Moving forward….(week 2)

The nice thing about the spring semester is that it feels easier to get in the swing of things. Fall semester means that lots of my students are in college classrooms for the first time and adjusting to not only their new academic situations—harder classes and more freedom (to succeed or fail) but also other new situations—like living in dorms, being homesick, eating in cafeterias, questioning their choices (things like:  have I chosen the right school? have I chosen the right major? how do I do laundry? what is the point of my existence?).  All that makes fall semester more interesting in ways, but also a little harder to achieve the feeling of moving forward. But in spring, both I and the students seem more ready and able to get right to work.

For the past two years we (all composition instructors at my school) have been using the textbook The Writer’s Practice by John Warner. Before this, we all had the same course objectives and used the same rubric for the final project (a research paper), but it was up to each instructor to determine the assignment sequence, readings, et cetera. I was happy with my assignments but also open to trying something different and one of our goals was to provide a more consistent experience for all our composition students—so they’d all have similar experiences and would move forward to other writing situations with similar expectations and understandings.

But this semester we are using the book for probably the last time. While there are some things we like about it, there are others we think we can do better. So next summer, a colleague and I plan to create a new composition course for our students, taking some of what we learned from using the Warner book,  combining that with some of favorite other assignments and practices we had used previously, getting ideas from all other instructors as well, and tailoring it to our students in ways we think will best provide them with meaningful experiences and best prepare them for writing in future classes and really in the rest of their lives.

Looking back on the past four semesters, the Warner book has been great in lots of ways, easy to read and accessible, it has a good variety of assignments, and a number of them, especially early on, are not focused on academic writing. For example, three assignments from early in the book I have been using are:

• Instructions (a “how-to do something” paper),
• Review (a description and assessment (positive or negative) of a product, experience, et cetera),
• Adventure Report (where students try something new/different and write about it).

These are good as they allow student to write about something they are familiar with and force them to really think about the Rhetorical Situation they are in, which means paying attention to needs of their readers. With the instructions, for example, students are always (in early drafts) making assumption about what their readers know. Last semester one student, who is on the track team, wrote her paper about “How to warm up for a workout” and made numerous references to specific exercises and drills but never explained what they were, assuming her readers would know what butt-kicks, c-skips, and karaoke were. She also failed to say what distance one should travel for each, how long the warmup should be. All this was surely very clear in her mind but she failed to anticipate the fact that her reader would need to get more details and descriptions on all of this. So the instructions assignment, though typically not on the most interesting topics, is a great starting point because it forces them to put themselves in the position of their readers, which many of them have never seriously considered before, at least when writing for school. 

Each assignment puts them in a new situation, which we like. However, the first semester we used the book, I just relied on the assignments as described in the book and lots of students misunderstood them because Warner’s easy conversational tone seems to obscure some important points.

For example, the first assignment is titled “How Do I…? (Instructions)” and while it was clear to me that students needed to do—give instructions, describing a process, probably half the class that first semester wrote advice papers, like “How to be a good friend.”  And these papers weren’t bad but they did not meet the goals of the assignment. 

The next assignment is titled “Should I…? (Review) and I honestly had one student write a paper on the topic of: “Should I get an abortion?” Now I’m pretty sure this student had never been pregnant (and was probably not sexually active) and had not experienced this dilemma. I think she just defaulted to this topic because that’s the kind of topic she thought she was expected to write about. It ended up being another sort of advice paper, but not really. So I told her she had to choose a brand new topic, something she had experienced personally to review. I think she chose a restaurant review and it turned out  being pretty good.

The third paper I assign is titled “You Did What? (Adventure Report)” and again, while it’s clear to me that students are supposed to have a new experience and then write about it, so many students that first semester wrote about “adventures” they’d had long ago, and one student even wrote about an adventure he wanted to have. 

These off-target drafts all reminded me of the fact that I needed to not underestimate my students’ ability to misinterpret assignment instructions (ironically, the assignments in the book were failing to meet all the needs of the readers). So, for the past three semesters, I have been giving my students more detailed assignment sheets for each assignment. I tell my students to first read the assignment as it is described in the book but then (and more importantly) read my assignment sheets. As a result, student papers have been much better. I’ve been sharing my assignment sheets with all the other composition instructors teaching the class and most are also using these (or some version of them) because they found their students running into the same problems as mine. So while we like some of the assignments in the Warner book, the fact that I’ve had to write complete, detailed assignment sheets as addendums to the ones in the book have led to me think we can do better without the book

Still, we like how our use of the book has kind of put all of us composition instructors on “reset” and all on the same trajectory. I’m sure we’ll take some of what we have learned from the book forward (so if you are reading this, John Warner, thank you).

One thing I’m including on the assignment sheets now (I didn’t do this the first semester I used them) is an overview of the Rhetorical Situation, with four things they must keep in mind:  Authorial voice, Content, Audience/Reader, and Objective.

Everything I’m doing with the assignment sheets is intended to make things easier for the students—as you know if you read my post from last week, they don’t all like writing as much as I do, so these assignment sheets help them know that the time they are spending writing will be worth it. And it makes my job so much easier too because the students write the kinds of papers I’m asking them to, which makes them easier to grade.

I will end this post with the Assignment Sheet I gave my students for Assignment 1.  Next week, I’ll show you the rubric and talk about how I make peer review productive for everyone.

If you’ve got time, please check out my new book on teaching:  Teaching The Way:  Using the Principles of The Art of War to Teach Composition.

Here’s a link: https://amzn.to/3mwbz3y

Thanks for reading!

ENG 104 Assignment 1: How Do I…? (Instructions)

Assignment 1 can be found in the book on pages 21-23. Follow all the steps listed in the process on pages 22-23.

Simply stated, your goal is to think of something you are good at and give instructions to someone else on how to do this. The best topics for this assignment are something that needs to be step-by-step/as a process. While you are an expert at whatever you have chosen to give instructions on, assume your reader is not, which means you need to explain things clearly and in detail and provide sufficient background information on what is needed to complete the task.

Rhetorical Situation:

Your authorial voice:  You, the friendly expert (on your chosen topic).
The content: Detailed how-to instructions on your chosen topic.
Your audience/reader: Someone who is interested in learning how to do what you are describing, but who has no background knowledge on the topic.
Your objective: After reading your instructions, your reader should understand how to perform the topic you have chosen.

Other goals for this assignment are to:

Be informative and describe the process in detail,

Keep your reader engaged and interested (for this reason, I suggest you do not provide a recipe/instructions for cooking as this is very difficult to make interesting).

Aim for 2 pages in Times New Roman font, 12 point, double-spaced (about 750 words).