A Series of Four Queries: Query #1: How Do English Educators Teach Students to Write?

Most of us teach kids how to escape writing.

We tell them to write a "research paper," and then command them not to interact with the material or draw conclusions of their own or write about what they think beyond the facts. We tell them to stop thinking entirely when they find those "expert opinions" that agree with theirs. The exercise descends to the level of collecting and reiterating other people's thoughts.

Balderdash. That is not writing instruction. Perhaps it is all very unprofessional of me to insist so boorishly, but nevertheless, it is balderdash, and I refuse to participate.

When I have kids write research papers, I insist on substantive thinking beyond the facts. I tell them to make some choices, provide synthesis (meaningful, original thinking about the research they've gathered) and draw their own conclusions. Other teachers frown on that practice. They say I'm mixing research with opinion.

We also teach kids how to express and support opinions, of course, in a separate activity. We take students through the routine of the five-paragraph essay, requiring an introductory paragraph with thesis, three paragraphs of support (including perhaps some mention of arguments the opposition might pose, with reasoning that renders them erroneous, or evidence and arguments that trump their concerns), and a conclusion.

With the incredible number of essays published on the web, it's almost impossible not to run into one on any chosen topic, of any description, unless of course, you're not looking for it. And if you're teaching kids to write research without synthesis, you're also encouraging them to compose essays by finding and reiterating opinions without doing any of their own thinking. It becomes very easy for them to perceive internet essays as time-savers. And they use them, often. I have caught some of the brightest kids copping out of work by copying someone else's work.

To clarify matters, I will tell you that I like the five-paragraph essay. In fact, I often have students write a five-paragraph essay first, then expand it with research, and transform it into a research paper, with synthesis and opinions, of course.

Plagiarism is an inconvenience I refuse to worry about. I make the plagiarists worry about it. I'll show you how. 

A Series of Four Queries: Query #2: So, How Does Wohlsi Teach His Students to Write?

I establish one writing assignment as the largest project of the semester. I force my kids to take a second look at their work, and then a third look. I select certain areas of their argument where I require them to elaborate. Regardless of the quality of their expression skills, they all do three drafts. Yes, that's right. Even if they have the ability to express themselves eloquently, I require them to look again at their work and strive to improve it, and then do so again.

Those kids who have hunted the web and stolen thoughts of others get their just desserts in my class; I'll come to that later. But there's another category of kid to consider first: Those who have memorized popular, shallow patterns of thinking and expression.

This experience with a student will serve to illustrate: She was, and I trust, still is, an extremely bright young lady. She was also cheerful and energetic. She had a good ear for language and used it to string familiar, high-toned phrases together. She was a verbal stylist, not much of an independent thinker, and not really a writer. She didn't reflect upon a situation and compose her own thoughts; she shopped through her inventory of stored up sound bites, threaded them together, and hit a mental "print" button.

Since she'd had little practice at composing her own thoughts, she could not control what she was saying, but she could certainly put phrases and clauses together. Without reading carefully, an instructor might suppose she'd simply missed a few transition elements and neglected to attend to a couple of details on her way through an otherwise acceptable essay.

I obtained a first draft from her and discerned in it a certain amount of passion and interest, but little else beyond a great many deeply prejudiced opinions, some of which contradicted one another.

During one of my scheduled writing workshops, she made it clear that she was not happy about having to do a second draft. Cheerfully challenging me on my methods, she asked, "What exactly do you want from me?"

When I responded by directing her attention to the writing prompt, she retained her smile but became visibly indignant. I asked her to address the requirement to provide examples from our reading to illustrate and support the author's position, and then register either agreement, or in her case, disagreement with the author, and finally, support her opinions with evidence of her own. The student's smile disappeared and never returned.

She did eventually submit a second draft. In it, I encountered tangential thinking. It began rounds of reasoning with specific references to a quote or a general reference to one of the various developments in the required reading, but then it drifted far off topic as it followed various sorts of memorized phraseology whose actual ideas, structure, and logic belonged with entirely different realms. She was selecting events here and there from the story, but she wasn't maintaining attention upon them or seeing them through to their conclusion.

She would begin with an event and/or character, then almost immediately depart into a discussion about politics. She would write, for example, "... of a productive, free society where the free market is allowed to react and respond according to natural trends, a place grounded in real principles, not floundering in a sea of doubt, blah, blah, blah ... ." Again and again she would do this.

Where on Earth did she get this stuff? Sometimes she sounded like a talk show cheerleader. At others, it seemed as though she had gathered and beaten senseless various trite expressions heard on the air, stored them in a personal library of mental zip files, and rearranged them into a political diatribe.

A conversation with her revealed that she hadn't done her reading assignments. I would recount a series of events she'd been assigned to read. I would start with one she'd selected to write about, and then I would ask her to explain the consequences and further developments that followed.  "Oh, I guess I didn't really get that part. I don't remember much of what happened there at all," she told me.

When I asked her to read that part over carefully and try writing again, she was baffled. "How do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, for example, look at this chain of events. I'll summarize it for you. It suggests that a choice made by people in this circumstance will produce these consequences. You see?" She nodded. "Now look at your essay. You assert, using your own words, 'it could never be.' I've just shown you that the author emphatically asserts that it could indeed be. What do you think?" I asked.

She said, "I don't get it. Can't I just tell you what I think?"

"Yes, please, tell me what you think. Tell me what you think about what happens here, and about what the author thinks."

"But do I have to write about what's in the story?"

"Yes, you must respond to what's in the story. The author reveals an attitude. Do you think her attitude is justified? Look at the scenario the author develops. Is she convincing? Is she right? Is she wrong? Why do you believe as you do?"

"Can't I just tell you what I think without doing all that? Isn't that the point of the assignment?"

"I'm sorry, but no."

I waited for her to close her mouth. When she did, her lower lip protruded. Her brows narrowed. She became more indignant. I was going to say something to soothe the gathering storm, but she cut in, "That's not fair! It's just my opinion, and I have a right to my opinion."

I continued, "You do have a right, but your thinking, all by itself, is extremely prejudiced."

"I'm not prejudiced."

"Yes, you are, extremely." Her eyes grew wide. I added, "You've made assumptions about this author's ideas without even reading them. That's prejudice."

She was silent now, and I continued, "You've selected a few popular expressions we've all heard in today's political speeches, and you've strung them together, but you haven't demonstrated that you've read and understood what this author thinks, and you haven't even started to answer some of her claims. You go off talking about today's politics a little too fast."

"I still don't get it," she said. "I've always gotten 'A's' from all my other English teachers. I just don't see what you want from me. I'm not going to change my opinions for you."

"I'm not asking you to change your opinions. What I want you to do is start with a good, careful re-reading of this part of the story. Then in your writing, explain what the author is saying about these issues first. Show me you understand. It shouldn't be too hard. I'll do some of it for you, and then you can finish up."

She brightened at that, and we had a pretty good conversation for a while. She was smart, and when I pressed matters, I found that she had good reasons for her opinions. She began explaining herself. I took down some notes for her and helped her to add language and examples when she became stumped. I advised her not to engage in personal attacks against the author. I also showed her how to be more careful about selecting words to specifically address her concerns, instead of imitating some absurd blanket of a phrase that shut out the light and completely halted the thought process. She respected and, I thought, appreciated the attention I was giving her.

"Excellent!" I said, after we'd talked out an early part of the argument. "That's the sort of case you want to build. You're now telling me very clearly why the author's logic doesn't always apply to reality, and you're bringing in evidence to support your own beliefs. Start with this point, and continue doing more of the same throughout your essay. Make sure you demonstrate an understanding of what the author says, and then show why you're right and she's wrong."

She seemed slightly distressed, so I said, "Look, I know you've already done a little work here," - 'Very little,' I thought silently to myself. - I went on after an awkward but necessary pause, during which I waged a private, inner battle between the urge to growl that post script at her and an effort to defeat the temptation to be rude. I don't always win this battle, I confess.)

I added the next part cautiously: "If you want, you can bring in some of the other information you've used. Select developments in our own society to show that your thoughts apply universally. But remember, wherever you disagree with this author, your first responsibility is to reveal what she presents in this book, explain how she arrives at her conclusion, and then tell how she misses the point. Don't make accusations. Don't just say, out of hand, that she has distorted the facts to suit her purposes. Maintain a civil tone. Provide your own examples and explain how they reveal that she is mistaken."

"OK. I see!" She almost smiled.

Here is where all plagiarists get theirs, incidentally. Kids who have copied another essay from somewhere become totally baffled when they're required to take a key element of "their" essay and elaborate upon it. They discover that they can't begin to extend thinking they never did in the first place. And if their moms or their friends (or their friends' moms) did the actual writing, the student's explanation of the requirements to the actual writer become a game of "telephone." Instructions hardly ever translate, and the whole process of revising a plagiarized piece becomes a lesson in itself. (Here is where you have to be forgiving, skirt accusations, and keep offering extra time for kids to start over and do what was expected of them at the beginning.)

But back to the matter of the verbal stylist: Over the next several weeks, I continued to ask how she was doing. She almost smiled many times and said, "Just fine!" She passed the class, but she never did that final draft. Because her writing project was incomplete, she took a 40% on it, and because it was heavily weighted, her overall grade was dismal.

A Series of Four Queries - Query #3: How Does Wohlsi Handle the Difficult but Unavoidable Aftermath?

I received a call from her mother. She seemed to know as much about the essay as her daughter did, and she had misconceptions that were identical. I found myself repeating my earlier instructions.

She stopped the conversation and insisted that I provide a reason for giving her girl such a miserable grade. I ended up emailing my digital copies of the drafts and providing a complete account of the conversations she and I had had.

I will confess, I have my doubts during moments like these. Parents have threatened to meet with my principal; they have complained that I destroyed their children's perfect 4.0 GPA. I have been accused of being an irresponsible non-professional, perhaps guilty of malpractice, perhaps deserving of a lawsuit.

Parents occasionally complain about the assignment itself. They begin to criticize me for expecting too much of their kids. Many tell me that English has always been a good subject for their children. And I reassure them. I tell them that their kids will continue to do well in the future, in large part, because they've learned something very important in my class.

Incidentally, no confrontational meetings or lawsuits or parental acts of retribution ever occurred over the years. In fact, the rare complaints of parents were far, far outweighed by statements of gratitude. My parent-teacher conferences every year, without exception, were overwhelmingly positive. They all came down to one simple statement. I heard it said many times exactly this way: "I wish more English teachers would do what you do."

Of course, I was always able to substantiate my evaluations, when necessary, with documented evidence of every kid's performance. And it is far easier these days to gather it up, now that so much of it is in digital form.

I didn't have the verbal stylist as a second semester student, so I wasn't able to address some of the essential skills she'd missed along the way. She'd have gotten some extremely close supervision from the start, of course, if she'd continued as my student.

The overwhelming majority of kids who took my class for more than a single semester, some of them for subsequent years (repeating a course they'd failed, or taking English 12 after they'd had me for English 11), showed tremendous growth as writers. It's a pity that all our schools can't be smaller. We teachers could keep more of our kids, particularly those who prefer to stay with us. They'd get used to our methods, and we'd become better teachers, not only because we'd see and appreciate growth, but also because we'd notice what works best to foster that growth.

I'm sure this particular girl despised me for being one of the first teachers ever to question her right to make free statements of prejudice. But someday, I'll probably see her in the local pub, and she'll say, "Mr. Wohlsdorf, you were right. You really did teach me something."

That's a direct quote too. I promise you, it is. I have heard those very words, literally dozens of times. As Beowulf might tell you, "I'm not boasting. These are just the facts."

A Series of Four Queries - Query #4: How Does Wohlsi Reject Mimicry and Take Advantage of the "Learning Opportunity"?

My methods aren't perfect. The "perfect" method of teaching an English class, let alone teaching writing, has not yet been created. My methods don't save much time. In fact, I'm absolutely certain that I spend probably 50% more time teaching writing than the average English teacher. And it's a good thing the kids have other English teachers who lean on speech, drama, debate, and visual arts more heavily than I do. My speech program is minimal. I hardly ever have my kids do poster board projects or perform plays or segments of plays. When the curriculum calls for those, I "cover" them. When I have to, I even "cover" grammar exercises. I do what I have to do.

But I believe in my program of reading and writing instruction. When kids come to my class, they take a while to get acclimated, but they do learn.

I'll admit that I'm perhaps a bit skeptical, and even a little overbearing, with some of the following assumptions, and if you're a "kinder, gentler teacher," they might be wrong for you, but they pretty much summarize my views:

We tend to settle for kids' imitating of others' sophisticated styles rather than insist that they develop their own voice and style. Mimicry of style isn't all bad, but if teachers don't adequately attend to the substance of a student's writing as it develops, the effect can be a mind-numbing series of dislocated lines, mere "sound bites" heard and memorized from the media, where they're used for their inflammatory effect, or, as good ol' Rush says, for "entertainment," the excuse behind which he most famously hides.

No holding back here: Rush Limbaugh is a meathead. True satire is not just "entertainment." It is a lens through which we examine truth WITH GENUINE HUMOR. It is not meant merely for creating waves of anger. It is much gentler and more subtle. Thomas Paine didn't use satire. He wasn't trying to entertain. He was trying to incite a riot. That's what Rush does. It's not "entertainment." Shame on that man.

My young verbal stylist felt that her rights were being violated when I required her to reject the work of "entertainers" and do some of her own actual work. I'm certain she felt she had already given me exactly what was needed to satisfy all requirements of the assignment. She had written the acceptable number of words arranged in paragraphs, punctuated and capitalized properly, and, contradictions and weak arguments aside, her statements seemed to make as much sense as they had on the political ads and radio talk shows she'd heard.

The fact that she hadn't read was immaterial to her. My expectation that she turn in three drafts to complete the project and demonstrate an improved understanding of the point of view expressed in print by another human being before attacking or accepting opinions was an outrageous trampling of her personal right to adopt, maintain, and express any prejudice she wanted.

Freedom to speak prejudice leads to the growth of defensive, often rude, extremely judgmental, very poorly founded ideas. Teachers of late elementary and early middle school kids are usually impressed by sophisticated style, and kids who learn the trick of mimicry can often milk very good grades from instructors who are glad to read something that at least sounds intelligent, regardless whether or not the underlying ideas are pertinent, original, on-topic, and properly supported.

At the secondary level, we can't continue with that. By graduation, these students are expected to read and write with college proficiency. The extent to which they're actually capable of demonstrating that proficiency reflects on our integrity as professionals in the high school language arts classroom. They may be short on prerequisite abilities for our writing programs. They may not be personally motivated and ready to learn. None of that matters. We have to deal with these kids anyway.

I believe writing is the most important form of "thinking out on paper" that exists, meaning, it's not just "school stuff." It's human stuff. It's humanity. We must teach humanity with the greatest of care. The following steps summarize what I do:

1) Ascertain, from the writing of a first draft, where each student is in her or his development of skills, talents, abilities, and knowledge brought to bear on the task.

2) Gather some notion, from the writing of a second draft, of the students' willingness to try to improve their skills.

3) Between drafts, identify weaknesses and establish individualized learning goals that are reasonable for that person's current skills, abilities, and attitude.

4) Provide individualized instruction specifically for the student.

5) Engage in co-authoring. Endeavor to help students build solid foundations for their opinions. (It is the teacher's job to transcend controversy and understand all sides of an argument from solid, neutral ground, while helping students to express their beliefs, not ours.)

6) Constantly re-evaluate learning goals as the process continues.

7) Provide clear opportunities for all students to improve expression skills through identification and correction of their own errors and revision of their own writing.

8) Grade on the basis of efforts demonstrated by students in the revision process through documented evidence of their efforts to deal with their own expression issues.

Often, students who are trying to bring together complex thoughts are told by their teachers, "Write simply. Don't try too hard to use fancy language. Stay within your own abilities."

I believe this sort of advice is a dismissal of student effort, and therefore, absolutely wrong. Kids may be clumsy at subordinating one concept and elevating another, for example, to show how they perceive the two of them. We may have never before seen the ideas drawn together; we may therefore be surprised at the assertion a student is trying to make, but if the ideas have any merit and demonstrate real thinking, we shouldn't be dismissing them.

I realize that it takes careful reading to find those nuggets of rich thought, but their writing deserves as much attention as we give to the great classics we prepare to teach.

Whether we manage to find intelligent thought in their work, or whether we find none, we need to have conversations with the kids. We need to explain to them what sorts of reactions we're getting or not getting from their efforts. We should ask them what they're trying to say and help them say it. If the ideas are ridiculous, or injurious, or libelous, we need to show them how to get their precious, vital main point expressed without incivility.

In place of true writing instruction, too many kids get grammar exercises, whether they need them or not. Many have trouble with mechanics, subject-verb agreement, and pronoun-antecedent agreement. Instructors frequently resort to grammar exercises to "cover" them. They ask kids to address these problems in their own writing, but the teachers don't systematically hold them accountable when they continue to make the same errors.

At the secondary level, some students need grammar review and some do not. The problem with grammar exercises is that the mistakes addressed in them seldom originate in the writing of weaker students, because they'll try to "stay within their own abilities," and not worry about that problem. They will not use structures that make their writing look weak. They will avoid using "who" or "whom" when the grammar rules make them difficult to apply. We need to show them how to use specific structures and words when the opportunity arises in their own writing, not in grammar exercises.

For the last two years students spend in school, and perhaps for the last four, we should not be devoting any class time to grammar exercises, and in most cases, we shouldn't expect kids to spend much time on them. Those who still have grammar issues by the time they get to high school should be given individual, extremely brief grammar lessons, and they should be directed to address their particular problems themselves. That's a whole story in itself. You'll need to download my free product entitled "Writing: Dealing with It ..." if you want to see how I accomplish that.

Another popular fad today is the "daily language" routine, where kids are given sentences to edit. They're taught editing symbols and are given one or maybe two sentences to mark up every day. Then they are shown the "right" way to "rewrite."

More balderdash! A rich discussion of language can take up a whole class period, but students won't listen to you talk about structures they avoid. However, once you get their attention, they will certainly listen to you talk about structures they're attempting to use in expressing their thoughts.

The teachers' biggest concern, they will tell students, is content. But too often, that isn't so. Instead, they reward smooth syntax, accurate mechanics, and clumsy, rude arguments. Lack of thought, prejudicial opinions, and even inflammatory imitations of talk show gibberish is too often perfectly allowable as "filler," and many teachers happily accept that kind of writing in their classrooms. As long as they're moving kids from writing fragments to developing real sentences with actual subjects and verbs, or getting them to intelligently combine two short sentences into one compound sentence, they believe they're doing their jobs.

We should open kids' minds to the fact that thoughts relate to one another in various ways. We should show them several approaches, identifying how each strategy works differently. We certainly should expect them to use as many of our suggested revisions as they want, and we must demand that they use our revisions when they agree that we've helped them say what they want with eloquence. When they choose not to use our revisions under these circumstances, they must be asked to share the reasons behind their choices.

We should be devoting significant portions of our classroom time to writing workshops, during which we attend to each child's current struggles with idea development, logic, and organization. Whenever it's necessary, we need to co-author, that is, give their language a boost to help them catch up to the ideas they're endeavoring to express. Allow them to see the various possibilities, and then let them choose what best represents their real thinking. Those kids are trying to put ideas together. We must operate under the assumption that they are not trying for "fancy language," but for original thoughts.

Plagiarism, if it is a problem at this point, ceases to become your concern and instead becomes a huge one for the kids themselves who have "borrowed" language and ideas from other sources. If, while asking kids what they mean or what they think about various matters developed in their writing, you get odd-sounding hesitation in their "yesses," and "noes," and an awful lot of "maybes," and "I don't knows," you're probably dealing with a plagiarized piece.

If they stonewall you about what they actually think, simply tell them to figure out what they think, and then require them to add a couple of paragraphs explaining it with examples. Always provide the option of going a number of directions with the thought. Demonstrate to them some possibilities and insist that they rewrite. Offer them several outlines if necessary. If they want to start over completely, allow the to do so, but explain also that it will count as a first draft, and you will be glad to help them catch up with the project.

Carefully document all the help you offer, particularly in those cases.

We must assume that our high school students have real, working brains. We need to get them thinking first; next, we need to help them find language to express their thinking; then we need to show them the various approaches, the numerous voices, the many logical patterns, the countless ways in which an opinion can become convincing because it is civil and polite instead of outrageous and loud. Particularly in these times, when hostility is so often glorified in the media, it is our duty to teach civility, and while doing so, reveal shallowness for what it is and condemn it.

Most importantly, we must fight the tendency people have to dismiss another person's point of view before understanding. We must fight prejudice. I believe it's our job to humanize.