JAC Volume 4

A teacher cannot expect to make superior writers. But a teacher can hope to foster superior writing. To do this one needs to know what characteristics typify superior writing. The characteristics below appeared when several colleagues and I re­examined impromptu essays that we had previously ranked as superior and compared notes on what characteristics “struck” us as outstanding. We learned that superior impromptu essays mainly struck readers as having either conceptual or artistic control. Among papers having conceptual control, we noted breadth of perspective—evidence of widely based yet pertinent thinking abut the contexts of a topic, and contribution of ideas—movement of ideas, not obvious in the assigned problem, to make a new point that is individual, relevant, and sound. From the artistic pole we noted artistry of language—felicitous use of language and structures of expression.¹ These were the characteristics that struck us as superior as we read; yet “breadth,” “contribution,” and “artistry” were neither precisely the characteristics we were looking for in theory nor addressing in our writing classes. The superior writers were registering outside our familiar scales of sound writing.

The reader may recognize such characteristics of superior writing readily enough, but may ask, as we did, what teachers can do to foster them. I find that particularly teachers of writing courses in subject areas across the curriculum can foster them when they teach writing as learning about their field. They can teach them in the following ways, which relate cumulatively: by phasing, sequencing, and varying writing assignments to expand students’ breadth of perspective; by offering both “intervening conferences” and frequent impromptu writing to encourage students’ contribution of ideas, and by guiding students in responses to one another’s writing to foster artistry of language. Teachers know these methods as components of teaching introductory writing as a process, but have not yet widely used them to teach writing-as-learning across the curriculum. This study suggests that by noting how these methods relate to characteristics of superior writing, the teacher may finely tune the method to address the writer. For it appears that the potentially superior writer stands ready, not just to gain from process and variation as methods of cognitive development, but to gain exponentially.²

Breadth of Perspective as evidence of widely based yet pertinent thinking about the contexts of the topic

Breadth of perspective is something we recognize in a student’s writing as soon as we see it. More than merely a broad overview, it is a conception that entails judgment; as it views complexities it sets pertinent boundaries. Setting boundaries, in turn, relates to that essential component of perspective, focus. To focus is to persuasively bound the topic in order to achieve a clearly defined point. A well-defined focus, then, can accompany breadth of perspective reciprocally. Breadth of perspective and its focus seems the hardest of the three writing characteristics to teach. Students are most likely to acquire this breadth through their own habitual wide reading. Yet acquisitions of breadth with focus can accelerate when a student writes in order to discover a field. Phased, guided thinking is the key. With phased writing assignments the teacher can consciously guide judgment while allowing discovery. Physically, the phases of a completed project may be two papers: (a) a typed draft version for student and teacher critiques, and (b) after more time, reading, and interaction, a second, and usually longer, version, in which revision and further contribution appear. Intellectually such phases enable one to teach thinking and thinking better within the same pool of materials. Strategically one can build phased writing into the course by giving credit for all phases and critiques. To be sure, teaching phased writing involves important trade-offs. To emphasize frequency of writing and conceptual change the teacher must reduce required reading to only the most evocative half of a conventional reading list and must allow class time for doubling the attentions to thinking, discovery, and communicating.

At the same time, a teacher may plan for students' conceptual development by carefully devising the sequence of writing projects—that is, the conceptual direction in which the phases move. A sequence may simultaneously³ reinforce the central concepts of the course, vary the writing enterprise, and move from structured toward independent thinking. For example, assignments in a course in comparative literature, which I teach, move from a prescribed comparison of parts within one text to the student’s choice of what to compare within a new text, then to an independent (but guided) research inquiry, and finally to the student’s presentation of new material to class.⁴ Though this sequence aims to deepen conceptually and could not be reversed, yet by varying the writing enterprise it also aims to broaden perspective. Students, in turn, can range to new subjects on successive assignments, or can pursue the same subject into new materials. Superior students tend to move early into an ambitious subject and to keep pursuing it through new contexts. They intuitively seek conceptual depth, adding to broaden perspective. A research inquiry timed to begin after about two thirds of the course seems particularly valuable for their pursuits.

Can a teacher using these methods see the development of perspective? Yes. While for students each new paper may be a creation, for the teacher it is also a monitor of how well its writer is comprehending the course. The first phase or draft may only show where the student is beginning her intellectual struggle. Another draft written after a critique shows how well she is using new judgment. In her first-draft introduction to a paper below, a student of exceptional ability brings a point of view from women’s studies to bear on values in the old Germanic literatures.

Beowulf, lines 920-924⁵

She shows that she intends a broad perspective on women in Germanic literature, but she does not show an open-minded, close engagement with the material of this course. The very actions in the passage she quotes suggest that she needs to temper her judgment with the subtleties that the texts have to offer. After she and her teacher talked about the significance of Queen Wealhtheow as gift-giver, her revision shows greater perspective.

She has broadened her reading and qualified her thesis (“careful channeling”), and has perceived a useful division within her sources. She knows more than she did; at the same time she controls her focus better. (“Although there are powerful . . . they must either . . ..  She is now ready to observe her sources closely enough to make substantive points. The inclination toward a broad perspective may remain a gift, but broadening is measurably teachable to sensitive students.

Contribution of Ideas as movement of ideas, not obvious in the assigned problem, to make a new point that is individual, relevant, and sound

It is easier to teach students to make a new point. A student need not be expert in the teacher’s field to contribute ideas, but does need to engage closely with evidence from an individual, yet pertinent, viewpoint. If helping students to contribute ideas has a recipe, it is this: as perspective grows, engage students imaginatively with true questions that call for evidence. Fostering such contribution is a cumulative process, in that both the student’s knowledge and focus equip him or her progressively. But one can also teach contribution in distinguishable ways through intervening conference, large-scale revision, and certain kinds of impromptus.

It was the conference between phases of her writing that most helped the gifted student quoted above. Here, I could redirect her keen desire to contribute. In such a conference, the secret behind eliciting contributions is the teacher’s confidence that the student is, in fact, a potential contributor. While too high an expectation is fatuous, a low expectation is condescending. The intervening conferences should come between the phases of revision of all papers, and during the planning stage of all new papers after the first one.⁶ The most fruitful conference is one to which the student comes prepared with two or three ideas for a direction; from these the student and teacher can make choices together. The teacher’s role is to hear as much as the occasion allows, and to catch where the student’s interest can extend.

One of my potentially superior writers, coming in to talk about her upcoming research inquiry, warned me that she was sure that she wanted to do a specific project, to which I tentatively agreed, but which I felt was too safe. She happened to mention a far more ambitious and original project. As I took interest in this second idea, so did she; and as I listened, she reached a turning point. “If I can think of a metaphor I can get a paper.” After a pause she began to speak of the theory of myth of Claude Levi-Strauss as not as a “crystalline,” “layered” structure but as a room of mirrors, each mirror obliquely reflecting a view of the center. She had come upon a contribution. After we had talked over the application of her idea she left the office confidently launched. The writer of the paper on women consciously came to make use of the intervening conference to try out and clarify her ideas. Of excellent retentive powers, she not only progressed between drafts but coordinated her papers into one increasing ideational development. She was able to contribute repeatedly through close observations. A third potentially superior student needed a first conference to scale down her plans, and the beginning of a subsequent one to show her what carrying a plan through could have meant. Thus both student and teacher learn from the intervening conference how to bring about contribution: In the cases of all three students mentioned above, the phases of papers with intervening conferences guided the teacher toward coaching the individual more effectively. And to the first two students, who were ready to excel, the conference gave the chance to reach new connections, each in very different ways and each at her own pace, under nearly ideal conditions. The exploratory conference is particularly valuable for the superior student.

How can the teacher of phased writings ensure a transformation of thinking, not just a cosmetic change? Teaching revision can involve teaching that transforming frame of mind. Even superior writing students need a push to transform, to discover that rewriting is thinking.⁷ The teacher can move the class into revision early—and hence into flexibility, synthesis, and change—if the second “phase” is a revision. To bring about large revision as a frame of mind I have adopted Monroe Beardsley’s practice of total, group revision.⁸ In it, after a group exercise in analysis and rewriting, students are asked to select a paper with which they are less than satisfied, or one which they believe they can push further, to analyze its parts, replan, and totally rewrite, saving none of their old sentences—all for credit. Thus they are supported in an exercise of rethinking and rewriting from the same intellectual stimulus. “Can I do more?” becomes a question from themselves to themselves. With this initiative, most students do in fact hand in a totally rewritten paper which is conceptually stronger and written better than the first version. Their changes have passed far beyond the scope of my marginal comments on their papers. Most important, total revision sets a precedent that change is agreeable and desirable. Though a total revision may not be needed again, the students know what it can do and tend to revise heavily thereafter. To superior students total revision gives a new opportunity to go beyond their own achievements into less charted territory—to expand in the most profitable direction or to start again as experiment—for credit. Notably they find this experiment welcome, and after it show a kind of freedom in exceptionally ambitious revisions.

Can there be a writer already too good to benefit from an early exercise in total revision? In technique perhaps so, but I submit that any student stands to benefit from learning what happens when one examines one’s own limits. For most effective revision, a strong writer needs to choose among at least two papers; an impromptu essay makes a useful option. Occasionally a gifted writer, or a constrained one, will by this experiment seem to confirm a previous suspicion that he or she “revises mentally” before writing a “draft” which is actually a finished rendition. This confirmation is worth the test.⁹ Of three of my own potentially superior writers, one subsequently chose to stand by her best prose and make additions; two continued to totally recast papers.

Below, the opening of the first paper of one of these students in the comparative literature class and the opening of her total revision show movement into contribution of ideas while her interest in the concept of revenge continues.

[January 14]

[January 28]

The topic is entirely rethought and rewritten. The focus has shifted from mere identification of revenge to one that assumes an understanding of revenge and sets forth to work with it to meet challenges. Though the new topic is more sophisticated it is also more clearly directed, and the new paragraph is more efficient in introducing it and moving the reader into an engaging thesis statement. (“She commits . . . and still manages to stay within the tenets . . .") The revision shows expansion in conception, in complexity of thinking, in the sense of what contribution is, and in self-editing. She has moved beyond mere “homework writing” into asserting discovery.

The frame of mind of revision, then, in tandem with the intervening conference, make two kinds of opportunity for the superior student to reach for contribution using him or herself as the stimulus and the teacher as coach. One more source of contribution needs teacher and audience as well: the student’s individual academic background. Surprisingly, most students need to be encouraged to draw on material they have already studied, material in which the teacher may see relation immediately. A superior student such as the first one quoted may see her academic background as an appropriate source of focus, but be unable at first to tune it carefully enough to make a contribution. The conference is the place to sound out possibilities; the revision is the medium for fine tuning. The results can add to the student’s sense of large intellectual relations and can contribute valuably. Classmates are a useful audience. The student audience for such a draft is a critical yet appreciative forum to assess whether the writer can communicate from a field outside the course and make a connection that works.

Finally, contribution of ideas comes through impromptu writing. In impromptus that generate ideas lie several values: exercise in thinking differently, in having an idea, and in experiencing immediate comparison of ideas in class. Some superior writers are constrained under the pressure of the impromptu; they stand to benefit from “thinking on their feet.” Some writers who are constrained in essays excel in creative writing: they need to try to connect the two. The variety allows discovery of strengths and practice on weaknesses—while steadily working at having ideas. Students say that hearing others’ responses to the same assignment is highly stimulating. For individual growth, probably the most important kind of impromptu is writing to clarify ideas immediately before class discussion.¹⁰ "Three good questions” by each student from the reading; five minutes’ writing on what the teacher intends as the main point of the day; these can make clarifying ideas a daily habit. They follow the principle of “Leap before you look.” Committing early and individually, the student will defend. These short impromptus may be collected as a profile of what the student is thinking at this point, or where discussion can profitably go next, or they can remain with the student as a kind of idea file. They often generate a paper topic of authentic engagement which has grown from discussion: what peers have found stimulating becomes recognizable and attractive as a contribution. Further impromptu exercises may lie in adapting models of lateral thinking or facets of the “creative growth” games or of values clarification.¹¹ The possibilities are stimulating, most keenly so when one tries to conceive of models that may enhance thinking appropriate to one’s own field.¹²

Artistry of Language as felicitous use of language and structures of expression

Artistry, as readers have recognized it within limits of language, appears as sentence structures which may engage the reader by complexity, variation and partial repetition; and vocabulary which ranges broadly from sophisticated to simple. The hallmark of these expressions is that they are strikingly helpful; they are felicitous in the sense of fortunately effective. If not the gift, at least the spark of felicitous language is widely shared, and it can be fostered by positive reinforcement.

The life-blood of work toward artistically effective language is self-editing. And self-editing is a product of the phased writing course, more specifically of the experience of active revision. In the opening paragraphs on Gudrun above, as striking as the change in conception is the sharpening of the language in the paper of January 28. Note the increase of information and the effect of climactic word ordering in the new first sentence: . . . outline a broad range of etiquette practices, warnings, and rules needed for daily life in that dangerous age.” Note again at the end of the new paragraph the move to a distinct thesis sentence. Both changes came not from the teacher’s specific comments, but from the student’s re-thinking of form as well as content. The slower student would have needed the specifics; the superior student had needed mainly the occasion to re-commit her energies to crafting words.

Creative impromptu assignments address superior writing characteristics in at least two cumulative ways: the student gains a sense of authenticity in composing and, in lucky moments, of artistry. An impromptu assignment asking students to add a “missing” passage to the author’s text, for example, demands that a student try first to particularize the author’s technique, then to synthesize and reinvent the author’s ideas. To particularize and reinvent fosters a sense of intuitive familiarity with a text; it may spring a felicitous phrase. Not least of all, it is enjoyable. You know something irrevocable about the Eddas if even as an amateur you have written a verse of them.

Reading these attempts aloud can evoke a noncompetitive appreciation for a student’s interpretation or artistry of technique. Further, it disperses student talent: here the creative writer may excel while, as in this example, the seasoned essay writer is breaking new ground.

We each know what we like. From the start of a course, exercises in picking out the best areas of language in a student paper appeal to students’ aesthetic sense. Though their aesthetic standards will differ from one another, students themselves are the best judges of the effectiveness of their peers’ writing. But they need alert guidance. Exercises are best short but frequent: ask students, for example, to edit three dittoed sentences from papers with problems like this:

Students can simultaneously appreciate the potential in this idea and offer strategies of revising the sentence to get at it efficiently. Here the most artistically inclined students contributed several renditions which helped the writer; their quickness of editing made a learning experience for the teacher. Before small-group work on drafts, occasionally, students can be asked to note such features.¹⁴

Small-group work on drafts is one of the most delicate of dynamics, carrying the greatest potential and often the greatest disappointment.¹⁵ The problem is deceleration. The first day of group work tends to be excellently productive, and the vehicle steadily slows from there. The superior writing student is an active, perceptive contributor to group work, but quick to despair at deceleration. Habit appears to lie at the base of the problem. The unknown response from a peer is dynamic; the known soon registers as static, as potential habit. Two adjustments can forestall the sense of habit. The first is simply to avoid too many opportunities for group critique. I have come to provide three, on the draft phase of each of the last three of four assigned papers. The second adjustment is to change the members of the group at each meeting, planning each new combination by personal temperament and paper content. The superior student needs at least one group member to be his or her equal in idea or artistry.

What I hear in a successful student group is attention to contribution of idea, and if I have encouraged it in class, attention to the felicitous in conveying information. It is this group critique, reinforcing yet removing focus from my own critique, that gives two superior students each the sense of an audience that listens keenly, an audience to work for. Here, too, in a subtly nurtured constructive atmosphere, artistic expression can give pleasure to group and writer.

That is, here artistic writing can be discovered by students, while it is doing its job.

Working with the potentially superior writer, the teacher must meet certain responsibilities scrupulously. One must take care to read very closely, to analyze on a higher level, to avoid the temptation of easy praise as substitute for hard thinking. Yet one can take pleasure also in acknowledging also the worth that is already there. Finally, when planning to teach writing as learning in a way that motivates superior students, one needs to avoid those pitfalls hinted above:

(1) Writing as an “extra” part of the course. Writing itself becomes the pitfall if it is simply added to a full lecture course or if judging it is relegated wholly to a teaching assistant who is not empowered to bring it into the classroom. Here the potentially superior writers may be the most shortchanged. Lacking the confidence of seasoned writing, they can come to resent what they perceive as an extra burden. Writing only reaches the student as a way of learning when it is integrated and allowed its appropriate times in class and out.

(2) Time to read competing with time to write. The conscientious writer may be as subject to this problem as the typical student, and less defensive against it. Reduce the input, the reading list, to about half that of a reading course, to accommodate the exchange, the writing experience. Be ready to lead the student of superior quickness to extra reading upon interest and request.

(3) Superficial revision, or the “band-aid” typing job. The student who has formerly received more praise than close attention may not grasp that revision is an opportunity to think. Build substantial revision into the course. Reward for experimentation with revision. If a superior student should come to excel beyond the need of revision, congratulations would be followed by a mutual decision as to how to profit most by the saved time.

(4) The optional conference. Even the most highly motivated students will not come, and the timely opportunity is lost. Find a way to fit mandatory intervening conferences into the writing schedule.

(5) Students failing to engage with their peers’ papers. Subtle combinations of personal reasons may cause the student who excels to avoid, or to cease from, close engagement unless his peer is very challenging. Set up careful accreditation for useful student comments on papers. An effective approach is to have one student take another’s draft home and write constructive comments on it for credit; this student becomes a member of the group session on that paper during the next class.

So by building a course accrediting writing as a way of learning, a teacher can set up an atmosphere that shapes sequence and response to do justice to the potentially superior student writer. Such an atmosphere fosters breadth and artistry and teaches students to contribute ideas by extending their own boundaries.