This is a difficult question to answer, let alone justify that answer. I have been heavily influenced by expressivist approaches to teaching writing, and I think it is important to acknowledge that emotions do affect students' ability to learn in the classroom. In almost every single personal history with writing that I have ever read (or written myself), the fear of writing takes center stage. In our culture, students are taught that the ability to write well is absolutely necessary if they hope to have any measure of success in life. They are trained to believe the idea that writing well equals success and, conversely, not writing well equals failure. They are also trained, through every essay that, over and over, battled the red grading pen and lost, that they are not good writers.
It was heartbreaking to me to read so many personal narratives this semester in which students debased and deprecated themselves, their value as students, because of this trained identity that they are failures because they cannot write well. Seeing this pattern over and over felt like I was a quality control expert in a dystopian, mass-production assembly line of education. With almost the same precision as clockwork, students could write wonderfully for the low-stakes, personal narrative section, but the waterfall of ideas and experiences that had tumbled onto the page would dam up before a student could even finish writing an introductory phrase for the analysis section. As soon as they were engaged in a high-stakes writing situation, their thought processes jammed up, and I could almost hear the gears grinding and stripping out in some of the essays.
This is a significant barrier to learning, especially when it comes to learning grammar. I would have short grammar mini-lessons in each class, and I would count these quizzes and worksheets as part of the participation grade. However, I would make it abundantly clear that, even though the quizzes were low-stakes assignments, I would be grading harshly for grammatical errors in the final analysis paper. As far as formal writing assignments, I am inexperienced in teaching all genres equally, so I feel equally comfortable following the assignment order suggested by any FYC program.
At the beginning of the semester, I would have students write a longer reflection essay in which they both provide a personal history with writing and outline personal learning goals that they would like to achieve throughout the course (i.e. learning comma rules, get better at identifying rhetorical choices, improve their ability to write introductions/conclusions, etc.). I would also have students write reflections after each formal writing assignment, focusing on what they learned, what they struggled to learn, and whether or not they made any progress in achieving the learning goals they identified in the first reflection assignment. At the end of the semester, alongside the final analysis paper, I would have students write one final reflection essay in which they review each of their previous reflections and write a conclusion, as it were, about their progress throughout the course narrative as a whole. I suppose I would be using these reflection essays to engage students in a low-stakes, portfolio approach to learning 1301.
Hey Justin! I totally agree with you about our students' fear of and lack of self-confidence in academic writing. Like you, I was floored by how many students could be very detailed in Part I yet have very little to say in Part II. Even when students were being really critical in their self-assessments, the informal responses to Part I that I read were generally quite cogent and often lengthy to the point of being too verbose. I found that the majority of students were adept at making connections between the different parts of the Part I prompt. On the other hand, the responses to Part II were often stilted in tone and generally disorganized. I'm not sure if it's the genre of self-reflection that puts students at ease or the stylistic expectations, as you suggest, but there is definitely a lot of anxiety about academic writing and analysis that we need to deal with.
ReplyDeleteAs a sidenote: what really broke my heart was the number of students who called themselves "bad writers" because they struggle with grammar. This is why I hate so-called "grammar nazi" culture. Too many people are confronted about their grammar problems by self-righteous peers and not enough are gently instructed in a low-stakes way like you describe. The goal is to empower, not tear down. Quick, someone tell facebook.
My name is Bailey, and i am a grammar Nazi. Well, a recovering one.
DeleteReading the BA 1's was an eye-opening experience for me. I found my harsh, critical eye stopped short in the face of overt negativity and a troubling lack of confidence. And after writing "This doesn't make sense to me. Explain," or something similar, countless times, I was struck by this portion of Meghan's post from last week:
"The big red circle around a word/phrase/sentence with a question mark was traumatizing. I didn't understand what my teacher didn't understand about my sentence. When I would gather the courage to ask, my teacher would say something like, 'this doesn't make sense' or 'I don't understand what you mean here,' and my response would always be: 'what don't you understand about it? How does it not make sense?'"
I suppose I've always taken a positivist approach to writing, grammar especially: if I can't understand what you're trying to say, it's wrong, and you need to fix it--preferably in standard ways. Maybe because it's easy to be a prescriptivist and throw out a grammar fix when such a fix is not helpful or even necessary.
Increase confidence, go low stakes, don't get caught up in mechanical errors--you people are breaking me. It's terrible and wonderful at the same time.
In the past, I have been accused of being a grammar nazi, and rightfully so. I had never learned anything about grammar until I took an advanced grammar course as a Junior in undergrad. Before that, I didn't even know the basic parts of speech. With the authority of my new-found power and vocabulary, I became seduced by the power of the red pen for awhile, but then I remembered how that approach had always created a glass ceiling for me.
DeleteI still value grammar in exactly the same way as I had. The only major difference is that, now, I try to remain mindful of how my words affect the person at the other end of my pen, and this person, beleaguered and demoralized, usually desires to improve at least enough to no longer identify as a failure. All they lack are the tools and basic training to get the job done.
And, Bailey, I still mark up essays for grammatical errors. I don't pull punches by ignoring their presence, but I do try to balance that with supportive encouragement. Sometimes it's helpful to acknowledge the student's struggle with grammar (they're painfully aware of it too) but also encourage them for having good ideas that are worthy to be written down and read. From there, you just have to explain the importance of packaging those ideas properly so that they are still intact after being shipped to the reader. I wish I had some kind of feedback to measure how well this approach has been working, especially whether the student perceives me more as an evaluative authority or as an ally.
Justin, I like what you say here about helping students with the often ingrained sense of inadequacy to become better writers. You and Bailey have mentioned grammar exercises during class, and I can attest that those are fun and helpful. A professor of mine who taught my theory of composition class in undergrad had us do those exercises as a way of putting us in freshman writers' shoes. They were fun!
ReplyDeleteI also like how you emphasize difficulty for high-stakes assignments. True, we can be compassionate and helpful in our teaching, which undoubtedly helps students in their learning, but we also have to give them some semblance of real-world writing. To that end, I like the comment you left on Bailey's post. I agree. We in academia HAVE to be aware of what's going on in the industry.
Justin,
ReplyDeleteI really liked the idea of small grammar checks. The hope is that they would have mastered that already , but most students haven't. Making it a part of class is a great way to support their learning. I also appreciated that you talked about how daunting a writing class can be. As writers, we love to dramatize the importance of our field, it is important to know that what we say can be intimidating. Really insightful!
Justin, I completely agree with how disheartening it was to read the diagnostic assignment,and to see how students discussed themselves as writers. And I am with Bailey here, in that clarity is a primary goal of writing, so if clarity suffers, then as an instructor, I consider that to be an issue worth addressing. But I can't help but wonder if there's not some middle ground with grammar, and I really like the idea of having low stakes for earlier assignments and high standards for the larger, and maybe cumulative, assignments. I also think that small doses of grammar during each class period, used as a means to demystify the process of writing and not to be punitive or nitpick-y, might help ease writer apprehension as conventions are reviewed and solidified for the student.
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed reviewing your blog post, Justin. Do keep up your voice in class. So coming up with assignments is difficult, and a philosophy which supports those assignments, also difficult, as you say. But, this is what teaching is, and you may become a teacher or team leader or something similar some day, if that's what your plan is. Reading through large-scale theorist thinking, like Berlin and Fulkerson, is helpful in that we can begin to understand what we value, ideologically, in our teaching. Check out the literacy narratives in the database online; they may be stronger than some that you've read so far. Good thinking about getting students writing about what they know the best (themselves), and then bridging that into argumentative (perhaps) writing. Have you used portfolios before? I value portfolio thinking a lot, myself. You may be interested in reading Chapter 2 at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/eportfolios/ , which connects the hypermediated syllabus assignment with teaching philosophies.
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