Voice

Voice can be taught by having students read and practice writing. I don't know. How do you teach someone voice? You teach them to write, you show them examples of voice.

Voice is...a billion different things. It can be used philosophically, or talking about feminism, or...talking about any number of things. It can be used to mean emotion or opinion, but that's not what voice means to me.

If someone tells me they like my voice in a piece, I assume they mean my style of writing. That's the 1950-60's considerations of voice (pre hippie 60's, that is). Then we get into all this individualism/expressionist bullshit in the late 60s and seventies, where you're supposed to write as you speak. Then in the eighties it gets a new tint with feminism, and the idea that women have a "Seperate voice" (thank you Carol GIlligan) .

So be specific when you use the term voice. In fact, it might be better not to use the term at all. Just spell out what you mean, if there's another term to use.

Teach your students to develop an individual style of writing, not a "voice." Everyone has a voice. Unless they're mute.

An Additional Note

So I was just thinking about the end of composition (that sounded really pretentious of me, didn't it?), and started thinking about advertising/PR writing/copywriting in general. Okay, it was actually the other way around. I was thinking about advertising etc and then wondered: isn't the end of some composition just to produce a product that gets the job done? Okay, ALL composition has a job to get done. What I mean is, I was reading Laura's comment on my ideas for future ways to teach composition, and she asked what would happen to people who don't fall into "humanities" or "science," and I realized that in my zest to categorize people, I left out the journalists from the mix. I don't personally put PR writing, Ad/copywriting, magazine/feature writing in the same category as humanities writing. And although basic grammar is important, and an understanding of sentance structure, journalism requires writers to be more varied in their writing abilities. Well, there are a lot of different styles of writing under journalism.

POINT: Wouldn't it be useful to tell students, particularly English majors and creative writers, that they can ALSO take writing classes in Advertising, Public Relations, Magazine/feature writing, and reporting? I mean, I feel like we have this understanding of "writing" skills as transferrable, but you have to learn the various ways of writing, and styles of writing. Seems like journalism has the whole "writing across the disciplines" under its belt, in the sense that you have to learn to write in different "genres," if you will, within the discipline. And there are classes specifically designed for each type of writing. English majors never take a class on "how to write an English literature paper," "how to write a poetry analysis." We expect English majors to know how to write, without being taught. But for some reason, we don't expect that of communication majors. We teach communication majors how to write. Shouldn't we do the same for English majors? And if writing skills are really so transferrable, then shouldn't journalism majors be excused from 1301, since they're going to take all these writing specific courses anyway? Are major-specific writing courses a good substitute for 1301?

MORE SPECIFIC POINT: I wish someone had told me to major in communication instead of English. I think someone DID tell me that, and I sort of wish I'd listened.

Comments on Comments

Here is what I think should happen. A student comments on a student's paper. A teacher comments on that same paper. The two students then discuss what comments were helpful, which were not helpful, and why.

My teaching philosophy is starting to turn really pessimistic. I feel like writing needs to be taught in small classes on a case by case basis. The whole idea of a uniform ("fair") writing class across several hundred students is absurd. Some kids may get a bad teacher; that sucks. Okay, so incorporate writing into more of their classes. Make students learn to write in order to pass their other classes. If a certain style of writing is not necessary to one discipline or in life, then don't make those students learn it. Originally, college was supposed to be a broad education, seeing all of the known world and studying, what, rhetoric, math and...something else. What is the purpose of college now, for most students? To make them eligible to apply for jobs in a specific field. Okay. Then what knowledge do they need? Knowledge relevant to that field.

What about kids interested in a broader study, a more traditional liberal arts education? That's what small liberal arts colleges are for. I should know. That's why I went to one. And you know what? The people who came expecting a focus on real-life training, and job relevant classes, were sorely disappointed. It's okay for different universities to have different goals. It's okay for different departments to have different goals. Engineers are not poorly educated if they leave Texas Tech unable to write a poetry analysis, or even a compare/contrast essay. However, it is not okay if they can't reason through WHY a bridge will or won't remain standing for the next 20 years, and then write that line of reasoning in a clear and articulate manner. Unfortunately, the English department can't teach a chemistry student how to write a research grant. So various departments need to take it upon themselves to teach students how to write in their individual disciplines. The English department needs to teach:
1. Organization: thesis, arguments, counter-arguments, conclusion
2. Sentance structure: a correct sentence, varying sentences, using commas in sentences
3. Grammar: the obvious basics, a few details.

If we want to effectively teach these skills, the subject matter needs to be relevant and engaging to each individual student as much as possible. So either focus on writing in the workplace (resumes, memos, grants, e-mails, cover letter, thank you letter) or get students to bring in work from another class, and go over it to check out the grammar usage (but not style or citations, because these differ from discipline to discipline).

That's my blog. I haven't said anything new. I talked to my cousin this weekend, who is an 8th grade teacher, and we chatted about teaching philosophies / theory vs. practice. It makes me despair for teachers around the world. And she likes her job. It just sounds like a lot of theory only works for a select group of students. So I don't know. I feel like someone should drop me in a classroom for a few weeks, and then see how my philosophy holds up. Right now, it's this water balloon just before it hits the ground.

Questions...Questions...

All of my little questions about how to make ideas from "I, You, and It" and ideas from the Take 20 video add up to one big question:
Is a thorough education in writing/composition studies only really possible in a small, liberal arts environment?

That sounds harsh, but it seems like the more we read these articles, everyone in class says, "Yeah, that's a great idea...but we can't do it on a large scale."

So is that true? Can operating systems like TOPIC provide activities to teach students critical reading, peer evaluations, rhetorical writing skills, etc?

I guess I'm just seeing a big contradiction between "let students write about what interests them" and "we need to be able to grade the papers quickly and effeciently." So then peer review comes in, but at what level do you say, okay, students can give adaquate feedback?

Sorry for such a big question.

A quick question: did anyone else see a correlation between Moffett's "what is happening now," "what happened," "what could happen" etc, and Wordsworth's whole experience/reflection as a re-experiening of the original event in the Preludes? (I think the Preludes, anyway). I was just curious. It didn't seem like an original idea to me, just an idea new to composition theory, stolen from literature (and made more psychological/analytical, not so much "pretty flowers! ah, memories!")

Two Ends to Composition

I may restate myself from the Take 20 response paper, because that paper sums up a lot of my thoughts on this topic.

The "End" of Composition

Composition exists to give students skills in communication which can transfer from freshman comp to senior English, from analyzing a chemistry lab to the workplace. Composition should teach students to formulate a clear thesis from an idea, and to understand the main point of essays, articles, speeches, etc. It should teach students different methods of persuasion, and which are more effective. Composition should also teach students to be critical thinkers.

The Means to the "End"

1. Develop a list of transferable skills: summarizing and paraphrasing, writing a professional letter and e-mail, basic grammar (punctuation, capitalization, sentance construction), maybe even grant-writing and internship/graduate school application letters. Create a class based on these transferable skills, possibly called "Business Writing," and require students to take it during their junior year. I think that's the best time - students will need to start thinking about internships that summer, graduate school the following fall, and a job the following spring.

This course will also address the need for critical thinking. Students will be given essays and articles to read and summarize; later in the semester, students will identify the methods of persuasion used by an author, and which methods are most effective. Students should also bring in examples of various persuasive tools. Also, students will watch speeches, and determine the persuasive techniques used. Students will learn the concept of counter-arguments (which they should be familiar with by junior year), and will read various work, including their own from other courses, to determine where a counter-argument would be effective.

2. Develop major-specific courses; or, at the very least, offer one course in "writing in the humanities" and one course in "writing in the sciences." Require students to take one of these courses their freshman year, depending on their major. If a student is undeclared, he or she may choose one to take; however, to graduate with a BS, a student must take "writing in the sciences"; to graduate with a BA, a student must take "writing in the humanities."

a. Writing in the humanities: Cover proper form of documentation for English, history and psychology papers (ie. parenthetical documentation vs footnotes vs endnotes). Also, proper tense use in history papers (past) vs literature papers (present). Explain passive and active voice, when it is appropriate to use one or the other. Focus on thesis, transitions, argument and counter-arguments, different schools of literary and historical analysis. Teach basic research skills, specific to the liberal arts. Require a research paper.

b. Writing in the sciences: Cover proper documentation in various fields (physics, biology, chemistry). Also, discuss proper tense use, and explain that use of the passive voice is appropriate in scientific articles. Teach the conventions of a basic lab report and scholarly articles. Teach basic research skills, specific to sciences. Require a research paper.

Feasibility

Accomplishing courses such as this on a large scale would require extensive teacher and grader training, an extremely specific syllabus including in class activities and out of class assignments. It would require a lot of input from various departments and cooperation of departments in deciding what material to include and what to omit. Students would need to enter college with an idea of their area of study, something often not decided until junior year. To be most effective, the major specific courses would use work from the students other courses, such as a history or english paper. This assumes the students are taking a course in their major freshman year.

Can this be done on a large scale? The business writing class can. It would be possible to make assignments for that course which would easily fit into a system such as TOPIC. Would a discipline specific course work in a system such as TOPIC? Yes, if a system like TOPIC was created to exist seperatly from the humanities TOPIC, for the science course. It would require a lot of training for graders and teachers, since there wouldn't just be a course in "English Writing" or "History Writing."

Conclusion

I have never taught in a classroom. I have only been a student in a classroom. Is this too much to expect from students, from teachers, from graders? I don't know. Is this something one can actually accomplish in a classroom in one semester? I don't know. I guess if something like this is ever implemented, I'll see.

Philosophy of Thinking

Of course there are different philosophies of teaching - otherwise we wouldn't be coming up with our own philosophy, Dr. Rice would just tell us what the one teching philosophy is.

A teaching philosophy is, as far as I can define it, to what end a teacher structures her class in a certain way. That's wordy. What I mean is, a teaching philosophy isn't just sitting on a throne saying, "I believe my job as a teacher is to help students become better at writing/at reading/morally/professionally, etc." You have to come up with a way to achieve that goal, and a reason for thinking that it is the reason for teaching in the first place.

Let's see, some different philosophies.
1. I believe correctness of form is most important for my students, because in the workplace, form is vital to success.
2. I believe teaching should foster creativity, because the work world will teach students correctness, but the classroom may be the only place where their minds are allowed to stretch.
3. I believe teaching should create socially and morally responsible individuals, because knowledge without responsibility is dangerous.
4. I believe teaching should primarily focus on theories, because once a student knows the theory, he or she can look up specific examples in a text-book, but drawing conclusions from specifics may be too difficult.
5. I believe students should learn to draw conclusions from specific examples, because then the theories become their own, and they develop critical thinking skills.

Okay, I think that's enough. My own teaching philosophy will be based on the needs of students within academia, the needs of students once they leave academia, and a combination of 4 and 5 - I'll give students the building block theories, but ask them to take it a lot further, to develop thinking skills. My teaching philosophy: teach the kids to think critically. If someone can think critically about an essay, he or she can think critically about life choices.

That may be a little over the top. I don't know. I know that's vague, too. How do you teach kids to think? ANd how do you keep them engaged in wanting to learn to think? I'm still working out the details...

Process: The Product of Writing

Malea Powell’s focus on rhetoric in her classes has prompted me to think about how I would teach, and to what end. After watching Take 20, I believe that the process of writing begins long before the physical writing of a draft. The first step is teaching students to follow and then create a logical argument, to come up with counter-arguments, to research, to use evidence effectively to prove a point. A student can learn the above skills through writing, but there are also other options.

In Take 20, one of the teachers mentioned having students write in class to practice. I would like to take this a step further: have students write in class, but also edit their own work, from a previous week, during class. Put your own writing up on the screen, and walk your students through the editing process. How do you look at your own work? Put up other writing samples. Ask for examples of counter-arguments within the text, or – perhaps more importantly – where the author should have added a counter-argument. Where is the author missing evidence, or using evidence ineffectively? Then, how can the author fix these problems?

I think the following quotes from Take 20 would be extremely useful in helping students consider writing as an ongoing process rather than a final product: “Nobody’s writing is ever finished, just due.” I’ll paraphrase the other quote: you can’t do writing wrong, because, like making a clay pot, you can always do it again; you just have to make sure you have enough clay. Also, straying away from Take 20, Natalie Goldberg (author of Writing Down the Bones) comes to mind: If you want to write, write. Despite my emphasis on editing, students have to practice writing to get any better. (Side note: If I was in the Take 20 video and had to pick a book for writing, I’d go with Writing Down the Bones. It’s for creative writers, but has some great quotes about writing in general.)

Emphasize reading as part of the process of writing. The point of considering writing as a “process” is to improve the product, right? Exposure to correct use of ideas, language, concepts, and arguments is one of the most effective ways to learn the skills yourself. When Dr. Rice passes around his current personal reading choices, that’s what he’s doing – he’s exposing us to new ideas, new books we might never have bothered to look at before. Do that with your own students. Have a student pick a book they liked and bring it to class, pass it around. Don’t just limit discussion to books – get students interested in informative TV shows, podcasts, NPR, a lecture series on campus. The point is exposure to good language, good rhetoric, and well-articulated ideas, and this happens in places other than books. We’re not just teaching students to write logically and clearly; we’re teaching them to be better readers of people, of speeches, and of written work. I want students to leave a class able to write well, but also able to identify writing which is purposefully manipulative, illogical, unclear, or vague -- and to know to take those kinds of writing with a grain of salt.

Once again, a specific project comes to my mind: have students rewrite an unclear news brief, bring articles into class that are unclear or have faulty logic. Have students complie a list of writing they might do for their future careers: memo, resume, proposal, grant, article, letter; then, a list of the writing they need to learn for college: academic papers, essays, scholarship applications.

Workplace writing has a different form than academic writing, to be sure, but all writing shares a similar thought process: idea, edit, research, evidence, follow-through with an idea, determine counterarguments, clarify, and simplify. This is true of all writing. Even creative writing. Even memos. The amount of time, the depth of thought, the audience, the purpose may change; but the process, the way of thinking, does not. Teach the process, and students will gather skills which will apply not only across the disciplines, but beyond academia, into each student's work, social and personal life.