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Teaching Writing in the Twenty-First Centur y

The Struggle Itself: Teaching Writing as We Know We Should P. L. THOMAS The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a [person’s] heart —Camus 99

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herein lies the crux of learning to write and of teaching students to write—struggle. What must we do as English teachers to improve our quest for fostering vivid, dynamic, original, and thoughtful writers? As with all teaching, the answer is complicated but achievable. Conceptual shifts must occur, more people must be educated

about writing and learning to write, research from the past must fuel future research, a unified conceptual writing curriculum must be implemented, and classroom practices must be dynamically reshaped. Shifting Concepts: The Struggle to Reframe The struggle to teach writing has carried with it the baggage of the grammar debate. The writing classroom still too often becomes a grammar class, focusing on correcting (especially at the K–5 levels driven by standardized tests, workbook-like in their format). We must now work toward creating a writing class where composing is central—a unique setting where students struggle to gain control of written language. That writing class must embrace four basic concepts: (1) the chaos model of the writing process, (2) an honest portrayal of writing forms, (3) a primary focus on content over surface features, and (4) an avoidance of oversimplifying the huge and complex act we call writing. These concepts will benefit from two primary shifts: All writing instruction must be grounded in constructivist theory, and it must anticipate that the great majority of students learn globally, not analytically. A first step in this process is readdressing the writing process, traditionally portrayed as linear— prewriting, writing, and then final drafting. As Con-

stance Weaver shows, the writing process is chaotic; all phases occur simultaneously with significant overlap. What we teach students about creating a piece does not have to change, but we must not force that process into a linear model that restrains them. Students must construct writing awareness for themselves holistically, conceptually—not in a lockstep manner. A shift to the chaos model demonstrates an additional necessary change: students must be taught writing as practiced by professional writers. Too much of the traditional approach to teaching writing has become excessively artificial, alienating students from composing. We must make a break from the wholly artificial clinging to the introductionbody-conclusion model of the essay. Virtually no practicing writer adheres to such a structure. The stilted traditional essay with its mandatory thesis statement is common only in school. The truth about the form of any piece of writing is that no single blueprint exists. Students need to develop a sense of beginning, middle, and end, of course, but their grasping of the concepts of appropriateness English Journal

Copyright © 2000 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

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and form is far more vital than their cranking out a five-paragraph essay with introduction and thesis. The essay form of the traditional classroom is as far removed from real writing as paint-by-numbers is from real art. A short fiction piece has a palpably different form than a letter to the editor; the same is true when comparing poem to novel, argument to personal narrative. Our students need a rich history of multiple experiences with hundreds of distinct works of literature over many years of school, enhanced throughout by hundreds of writing experiences that allow them to mimic innumerable writing forms.

Our quest for structure has often forced us into counter-educational and simplistic practices. These conceptual shifts must be supported by two broader shifts as well. The guiding shift needs to be a primary focus by the students on the content of their writing. Weaver, along with Hillocks, Routman, and others, notes that most teacher marks and student revisions deal with surface features exclusively. “I am not willing to teach the polishing and adornment of irresponsible, unimportant writing,” Lou LaBrant announced more than half a century ago (“Psychological Basis” 123); yet that has become the primary result of our teaching of writing. Students must learn that what is expressed is paramount, that the how of their expression is crucial (their diction and syntax), and that conforming to conventions is important only after they have expressed something worth editing. While the sophisticated and more mature writer comes to see the content, form, and conventions as inseparable, the emerging writer must have a manageable focus. In the early years, an emphasis on form and conventions must come last, after students have worked to state something worth expressing. Yet, the final shift makes all the other work we do even more complex: we must strive never to oversimplify. Our quest for structure has often forced us into counter-educational and simplistic practices. For students to grow into bright and ar40

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ticulate writers, we must initially and progressively allow them into the complex real world—a holistic and chaotic world of grays, not a black and white world of step-by-step processes.

Reeducating Teachers and the Public: The Struggle against Tradition My most consistent battles for nearly twenty years as an educator have been with tradition-bound teachers and parents. Consider, for instance, George W. Bush’s presidential campaign TV ads highlighting the need for a return to phonics instruction. Politicians are keenly aware of the public’s perception of good teaching, and they pander to that perception regardless of its accuracy. Thus, as we shift the concepts mentioned earlier, teachers of writing must also educate each other and the public about the best practices for creating students who can write independently and effectively. An acceptance of the writing workshop approach to teaching must be fostered among fellow teachers and the public. First, we must ensure that all teachers of writing from K–12 have access to the research on teaching writing, ample support from master teachers, and extensive experiences as writers themselves. While teaching a graduate course in language arts recently, I had a colleague as a student in the class. She bluntly expressed that she did not put much value in research. A conscientious veteran teacher, she has become disillusioned by the many sporadic programs that have come into favor over her years of teaching. She, like many teachers, is simply going to shut her door and teach as she wishes. This insular attitude is common in education and pervasive among English teachers. Most practicing English teachers were never educated to teach writing. Their resistance to change is driven by their lack of needed training. We must approach the problem at two points—change teacher education programs to include writing instruction for all teachers, with more intensive training for primary, elementary, and language arts majors; and offer extensive in-service training for all practicing teachers. The management of writing instruction is overwhelming, and no one can take on such a daunting task without proper knowledge of the field. Writing instruction is still viewed by most as a sub-field of English teaching. We must develop it as a thriving field of study among English teach-

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ers before we can shift the popular conception of effective writing instruction. Next, we must overcome the cultural myths concerning writing. Just as being able to pronounce words is not necessarily comprehension, identifying all the conventions of language in other people’s work does not ensure the ability to express oneself well in writing. This year alone I have been challenged by a number of parents about my practice of having students rewrite their essays. These challenges have come from the parents of advanced students planning to attend college. Where do the misconceptions originate? I see a few phenomena at work here. First, many parents unconsciously reject methods that are different from how they were taught; by implication they seem to assume that any new approach deems their education insufficient. Added to this is the bombardment in the popular media of support for phonics and grammar instruction. Many suffer the delusion that then was somehow superior to now; a cultural belief in perpetual societal decadence makes any progressive move difficult. Of course, to counter both conservative educators and the public, we can emphasize that we have known how to teach writing well since the 1930s through the work of Lou LaBrant, Louise Rosenblatt, and many others.

What Do We Know, What Don’t We Know? The Struggle to Research The new cultural awareness we must foster is the antithesis of tradition. We must emphasize within the ranks of teachers, then among all members of society, that education can always be improved, that it will always be in a state of flux—the struggle itself. Writing instruction has never been effective enough, and it never will be effective enough. Continuing research and a rediscovery and reassessment of the research that has already been done are the keys to this shift. While researching the life and work of Lou LaBrant, I was astounded at the history of reading and writing instruction. LaBrant noted, “Our drills and exercise in writing have had such transitory effect and have failed to carry over to out-of-class writing” (“Psychological Basis” 297). Then, a decade later, she says, “We have some hundreds of studies now which demonstrate that there is little correlation . . . between exercises in punctuation and sentence structure and the tendency to use the prin-

ciples illustrated in independent writing” (“Teaching” 127). Hundreds of studies? In 1946? More shocking to me has been discovering the great number of educators oblivious to that history. Part of the reeducation mentioned above must be making all educators aware of the amount of data available on progressive reading and writing instruction dating from the 1920s, as Weaver, Routman, and Kliebard all demonstrate. The research for the last seven decades has favored a holistic approach to writing instruction (as well as reading instruction); methodologies grounded in constructivism have also been supported by research, even before the term “constructivism” surfaced. Although it is much more complicated than this in practice, research has shown that students need ownership of topics, choice, extended opportunities to write, freedom to rewrite with a focus on sharpening and reseeing their content, engrossing models of writing, provocative prewriting stimulation, and productive and timely feedback—from kindergarten through high school. Further, we must dedicate ourselves as teachers of writing to expanding the research in our field and strengthening writing as a field of scholarship. We need to explore the most effective practices from K–12 while considering brain research, global and analytic learners, learning styles, multiple intelligences, the impact of socioeconomic variables of the home, the purposes of writing instruction, the needs of the individual and the workplace, the role of appreciation of art and beauty, and the social and political implications of personal expression.

Finding a Framework: The Struggle to Organize Before we move to the individual classroom, we must provide a curricular framework for the teaching of writing. This framework must be conceptual—not a scope-and-sequence of skills. Our conceptual grounding must be supported by a framework that teachers can maneuver within and be driven by but not be restricted to. The K–12 writing curriculum must maintain a standard set of concepts that will be consistent throughout a child’s education. Our debate over the concepts must begin now, and we certainly should anticipate fluctuation, but the concepts that guide writing instruction should be meaning, clarity, form, specificity, originality, sincerity, and conventionality. English Journal

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Three other aspects of curriculum must also be addressed: K–5 instruction, a lack of writing on standardized testing, and writing as a distinct course. While the conceptual curriculum for writing must be flexible, the K–5 grades are crucial years when we must establish a solid foundation. Those first six years of school must include extensive immersion in language—daily, extended reading and writing. Little else, including content mastery, matters in those first years. Students leaving fifth grade without independent reading and writing abilities are severely disadvantaged.

The K–12 writing curriculum must maintain a standard set of concepts that will be consistent throughout a child’s education. With a change in the curriculum, we must force standardized test makers to recognize writing as an essential part of the testing program. Now multiple-choice reading sections count as verbal assessment on tests such as the SAT; the only so-called writing sections on most standardized tests are multiple-choice grammar tests (with no actual composing by the student). This must change. The conceptual curriculum should drive this change instead of standardized testing determining the curriculum. A model similar to the advanced placement tests, where students complete a challenging multiple-choice reading section followed by several original compositions based on reading can be a starting point. Students must be asked to compose on standardized tests so that verbal scores offer more than assessments of a certain type of artificial reading and the selecting of answers. As the writing curriculum influences the overall curriculum, the next logical step will be a mandatory separate writing course. While the holistic approach is preferable to instill exceptional reading and writing abilities—students must read and write in all disciplines—an intensive year of a single writing course should prove to be effective in the high school years. That course would allow a teacher 42

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to focus primarily on writing, without covering a period in literature or a vocabulary text. Concurrently, we should adjust our curriculum to address literature as a content area. In high school, literature is the content, but too often reading and writing instruction have fallen solely on English teachers. All teachers at all levels from K–12 should be teachers of reading and writing, but that will never occur as long as we continue to label our literature courses “English,” or even “language arts.”

Facing Students: The Struggle in the Classroom Conceptual shifts, reeducating teachers and the public, research, a new writing curriculum—none of these truly matter except as they affect each student in each classroom each day. Ultimately, what is the teacher to do to improve students’ abilities to express themselves in writing? Especially from K–8, but even into high school, an essential element to teaching writing is patience. Neither the scope-andsequence approach to teaching nor pacing guides will work with writing instruction because no two

No two students will progress equally in their writing development.

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students will, or even should, progress equally. No real pattern has been identified for how and when students acquire the many skills that writing requires. Teachers have to be patient and persistent, allowing students numerous opportunities to write and exposing them to hundreds of models of effective writing. Parents, educators, and politicians all must be aware that end-of-course testing will never show uniform mastery of writing skills. Only prolonged writing will produce effective writing, especially if a master writer is there offering judgment, guidance, and models. While we need always to continue with research to confirm the chaotic nature of acquiring writing skills, we should maintain an open ear to those who are writers for life. Read Louise DeSalvo’s Vertigo; there you hear the enormously complex avenues that led to her becoming a voracious reader, a literary scholar, and a weaver of moving and vivid prose. Also consider Joseph Campbell, scholar of mythology and religion: I went to Canterbury School, a fine Catholic prep school, in Connecticut [1919–1921]. . . . One [teacher] was the headmaster who had founded the school, Nelson Hume, and it was from him that I learned to write. He was a marvelous, marvelous teacher. . . . There were six of us in my class, and we had a kind of precious attention. Every day we had to write a daily scene. Hume would come in and read out scenes and criticize and adjust them for us right there. It was everyday: writing, writing, writing. (Cousineau 6)

This anecdote clearly reveals effective classroom practices—daily writing, immediate and expert response, low student-teacher ratio, and student respect for the teacher. Students will be better served when grammar texts and the hybrid texts now surfacing are abandoned, preferably for no text at all, but at least replaced by true writing texts. Textbooks, in general, are narrow, simplistic, and bland. Examples and explanations are concocted by adults who function at a much higher level of language development than students. The shotgun approach offered by most grammar or writing texts often causes regressive language development for students (Hillocks). The best text is to gather over the years examples from students and professional writers to produce a bank of problem areas teachers can anticipate and a reference for students as they work to rewrite their own writing. That bank must be constantly re-

freshed, since each student offers a unique stage in language development. The teaching of writing is highly dependent on two crucial aspects of classroom practice. First is provocative prewriting activities that spur discussion, debate, and thought (Hillocks). Prewriting activities can come in the form of literature, movies, plays, debates, and brainstorming, but the activity must ultimately provoke a need in the students to write and to write well. Generating for the students a purpose for writing assignments is one of the most successful practices a teacher can implement in the writing class.

Students will be better served when grammar texts and the hybrid texts now surfacing are abandoned, preferably for no text at all, but at least replaced by true writing texts. Second, and most important, a writing teacher must have a system for assigning essays and handling the paper load. I briefly outline here my plan for merging reading and writing as an avenue to creating self-directed and motivated students—not as a template, but as one way to bring students to writing. My writing program during a 180-day secondary English course involves two broad concepts— required and optional rewriting of all formal essay assignments and a weaning process that increases student responsibility for the first final draft. A vital aspect of teaching students to write is teaching them that writing is rewriting; within that concept we must instill a primary concern for revising content above all else, while simultaneously moving each student to realize that content, form, and conventions are inseparable. To do this I work hard to create extensive prewriting strategies, often in the form of extended literary units that create purpose and interest for the students. We study the work of Emerson, Thoreau (including discussions of Transcendentalism and persuasive writing), and Martin Luther King Jr.’s English Journal

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“Letter From Birmingham City Jail,” focusing on argumentative techniques—allusion, repetition, parallelism, references to authority, figurative language, aphorism, and rhetorical questions. We conclude by watching Gandhi. This unit dealing with argumentation and peaceful rebellion throughout history takes from three to four weeks and includes two major essay assignments. One writing assignment is a critical analysis of King’s “Letter.” Here students analyze King’s rhetorical strategies. This essay is submitted with a full rough draft and a first final draft. After I respond to the essays, students are required to rewrite at least once; then they are allowed to rewrite as often as they like throughout that grading period. Another writing assignment grows from the first. Students are then asked to write their own argument, while incorporating some of the rhetorical strategies analyzed in King’s work. As with the first assignment, they are required and allowed to rewrite within that quarter. The key to the process is twofold. First, the writing assignments are cumulative. This unit occurs at the end of one quarter where students began the year writing an essay that is a series of personal responses to aphorisms by Thomas Jefferson. They experienced quoting, documenting, and responding to literature. Next, they wrote a critical piece analyzing either Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” or Margaret Fuller’s “The Great Lawsuit”; this analysis did not require any discussion of technique, only the main points presented by the author. The quarter ends with the two essay assignments described above. The students work from simple reaction, to basic analysis, to sophisticated analysis, then to original expression of an argument. By the end of the quarter, students are often working on three or four essays simultaneously, causing a sort of cross-fertilization of ideas and expression awareness. The details of my plan are not as essential as providing for students a language-rich environment that offers choices and time for their own writing— original work that is prompted by stimulating works of literature and other forms of expression, such as film. My students work with a text I have created that includes numerous examples taken from other students’ writings; they see both the original and revised examples as prompts for their own revising. That they have a framework within which to revise is more important than my method or text. As with any approach to better education, no single writing program is a panacea or a template for 44

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everyone to follow. But several aspects of a writing program can increase its effectiveness. Teachers must have a system that allows them to manage the paper load; they must not be overwhelmed with marking essays, and that marking must have a purpose for the student. Formal essays must then be a part of a process that both requires and allows students to rewrite, with a primary emphasis on the students addressing content revision. This revision must be guided—student-teacher conferences and some system of marking papers—with both allowing individual growth for all students. Throughout the year, then, students must gradually be weaned away from seeing the teacher as primary editor to viewing themselves as emerging young writers who can self-edit as they discover their own voices and their own messages.

The Struggle Itself: Teaching Writing as We Know We Should Despite a history rich with knowing how to teach young people to write, we have failed as writing instructors on the grand scale. Remember LaBrant’s lament over six decades ago. For too long, students have completed worksheets, yet have not written nearly enough. Early, frequent, and intensive experience and guidance must occur during the first five or six years of school. A low student-teacher ratio is essential throughout schooling when writing instruction occurs. And ultimately, as Campbell expressed, students must write, write, write—and I would add, rewrite with purpose and expert guidance. The struggle itself, by teacher and student, is not a simple task, not an easy road to follow, but essential. Works Cited Camus, Albert. “The Myth of Sisyphus.” The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1955. 88–91. Cousineau, Phil, ed. The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell On His Life and Work. Boston: Element, 1999. cummings, e. e. Selected Poems: e. e. cummings. Ed. Richard S. Kennedy. New York: W. W. Norton, 1994. DeSalvo, Louise. Vertigo: A Memoir. New York: Dutton, 1996. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Portable Emerson. Ed. Carl Bode. New York: Penguin, 1981. Fuller, Margaret. “The Great Lawsuit.” The Transcendentalists. Ed. Perry Miller. New York: MJF Books, 1978. 457–64. Gandhi. Dir. Richard Attenborough. Columbia Tristar, 1982.

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Hillocks, George Jr. Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice. New York: Teachers College Press, 1995.

———. “Teaching High-School Students to Write.” English Journal 35.3 (1946): 123–28.

Jefferson, Thomas. Thomas Jefferson: In His Own Words. Eds. Maureen Harrison and Steve Gilbert. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1993.

Routman, Regie. Literacy at the Crossroads: Crucial Talk about Reading, Writing, and Other Teaching Dilemmas. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996.

King, Martin Luther Jr. “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ed. James Melvin Washington. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986. 289–302.

Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience, 1849.” The Portable Thoreau. Ed. Carl Bode. New York: Penguin, 1975. 109–37.

Kliebard, Herbert M. The Struggle for the American Curriculum 1893–1958. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1995. LaBrant, Lou. “The Psychological Basis for Creative Writing.” English Journal 25.4 (1936): 292–301.

Weaver, Constance. Teaching Grammar in Context. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1996.

P. L. THOMAS teaches English at Woodruff High School, Woodruff, South Carolina.

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