Throughout history, student writers have used generalizations. In society today, everybody likes to make broad, sweeping statements and to repeat clichés. As the saying goes, great writing is timeless. At the end of the day, avoiding cliché is easier said than done.

In nearly a decade of teaching college writing, I have encountered thousands of variations on the above statements.  I might even go so far as to say that the vast majority of students I have worked with rely heavily on generalization and cliché when writing essays, or at least when composing first drafts. When I first began to notice this pehnimenon, I was baffled, and, honestly, a little angry. Why were students subjecting me to essays that said nothing new about anything?

When I talk to other faculty, they often express the same confusion: why do undergraduates feel the pressing need to talk about what has been going on since the dawn of time? And, more importantly, how can we stop them?

My early attempts to battle this kind of language failed miserably. I would mark papers with vague terms like “vague” or highlight a passage and write a general phrase like “general.” I might even circle a cliché and write, “Avoid cliché.” None of this had any effect, so I began devoting class and conference time to more specific explanations along the lines of “your essays should be specific.” Yet still I received papers that began as does this sample essay on The Great Gatsby: Many Americans long for a big house and lots of money. This is the American Dream. The American Dream is what Americans quest for.

photo credit: remediate.this

Lately I have changed tactics. I am waging war on cliché, and my first strategy is frankness. Confronting students honestly about how awful this kind of writing has yielded surprisingly frank response form students: many admit they know exactly what they’re doing, they just don’t know how to fix it. Consider the following conversation with the author of the above “American Dream” author.

Me: (underlining every sentences) None of this is necessary, because you aren’t saying anything new or interesting about America, and you repeat yourself over and over. It’s all just….
Me in my head: Be Nice! Don’t say bullshit filler nonsense. Don’t say bullshit filler nonsense.
Student: It’s just bullshit filler nonsense.

When a student comes out and admits to writing filler, I feel elated, because admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Another oft-copped-to issue is not having anything to say.  Here is another sample conversation with a student author who constructed her essay around the thesis “The Great Gatsby teaches us that money doesn’t buy happiness.”

Me: Did you really have to read Gatsby to learn that money doesn’t buy happiness? Had you never heard that before encountering this novel?
Student: (sheepishly) No.
Me: Do you think Fitzgerald wrote the great American novel just to prove an old saying?
Student: Not really
Me: So why do you want to write a whole paper around this idea?
Student: I didn’t know what else to say.

So why do students feel like they have nothing else to say, and why do they continue to write bullshit filler nonsense even when they recognize it as such? The reasons are, of course, complex; below are possible explanations–starting points to help understand why it is so difficult to move beyond trite language.

1. Students are told to generalize.
When I was in sixth grade, I learned that essays should look like an hourglass: the introduction and conclusion should be general, whereas the body of the essay is where I give specific examples.  My students often repeat this lesson: an intro needs to generalize, because you can’t just launch straight into your evidence. And this is quite true. Problems arise , however when students interpret “general” to mean “the whole wide world,” rather than “this paper in general.” An introduction needs to tell the reader what a paper is going to say in a general way. For example, “This essay explores the problems professors face in communicating why cliché is an ineffective rhetorical strategy” is a general statement at about the right scale for an introduction.  However, when we tell students to make their introduction general as a way of easing the reader in, they turn to the entire world, which is a difficult entity to sum up in a few words.

I like to tell a class, “I release you from the burden of having to talk about everybody in the universe! Don’t worry about the whole of history, just worry about your paper!”  I think this should come as a relief, but nobody ever looks comforted by these words. Instead they seem confused. Which leads us the my second point:

2. Professional writers and scholars generalize all the time, so why can’t students?
I recently asked my students to read a Michael Pollen essay that claims certain farming practices have shaped the American diet and led to the obesity epidemic. Pollan stakes a large-scale claim about American food culture, but he does so within an accepted rhetorical framework.  Students asked to make similar claims about food culture might simply say it differently, noting that “People eat too much fast food,” or “Farming is important to society.”

The difference between the students’ claims and Pollan’s lies in a very particular manipulation of language: Pollan generalizes about specific society (America in 2011) and specific farm practices (i.e. the overproduction of certain crops like corn). Recognizing the difference between these types of generalities comes with experience reading criticism. Writing in a way that recognizes that difference requires even more experience with cultural studies. Pollan is just such an experienced author, and so he deploys generalization to construct an actual argument about agricultural corporate organization and its effect on how consumer attitudes towards food. I trust that his statements will be backed up with actual evidence, including studies and writing, and that he has spent hours analyzing data to come to this conclusion. Of course, an undergraduate writer has not put in the labor reflected in such nuanced generalization, and so cannot manipulate language quite as deftly. Which brings me to a final observation.

3. Constructing an original argument is a skill.
Differentiating between pointed and pointless statements means having a point of view.  Assignments frequently ask students to state a claim—articulate a thesis—and argue in support of that claim. Coming up with a good claim is daunting, but if the claim is something we pretty much accept is true—that, say, food is important to society or that Americans want to achieve the American dream—then a student can’t “do it wrong.”

Again, releasing students from burden might not be helpful: if I say go ahead, do it wrong, say whatever you want to say about this topic, I get a surprised reaction. “You want to hear MY opinion?” And of course, I’m not interested in opinion, I’m interested in argument. Tell me your analysis, tell me your interpretation, tell my your reading of the material. And here is the crux of the problem: not knowing the difference between fact, opinion, and analysis/interpretation makes it difficult to have an original point of view. First-, second-, and even third-year undergraduates might not yet have a firm grasp on exactly what it means to analyze as opposed to repeat facts or give opinions; that’s in part what they are in college to learn. It takes time and effort to develop these skills. And so those of us who teach writing have no quick fix. In some ways, we have to take a step back from the educational process, be active witnesses, let young writers figure out for themselves what is cliché and what is innovative, what is summary and what is interpretation. Yet all the while we can encourage original thought. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but hard work pays off. And as they say, slow and steady wins the race.