By Rachel Sanders
One of the hardest things I face when writing my own papers is simply getting started, especially when the paper topic I’m assigned is really general and open-ended. I get writer’s block as a result of my lack of creativity. In my assistance sessions with other students, I’ve found that they either love these open-ended questions or they hate them. Those that love them are usually able to manipulate the topic into something that they are interested in, whether it’s a book, or a current event, or a personal experience – and for them the writing comes much more easily and naturally. The majority of my students however, are unable to do this right away. They arrive at our tutoring sessions with no rough draft, no thesis, and hardly ever any brainstorming. I don’t mind this at all. Being able to work with a student from the brainstorming process through the finished draft is the best way for me to see the techniques, rules, and processes that the writer uses to formulate his or her paper. Many times these students simply don’t know what techniques to use to start drawing connections and defining an argument.
At my first sessions with all my students, I asked them what brainstorming techniques they usually used to start their papers, or whether they had any sort of typical planning process for their papers. Most of them responded by saying that they simply sat down at their computer and began typing, and they figured out what they wanted to write about as they went. After reading these students’ first drafts, I saw that many of them were lacking an argument, and their papers would meander off topic. I ended up spending the majority of my early tutoring sessions helping students learn how to brainstorm, as well as how to draw out an argument from the ideas that they expressed. In this essay, I will describe, analyze, and illustrate techniques that I’ve used with my students to help them formulate their own opinions and arguments that enabled them to write some strong, focused, and well-argued papers.
One of the very first things that I do with almost all of my students is have a conversation about the reading that they must incorporate into their essays. I’ve found that many students (myself included) work better when they can verbalize their arguments before they even write anything on paper. Simply having a dialogue about the readings almost always brings out opinions about those readings, and those opinions can lead to arguments and theses.
In one assignment, students had to integrate within their papers a thoughtful discussion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” while relating his views to a current act of civil disobedience. They could either use King’s views to justify or criticize the current event, or they could have used the current event to critique King’s ideas. A student of mine who I will call “Casey” came into our session telling me that she agreed with King’s ideas, but she wasn’t sure why she agreed with him, or what sort of stance to take regarding a current event. The first thing I asked her to do was to summarize the main points of King’s essay in her own words (this technique helps the student to get a firm grasp on what the reading was about). As Casey flipped through her course reader, she verbalized King’s points as I transcribed what she was saying word for word. When she was finished, this is what I had written down:
- King firmly believed in non-violence to gain racial equality for blacks.
- Participants in non-violent demonstrations must be prepared to come up against violent attacks by cops and those who disagree.
- Participants must be willing to be jailed for their beliefs and non-violent actions.
- Non-violent action is meant to cause tension, which would force communities to take action when they refused to do so before.
- Unjust laws that degrade human life (like segregation) must be broken.
Now that she had drawn out what she saw to be the main points of the letter, I asked her to simply give me her opinion of King’s ideas. She told me that she agreed with King, but then as an afterthought she added that she felt that simply arguing “violence is bad because people get hurt” didn’t sound like such a strong argument to make. I asked her what she thought of more violent tactics, as long as those tactics worked to serve a higher purpose, such as racial equality. Casey replied by saying that sometimes violent acts of civil disobedience bring media attention that a group or person might not otherwise get, but it didn’t necessarily mean that the violence was a positive thing. Eventually, our conversation about King and violence and non-violence led her to her ultimate argument, which was much more complicated then simply saying violence is bad. She argued that non-violence was a more prudent action to take, because violent acts tend to get blown up in the media and become the center of attention rather than the issue at hand. She also argued that with violence, people might get so caught up in enacting the violence that they forget the reason they are fighting (the example she came up with on her own was the 1992 L.A. riots). Casey came into the session with no clear direction as to what she was even going to argue, but by simply discussing the reading with me she was able to formulate her opinion, a thesis, and even examples to back it up.
The Martin Luther King Jr. essay was a typical example of the paper topics my students were assigned this quarter. The Cowell Core course encourages students to relate their life experiences and current events to the issues that they read about in ancient as well as current-day novels and essays. Often, teachers will assign papers that ask students to critically analyze a current event in light of what they have read in their Core class. One technique that I use when students simply can’t think of an appropriate example for their papers is to bring a newspaper in to our sessions. After discussing the reading, if they are still stumped for examples, I ask them to spend a few minutes flipping through the front page until they find something that is relevant to the issue they’ve been asked to write about. This almost always works. It’s a great technique to fall back on when students can’t quite think of an example off the top of their heads, and it also helps them to be factual in their writing when they have something to physically refer to. “Megan,” another student I worked with, had a lot of trouble coming up with a current day example to use in the King essay. After flipping open the paper, she immediately came across an article about the WTO, which reminded her of the 1999 Seattle protests. It’s not that she couldn’t think up an example on her own, but it was really useful (and time saving) when the paper jogged her memory. Magazines such as Newsweek would probably be just as helpful to students searching for things to write about.
Another brainstorming technique that is sometimes quite helpful is a “spider chart.” As a matter of fact, I used a spider chart to brainstorm for this very essay that you are now reading. It is known by various other names, but it is basically a chart that helps to connect evidence to main points in a visual manner. Once a student has figured out an example to use or a point/problem to prove, he or she simply puts the phrase, incident, or idea in the center of the page in a box or circle. From there, put all other thoughts that come to mind about the topic around the main point, drawing lines connecting the smaller ideas back to the main point. Here is an abridged version of the spider diagram that I created before starting to write this paper:
This type of diagram is useful not only for planning out opinions and evidence to use in the paper overall, but during the actual writing process it can be used to plan out each individual paragraph. The student must simply decide what the main point of the paragraph is, and from there he or she can map out important things to point out within the paragraph, commentary about the main point, etc. Although this is a style of brainstorming that most of us probably used in grade school, it is a method that ensures that the student will stay on track. If all points must relate back to the main point, a spider diagram makes irrelevant points easier to weed out.
Another brainstorming technique is the freewrite. In his book Writing With Power, Peter Elbow advocates this method as “the easiest way to get words on paper and the best all-around practice in writing” (Elbow, 13). Asking a student to spend ten minutes freewriting is sometimes the best way to get his or her thoughts flowing. The simple practice of writing about a topic non-stop without having to worry about grammar, structure, or any other “rules” of writing sometimes allows for some pretty good ideas to emerge. In my experience with my students, when they have to spend ten minutes writing about a certain topic with no rules, an opinion on the topic almost always emerges. Particularly if the paper assignment is a very open-ended one, freewriting sometimes helps students to gain focus regarding a specific topic. Additionally, sometimes the hardest part of getting started is the physical act of getting started. There’s something dreadful about having to write a first sentence or a first paragraph. If you have done a freewrite beforehand, you are able to “start off already started” (Elbow, 15); once you’ve started writing it’s generally much easier to continue writing. Freewriting however, is a method that I use with my students much less frequently than some of the other methods I’ve discussed. Many of my students don’t like spending ten minutes of their assistance sessions writing in front of me, and some of them do not find the method useful. Some of them however have developed some great essays based on what they wrote in their freewrites. It’s a method worth trying, but it’s also very important to follow up with the student to find out whether they thought the freewrite helpful or not.
The students I’ve worked with have corroborated my opinion that the more time spent planning an essay, the easier it is to write a better paper. Without an idea of where you want the writing to go, papers can become meandering and off-topic. Entering freshmen who haven’t passed the Subject A exam and who haven’t yet had a lot of practice writing college papers often need to be reminded that in order to write a coherent, well thought out and well argued paper, one must build a base to start from before writing begins. Eventually, it gets easier to write a paper with less planning as we learn to internalize our brainstorming, but until that happens (and sometimes even after that happens) it is usually best to brainstorm on paper. The techniques I’ve outlined help at different times for different students. Some of my students prefer to brainstorm using a spider diagram, and some of them only use the diagram as a last resort. Sometimes freewriting will help a student with one assignment, but might only confuse her more when she starts to work on a different assignment. Therefore it is important to keep in mind that not all students thinking processes work in the same way, and not all of these techniques will help all students. It is important to get feedback from a student after trying out a new brainstorming method; ask them what they liked about the method and what they didn’t like, and what helped them or didn’t help them. Some writing assistants prefer students to come to each session with a completed draft of their paper, but I don’t mind working with students through their planning process. I believe that the planning process is just as important as the actual writing, if not more so. It is worth it to spend the first few assistance sessions talking about the methods a student uses to get started, as well as introducing them to different methods that might help them jog their memory, produce and evaluate their opinions, or make a discovery.
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