Size does matter: longer is better for incoming freshmen

In an article I found in the Eureka Review, one college writing professor decries the direct correlation he found between essay length and score on the new version of the SAT. Because many incoming freshmen view the SAT model as objectively “good writing” and because those who did well on the test are exactly those students who wrote high-scoring, wordy essays, an English comp teacher faces a classroom that is at least somewhat obsessed with the length of each essay.

“It’s exactly what we don’t want to teach our kids,” says Les Perelman, an MIT writing instructor. I agree.

I think we send mixed messages when we tell our students to avoid padding their papers with extra words in a system that not only rewards--but demands--sheer page length. Shouldn’t writing be genuinely inspired, sung by angels on high and simply transcribed by eager freshmen?

It’s a delicate balancing act. We ought to teach our students to become acquainted with their free and reflective inner writers, but we must also remember that part of our job is undeniably practical: our students will inevitably face demands of word length, and it’s our job to help them develop strategies for working within those boundaries.

Also, I understand that there’s a very obvious reason for the connection between word length and the success of a piece of writing. In most cases, good thinking requires a significant amount of verbage.

So, looking forward, I’m left with a big question: Is it possible to encourage writers to develop both an organic view on word count and the skills to knowledgably work within the construct of page requirements?

Adaptation: Teaching Composition from a New, Visual Perspective

In some ways, Boice's description of the exploratory essay is truly the opposite of what I've always understood about about the construction of an essay. Boice recommends that we resist writing a thesis at the beginning of the essay. He also advises us to begin after an introduction, in the middle. He asks us to consider and explore two or more perspectives or arguments. All of these ideas are contrary to my deep-rooted thoughts about writing an essay. I think it will be an interesting detour for me to take as I approach my own essay. . . .

On a different note, I have been thinking about my essay and would like to explore the concept of visual learning styles in the teaching of composition. Right now, I am leaning toward the the idea that visual composition organization, rhetoric, and learning styles are imperative for effectively teaching students after our recent technological renaissance. When I tutor at the Writing Center, I find that the students are often unable to organize their thoughts. When we draw up a visual aid, however, their writing appears to improve immediately. I now have a hunch that students view information in clusters and as visual elements. Perhaps they think this way because they are confronted daily with technology that requires all students to think in a more visual manner. As teachers, I believe that we need to adapt to a new generation of students, even when teaching composition.

My brother is dyslexic and relies almost entirely on aural instruction. Prior to starting graduate school in English, I was a graphic designer for many years. My experience in the art world radically changed the way I view text. I mention these examples because I think that striking a balance between students who respond to traditional written instruction and aural, visual, and kinesthetic learning styles is of paramount importance. These are concepts that we have not explored in Boyce's book or the Allyn & Bacon guide.

I don't know if a new focus on visual teaching will take away valuable writing time or not. Can these alterations in teaching be successfully integrated with traditional teaching models? Are my assumptions wrong? I really don't know.

Resonance and Dissonance

    In “Writing as a Mode of Learning,” Emig argues that writing corresponds to certain learning strategies. For example, she points out that the ability to generate conceptual groupings and synthesize ideas is required in both learning and writing. I agree that both writing and learning involve the process of analysis and synthesis but one has to be careful when he or she tries to generate conceptual groupings or synthesize. Sometimes a writer tends not only to generate and synthesize ideas but also to “generalize” those ideas. This tendency to categorize and generalize differences is mentioned in Kastely’s “From Formalism to Inquiry.” In this article, he reminds us that an argument sometimes is made at the expense of differences. In order to produce a tenable argument, a student may learn to disregard conflicts and dissonance. This article reminds me of the time when I wrote my master’s thesis. I learned for the first time that writing is not imposing harmony on ambiguity and dissonance but simply presenting them.

    When I wrote my master’s thesis, I tried to explore a protagonist’s ambiguous attitude towards the night life in Paris. It turned out that I was only able to present the positive side of her attitude because I found it impossible to describe both sides without jeopardizing the integrity of my arguments. So, how to present ambiguity in an unambiguous way becomes an important issue for me. My harmonizing strategy was later challenged by the questions posed by my advisor. She pointed to the scenes in the novel where my arguments failed to explain. Through asking questions, my advisor exposed several blind spots in my seemingly incontestable arguments. The questions she asked were aimed to open up various possibilities that coexisted but at the same time contradicted each other. It was from the contents and forms of her questions that I learned how to present ambiguity without privileging either side of the arguments. I think the key resides in the power of resonance and disagreement brought up by my advisor. When she regarded my argument as “problematic,” as Kastely puts, I was forced to explore the other possibility that contained incoherence and ambiguity. 

Exploratory essay

I'm a little more excited about the prospect of an exploratory essay than I anticipated. This is, more or less, because it seems to be a pretty easy mechanism through which to bring my theoretical orientation into discussion, but without cramming it down the reader's throat. It seems, for example, much more palatable to bring theorist in to support, enhance, or change the scope of an exploratory essay than to foreground the theories. In other words, to show why theorists are relevant to the issue, rather than how issues are relevant to the theorist (which is how many paper seem).The dialectical thought process that Bacon & Co. advocate seems essential to keeping the reader's interest; this point was driven home by two essays on creativity. In one, the question was closed immediately; in the other, it was left open allowing the essay to generate a synthetic answer. I have a tendency not to write in this way. I start with the answer and try to show why it's the answer. This never works very well.Speaking of other poor writing habits, as annoyingly zen-like as Boice's advice can be, I can't help but feel that heeding his advice has the potential to let me develop a set of something that I could actually call writing habits.Now, I know that his advice of “Wait” (which I understand as actively working on the problem without an eye towards any final end) and “start before you're ready” seem kind of paradoxical (and in a way they are) but the problem I see him trying to solve is a real one, and on top of that, one that applies to me. I felt that all the examples he gave of reasons why a person's writing can get stunted or stumped apply, in some way, to me. I'm in a convenient position of entering an MA program knowing fairly specifically what I am doing. All I need to do is start, which is kind of the problem. I'm willing to give his strategies a chance.

Believing and Doubting: Exploratory Writing

Though I’ve had a fair amount of experience constructing annotated bibliographies and other writing assignments designed to help generate further questions and insights into research papers, I’ve never before tried (or, for that matter, heard of) the exploratory essay as “an intermediate stage in the research process.” After playing Elbow’s “believing and doubting game” in class earlier this week, I’m tempted to explore this (for me, at least) new form of writing in terms of believing and doubting.

I’m intrigued by The Allen and Bacon Guide’s claim that exploratory writing is designed “to keep a problem alive through consideration of multiple solutions or points of view,” because I feel like this strategy will be particularly handy as, throughout grad school, I will need to return to previously written seminar papers as I prepare articles for publication. If I engage in exploratory writing, I will be able to revisit not only my initial notes and final draft, but also the many angles on the topic that I found interesting as I got further into my research. What an invaluable resource this could be!

I am not without reservations, though; I still find Boice’s advice to “wait” before writing challenging because it has never been a big part of my writing process before now; what if adding this additional step to my writing process ends up disrupting a process that, at least to this point, has seemed pretty effective? What if I end up devoting more time to my writing—valuable time that I could have spent preparing for other courses—without any noticeable difference in the end product? I’m hopeful that, after we experiment with exploratory writing in this class, I’ll have a better idea of how best to incorporate this new strategy into my own writing process, and will know which side of Elbow’s game I’d like to run with.

Freewriting and Chaos (in response to Hsiao-wen's post)

I think Hsiao-wen’s angle on "order out of chaos" revealed some good criticism on the concept . I also liked what she said about freewriting—that it sometimes makes essays vague.

I try to freewrite everyday. It allows me to work out a field of subconscious thoughts, but the result of that kind of writing sometimes leads me to a larger field that I can plow. Plus, I think too much freewriting can often lead the writer in the wrong direction from the topic of a paper.

I think it’s difficult to find good ideas from freewriting, and it’s even more challenging, as Hsiao-wen wrote, when we try to cull those ideas from chaos.

Tension and Rhetoric

“The key to effective exploratory writing is to create tension between alternative views.” While reading the chapter in The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing, about the exploratory process (p. 56), this sentence resonated with me. I think it would have been helpful if the authors discussed in more detail about this tension. Are there different kinds of tension? Are there other ways in which we can achieve tension? Clearly, in the scope of an entire essay, one kind of tension is to present various viewpoints from different sources. Following suit, our thoughts and ideas on those sources creates tension by presenting an array of, and often conflicting, viewpoints.

For example, how do we address a kind of tension through rhetoric? Should we use different rhetorical strategies throughout our essays to generate this “tension?” Should we use one rhetorical strategy throughout the essay to develop a strong, consistent, and clear voice? These are questions that I find perplexing. Although the premise of an exploratory essay is to question and “dwell” in a pool of ideas, I still think that underlying expository argumentative rhetorical strategies exist.

I will write my own expository essay in the near future, and I will have to make choices not only about how I will explore the topic of the paper, but how I will structure the essay rhetorically. My inclination is to use various strategies to reveal a more circular and thoughtful approach to the essay. Of course, while the purpose of the essay is to “explore” a question, I do believe that there are exploratory essays that use only one or two rhetorical strategies to address multiple ideas from different angles. The outcome of those essays reveals a singular voice instead of an ever-changing one.

With regard to the chapter in Boice’s book, I think there is a crossover with Ramage, Bean, and Johnson’s book with regard to how we should approach and begin exploratory essays. I gleaned from the combination of the two chapters how to begin before I’m ready to write an exploratory essay, in particular. I specifically liked the quote Boice borrowed from Sylvia Boorstein about not hurrying “to breathe the next breathe—the next breath will arise whenever it is ready (p. 126). I found her words reassuring that writing (including expository writing) is a natural process.

Both of the essays were quite interesting. The chapter in the Allyn & Bacon Guide caused me to think about tension and rhetorical strategies while the chapter in Advice for New Faculty Members revealed to me how to begin the writing process early—an how to just relax.