Blog 19: Freestyle

In addition to reading literature for class and for fun, I also read many student papers. I'm heading into scoring Paper 2 for my on-campus English 104 class today, so I thought I'd write a bit about why I assign papers the way I do and what happens when I read them.

Academic writing is an important skill for college students because they are asked to use that form frequently in their classes to show what they know. Even though most students will write different kinds of documents in their work after college, the form is also helpful to learn because it is set up to make one's thinking clear. Having a thesis at the beginning provides the reader with a good understanding of the writer's overall conclusions without mystery. Body paragraphs then each make a supporting point, and their separation allows the reader to move easily through the writer's reasoning, in a sense following the steps in the thought process that brought the writer to the thesis conclusions. The details in the paragraphs and analysis of them indicate how the writer is processing ideas so that the reader again has a window into the writer's thinking. For me, academic paper format provides the best way to pin down students' thinking so that I can tell whether they've learned the knowledge and skills the course provides. Once students have graduated and moved into the working world, the skill of making their thinking clear to a reader is useful in other kinds of writing they may pursue, such as letters to the editor, legal briefs, or proposals.

When I read student writing, I catch the thesis and tuck it into the back of my mind. When each paragraph connects to the thesis and helps demonstrate why the writer believes what he or she does about the thesis, I think, "Yes!" Good transitions at the beginnings of paragraphs help me follow those connections in easy steps so that I understand why the information is being presented in the order it appears. The examples provide sensory experiences that help me picture why the writer believes what he or she does, but I can't process them in connection with the thesis unless the reader follows them with analysis. In the analysis, the writer explains the connection for me so that I don't have to try to make it up in my head. For this reason, analysis is one of the most important parts of academic writing and makes the difference between good and excellent in my scoring.

I really love reading student writing, and I love trying to help students make their ideas as clear as possible. I think that being a good reader of student writing involves listening carefully for what students want to say and not imposing my own ideas on their writing. It also means encouraging students to use the tools of academic writing to clarify their thinking both in their heads and on paper. To respond effectively, I need to remind writers to use those tools.