Rousseau, Brahms, and Unintentioned Creation

May 12, 2007 By 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.

Filed Under: Pedagogy, Process, Writing Instruction

The Question of Critical Thinking

April 27, 2007 By 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?

Filed Under: Baruch College, Higher Education, Pedagogy, Process, Writing Instruction

Developing Specificity in Research Projects

March 7, 2007 By Leave a Comment

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?

Filed Under: Pedagogy, Process, Writing Instruction

Inventing the Critical “I”

February 12, 2007 By 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.”

Filed Under: Feedback, Liberal Arts, literature, Pedagogy, Process, Revision

Wikis in group authoring

April 9, 2006 By 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.

Filed Under: Process, Revision, Technology

Attack of the Conference-Ready Undergrads

December 8, 2005 By Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Peer Review, Powerpoint and Presentations, Process

Confessions of a Writing Teacher

December 6, 2005 By 4 Comments

I’ve been working my way through Laurence Sterne’s wonderfully comic novel about writing a novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , and recently came upon the following passage (from Volume 8, Chapter 2):

Of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I’m sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Sterne goes on to speak of how the “plan follows the whole” (as opposed to the work following a plan, presumably) and though admitting that he “intercept[s] many a thought which heaven intended for another man,” he obviously prefers intuitive, discursive writing to something more planned or ideologically driven. (Pope seems to be his target of criticism here.) The approach Sterne describes is pretty much mine too (even in academic writing), though I generally don’t invoke God unless I’m trying to meet a tight deadline.

This brings up a tension I’ve just begun to think about: I teach my students to write a thesis statement, plan ahead, outline paragraphs, etc., yet I’ve never written a paper that way. Could I do an informal survey? How many of you out there begin a paper with a plan, and how many begin by simply starting to write? (I don’t mean free writing here; I mean writing something with the intention of making it work somehow.) Does anyone have any success stories about teaching academic writing in non-traditional ways?

Filed Under: Pedagogy, Process
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