Good Advice (and Non-Advice) From Our Main Man Boice: BDS

Good Advice From Our Main Man Boice: BDS

Sometimes Boice's advice is a little too Zen-like for me to easily palate. At other times though, I feel that his advice is practical and useful. This week's reading selection provided prime examples of both.

Chapter 4 falls into this later camp. Its theme is on how and when to best perfect one's stopping skills, but it offers little tangible instruction (other than to say no others' demands upon your time). To be fair, Boice isn't trying to give us an instruction manual, but the way he breaks down and presents his behaviorist perspective of what good teachers do correctly isn't in the most palatable format for those people who most need Boice's advice (new and prospective teachers).

Chapter 11 stands in sharp contrast; I believe that it offers a great piece of concrete advice. Here, Boice urges one to work in BDSs, or brief daily sessions, because “Writers”, he quotes Donald Murray, “write.” This is a suggestion I took to heart earlier in the semester, and while I haven't generated anything substantial, I've noticed that ideas stay fresher in my head and I can work with them more adeptly. It also is getting easier to just sit down and work as opposed to dilly-dallying around for twenty minutes while I gather the gumption. However, one trick of his that I have been less successful in is working at regular times, which at this point is unlikely to happen.

Synthesis Essays and Classical Arguments

My initial response to the order of these two chapters in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing was similar to Matthew’s because I was taught how to write a classical argument first and it was not until the third year of my undergraduate career that I knew how to write a synthesis essay. I think it is reasonable to teach classical argument first because the classical argument seems to involve less “delicate” reading and analyzing skills than synthesis essays. In writing a synthesis essay, students have to not only understand other experts’ arguments but also comprehend those arguments to the extent that they find their blind spots, assumptions, contradictions, or implications. Writing a synthesis essay requires close reading and careful analysis to put different arguments in a dialectical debate. It requires students not only to synthesize but also to differentiate various arguments in order to connect or disconnect these arguments.

Compared with synthesis essays, the classical argument involves less gesture of differentiating and screening. It seems to me that writing a classical argument is a process of accumulating. Ramage et al. state that the goal of classical argument as process is “truth seeking.” What students need to do is to offer reasons and evidence that can support their positions. They do not have to deal with contradictions and discrepancy between various arguments. However, does this mean that we should not ask first-year undergraduates to write the synthesis essay because of its complexity? No, I do not think so. I think the point is not to request students to write a perfect synthesis essay but to make them aware of the form of synthesis essay so when they come across this type of essay, they can observe and learn how certain authors discover meaningful connections among various arguments and how they locate themselves in a debate. I am saying this because before I was drawn attention to this type of essay, I could read a synthesis essay without knowing that it was a synthesis essay and missed the opportunity to learn from those texts. Thus, I think it is important to make students aware of different types of arguments and writing.

Synthesis in the Syllabus?

Partly as a result of my exploratory essay research and partly, I think, because I’m beginning to realize that my days as a writing instructor are creeping ever nearer, I often find myself thinking about assignments and syllabi these days. Though at this point I’ve got several dozen ideas dancing around in my head (from which I’ll get to choose only a few, I know), I was glad to encounter yet another potentially helpful assignment mold in the Allyn & Bacon chapter on synthesis.

Like several of my classmates who’ve already posted, I’ve worked with many students in the Writing Center who have trouble forming a basic argument, yet alone constructing a coherent synthesis paper. But I think I’m with Sarah B. on this one; I believe that most English 1000 students are quite capable of writing a synthesis essay (though they might not know to call it that) if we can help them get started. I believe the five steps the book outlines—exploring your texts through summary writing, exploring your texts’ rhetorical strategies, exploring main themes and similarities and differences in your texts’ ideas, generating ideas of your own, and taking your position in the conversation—would lend themselves well to individual assignments (perhaps to be assembled ultimately in a portfolio?) in an English 1000 class, and could thus teach students about both the process and the product of writing a synthesis essay.

I’m still undecided about whether or not I’ll actually weave such an assignment into my first syllabus—one semester seems like such a short time to really teach composition, and I know I’ll have trouble taking Boice’s advice to stop before taking on too much— but I do think it’s a viable option to consider. Decisions, decisions… J

Synthesis, analysis and persuasion, oh my!

In reading the Allyn & Bacon's guide to argumentation and sythesis, I was struck at how unhelpful this would seem to students. As a tutor I can recognize the different goals the instructor has for English 1000 when students bring their assignments to me. Without realizing, students are performing the synthesizing, analyzing and persuasive tactics already.

A few weeks ago, a student brought an assignment to me for her English 1000 class that asked her to do a close reading of a few panels of Maus II (Fellow tutors: yes, that assignment.) and analyze the theme found in each of them. She was distraught that she had not analyzed the panels well enough. Perhaps this was partly because she was terrified of her instructor and the grade she would receive, but I think a large part of her problem was that she knew the buzzword, but not the practice.

I explained to her, after looking through her paper, that she indeed did have analysis. Granted, there was space for improvement, but she had the scaffolding in place. I think some instructors wish to teach their students what analysis, synthesis and persuasive essays look like, rather than creating an assignment and telling them, "Hey, what you just wrote? That was synthesis. See how easy it is?" In a way, crafting the assignment to fulfill the teaching role is easier than telling the students upfront: You're going to write a synthesis paper.

I think we underestimate students a bit. Yes, there are the students that need the blatent instruction beforehand, but I have seen plenty of students come to me in the Writing Center with unnecessary fears about their writing when they have already fulfilled the basic requirements for the assignment. So maybe "after-the-fact" teaching can be put into good practice, occasionally. Moderation in all things.

Synthesis vs. Classical Arguments

I was somewhat surprised to see that the chapter on classical arguments in the Allyn and Bacon Guide came after the chapter on synthesis. Like Alex, I've seen many students at the writing center struggle with the idea of synthesis. There is a tendency among undergraduates to exclude any information that might complicate their thesis. Often, they would rather change their thesis completely than recognize the existence of antithetical information in their papers. Synthesis is (to my mind, at least) one of the most important skills that an undergraduate can learn, but I have my doubts as to whether English 1000 students that are unsure of their ability to write a thesis to begin with will be willing to acknowledge and then attempt to synthesize opposing viewpoints.
I felt that the classical argument chapter was a better starting place for this discussion. It outlines in fairly direct terms the different elements of argumentation (and what 18-year-old doesn't like to argue?). It seems like a lot of fun to teach students to recognize informal fallacies and anticipate objections to their claims. And once they recognize the objections that can be made to their claims or someone else's, the process of recognizing antitheses and responding appropriately doesn't seem as difficult.

As an English Lit. major, it took me until my last years of my undergraduate career to understand the “moves” that can be made in a paper to synthesize an original argument out of a variety of sources. While in a perfect world my students would leave my classroom fully confident in their ability to synthesize an argument, I think a more realistic goal would be perhaps to introduce the concepts of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, but focus more on mastering the classical argument.

Writing as a Process

Reading Chapter 12 and 13 on how to write a synthesis essay and a classical argument, I feel it’s very important to help students break down the writing process into small steps so that academic writing does not seem too formidable. To do that, I’ll need to design my syllabus in such a way that the students are given enough time to tackle each step for every major writing assignment. Hopefully it will not only demystify academic writing but also help them form good writing habits (that is, writing with moderation and constancy—Boice).

But everything may not work out as well as I hope. With myself as an example, after writing academic essays for years, I still do not enjoy doing it. Even though there’re moments of excitement and even fulfillment when I see things suddenly connect, academic writing has always posed as a task rather than an adventure for me. That is one of the main reasons that I do not feel confident teaching college composition. With that said, I also understand the concept that you learn as you teach. Teaching itself is a learning process. Maybe as I try to make academic writing less dreadful to my students, I’ll also learn to think of it less dreadful myself.

But it’s really not about me. As a composition-instructor-to-be, I should probably put my personal interest or disinterest aside and do whatever I feel is best to make the students learn. Learning to write an argument essay is quite essential if they want to continue their higher education, so I don’t think I can avoid teaching them that. The Allyn & Bacon Guide provides pretty clear formulas and effective examples. My task then is to present such formulas to the students in even simpler and easier-to-understand terms. Even though my personal attitude towards formulas is ambivalent, I recognize that beginning writers would need to know them to start with.

You can't spell synthesis without 'thesis'

I often feel that synthesis is the most common missing element among the student writing I see in my sessions as a tutor. Students can often summarize or describe a text, and the good ones can even break it down to its parts in some sort of analysis. But few students I see do a significant synthesis of those parts in a way that looks anything different than their original deconstructive process.

Part of the problem, I think, is that much of our education process lends authorities to texts that students encounter. They’re simply discouraged from being skeptical of the information presented to them. But if you accept a text or argument at face value, you can never complicate it, refute it or synthesize its factors with a separate text.

That’s why so many student papers have the exact same thesis. But those theses often blur together because they simply describe the text or argument rather than actually rising to the level of synthesis.

I see a similar difficulty in forcing students to think outside their ideologies. Ramage, Bean and Johnson point out that in order to engage the truth-finding process of argument, students must question their own preconceptions. It’s often something that they’ve never been asked to do before, but it’s a crucial building block.

I’m tempted to trick my students in the course of the semester by having them write a short essay based on their personal opinions and then write a longer, more-involved paper that disproves their first assertions. Yeah. That’ll show ‘em.