North, Steve. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English 46.5 (1984): 433-446.
At the time this article was written in the early 1980’s, North states that writing centers were used as a place for instructors to send students who were labeled as struggling writers. Either that, or such spaces were used as a stop-gap, as an opportunity for students to learn about writing skills that teachers felt they lacked the time and/or skills to teach. North begins by expressing his frustrations with such perspectives, and then goes on to challenge this perception and also offer suggestions about how writing centers should be viewed as legitimate spaces for all writers at all levels, and not solely as a “fill-in space.”
Thankfully, many writing center administrators and their institutions have heeded this call. North’s article reads as a fact sheet, highlighting many features of writing centers that are present today. It was a little frustrating and disappointing to see how much has remained the same, however. For instance, it seems as though many writing centers are still trying to prove themselves as valid spaces, suffering when budgets are cut, and headed by directors who are untenured staff. Rants aside, though, North’s article was helpful to read to gain a better sense of the context surrounding writing center literature.
In noticing how few changes there seem to have been, my first question is, “Why?” Beyond the reasons North cites of lack of familiarity and understanding, why are writing centers constantly trying to validate their existence? I also wonder how instructors who use writing colleagues view them. For example, do instructors in math and science disciplines, who may have minimal knowledge of writing pedagogy, see writing colleagues as individuals who can “carry the ball” as far as writing instruction goes? When the practice of writing gets compartmentalized instead of seen as something everyone does, it’s no wonder there are so many misconceptions about writing instructors and writing centers.
I found it interesting to read about writing centers’ means of publicity and how much that has remained consistent. Even with the surplus of technology available, we still rely on in-class visits, fliers, and other publicity strategies reminiscent of those North mentions. I was intrigued by his idea of having individuals from the writing center enter classrooms for sample tutorials. Offering such services might de-stigmatize writing help.
At the KSU writing commons, where I’m one of the assistant directors, we’ve been toying with the idea of replacing the term “tutor” with “consultant” or a similar word, to further de-stigmatize visiting the writing center. We’re interested in building on skills that the students already have, which is why the term “tutor” feels like it has a “remedial” quality to it that we want to distance ourselves from. We do indeed help students from a variety of contexts, some of which might require being corrective, but ultimately, we try to minimize directivity so that students are able to identify the changes that they want to make in their writing, with minimal interference from us. I’m curious if North would have a positive take on what we’re attempting at our writing center, where we see ourselves as guides and support rather than tutors.
Finally, I wonder how North would feel about programs that require students to meet with colleagues. He emphasizes the importance of students taking the initiative to seek out a writing tutor, as he writes, “nor should you require that all of your students drop by with an early draft of a research paper to get a reading from a fresh audience” (pp 440). I wonder what differences, if any, surface in students who self-select writing feedback versus those who are required. There are students who come to see us who are resentful of the requirement, and I’m not sure how much we help them. I agree with North that everyone, no matter their level, can benefit from a writing center visit, but I’m not sure that the required students agree.
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Brooke, Robert. “Underlife and Writing Instruction.” College Composition and Communication 38.2 (1987): 141-153.
The article “Underlife and Writing Instruction” by Robert Brooke discusses the concept of underlife and how it plays a part in education. Underlife is a sociological idea that can be understood as “the activities individuals engage in to show that their identities are different from or more complex than the identities assigned them by organizational roles” (pp 142). In other words, others give everyone an identity based on their social interactions or organizations. How people present themselves physically, what is known of their past, and their view on the organizations they are assumed to belong to are all factors of what identity will be “assigned” to them. Participating in an underlife is essentially rejecting the role that one has been given by outsiders to show that they are more complex.
According to Brooke, there are two forms of underlife: disruptive and contained. Disruptive can be compared with unions, as they wish to abandon or alter the structure of certain organizations. Contained underlife is an attempt to show individuality from the assigned role, without eliminating the structure of the institution.
The purpose of underlife in the classroom is that it allows for students to take views towards the roles they are expected to take part in, and show others their point of view. Underlife that takes place in the classroom is usually of the contained form. Brooke performed an observational study of a first-year college writing class to study underlife. He found there are four major types of underlife activities. These included students using material or knowledge from the classroom in a different way than the teacher intended, students recognizing the roles they each play in the classroom, students evaluating certain aspects of the classroom, and students dividing attention between classroom activities and something else unrelated. All of these activities allow students to explore different roles and identities while still – hopefully – remaining successful in the classroom. It also allows them to show that they are not completely conforming to the role of student.
On the other hand, writing teachers are considered to play a part in the disruptive role of underlife. Writing teachers actively try to change the classroom roles to benefit students. According to Brooke, the goals in a writing class are different from other subjects. Writing teachers often note this as a struggle because they are forced to test students on writing “skills” when in reality writing teachers would like students to see themselves as writers and not only as traditional students. Writing teachers like to see students find their voice and identity through writing, but it is a virtually impossible task when teachers are forced to assign projects and then evaluate the students’ performances. To truly help students see themselves as writers and not just students complying with teachers’ demands, instructors must help them view writing classes as different from classes of other subjects. Teachers are asking students to take a disruptive form of underlife in the writing classroom rather than the contained form. By doing this, students will part from the normal roles of the classroom by becoming conscious of what these roles are and their differences from them. Writing instructors want students to accept their own underlife and discover these new roles and identities.
Brooke states, “…writing instruction comes into greatest conflict with the existing educational system, and also has the most to offer to it” (pp 152). He is saying that the shift of roles in the writing classroom would benefit the classrooms of other subjects as well. He uses the example of a student in a chemistry class seeing herself as a chemist rather than a student. Teachers need to “focus on fostering the identities of students as thinkers in our disciplines rather than merely on transmitting the knowledge of our fields” so that students are able to see themselves as something other than only a student complying with the demands of the classroom (pp 152). The concept of underlife helps to dissect the roles of teachers and students in the classroom and brings to light some issues in the educational system that could be changed to better benefit the student.
Wednesday, August 6
Friday, August 1
Week 3
Hake, Rosemary and Joseph M. Williams. “Style and Its Consequences: Do as I Do Not as I Say.” College English 43.5 (1981): 433-451.
The article “Style and Its Consequences: Do as I Do, Not as I Say” is interesting because its thesis hinges upon our need as composition instructors to hold ourselves accountable for our students and their ability to learn. It sounds like a no-brainer, but often, studies in composition seem to focus on students “getting it wrong,” instead of focusing on what instructors need to do in order to better connect with students and their needs: “Is it possible that despite our public declarations about clear, direct writing, we might somehow discourage our students from writing good prose and encourage them, through our own tacit behavior, to write bad?” (pp 434).
In spite of this strength, with which I still agree, however, I find the article’s representations somewhat confusing. First, Hake and Williams purport to be testing whether teachers reward a style that is "direct," "simple," "concise," and "plain." How these terms are defined isn’t exactly clear, however. In practice, Hake and Williams equate these qualities with verbal style and the opposite, negative qualities with “nominal” style. If we compare the nominal and verbal versions of the two essays in the appendix, we find, first, that there is no overall variation in conciseness. Closer examination shows that, in fact, the verbal version is wordier and loftier on a number of occasions: In essay one, five of seven sentences in the first paragraph are longer in the verbal version. In essay two, seven of the twenty-four sentences are longer in the verbal version.
Of course, the two versions have been designed to be the same length, but this very design makes it clear that what is being tested is simply whether teachers prefer nominal or verbal style when all other factors are equal. In addition, there isn’t much variation in how Hake and Williams depict directness or simplicity. As an objective measure of these qualities, the verbal versions have far more passive verbs: in essay one, five passives in the verbal version, one in the nominal; in essay two, seven passives in the verbal version, three in the nominal. My point is not that the researchers were wrong to identify verbal style with conciseness, directness, and simplicity. In normal, uncontrolled usage that equation seems to hold true. My point is that (if these examples are representative of those used in all the experiments) the researchers did not test instructors' reactions to variations in wordiness or directness. They only tested their preference for nominal versus verbal style (and perhaps for passive versus active verbs). Their representation of the research is thus misleading in that they actually tested a far more narrow difference than they say that they tested.
Yet another thing I find confusing is the indictment of instructors implied by the title: "Do as I Do, Not as I Say." Hake and Williams do not present evidence that any of the instructors who marked papers for their study preach that verbal style is superior to nominal. Because we don't know the "stated values" of this small group, we cannot be sure that in their theme marking they are "behaving in ways that contradict" them. We can believe even less that the indictment holds true for our entire profession. The fault here is in the researchers' assumption that our profession shares a set of "stated values." In fact, there is wide diversity in how instructors teach writing and what styles of writing we prefer. The preference for extreme simplicity of style is of course pronounced in some “remedial” composition texts, but even so, I know of no text which sets out an absolute rule that verbal style is superior to nominal in all cases, regardless of conciseness, simplicity, or directness. It’s somewhat arbitrary to say that only simple, concise language should be privileged in our writing classrooms. In fact, there are instructors who would argue that some forms of simple writing are unacademic. Different genres of writing dictate different styles, and even within those genres, there is still a wide variety. Not all fiction reads like Hemingway, for instance.
The significant issue is not just that the title is too strident, but that there is a genuine and deeply-felt difference of opinion among members of our profession re: style and that the tests reported here ignore the possibility that some instructors might hold opinions radically different from the researchers' own. Finally, the reporting of the experiments deserves a comment. In the report of experiments one and two, there is no mention that the readings were at all controlled. Inter-rater reliability is not an issue here; the experimenters wanted each teacher to apply his or her own standards. But it seems to me that intra-rater reliability is. Unless I can be sure that each teacher consistently and consciously applied his or her standards to each paper, I must question the statistical report. Fatigue, boredom, awareness of other readers' standards – all of these factors can cause differences in one reader's marking of successive papers unless they are controlled for.
Ultimately, I appreciated where the researchers were coming from and agree that the onus of student success should fall on the instructors, but I wish that the methods were more transparent and less unilateral and simplistic, and I wish that the actual experiments were holistic and accounted for the large variety of “legitimate” styles of student writing. I’m still not completely sure what they mean when they say, “We may have to look to psychology or history to learn whether we can create better writers by better teaching or whether we shall have to accept this [nominal] style as a historical inevitability and an unavoidable consequence of mass education” (pp 447). Why so fatalist? I guess, as a reader and educator, I don’t understand this particular “crisis.” Better teaching involves compassion, transparency, and acknowledgment and celebration of diversity, both in terms of our students and also in terms of the skills they are bringing with them to our class.
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Smith, William L. and Warren E. Combs. “The Effects of Overt Clues and Covert Clues on Written Syntax.” Research in the Teaching of English, 14 (1980): 19-38.
Smith and Combs are interested in measuring students’ ability or lack thereof in using cues to produce longer sentences or combined sentences: When instructors or researchers indicate or “cue” students, what are the results? Do they internalize those cues? What happens when the cues are covert? Are they still effective? Smith and Combs conclude that there are indeed cues that direct the student to complete longer, more complex sentences. During the course of several experiments and tests, they find that students privilege initial cues over later cues, but matters of retention are a different story.
Early in the article, Smith and Combs are able to articulate why such research is important to the field. They also do a fine job of transparently outlining their methods, as with Experiment 1:
Once students are given specific writing tasks, the researchers are able to figure out which types of cues are the most influential. When teachers are directive, thorough, and explicit about their expectations for assignments, particularly from the beginning, students seem to respond well to the task and are able to see to its completion with few questions. Smith and Combs’ findings led them to conduct another experiment, to “determine whether the cues transferred to students' actual writing, not just their ability to combine simple sentences” (pp 24). The second experiment focused on the influence of covert cues in particular, although “the possible combinations among no cues, overt cues, and covert cues were built into the design to assess the differential influence of the three” (pp 24).
The researchers were able to determine that the effect of the overt cues was positive, even though such directions were only “retained … across a short duration” (pp 35). It’s interesting that early initial cues seem to override later cues, and Smith and Combs suggest that it’s difficult but not impossible to study “how ling [a] cue will last.” Further, they were able to conclude that both “overt and covert cues give the appearance of complexity without providing the actual substance of complexity,” meaning that students were able to combine sentences or create longer sentences regardless of the type of cues they were given, but those sentences were not necessarily more complex (pp 35-36).
I wonder how much guidance is needed for students to write meaningful, complex sentences. Do we as instructors provide too much guidance? No matter if our cues are overt or covert, we still have certain expectations. Do students perform better with fewer expectations? I’m not sure if Smith and Combs’ study is laying the foundation for such inquiry, although their final remarks are intriguing in that regard:
Therefore, how can we as instructors separate what we want from what our students need? If high school English instructors, for instance, are pressured to give overt cues and have students meet certain bureaucratic benchmarks, are their students producing work that only has the “appearance” of sophistication? (pp 35). And sure, it’s no surprise that the instructors’ use of cues greatly reduced teaching time; however, at what cost? When students are given cues and lots of direction, I worry that they may not retain information in the long term, and Smith and Combs already pointed out that students weren’t able to hold onto cues for very long, regardless of whether they were overt or covert. Perhaps this lack of retention threatens students’ ability for life-long learning and enthusiasm for writing.
The article “Style and Its Consequences: Do as I Do, Not as I Say” is interesting because its thesis hinges upon our need as composition instructors to hold ourselves accountable for our students and their ability to learn. It sounds like a no-brainer, but often, studies in composition seem to focus on students “getting it wrong,” instead of focusing on what instructors need to do in order to better connect with students and their needs: “Is it possible that despite our public declarations about clear, direct writing, we might somehow discourage our students from writing good prose and encourage them, through our own tacit behavior, to write bad?” (pp 434).
In spite of this strength, with which I still agree, however, I find the article’s representations somewhat confusing. First, Hake and Williams purport to be testing whether teachers reward a style that is "direct," "simple," "concise," and "plain." How these terms are defined isn’t exactly clear, however. In practice, Hake and Williams equate these qualities with verbal style and the opposite, negative qualities with “nominal” style. If we compare the nominal and verbal versions of the two essays in the appendix, we find, first, that there is no overall variation in conciseness. Closer examination shows that, in fact, the verbal version is wordier and loftier on a number of occasions: In essay one, five of seven sentences in the first paragraph are longer in the verbal version. In essay two, seven of the twenty-four sentences are longer in the verbal version.
Of course, the two versions have been designed to be the same length, but this very design makes it clear that what is being tested is simply whether teachers prefer nominal or verbal style when all other factors are equal. In addition, there isn’t much variation in how Hake and Williams depict directness or simplicity. As an objective measure of these qualities, the verbal versions have far more passive verbs: in essay one, five passives in the verbal version, one in the nominal; in essay two, seven passives in the verbal version, three in the nominal. My point is not that the researchers were wrong to identify verbal style with conciseness, directness, and simplicity. In normal, uncontrolled usage that equation seems to hold true. My point is that (if these examples are representative of those used in all the experiments) the researchers did not test instructors' reactions to variations in wordiness or directness. They only tested their preference for nominal versus verbal style (and perhaps for passive versus active verbs). Their representation of the research is thus misleading in that they actually tested a far more narrow difference than they say that they tested.
Yet another thing I find confusing is the indictment of instructors implied by the title: "Do as I Do, Not as I Say." Hake and Williams do not present evidence that any of the instructors who marked papers for their study preach that verbal style is superior to nominal. Because we don't know the "stated values" of this small group, we cannot be sure that in their theme marking they are "behaving in ways that contradict" them. We can believe even less that the indictment holds true for our entire profession. The fault here is in the researchers' assumption that our profession shares a set of "stated values." In fact, there is wide diversity in how instructors teach writing and what styles of writing we prefer. The preference for extreme simplicity of style is of course pronounced in some “remedial” composition texts, but even so, I know of no text which sets out an absolute rule that verbal style is superior to nominal in all cases, regardless of conciseness, simplicity, or directness. It’s somewhat arbitrary to say that only simple, concise language should be privileged in our writing classrooms. In fact, there are instructors who would argue that some forms of simple writing are unacademic. Different genres of writing dictate different styles, and even within those genres, there is still a wide variety. Not all fiction reads like Hemingway, for instance.
The significant issue is not just that the title is too strident, but that there is a genuine and deeply-felt difference of opinion among members of our profession re: style and that the tests reported here ignore the possibility that some instructors might hold opinions radically different from the researchers' own. Finally, the reporting of the experiments deserves a comment. In the report of experiments one and two, there is no mention that the readings were at all controlled. Inter-rater reliability is not an issue here; the experimenters wanted each teacher to apply his or her own standards. But it seems to me that intra-rater reliability is. Unless I can be sure that each teacher consistently and consciously applied his or her standards to each paper, I must question the statistical report. Fatigue, boredom, awareness of other readers' standards – all of these factors can cause differences in one reader's marking of successive papers unless they are controlled for.
Ultimately, I appreciated where the researchers were coming from and agree that the onus of student success should fall on the instructors, but I wish that the methods were more transparent and less unilateral and simplistic, and I wish that the actual experiments were holistic and accounted for the large variety of “legitimate” styles of student writing. I’m still not completely sure what they mean when they say, “We may have to look to psychology or history to learn whether we can create better writers by better teaching or whether we shall have to accept this [nominal] style as a historical inevitability and an unavoidable consequence of mass education” (pp 447). Why so fatalist? I guess, as a reader and educator, I don’t understand this particular “crisis.” Better teaching involves compassion, transparency, and acknowledgment and celebration of diversity, both in terms of our students and also in terms of the skills they are bringing with them to our class.
---
Smith, William L. and Warren E. Combs. “The Effects of Overt Clues and Covert Clues on Written Syntax.” Research in the Teaching of English, 14 (1980): 19-38.
Smith and Combs are interested in measuring students’ ability or lack thereof in using cues to produce longer sentences or combined sentences: When instructors or researchers indicate or “cue” students, what are the results? Do they internalize those cues? What happens when the cues are covert? Are they still effective? Smith and Combs conclude that there are indeed cues that direct the student to complete longer, more complex sentences. During the course of several experiments and tests, they find that students privilege initial cues over later cues, but matters of retention are a different story.
Early in the article, Smith and Combs are able to articulate why such research is important to the field. They also do a fine job of transparently outlining their methods, as with Experiment 1:
The purpose of this investigation, then, was to determine the influence of various kinds of cues on students' writing performance. Purpose 1. No cue. Students were simply told to "rewrite" or "write". While this is an overt cue of sorts, it tells the students nothing about the audience or how to write. 2. Overt cue. Students were told that the reader would be a highly intelligent person who is influenced by long, complex sentences. 3. Covert cue. Students were presented with a two-class-hour programmed text in SC [sentence-combining] exercises (one hour in each of two consecutive days). It is assumed that instructional activities contain implicit cues. SC practice "tells" students that syntactic complexity is desirable in a writing task. (pp 20)
Once students are given specific writing tasks, the researchers are able to figure out which types of cues are the most influential. When teachers are directive, thorough, and explicit about their expectations for assignments, particularly from the beginning, students seem to respond well to the task and are able to see to its completion with few questions. Smith and Combs’ findings led them to conduct another experiment, to “determine whether the cues transferred to students' actual writing, not just their ability to combine simple sentences” (pp 24). The second experiment focused on the influence of covert cues in particular, although “the possible combinations among no cues, overt cues, and covert cues were built into the design to assess the differential influence of the three” (pp 24).
The researchers were able to determine that the effect of the overt cues was positive, even though such directions were only “retained … across a short duration” (pp 35). It’s interesting that early initial cues seem to override later cues, and Smith and Combs suggest that it’s difficult but not impossible to study “how ling [a] cue will last.” Further, they were able to conclude that both “overt and covert cues give the appearance of complexity without providing the actual substance of complexity,” meaning that students were able to combine sentences or create longer sentences regardless of the type of cues they were given, but those sentences were not necessarily more complex (pp 35-36).
I wonder how much guidance is needed for students to write meaningful, complex sentences. Do we as instructors provide too much guidance? No matter if our cues are overt or covert, we still have certain expectations. Do students perform better with fewer expectations? I’m not sure if Smith and Combs’ study is laying the foundation for such inquiry, although their final remarks are intriguing in that regard:
Furthermore, the results of this study do not speak only to SC [sentence-combining] research. All types of instruction in writing provide cues concerning what the teacher values and therefore what is expected of the students. Consequently, all research should make an attempt to distinguish what the students learn as a direct result of instruction from what they perceive as "teacher desired." (pp 37).
Therefore, how can we as instructors separate what we want from what our students need? If high school English instructors, for instance, are pressured to give overt cues and have students meet certain bureaucratic benchmarks, are their students producing work that only has the “appearance” of sophistication? (pp 35). And sure, it’s no surprise that the instructors’ use of cues greatly reduced teaching time; however, at what cost? When students are given cues and lots of direction, I worry that they may not retain information in the long term, and Smith and Combs already pointed out that students weren’t able to hold onto cues for very long, regardless of whether they were overt or covert. Perhaps this lack of retention threatens students’ ability for life-long learning and enthusiasm for writing.
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