Theme Essay by Kate Geiselman
The Trouble with Teaching Students Who Don't Read
Some time during the first week of each quarter, I ask my beginning college composition students to draw a picture of their left shoe. I don’t give them paper or tools or any preparation. If they start to ask questions, I smile and say, “Just do it.”
After about two minutes, I tell them time’s up and direct them to hold up their drawings for everyone to see.
“How many of you are happy with your work?” I ask.
They laugh, embarrassed by their meager efforts.
“Now, what would have made that assignment easier?”
We make a list: Better tools. A different subject. More specific parameters. An eraser. Time.
As you’ve no doubt guessed, I’m trying to show them by analogy that even if writing is difficult, there are elements they can control. If they use the right tools, choose their subjects carefully, ask questions, and spend the right amount of time, they can dramatically increase the quality of their work. It’s the key to writing success—all wrapped up in a pat little lesson plan.
But invariably during this exercise, someone will say, “I can’t draw.”
Suddenly, my little analogy has taken a rough turn. What do I say to students who also claim, “I can’t write”?
The veteran teacher in me (perhaps in a frantic effort to justify her own existence) denies this and cheerleads and talks about shutting down that self-critic and freewriting, blah blah blah. But the question remains. Even after twenty years in the classroom, I wonder whether good writing can be taught to students who have little exposure to it—especially to those who don’t read.
Of course, defining “good” writing is a tough task in itself. In grade-norming sessions in my own department, colleagues who respect each other can’t always agree on what constitutes an A in a freshman composition class.
Any decent assessment has to weigh both what is said (strong ideas and details) and how it is said (style and organization). When the quality of the content and the mechanics of it don’t match—often the case in student writing—reasonable professionals disagree about when one should trump the other.
If a narrative with a fresh voice and striking emotional content has more than a few comma splices, should it receive a poor grade? Or should a formulaic essay composed of simple and correct sentences receive a better one?
For better or worse, I often make grading decisions ad hoc, based on the goals of the assignment and even a student’s own objectives. If a criminal justice major who never plans to write anything but police reports doesn’t punctuate the dialog in a narrative correctly, for instance, I’m not going to get too worked up about it. I try to consider what future writing assignments I’m preparing my students for and then grade accordingly.
The truth is, there’s still plenty about teaching writing that continues to challenge me. I can help students understand rhetorical situations and how to approach various writing tasks. I can reiterate grammar and punctuation rules. I can move them along a continuum toward good writing, but whether or not they get there will depend on much that’s beyond my scope.
In particular, I have absolutely no control over the amount my students read. I don’t just mean the textbook or sample essays I assign—which they frequently don’t read—but whether they have spent the first 18 (or 20 or 30) years of their lives immersed in the written word.
If they have, then my job is easier. Readers understand the rhythms of language. They have good vocabularies. They intuit how to tell a story—what details matter and what can be left out. They know there are many ways to say one thing.
But nonreaders simply don’t have the natural facility with language that readers do. I’m not sure any teacher in any course can backfill that deficit. I won’t embark on some luddite screed about “kids these days,” but with the amount of static that fills their eyes and ears, from illiterate YouTube comments to LOLing Facebook messages to Twilight, it’s no wonder they don’t know good writing when they see it.
Students of all ages in my classes often equate good writing with things they agree with or understand. For example, they’ll dismiss a Tobias Wolff memoir excerpt (my favorite piece in our textbook) as rambly and difficult; they’ll rate a balanced and well-supported argument about sports team names poorly because they “don’t agree with it” or “don’t care.”
Despite professional disagreements about grading among my colleagues, we don’t argue about the need for critical thinking. Critical reading comes ahead of writing skills on every list of course outcomes in our department. In its absence, becoming a good writer is nearly impossible.
So, can good writing be taught? My answer is a resounding “sort of.”
In the course of an academic quarter, I can give my students lots of practice. Most of them will make progress if they do the work. Often, they just need to be cured of bad habits or provided with some strategies for organizing their thoughts or shown how to vary their sentence structure.
I’m confident that I can teach better writing. But even if students read every sample essay I assign and every word of the textbook, I can’t fill the void created by years of inattention to written language.
As part of their final portfolios, my composition students write a reflective letter that assesses their progress over the quarter. Recently, one of them mentioned the drawing exercise the first week of class as proof that even someone who says they “can’t write” can learn with the right tools.
But then, another mentioned that exercise as proof of why, when he first met me, he thought I was “nuts.” Both may be right, but what keeps me coming back to the classroom each year is my stubborn insistence that words—both reading and writing them—offer the surest path to student success.
Art Information
- “Writing” © Jonathan Reyes; Creative Commons license
- “Study” © Jeffrey Smith; used by permission
- “Shoes” © Giuseppe Aniello; Creative Commons license
Kate Geiselman teaches composition at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.
Her essays have appeared in Salon, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Rumpus, and elsewhere online. Essays from her blog, Notes from the Professor, have recently aired on American Public Media's The Story with Dick Gordon.
