When we first began our careers teaching developmental writing, like many of you we were required to teach the traditional sentence-to-paragraph courses. In these classes, we did what most of us do--we collected papers in which students approximated conventions of academic writing. We could point to topic sentences, organizational maneuvers, and supporting details, and we could celebrate those steps forward. So far so good. Yet along with these approximations, we saw a content gap in student writing. As the disgruntled customer used to complain in the Wendy's commercial: Where's the beef? There just wasn't much content. The students didn't say much. We believe that students bring personal knowledge, insight, and wisdom to the classroom. How do we tap into that? We also believe that one of the by-products of literacy is the capacity to think critically about this personal knowledge and to use it to think about their place in their home, vocational, and academic worlds. But when does that start to happen? In paper after paper, we saw platitudes and conventional wisdom superficially expressed in available language. In short, not much beef. We wondered what we could do to help students develop a content to think about.
Experienced writers think, and re-think, and re-re-think. The composing process makes this thinking happen. Additional thinking is also stimulated by new input-- from readings and conversation about ideas that matter (or don't matter). We know this new input comes at almost all stages in the thinking-writing process. How do we get students to think and re-think? Our challenge seems to be keeping students from coming to closure right away. As Ann Berthoff points out, we need to keep them “tentative” (47).
To keep our students tentative, we now introduce additional thinking opportunities. We want to prolong the reading-thinking-talking-writing process for our developmental writers. After an initial short reading to launch a unit, for example, we look at, talk about, and write about stimulating photographs. We look at, talk about, and write about graphs and data and info rmation related to the initial topic. We also keep reading, adding a variety of short texts, some personal, some more info rmation-laden and academic. All give rise to thinking, talking, and writing. In a unit on literacy, for example, students are invited to develop a literacy-learning timeline, to tell a story or two, and then, over the next 3-4 class periods, to look, read, think, and talk further, asking, What does this new info rmation have to do with me? What does it have to do with this subject? What is the subject?
How do we get them to think about what they read? How do we get them to talk about it? We want them to be active, to select what is important to them in this new info rmation and to explain it, talk about it, write about it—to make it meaningful. One approach is asking them to select a passage from new reading, something they like or that seems important. They copy it in their journal and then write a paragraph explaining their choice. Prior to class discussions, in turn-and-talk or turn-and-talk activities, they share these passages and their thinking about them.
Student #1: I chose this passage because it seemed to me that the two Irishmen cared about the little boy. They thought it was a shame for someone that small to never experience life as being free. They advised him to run away so he someday will experience freedom instead of being a slave his whole life.
Student #2: That was pretty good.
Student #3: Frederick Douglas describe [sic] this passage as if being a slave was the lowest thing to being human. It was agony in just thinking of being a slave. The White man seemed to be evil and very cruel. The Master didn't want any of his slaves to learn to read or write. Frederick Douglas read negative articles which made his situation even worse. It seemed to be no good ending in being a slave. He didn't agree with fellow slaves view points. They seemed to be brain washed by the slave Master. In this passage Frederick Douglas seemed to be a leader not a follower. I choose this passage because it showed Frederick to be a very strong individual.
Student #1: You're right. The kid is really young and has never experienced life. But, you know, it doesn't really connect to me because I've never been in that predicament.
Student #3: If you really believe in something you can overcome it, but he was a slave and that was the worse thing that could happen to him, but he escaped because there was lots he didn't know about it. And then he learned that there were places you could go to be free, like up north. Personally, maybe some of my ancestors were slaves, and it makes me feel bad that they had to do that. Probably my ancestors way before me. I can feel for them because they didn't have freedom back then.
This sounds like inquiry. It sounds like students figuring the text out. The dialogue reveals students #1 and #3, in particular, finding connections between the text and themselves (or not), helping them get further into a subject. It finds them trying on what Lesley Rex calls “interactional discourse,” as they become “active builders of academic knowledge.” These are approximations of careful reading and content-building, and clearly, the process is not totally successful. “That was really good,” says student #2. What kind of comment is that? He obviously hasn't begun to think about the subject yet, or he hasn't learned how to talk to his peers yet. How do we get him to engage the subject?
How often have you tried to discuss a reading at the beginning of class and found students had nothing to say? Too often. They are not accustomed to talking to each other. They are risk averse. They believe that there is a correct answer (and that they don't know it). They are not accustomed to regarding knowledge as shared and actively constructed. In our classes now, before any discussion, we involve students in short turn-and-talks for 2-3 minutes. They report out on passages they selected, explain their reasons for selecting the passage, exchange a few ideas. Then we turn to an open forum for discussion. And when we do so, students have already rehearsed what they were going to say. We encourage them to say what they already said (often they say it better the second time), to think beyond what they already know.
We plan turn-and-talks and turn-and-reads for every class. We organize the room so these one-on-ones can happen quickly and students can dialogue with a number of classmates over time. Our approach to these collaborative moments owes much to Kenneth Bruffee's work. He argues that time constraints are essential to the success of shared inquiry. Give students a little less time than they will need to meet clearly defined objectives. They will have to stay on task. Gradually, we increase the time limit, but only slightly (rarely more than 3-4 minutes)—because we are busy, because there is plenty to do in class.
There's so much to do in a developmental class. Many of us have to prepare students for the next classes in the sequence, not to mention for tests in which form and correctness will matter in the extreme. But we still want the beef. We want to engage students, to stimulate thought, to make the most of literacy education.
Questions for discussion:
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How do we address text-building and content-building in the basic writing class?
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Which do you privilege and why?
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What role does student talk play in this process?
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What is the role of multiple drafts, multiple readings, and revision in this process?
Berthoff, Ann E. Forming-Thinking-Writing: The Composing Imagination.
Rochelle Park, NJ: Hayden Book Co., 1978.
Bruffee, Kenneth. "Collaborative Learning and 'The Conversation of Mankind.'"
College English, 46 (1984).
Rex, L., Murnen, T., Hobbs , J., & McEachen, D. “Teachers' Pedagogical Stories
and the Shaping of Classroom Participation: ‘The Dancer' and ‘Graveyard Shift at
the 7-11.'” American Educational Research Journal (2002): 765-96.
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