Pearson
Adult Learning Centre: Weekly Feature
Writing Outside
the Box
by Brad
The
looks on my Writing 12 students’ faces said it all. My essay, written
in 1999 and on the web for years, might not be worth saving. I knew it
was “fat” (wordier than necessary) and had removed a good 20% of the
total word count, taking it from 735 down to 556 words.
But an
edit can only save what is worth saving. Was my essay worth the trouble
and the time? I had written it with good intentions—using metaphor and
a three-part structure, trying to explain the “mystery” of the writing
process.
Was the three-part structure the problem? With my
Writing 12 students I talk about the “tyranny of the essay,” and how it
turns everything we write into a cloned version of the standard. That
would be fine if it were fun and interesting to read a standard essay.
Most
of the time, it’s not. We write essays, dutifully of course, to enter
college, to satisfy our teachers, to be predictable. Such essays do
teach a certain discipline, yes, but they are often dull exercises in
responding to dry (and often repeated) “topics.”
How dry I found
out the other day when I subjected my students to a reading of the
original and, though improved, still badly flawed edit. I’ve learned
through them that to explain writing is a bit more difficult and
multi-varied a process than can be captured in three body paragraphs—no
matter how much cutting I do!
Lately, I’ve begun to use
published essays taken from The Globe and Mail Life section as models
for student writing in English 11 and 12. These essays are written on
personal topics, ones that are much more likely to resonate deeply with
my students. This term I used three essays that described a person
important to the writers’ lives.
Starting with an oral reading
of the essays so my students could hear the beauty of each writer’s
words, I then assigned them to choose a favourite. Their choices
reflected the great diversity I find in my classroom: some chose the
familiar (a wise but reticent uncle who influenced a young man to
return to school); others the funny (a tongue in cheek account of a
young single father’s experience with his new baby); still more the
serious (a sister writing about a fragile but beautiful sister who was
damaged at birth).
Using the essays as a guide, the students
are now assigned to write about a person who has had a special
influence on their own lives. The sample essays provide them with a
rich trove of ideas, approaches and structures that they can use to
express a story well.
It’s taken me a long time to learn how to
teach effective writing and, although my students do know how to write
a standard essay, I firmly believe that they learn more that is truly
useful by writing outside the box (with firm guidelines and models
along the way).
(May 9, 2011)
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