Yesterday, I had two of my writing classes, one first-year, and one advanced, write reflectively in class about an obvious idea we engaged for the whole semester: writing is a process. I asked them to reflect on which of the ideas we’d read had influenced their writing practice. I asked them how much they considered writing process to be important.
What they wrote was predictable. Many did not clearly define what we meant as a class by “process.” To many of them, this meant simply that each writer has a different style, or “creativity.” It did not mean specific practices of invention, drafting, revision, and editing, and then seeing these all as recursive, or returned to again and again in the process. It did not mean reflecting on purpose or audience.
This result of their reflective journal writing was not new to me. I find every semester that when I teach writing and teach it as a process, I am teaching it as an oppositional idea. I am teaching something that my students find to be a foreign practice. It is not that they think it’s complicated. It is that they still think of writing the way they did in high school, and this is mostly just unconscious on their part: Writing is represented as one draft, with a focus on format and grammar, not on ideas, and then a turn in.
Again, this is all predictable. It is predictable because this is similar to the way that we all handle ideas that we find oppositional. When we read an article that we find challenging our assumptions and beliefs, we will give that argument lip service, even imitate some of its language. But we will not show understanding of it. We will not accept it or its terms. We will immediately reduce its ideas and challenge them.
I know this is the case with my students. As we learn from Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” the first time the man in the tale is enlightened, he finds it painful and requires resistance. When he begins to accept what he is understanding, he goes back and tries to tell others about what he has learned. Then he is taken as a challenge and then killed.
For my students, the idea of process seems acceptable but not practical or even really for them. Many college students have said in surveys, some reported in several articles over the last decade, that they really don’t think that first-year writing is an important class, or that writing process is even really important to their writing. They believe that when they enter their major field, they get into classes with their major professors who will then teach them to write.
This is why it is important to always keep the idea of writing process in the foreground of writing instruction. It may seem obvious. It may seem boring, even. But it is also against the habits of most people. It is still, even after over forty years of talking about it, a revolutionary idea.
Tom, the last high school I taught at, Oaks Christian in Westlake Village, had an effective tool to teach students to view it as the process you described–recursively. We had rewriteable essays, where every mistake in formatting, reasoning, and content had points deducted. However, they could rewrite the essay, with only the last score counting. Yes, some took advantage and turned in a sloppy first draft, hoping the teachers would do their work. I thwarted that with a policy that if their first draft scored under 50%, then their final score was averaged with their first, with the max high grade of a C+. The quality of papers showed great improvement. 😉
TIm, the “sloppy copy” idea in lower grades tends to place the focus too much on format and editing. I love your approach, though, of getting them to try harder in their first draft so that more emphasis is placed on real revision. That would seem to get them to try harder in their first draft, and be ready to enact real changes in ideas and content later. Thank you for this practice. I may try this in future classes myself.
I found the key is to be pretty brutal on grading that first draft, and to include all you’ve taught–style, reasoning, formatting, grammar, and more. I also had them attach the previous copy(ies) and to highlight the changes. That made grading easier, I knew exactly what to look for and where. Let me know how that works on the college level!
PS I made a key of numbered sheet including common mistakes, and would write the number in the margin near the mistake. That helped them find the problem and know what it was.
I wonder if part of the resistance to the importance of process in writing is practical rather than philosophical. While the idealistic part of a student may truly want to become a better writer, the practical side feels pushed to get assignments done as quickly and efficiently as possible and move on to the next thing. If a student can do well enough on most assignments with one draft and a little editing, then that becomes standard practice. It may not produce the best writing, but it adequately completes the task as the student is thinking of it. I find less resistance when I teach at writers conferences than when I teaching writing in college courses because the writers conference writers simply care more about the actual writing. I don’t mean this to slam students, whom I love, but writing is only one of many things they have going on in their lives, so they sometimes cut corners on writing. I enjoyed your article.
Joe, I think you are right that the problem for students is one of being busy. But I do also think that there is a problem with understanding. When given four weeks to revise a story or a paper, few of them will know what to do. They will edit their paper, but they will not rethink it or alter the content or emphasis of their work. This mainly concerns revision, and I see it happening over and over again. Anyway, your suggestion that their current process is fine given that they have so little time is certainly understandable.