Archive for the 'Process' Category

Assigning Journal Writing

Published
by
Olga
on December 18, 2007
in Low-Stakes Writing, Process and Writing Instruction
. 1 Comment

 In my freshman composition class, my instructor required that we fill up a certain number of pages in our journals by the end of the semester.  He specified that we could write “Don’t Read” across the pages with things of very private nature.  Once I taught a composition class to a group of older students who had been out of college for a long time and froze every time they needed to write a paper. I thought it would be useful for them to keep a daily journal for a couple of weeks at least.  And, yes, I did something I probably wouldn’t do now - I said they could write “Don’t Read” over certain pages.  The things I did get to read revealed great thinkers and writers.  Many who were against journal writing at first continued writing in their journals till the end of the semester.  They shared personal, not necessarily private things; they shared things that could be easily put in and add tremendous depth to their essays.  Journal writing became a great extension of the writing they produced in class, not an appendix to it. 

I think journal writing can be a great learning tool and not just in a composition classroom.  We know that many professors do not see the value in encouraging students to relate their personal experiences to the readings.  And, journal writing is certainly not a common practice outside of the composition program.  But it is no news that the making of new meaning is always connected to the previously gained knowledge and experience, to the things that go on in the students’ lives currently.  Why not let our students make that connection not always on the spot in the classroom, but in their personal writing space? 

Making the Process Work

Published
by
Olga
on October 12, 2007
in Blogs and Blogging, Cross-Cultural Communication, ESL, Low-Stakes Writing and Process
. 2 Comments

Inspired in many ways by Luke’s post, I asked students in my Great Works tutorial whether they would want to share their thoughts and questions on our Blackboard discussion board.  To my slight surprise (this class is already very demanding of their time - they come to the 90-minute tutorial every week and often attend the Writing Center) they overwhelmingly agreed.  I see that despite the product-oriented writing instruction or perhaps because of it, students long for a safe space to share their thoughts in.  They really seem to understand the need for a process to take place before any product can be put out.  For this reason, I think it’s a great idea to have the tutorial in the first place, as it provides plenty of room for that process to develop.  In a similar way, the Writing Center with its “I Write” campaign, which seeks to give student writers a sense of empowerment, is also a comfortable Baruch venue where academic professionals serve as facilitators not judges of their writing efforts.

  I hope that Blackboard discussions would be valuable for my group of Great Works students.  Some of them need a lot of support in language areas, and they are the ones who would probably benefit most from these online discussions.  However, I’m afraid they would also be the least forthcoming participants.  Can those of you who have experience initiating blogs suggest ways to reach out to most diffident participants? 

It’s the Process, Silly!

Published
by
Deborah
on June 13, 2007
in Oral Communication, Pedagogy, Peer Review, Powerpoint and Presentations, Process and Revision
. 0 Comments

A lightbulb went on in my head in the last couple of weeks. In May and June I have had the opportunity to work with students in the capstone course for the Healthcare MBA that Baruch sponsors with Mt. Sinai Hospitals. They were required in groups of three to develop and submit a business plan which they would then present to “juries” playing the role of venture capitalists, bank loan officers, or hospital board of directors. It was my job to videotape a dress rehearsal with them, offer my suggestions from the perspective of communication style, and then watch the videotape with them. I have done a very similar version of this with undergraduate senior-level Business Policy students for two years. It has always seemed like a useful process to me, and I have always been convinced that it benefited the students.

However, I think I made connections between my own academic work and the work with MBA students this spring and a few things clicked into place more clearly. I don’t know how long I’ve told students, “writing is a process.” (Imagine you are hearing that mantra from an annoying professor, battered at you in a sing-song-y voice.) But I think it sunk in a little further for me. After watching 11 groups of successful medical professionals present solid Powerpoint presentations, that nonetheless still needed revision, and watching them watch themselves on video, the light went on. Prior to this they had already submitted the paper versions of their business plans, and felt well prepared. But in addition to the videotape making clear the various nervous tics they had while speaking, or that they engaged the slide screen far more than they did the audience, it also helped them see the entire scope of their presentation, how well its various parts fit together, and where they needed to change the emphasis. They could clearly see if their argument needed bolstering with evidence in some areas, or increased clarity in others.

Watching them, I realized that the only way their presentations could make it to the ‘next level’ so to speak, was by going through this final review and revision process. Not only that, for these students especially, I was truly more of a coach and facilitator than anything else. It was a combination of my experience, their experience, the videocamera, and their own critical review of themselves, that really made the process worthwhile. I wouldn’t say they didn’t need me, but it was the process and the assemblage of them, me, the camera, and the review, that was essential.

Creative Writing as a Communication Intensive Course

Published
by
Jenny
on May 21, 2007
in Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Pedagogy, Process and Writing Instruction
. 1 Comment

We want our students to be able to write. We want them to write well. We want for them to be able to articulate eloquently their thoughts on what they have written and what they have read. Educators seem to agree, rather vehemently at times, that students lack critical skills and, when it comes to discussion, are unable to back up any claims they have or argue their points in an intelligent and effective way.

Composition 101 has long been regarded, almost without question, as the “required writing course.” Yet, students don’t really learn how to think more critically in these courses and therefore continue to churn out, in all of their coures, poorly written essays with lukewarm thoughts and little substance.

Creative writing courses, on the other hand, are regarded as “electives”–courses that only “artistic” types take or, mistakenly, a way to get an easy A. The creative writing course, however, seems to strive towards effective communication, analysis, argument and thesis development, critical thinking, eloquence, articulation, and correct writing.

In a typical creative writing class, students will read difficult works of fiction and poetry. They will be asked to discuss the most minor details of these works and be able to back up any statement they make with not only textual references but also with interpretive skills that may call on what they have read before.

Additionally, students will “workshop” their classmates’ writings, applying the same critical and analytical skills that they will have gained by reading and discussing published works of literature, both contemporary and canonical.

(During a typical workshop, the student whose work is being discussed is not allowed to speak until the end, at which time she may ask questions. I find, however, that most students want to defend their writings or say, “This is what my writing means,” a practice that I discourage.)

A good creative writing teacher will not allow her students to merely say, “I really liked this” or “I didn’t like this.” Students must say why. The writing workshop is an exercise in close reading and critical commentary. I make my students read and comment directly on their classmates’ writing before the workshop. They must come to the class prepared to speak. The workshop, therefore, requires that students both write and orally communicate their thoughts.

And I don’t let anyone hide. In a typical workshop, a student will have articulated his or her thoughts an average of five times. If four workshops are conducted in a two hour class, each student will have spoken 20 times.

There certainly are enough MFA in Creative Writing graduates to fill the demands of the writing curriculum at American colleges, but I can already hear the cries of our composition-rhetoric colleagues protesting that creative writing is not a critical or academically rigorous discipline. I read more during my two-years as a MFA student than I have as my four years as Ph.D. student in English. A typical Tuesday assignment (for Thursday’s class) from my creative writing professor was: read George Steiner’s After Babel, Robert Lowell’s Imitations, Stanley Burnshaw’s The Poem Itself; find a poem and translate it in the three modes of translation according to Steiner; find three different translations of Dante’s Inferno and report back on which translation is more effective and why based on content and prosody (prosody being my professor’s seemingly harmless way of saying “every poetic device,” so you had better scan the poems before coming to class because you might be asked about how a certain trochee affected the poem); and email, by Wednesday midnight, a three-page essay on one poet in The Poem Itself and how you might read this poet according to After Babel.

On Thursday, we would discuss all of this and more. We would read and analyze our classmate’s translations. We would have to eloquently articulate our thoughts and integrate, into our conversation, our readings throughout the semester.

We polished our poems before we photocopied them for our professor and classmates. We went over them endlessly, revising and perfecting, taking into account the comments of our teacher and classmates and our own developing artistic and critical sensibilities. We questioned our revision choices; sometimes we went back to our original plans. But we were revising, and we were revising in a way that was intended to please us, not to get a higher grade.

For us, revising was high stakes: it was on a level that was critical, personal, artistic. The revisions we made seemed to change the world, or our places in that world. It seems to me that this is the way writing, critical thinking, and communicating ought to be taught.

Rousseau, Brahms, and Unintentioned Creation

Published
by
Anthony
on May 12, 2007
in Pedagogy, Process and Writing Instruction
. 1 Comment

In Book 3 of his Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes (among much else) about his struggles with writing:

It is with unbelievable difficulty that my ideas arrange themselves into any sort of order in my head. They circle there obscurely, they ferment to the point where they stir me, fire me, cause my heart to palpitate; and in the midst of all this emotion I see nothing clearly; I cannot write a word, I must wait. Imperceptibly, the great movement subsides, order succeeds chaos, everything finds its proper place; but slowly, and only after a long and confused agitation.

This passage reminds me of some advice Johannes Brahms is supposed to have given once regarding composing. You should begin work on a piece, he said, but then set it aside for awhile without thinking about it. Upon returning to the piece later, you will often discover that some of the problems that first presented themselves have been worked out, and you will have a clear sense of how to proceed.

From a psychological point of view, Rousseau and Brahms both highlight the importance of the subconscious in the creative process. In their view a successful composition is fashioned, in part, outside the realm of conscious intention. I wonder if there is any place for this creative “non-practice” in college composition courses. Perhaps there are ways to foster a productive subconscious creativity with practices that extend beyond the act of writing itself.

The Question of Critical Thinking

Published
by
Anthony
on April 27, 2007
in Baruch College, Higher Education, Pedagogy, Process and Writing Instruction
. 2 Comments

In my current work as a Fellow at Baruch, I’ve been encouraging students to formulate questions as they begin to work on research papers. The idea, in part, is that it’s a whole lot easier digging through the literature on a given subject when you know what you’re looking for. The process of coming up with appropriate questions, however, has been more difficult for the students than I thought it would be.

While pondering why this might be so, I stumbled on an article that may or may not be relevant (to the question of why questioning well is hard). In Critical Thinking Development: A Stage Theory, Linda Elder and Richard Paul detail, among other things, some of the traits and implications for instruction of what they call “The Practicing Thinker.” In order for students to become practicing thinkers, they argue, teachers must help them understand that “thinking is inevitably driven by the questions, that we seek answers to questions for some purpose, that to answer questions, we need information, that to use information we must interpret it (i.e., by making inferences), and that our inferences, in turn, are based on assumptions, and have implications, all of which involves ideas or concepts within some point of view.”

The rub is that “The Practicing Thinker” is stage four in what Elder and Paul put forth as a six-stage process through which “every person who develops as a critical thinker passes.” The stages range from “The Unreflective Thinker” (stage one) to “The Master Thinker” (stage six). If there is any connection between this theory and my question, then the students who are having difficulty formulating good questions might be “Unreflective,” “Challenged” (stage two), or “Beginning” (stage three) thinkers, and my job is to move them in the direction of becoming “Practicing” thinkers.

Part of Elder and Paul’s project is to highlight what all of this means for the educational process. I have to admit that I hadn’t thought about teaching in these terms, though I have sometimes wondered whether the seeming lack of critical thinking abilities in some of my students is connected to stages of cognitive development. Any cognitive psychologists or education specialists out there care to weigh in on this?

Developing Specificity in Research Projects

Published
by
Anthony
on March 7, 2007
in Pedagogy, Process and Writing Instruction
. 0 Comments

This semester at Baruch I’m working with students who have semester-long research projects. Their first assignment was to propose a topic idea. Most of the proposals were far too broad in scope. This was in no way odd or unexpected. It led me to wonder, though, whether there might be some systematic way to “teach” a sharper focus at the proposal stage.

A colleague of mine shared some ideas she had on the subject, which I’ll paraphrase here. My colleague’s approach is to require students to rewrite proposals until they pass. The proposal has to follow this format: Paragraph 1=Name the focused topic. Discuss what you find interesting in it and how it is relevant to the course objectives. Par. 2=Pose a main research question. This should be a question for which there is no simple (yes or no) answer. Par. 3=Introduce one solid source. Give full bibliographic data, and indicate how this source will contribute significantly to your project. Par. 4=Same as paragraph 3, but with another source. Par. 5=Outline how you will proceed with and complete the project. Indicate what you are still looking for in research, and discuss any potential stumbling blocks.

I’m wondering if anyone else out there has tried this kind of approach. I’m not sure if it would be appropriate for all writers. For some people, the focus seems to come only through the process of writing the actual paper. Any thoughts?

Inventing the Critical “I”

Published
by
Jenny
on February 12, 2007
in Feedback, Liberal Arts, Pedagogy, Process, Revision and literature
. 1 Comment

In the Uses of Literature, Italo Calvino writes that “[t]he preliminary condition of any work of literature is that the person who is writing has to invent that first character, who is the author of the work.” Literature classrooms present an interesting paradox: although the work under discussion is literature, students are asked to produce critical works, not literature. Yet, when asked to discuss or write about a work of literature, students are often happier, indeed more comfortable, with relating the work to their lives (in a sense creating a type of literature?) instead of looking at the work with a critical eye.

I think that we can apply Calvino’s “preliminary condition” in the classroom. It may be easier to think of Calvino’s “preliminary condition” alongside something that Nancy Sommers writes about in “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” She writes that “experienced writers imagine a reader (reading their product) whose existence and whose expectations influence their revision process. They have abstracted the standards of a reader and this reader seems to be partially a reflection of themselves and functions as a critical and productive collaborator–a collaborator who has yet to love their work.” Just as a writer of literature must first invent an “I” who is, according to Calvino, the author of the work, a successful writer, according to Sommers, imagines (or invents) a critical “I” to shape the work into an effective piece of writing.

Students in literature courses will inevitably encounter religious texts and be asked to write on them or do some comparative work. They are often hesitant to engage in this work, so close are they to their personal selves, the personal “I.”

I once had a student in an out-of-class workshop say that she couldn’t write on religious texts; she was afraid that her writing might be deemed offensive, that she might say “the wrong thing.” One student in an in-class workshop said that he hoped he wouldn’t have to do a presentation on a piece of writing as controversial as a 17th-century sermon. His impulses were to blame the sermon for outcomes in history rather than reading the sermon as a piece of literature.

Instead of having our students write unimaginative and often weak theses, I’m wondering if we should instead be trying to help them invent an “I,” a critical collaborator with which to think through and write, an “I” that can help them to author critical essays without the personal “I” impressing itself needlessly into the work. Perhaps the “preliminary condition” of any literature course should be the invention of this “I.”

Wikis in group authoring

Published
by
Cristina
on April 9, 2006
in Process, Revision and Technology
. 2 Comments

Noticeable shifts in style and grammar in a group-written paper can make it difficult reading. Further, a student may sometimes develop her assigned section in isolation from the rest of the paper, failing to build on what others have written. I’ve talked about these issues with students I have worked with. But until I picked someone else’s brain and found this page on wikis in education, I wasn’t sure how to make the collaborative writing process easier.

This is one way wikis can help. Students set up a wiki site for their drafts, with each student getting a page to write her assigned section in. After each section has been revised, say, two or three times, each student moves on to the next section and applies her revisions. She then moves on to the next section, and so forth. This may force each student to engage and build upon what others have written, as well as be committed to the overall focus and quality of the paper. Wikis smooth the workflow by eliminating the cumbersome process of emailing a Word document because several versions of the paper can be accessed via any Internet-connected computer. Wikis store a document’s history and allow “rollbacks” of changes — no messy strikethroughs and red fonts in Word’s “Track Changes” feature to deal with. I’d love to hear what others think of this process as well as any other thoughts on collaborative writing.

Attack of the Conference-Ready Undergrads

Published
by
Cristina
on December 8, 2005
in Peer Review, Powerpoint and Presentations and Process
. 0 Comments

Something noteworthy at the gem that is the MIT OpenCourseWare site: an undergraduate course on Economics Research and Communication. The course description indicates that “primary activities are oral presentations, the preparation of a paper, and providing constructive feedback on classmates’ research projects.”

Constructive feedback involves group peer review at several stages of the writing process. In nine of the thirteen three-hour sessions, students have to: (1) present initial ideas for a paper; (2) present research plans; (3) participate in open forums for discussing project difficulties and questions; and (4) make a presentation based on the first draft. Class discussions always follow presentations.

All these are probably nothing new to many of you. My undergraduate years, however, offered no such communication rigors in my major, no requirements that process be subject to peer scrutiny. How the economics curriculum was implemented at my university implied that economics was a solitary pursuit — you only needed to impress your professor on paper. Any other skills were not the school’s concern.

So I came to the U.S. shy, self-conscious, still somewhat in “I hope I don’t get called on in class” mode. Teaching has helped mitigate some of my reticence; I think I’ve evolved into a self-assured instructor. But addressing peers and superiors can still induce significant levels of apprehension, though I’m finally at the point where academic conferences and presenting at department seminars are inescapable duties. (I’ve hence sometimes bemoaned the deficits in my undergraduate education.) Here’s hoping that university departments are on track to turn out graduates more communication-savvy than I ever was.