It is said that where
Chiron resides in your chart is where you are wounded and where you must heal your wound. Often my feet get hurt and I tend to lose faith in the universe and most isms quite regularly -- both of which I believe correspond nicely with Piscean dilemmas. The one area where I have yet to lose faith is in the healthy student and teacher relationship. It is in this area where I believe my healing often begins. In addition, specifically, I believe that I can assist students in achieving
writing success. Hence an additional posting for this month:
Classroom Strategies for the Development of Writing Confidence
by
Erik Kaarla, MA; MEd.
Even now after having been a writing instructor for over thirteen years, I am still amazed by the magic that goes into the writing process … or the complete lack of magic. Sometimes there just isn’t any writing process because a particular student doesn’t get any writing done. This is always frustrating for the student and doubly so for me as the instructor, for I feel as though I have failed the hapless student essayist.
Fortunately, I feel that most of my students can somehow get that writing engine to turn over eventually, and frankly, I think that it has much to do with letting the writing simply happen. Over the course of my years of teaching in the writing classroom I have come up with some methods for improving the level of writing confidence in my students who are active readers and not suffering from any acute learning disabilities. These techniques I believe to be quite straightforward and effective, but first I would like to share some background information about the writing process itself.
In The Discovery of Competence, Kutz, Groden and Zamel talk about the purposefulness of advanced student writers absorbed in their writing processes in much the same light as I would characterize the budding first year writing students who do possess some self-confidence and a belief in achieving writing success:
These students, experts as they are, are also voicing their anxiety as they begin the task of writing a particular paper. But they know themselves as a writer, as a learner. They know what to expect next in their own idiosyncratic processes. And they can see the shape of the whole project. They can trust that they will ‘end up somewhere -- eventually.' They are lost in the process, but only temporarily, and they can trust in the now-familiar experience of being lost and eventually finding a way out. (13)
Of course every part of the writing process contains pitfalls and stumbling blocks that can end the student's journey towards a completed draft. Through well-designed pedagogy and assignment selection, an instructor can positively influence the outcome of a student's attempts at writing a difficult essay. Proper topic selection can help produce results in students to whom composition seems mostly arduous drudgery.
Spending Time on Topic Selection
Young writers carry within themselves a portfolio of pictures and sounds that are made up of experiences, creative notions, fears, and values. These portfolios provide wonderful sources of inspiration to be explored during the writing process. As a student goes about the business of approaching a new writing challenge during the creation of a draft, these creative portfolios should influence the writing process and the resulting product. Be the writing outcome marginal or extraordinary, it is important for the author to feel some kind of victory. If this feeling is positive -- regardless of how outsiders view the writing -- then it is clear that this author is ready to write again come the next opportunity. (Kemppinen 37)
Often struggling writing students have track records of never completing drafts on time. If these students are overly chastised for this deadline-missing behavior, the consequences can be disastrous. A single student’s anxiety level may go through the roof, which may even end with the student dropping the class or stopping any meaningful participation for the rest of the semester.
Sometimes draft non-completers are simply labeled “basic writers.” Researchers like Walter Minot and Kenneth Gamble have made multiple suggestions in the area of teaching basic writers. Minot is Professor of English at Gannon University, and Gamble is an associate professor and Chairman of Psychology at Gannon, where he teaches courses in personality theory and learning theory. In their 1991 article appearing in the Journal of Basic Writing, Minot and Gamble examine other studies concerning the writing process.
Basic writers may not differ from other students in any externally identifiable way except that their writing performance on specific writing courses falls below that of the average freshman at that college. Once identified as such, researchers and teachers alike will probably view them as a homogenous group and will pay little attention to the important differences that might exist within the group. We find similar instances of oversimplification and over generalization in areas where more sophisticated theories of behavior have been applied to writing. (118)
As much as we have to examine the writing process in its entirety, doing at least a forty-five minute block on topic selection with corresponding exercises is always a worthwhile activity. What I often like to do is to give each student 3 potential topics and to have them come up with a thesis statement and an outline as to how they would cover the particular topic in question. Within this assignment, I ask them to take note of several things:
Is it easy to come up with 3 major points that would constitute the body of the essay?
Do you envision a struggle when having to expound on these 3 separate and distinct ideas?
Are you excited by your thesis statement or theme and do you really want to explore it to its full potential?
Upon first hearing the topic that everyone was to write on, did you feel excited and motivated, or did you feel stressed out about having to come up with content?
As students discuss their feelings with concern towards these processes, often their stress levels come down significantly. This, in turn, makes it easier to go forward with the assignment in question.
As instructors of English, we all are glad to recount various writing process theories for our students. Some of us may even choose to engage the classroom in philosophical debate over whether the "process" or "product" has the most value. Whether or not we write in our free time ourselves usually influences how much emphasis we place on the hallowed methodologies of getting started on a piece of writing in the correct fashion; perhaps we choose to emphasize in front of our classroom that there is not any one technique that is the best for all writers, but that there should be a certain reverence for composition as an ongoing process.
Donald Murray has theorized about the act of teaching composition through the technique of understanding and isolating the writing process. He is quick to show that it is different for each writer, but that there is plenty we can learn from trying to map this process out.
If we stand back to look at the writing process, we see the writer following the writing through the three stages of rehearsing, drafting, and revising as the piece of work - essay, story, article, poem, research paper, play, letter, scientific report, business memorandum, novel, television script - moves toward its own meaning. These stages blend and overlap, but they are also distinct. Significant things happen within them. They require certain attitudes and skills on the writer's and the writing teacher's part. (Murray 4)
In order for students to be able to write a basic narrative essay that makes a statement about an experience they have gone through that resulted in a profound change, the student needs to pick out that singular experience, gather and arrange historical and sensory details, figure out their impact, and then recount the experience as clearly as possible. This is no easy task for even a seasoned writer. To write is to make a commitment to tell a story that matters. If a student is lacking in self-confidence, this can become a problematic undertaking. The student may feel that his or her story does not need to be told. The student may feel that the details are hard to remember. Self-confidence directly plays into the invention component of this topic and that is why this is a difficult process for early college writers to begin the semester with and this is the precise reason why I begin my Composition 1 courses with essay #1 being "An Experience that Changed My Life Forever."
Processing the First Narrative Assignment
In the classroom I initiate small group interaction after the students get a chance to think about what a life changing experience actually is. In groups of three and four, the students "sell" their choice of topic to the other members in their group by verbally stating how this event changed their lives. I won’t accept a vague answer like "I really made some great friends at camp that summer!" or "That trip to France really made me think."
I also forewarn the students that they should avoid writing about an embarrassingly personal topic, unless they can discuss it maturely because of their being far enough away from the time of the experience or because of their coming to terms with it. My central focus is on their topic selection skill. I tell my class that I am always available for individual discussions concerning these topics via email. It has been my experience that if you can't write a little something about yourself, then the construction of a process analysis or an argument essay on a designated topic is simply out of reach.
When beginning any writing project, a solid topic is a stepping stone towards achieving writing success, especially in the case of the resistant writer -- there is no better way to have the students feeling good about the assignment than through assisting them with topic selection. In Writing Relationships, Lad Tobin discusses how a poor topic choice can hinder a student:
When I [Tobin] asked him why he was writing a comic essay on making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he had no idea. I suggested that if the essay was meant to be satiric, he ought to think about who or what was being satirized. He seemed totally confused and asked for an example. I said that the essay could, for example, be making fun of technical writers who complicate simple processes. He looked irritated. (37)
Later Tobin is able to get the student to think about such ideas as topic relevance and about commitment to saying something substantial in an essay. Educating the reader in a mature and well-thought-out manner should be the writer's goal. In Tobin's account, the student soon connected with a more realistic topic. Having a student select a defined topic that involves him or herself in some meaningful life situation helps to motivate the student to tell a story, and hopefully to tell it well. The ownership of the personal narrative can't be denied, especially in the case of writers who just can't seem to get through the writing process. If these writers are allowed to have a stake in getting through the invention process in order to begin composing ideas about something meaningful, the results are often well worth the wait.
Discussing the Writing Process
When the college freshman sits down to write and nothing happens: what is to be done? Probably very little because the student doesn't know where the instructor's office is, not to mention anything about the office hours. Perhaps it is 2AM and the student is attempting to write something in a notebook while there is a party going on in the background. Whatever the case may be, it is imperative that a savvy instructor make room in the beginning of the semester for focusing on the writing process and on what to do about it "if yours doesn't work." David Murray ponders the writing process in a succinct fashion.
This process has been revered - and feared - as a kind of magic, as a process of invoking the muse, of hearing voices, of inherited talent. Many writers still think that the writing process should not be examined closely or even understood in case the magic disappear. We can study writing as it evolves in our own minds and on our own pages and as it finds its own meaning through the hands of our writer colleagues and our writing students. (Murray 3)
As Murray suggests, the writing process is indeed a mysterious concoction. As a writing instructor, I can say from firsthand observation that the students who performed with above average success in my Composition classes from 1995 - 2008 learned much about their personal writing processes in the beginning of the course. Most of these students were able to finish work within deadline parameters, and their work tended to have more content than did those students who did not take the time to delve into just what makes their respective writing processes tick.
I have been fortunate with most of my sections of Composition having had a diverse mix of students. Within a good racial, cultural, gender, and writing ability mix, students were often able to see many differences between their respective writing processes and to learn from one another. Students who displayed more of the signs of self-confidence and some academic maturity tended to proudly recount their respective writing processes. They seemed to instinctively know that the writing process was important for producing descriptive language and writing that demonstrated critical thinking. In the case of ELL students who spoke up about their writing process - they didn't necessarily have a better command of English than the other ELL students who remained quiet, yet the vocal ELL students simply tended to have a stronger belief that their writing process mattered and might prove to be a good model to others. Was this empty boasting on their parts? Maybe, but it seems that students who achieve writing success often do want to share their ideas; they feel proud of these ideas, and in this way help others not to be stuck in the hinterlands of never being able to create a draft in time for class.
When college freshmen must begin to perform peer edits and to interact in a decentered classroom that more or less runs on the individual's stick-to-itiveness, basic writers are shocked. Students lacking writing confidence are completely immobilized. They do not know what is expected of them and they do not know how to deliver "the academic goods." The building block for successfully writing numerous essays over the course of the semester always involves the use of a fine-tuned writing process. Here are some key points to direct students toward as they develop their individual writing processes.
1) Always respect the composition process and establish early what works for you and stick to it!
2) Spend some quality time on thinking about the exact topic that you will be writing on.
3) Establish goals for your invention work, drafts and revisions that are in line with your writing process. Is your invention process very involving and complex? If this is so, always be aware that to quickly try and come up with a draft may prove futile and could jeopardize your forward movement; take all the time that is needed in order to respect your process.
Using Questionnaires for Writing Practice
In a newly developed program of writing instruction Lonka et al. devote a substantial part of their student-centered pedagogy to the writer coming up with a characterization of his or her own level of writing confidence and writing style. They achieve this through having the writers take a lengthy questionnaire as they compose and draft an essay. This practice assists the writer in seeing himself or herself in the writing process. The writer must fill in specific point values from a certain range in order to give a proper answer to a question that targets the writer's nature. Some of these questions include: How willing are you to model your writing after some other text? Do you see writing as more a modeling process than as a regurgitation of knowledge? Other topics the authors go through involve perceptions of self, procrastinatory behavior, perfectionism, and if process or product is more important to the particular writer.
Of course writing is an intense journey of self-discovery. Studying the process of writing itself is even more a focused experiencing of self. It is for this reason that Lonka et al. decided to bring the writer right into the very core of the composing process (57). Speaking to Differing Learning Styles Writing confidence is indeed necessary for getting through the invention and revision processes in writing, especially when work must be completed within distinct time frames. In order for students to get through the lengthy process of writing college-level essays, they must feel competent with their own understanding of texts. How a text is dealt with in class becomes very important in freshman English classes. Exactly what classroom methods are being employed to bring texts alive for students? What seem to be the chief teaching techniques that are reaching students? Is lecturing proving as constructive as interactive group work? How many different kinds of learners are there in the classroom? Psychologists Kolb and Fry came up with an innovative classification of learning characteristics:
The learner, if he is to be effective, needs four different kinds of abilities - Concrete Experience abilities (CE), Reflective Observation abilities (RO), Abstract Conceptualization abilities (AC) and Active Experimentation (AE) abilities (qtd.in Tennant 101). Kolb and Fry go on to describe how AC and AE people are CONVERGERS, CE and RO people are DIVERGERS and finally, how AC and RO people are ASSIMILATORS. These three typical learning styles of students are quite different from one another, and a large number of students are not picking up information easily from, say, a classroom pedagogy based on lecture alone. The writing confidence of freshman students can be in jeopardy right here already if a class is a requirement and the students who are CONVERGERS (in that they need to employ active experimentation in order to learn) cannot do that in a particular lecture course.
I make this point to show that the students who are not being reached in the classroom often have poorer and poorer self-image as a result of compounding frustrations in the classroom. As educators, we need to become keenly aware of these pathways and attempt to see which of these learning directions may be more effective for a particular student who is having visible learning difficulty. We need to understand how to develop the student who is lacking, for example, in abstract conceptualization abilities. A classroom based solely on principles of active experimentation (AE) will not effectively reach the students that rely mostly on their concrete experience (CE) processing skills. In other words, it is essential that throughout the semester the instructor combine elements of interactive assignments, oral presentations, peer editing and individual composing exercises, so that learners of all styles have a chance to negotiate the writing process successfully. A variety of teaching methodologies should help in reaching each and every student.
Please see a list of Works Cited here:
http://www.geocities.com/erikkaarla/thesis.htmlThanks for reading!
Here we are once again folks, on the cusp of the chilly autumnal season and if you are alive at this moment in the Northeast, then you are without a doubt experiencing the autumnal equinox coming on and introducing the beginning of fall and no matter how you slice it, yet another season of death and decay will soon be under way. Things be moving on as they often say … year after year for that is the cycle of life on the mothership earth. Even as an October Libran native myself, I always find this time to be overwhelmingly serious and depressing. It is a period of time in the calendar that signals perhaps the most pronounced shift from one condition to another. This might be broken down best as a sudden shift from hot to cold! And, indeed, this is a shocking time for all of us humans, animals and plants alike! We sort of all go Libran for a month as we try to find some equilibrium between body temperature and home thermostat. The skin gets dry and the outdoor winds blow cold, yet the sun shines brightly.
