Some Thoughts on Student Writing:
Modeling Paper Focus, Topics, and Clarity
By David Lawson

I realized that, when I’m working with a student on a paper draft, I actually roll up my sleeves.
-David Lawson

Beginning this paper is problematic.

I say this because it is all too easy for a writer to dogmatize his or her own point of view about anything, including writing. I want this paper to be one of many helpful voices that other Writing Assistants may consider and possibly use. I think that the dogmatization of writing theory is an issue which, in a larger scope, contributes to the fear of writing that may well be widespread and chronic in our society (it certainly is in the dorms). This will not be the focus of this essay; rather, I prefer to state my initial trepidation.1 I warn the reader, however, that this paper is the sum of many parts, not least (in number or usefulness) of which are, very likely, not my own. I intend to describe methods that I have used to some successful degree with my students. By no means are the ideas put down here necessarily archetypical or even the best for writing conferences; to make such generalizations perpetuates writing dogma. Indeed, the most directly useful aspect of the Tutoring Writing course has been, for me, the exposure to other Writing Assistant’s methodologies. With that in mind, it is my hope that this paper finds itself in the hands of a tutor who can use it.

First, some background. I am a second-year student at UCSC, and was very recently hired as a Writing Assistant (WA) and Instructional Assistant (IA) for the Porter Core course. I was both honored and a little scared at the prospect of providing writing assistance to the freshpeople. To add to my nervousness, I had only one day of WA training under my belt when I began my conferences with students. How was I to communicate the abstraction that is “writing” to twelve students a week? I could write, but could I convey how to write? These feelings were not pacified by the training day (Brij called it "the glorious Saturday"), and I was in a freefall. What could I do but decide to “take it one writing conference at a time,” since I had only a vague idea as to what I should do? It seemed that my only option was to hope for the best.

It should be noted that I had already met the students I was to be working with, as they were all in the Core class I was an IA for. Over the next few months, I got to know my students much more intimately than, say, a Writing Assistant for drop-in tutoring would his or her students. This undoubtedly made it easier for me to be their Writing Assistant, simply because I had the opportunity to know them in the classroom as well as in the Hungry Slug (or wherever writing conferences happened to be held).

Two days after WA training, I had my first set of writing conferences. The first student I met with brought a draft of her first analytical paper. Aside from the errors in conventional English, hers would be the first paper in a series that exhibited problems that were not unique.2 The issues faced by students covered a broad range, of course, but there were some elements of writing that were, in some way, deficient or otherwise problematic in nearly all of the papers I saw.

The most obvious was thesis. All of the students I met with had thesis problems. Their theses were simple, unchallenging, devoid of personal opinion or critical analysis. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the lack of analysis with which I was presented is the fact that I knew that my students could think critically. I worked with them in class, and our discussions revealed that there was little to no difference in the thought processes of Subject A students and Honors students. The main difference was that my students had difficulty communicating their critical thoughts.3 How was I to explain "University-level" analysis to students who have been told (sometimes from an early age in their education) that they do not think as clearly as other students?

Visually.

I developed a "column system" (Figure 1). It was instinctive for me, in the sense that I had not heard analytical writing described this way when I began to use it. The column system seemed to work well enough with my students. Allow me to explain.

The three columns in the diagram represent three different levels of analysis. I label the columns, in order, Examples, Revelations, and Reasons. Column One, Examples, is where direct evidence (from a text) can be found. It includes quotations, illustrations, and even personal anecdotes, when appropriate. Column Two, Revelations, contains the topics that those examples lend themselves to: subject matter for the paper. And Column Three, Reasons, should have answers to critical questions concerning the paper topics, such as "Why?" and "How?" and "Why is this important?" The ideas in Column Three should lead to the paper’s thesis.

The beauty of the column system is that students can see the relationship between the different levels of analysis in their sentences. I can draw lines between Columns One and Two, and say, "These examples should illustrate your topics." I can draw lines between Columns Two and Three, and say, "How does your topic function in the text?" or "Why is this an important observation?"

I realize that this is an abstract discussion, so I will include some examples. As usual, the names of the students discussed here are fictional.

One of the papers that was assigned to the students I was working with asked students to analyze the ending of Luis Valdez’ Zoot Suit. Valdez wrote the ending to be intentionally ambiguous, presenting the audience with a short list of possible endings for the characters in the play. As usual, the aim of this prompt was to force the students to take issue with the subject matter and, using evidence from the text, support their own opinionated analysis The real goal here was Subject A exam preparation. Enter Diana and her draft of the assignment.

Diana’s Zoot Suit paper went through an explanation of how all of the possible endings listed in the play could be true, and made some connections to the idea that certain interest groups are represented in the different endings. Her essay lacked concrete examples to support her ideas (Diana’s professor had written “Less tell, more show” in the margins of her paper). In discussion, however, Diana easily cited instances in the text that supported her ideas; I asked her to write those specific plot points down, and to add them to her draft in exchange for her presently unsubstantiated phrases.

Examples weren’t really Diana’s problem, though. Her paper was missing the “Why” and “How” that so many other papers were missing, elements from the third column. Why does Valdez leave the ending ambiguous? What is the significance of this, and what effect does it have on the reader, the audience, on you? How does his ending accomplish this? These questions were the catalyst of a discussion Diana and I had about the main ideas behind the prompt (and behind her paper). As I saw it, Diana needed to take a step back from her writing so she could try to “understand… at an arm’s length”4 the concepts that her paper was, inadvertently, tackling. From the discussion, Diana and I altered her thesis to include statements about the significance of Valdez’ ending, and the idea that the endings, as interpreted by the reader, reveal more about the reader than about the play’s characters. The questions I asked her, and the discussion that followed, led Diana to take her paper’s ideas to the next tier of analysis, which I illustrated for her using the column system.

Another student of mine had the opposite problem. Laura would often come to me with papers that had interesting, engaging thesis ideas. Her thoughts were often angles on the prompts that I hadn’t yet seen from other students. However, Laura’s great ideas were undermined by the near complete lack of evidence from the text. She had no support for her ideas.

When I showed her the column system for the first time, she remarked that “it made it really easy to see” how to fix her papers. We would go through her papers, talking about the statements she was making, and I would ask her to back up her ideas with specific text-based examples.

Inevitably, I had several students come to me without a working draft of their present assignments. In these cases, I would talk about the assignment prompts with the students, and have them begin to fill in columns on their own. Often, the prompts themselves needed clarifying, and students were glad to discuss them.

The column system also seems to have some accidental functions. Put a different way, I found other uses for the diagram. For example, once a student had a couple of examples in Column One that led to a topic in Column Two and some analysis in Column Three, I would draw a horizontal line across the columns. This grouped the three levels of analysis together to visually demonstrate both the content of the paragraphs and how the paragraphs should be separated – with clearly defined, examples-supported topics that led to analytical discussion.

Another welcome surprise of the column system was the ease with which it modeled a paper’s thesis. Once Column Three started to get filled up with analysis of the topics, I would ask the student to think about the point of the paper as a whole. I would ask the student to analyze trends that are developing in their third column, to take a step back from their paper, see how it is evolving, and think in critical terms about their subject matter. I found that my students' theses were dynamic: they changed as the paper grew. Sometimes, under Column Three, I’d even draw an “= Thesis!”

Though it is easy (and temping) to label different types of sentences as “Level One” (or Two, or Three), I shy away from this. I believe that such a clinical cataloging of a student’s work serves to distance the Writing Assistant from the work and the student. Though the problems I discuss here are common to many students, the students’ individual problems should be met with individual analysis on the part of the Writing Assistant. Another possible result of such indifferent labeling of student writing is that the student may come to think about every paper in terms of the column system. As much as students should be able to write analytically, they must also learn to use different styles of paper writing for their University careers. I take careful pains to defuse the writing dogma that I see in most students’ approaches to writing. Used carefully, the column system should not neutralize and standardize students’ voices, but empower them.

One method that I found did not work as well with the Subject A students was the free-write. The act of free-writing is often found to yield provocative statements on the part of the student. What makes this method work is that it asks for opinions directly. However, as mentioned earlier, some students, especially Subject A students, do not feel that their opinions (or voices) are valid. I have found it difficult to extract opinions from such students with free-writes; but where free-writing failed, columns and discussion succeeded. Opinions comprise an important part of the critical analysis that the third column asks of students, but the magnitude of students whose voices are not self-empowered is striking. In the words of another Writing Assistant, "It is part of our job to convince [the students] that they know [how to think and write]!"

I was proud of my column system, as the students’ papers were improving with each new assignment. I had come up with a process that worked! A smug, self-satisfied feeling crept over me. It was not until I chanced upon the exact same system on a worksheet produced by the University of California’s Office of the President (UCOP) that I was (rudely and appropriately) awakened to the fact that, though “my” system worked, it was not original. I kissed fame and fortune good-bye. I guess a Writing Assistant’s first priority is the student. The main point, that the column system is simply a tool that can help some students, must not be lost.

I believe that an effective Writing Assistant is one who has an extensive library of conferencing methodologies from which to choose. The best Writing Assistants recognize which methods their tutees respond to, and tailor their conferences to the individual students. As writers, we must never stop learning about writing or approaches to writing. If a future Writing Assistant finds the column system helpful, then this paper will have fulfilled its purpose.

1For a more complete discussion of this topic, see Corral’s “Constraints in Learning” and Draper’s “Writer’s Block and Writing Apprehension.”
2I believe that, because the topics I discuss here are not isolated, they are symptomatic of a grander problem in education: that of the devaluing of student voice early on by means of dictatorial (dogmatic) writing instruction. See Endnote (1).
3Lisa Delpit's "The Silenced Dialogue" contains some illuminating discussion about institutionalized tracking and different modes of learning and power in the classroom.
4Lammé, Rob. “Me and Justin.” Walk a Fine Line.

Works Cited

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