My three important concepts of composition have developed out of what I want in my own writing. Understanding. Organization/Presentation. Voice.
Let's start with Voice. The majority of freshman that walk into a freshman comp classroom have never been asked to write...they have been told to. They are told to write a 5 paragraph essay describing the symbolism of Orwell's 1984. By dictating when and how to write, most students become robots of writing. A routine. Finish a book, write a paper. Read a poem, analyze its structure. What I find critical in composition is the ability to find and strengthen your own voice as a writer. This develops primarily through free writes, journal writing and creative writing assignments. Finding one's own voice can be challenging and frightening at first. The complete lack of supervision and guidance, can create a literal writer's block for many students. This, I believe, helps students to see that writing does not always have to be an entity that is forced upon you. It can be used to express oneself. But it is this unobstructed way of teaching that will help them develop a voice, and hopefully, with practice, and strong voice filled with authority. Once the student has found his/her own voice, you as an instructor can teach them how to channel their voice into different types of writing.
To create that authority a student in a composition class needs to have the understanding and the knowledge of the subject at hand. A piece can be beautifully written with and inviting voice and flawless mechanics, but if it doesn't pertain to the subject, or worse, is incorrect, than that writer has lost credibility with the audience. Teaching students the importance of research and questions can help improve the student's writing. Writing with authority means giving substantial, and correct, evidence to your audience demonstrating your well researched knowledge.
Lastly, but definitely not the least important is organization/presentation. I believe these go hand in hand because when a paper or a piece of writing is not organized the presentation of that work is faulty. Back up your argument with unshakable evidence. Create a flow within your paper that takes the reader smoothly from one idea to the next. Teach the students that organization does include drafts, revision, and knowledge of mechanics. Without these the flow of the paper is interrupted by mistakes that would not be present if the writer and fully prepared the work.
There are many other aspects that are important in composition and I am sure that I will shift my thoughts throughout the years to match my students' needs, but these are relevant throughout the writing process and will help students become successful writers.
5 comments:
Do you have any ideas about how to encourage/teach organizational skills to your students? That has always been a struggle for me.
As much as I hate to use it, the five paragraph essay works well to help students understand organization. I teach them the funnel method. I hope that is what you were talking about when you were mentioning organizational skills. If not, let me know and I will get back to you. :)
Students just need a structure. When they look at a blank page, they have no idea where to begin. Let alone when they reach the college level and don't have a prompt spoon fed to them.
Okay, I'm taking a risk, you smart grad student, and leaving you a suggestion... To help students find their voice you should do a free write every day of class for 10 minutes or so. Somedays students could write about whatever and other days you could give them a topic that either tells you something about them or pertains to the next essay they will be writing. You could also have the students keep journals like in "Freedom Writers" if you don't think that is trying too hard to copy someone else's method. I'm sure many teachers have done something like the journal idea, it just didn't take off for the class in the same way, probably because the teacher wasn't invested enough in the lives of her students.
Rachel's three concepts for conposition lead me to ask how these same concepts would apply to the spoken word. In writing, we can make a case that voice and presentation are clearly different. Voice in writing would be a combination of style, including unique metaphors and other figures of speech, as well as the confidence exhibited in the text, among many other things. Presentation, at least as tied to organization, involves the way the writing appears, including even mundane things such as typical paragraph length.
In spoken oratory, voice and presentation would both involve the sound or timbre of the speaker, the pace at which he or she speaks, the cadences, melodic qualities, and various other oral/aural attributes. Britten's essay we are reading this week hints at the distinction between written and spoken voice.
Thus, I might encourage Rachel to think more about what she means by voice, presentation, organization in writing--where they overlap and diverge.
As for teaching students organizational skills, I find myself grasping for all kinds of metaphors. An essay is like a chest of drawers, where you would have T-shirts and socks in separate drawers, etc. Sometimes I find one that works with a particular student. In most cases, where organization is a problem, the student is either trying to work too fast, not taking the time to plan, or is trying to cover too much ground in one writing project.
Also, I know it may sound stale, but one cannot overemphasize the value of good pre-writing skills, which for me means the tried-and-true outline. Ask students to outline bigger projects and ask to see the outline before they move on. They will likely depart from the outline, as any writer does, but at least it provides a skeleton (another metaphor).
I mentioned in class using metaphor to teach writing. Here is a link to an old article I wrote while in grad school when I was living this stuff. My article is midway down in the newsletter, should you want to take a look.
http://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v25/25.1.htm
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