|

 

 

For the third class, at last, students wrote something of their own. I did not want them to get hung up on
worrying about what topic to choose, so I offered them a list of topics that I felt would be possible; but I also
told them that if they didn’t like my topics that they could write on something of their own choosing. Since Y
one has yet chosen one of my topics, I must conclude that finding a topic is not a problem for juniors ane
seniors. I said no more about length than “a few pages” and “whatever seems reasonable in the available time.

They brought their first papers to the third class, and we arranged a round-robin in which each student
gave his paper to the next student in the circle. Each student was to look at, think about, and offer esate
to his classmate and then pass the paper on to me in time for me to look over the whole batch and return the
papers the following week. This became the pattern for the rest of the term.

The Rest of the Term on

Class time has been spent in several ways. We have discussed samples of published writing that one of us
has brought to class. We have discussed the differences between oral and written English. When commas
seemed to be used a bit too imaginatively, I have taken 10 minutes to explain a few conventions about commas.
I have also experimented with exercises designed to tap their intuitions about language. I once passed out a
sample of writing from which the paragraph breaks had been removed and, somewhat to their surprise, the stu-
dents found that they agreed quite closely about where the breaks should go. These exercises helped a bit to in-
crease the students’ awareness of the inner constraints upon writing. =

I have tried to encourage discussion of specific points by occasionally rewriting a student paper and offer-
ing both the student’s version and my own to the class. We have then spread out the versions and considered
the alternatives: Why did I change this word? What are the pros and cons of that phrasing? We get into ae
tailed discussion of particular points: whether this word or that word works better in a particular sentence;
whether it would be better to break this sentence into two shorter sentences or to leave it alone; whether the
two sentences toward the bottom might better be moved to an earlier spot on the page; whether the logical rela-
tionship between two sentences might be made more apparent by adding a clarifying phrase; and, over and over
again, whether anything at all would be lost by cutting out a few words here and there.

Rewriting a student's paper has its risks. The first time I tried it, | chose a paper that was already reason-
ably sound and a student who seemed to be reasonably tough. I did my best to let the class know that I had
selected a paper that was good enough to be worth the effort of rewriting, for I did not want to hold anyone's
writing up to ridicule. At the same time, however, I did not want to encourage anonymity. I wanted the writer
to be able to defend himself, to argue with my suggestions. So far as I can judge, my experiments in rewriting
have been well received. It is surely more illuminating to see how someone has struggled to reword and to
reorganize than to be left with a few vague comments in the margins like “awkward“; and since students can al-
ways find flaws in my version too, they get the idea that each draft is simply a trial, one step along the way, not
something to be left inviolate. ’ . ; ;

I like to believe that in the course of the term I can see the students gaining some confidence in their writ-
ing. Their phrasing seems a bit more solid, their organization a bit tighter. But I see no revolution in their writ-
ing, and I cannot be entirely confident that a blind examination of their first and last papers would confirm their
progress. I even suspect it is too much to hope for unambiguous evidence of better writing in a single term.
What I hope, instead, is that students will have begun to think seriously, and in productive ways, about the
craft of writing. If we can help students begin to understand how they can work toward learning to write, that
is probably enough.

 

 

Robbins Burling | DOUGLAS COLLEGE
Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics | ARCHIVES -
University of Michigan | :

 

Reprinted with permission of the Southern Regional Education Board from “Writing Across the Curriculum,” Re-
gional Spotlight, Volume XIV, No. 1.

For further information, contact the author at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109.

o

 

 

Suanne D. Roueche, Editor
April 5, 1985, Vol. Vil, No. 11
INNOVATION ABSTRACTS is a publication of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, EDB 348, The University of Texas at Austin,

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