and can answer questions.

 

Pace and skill calibrated

Because most sections contain a checklist, prompts, a template, a sample, and tutorials for each prompt, this way of drafting can be self-paced and skill calibrated. For example, stronger writers will only need the checklist to make sure they have all the elements of an introduction, for example. The checklist is reflected in the prompts. Most average students are able to answer the prompts to create a draft. Some may need a little help by looking at the sample writings constructed from the prompts. Weaker writers tend to need the templates and examples, and they have the tutorials to fall back on if they need additional help. All of this causes each student to progress at different rates and need help at different points with different skills. Essentially, students work at their own pace.

 

Teacher role

With students writing at different rates and skill levels and essentially on individualized tracks, a teacher’s role becomes that of an editor, coach, and helper. A typical class consists of students at their computers, writing their drafts by answering the prompts in each section. When they need help with a prompt, the teacher is available to respond. When each one finishes a section, like an abstract or introduction, he or she can submit it. These sections are small and easy to edit; you can check that all the prompts are addressed, conventions are correct, and style and format are proper. This makes editing easy, fast, and individual. Submissions are spread out because students finish sections at different times.

 

The role of teacher becomes facilitator rather than gatekeeper; it is teacher and student together trying to answer the prompts – in class – instead of the teacher assessing work done outside of class with little structural direction.

 

The easiest way to teach the four types of writing in this book (persuasion, technical, analysis, and personal) is to complete one type of writing during a semester. Some may finish early and some may need some outside class time to work, but both of those are OK. Persuasion and technical writing are the most straightforward. Literary analysis is a little more involved because it deals with language in figurative as well as literal terms (the first two are mainly literal). Personal writing, done correctly, is the most difficult for most students, at least in my experience.

 

A student-friendly process is to require all sections of a type of writing be handed in when the student finishes each section. While the instructor is editing that section, the student begins on the next section. It is helpful to answer the prompts in each section, in real time and in a projected word processor program, in front of the class. I tend to avoid deadlines and grades until the end of the semester.