Too often there are students who enroll in elective writing classes (or, worse, declare journalism as a major) who have no interest in language. They claim to have an interest in language, but their profound inattention to it suggests that they read rarely and write their papers while drunk.
Last week while I was grading my grammar students' homework, one journalism student, Meaghan, exasperated me. Had she not been awake for all those hours she sat in the front row of our class? Had she not thought about a single word she had heard or read in her nineteen years of life?
Because I couldn't kick her squarely in the butt, I did the next best thing: I pinged a colleague who taught—and failed—her last semester. She agreed that the student doesn't think seriously about language. I sighed, finished grading, and quickly forgot about the exchange.
***
One of our style workshops this week challenged students to consider diction. I typed a passage from The Prince of Tides and, after a few deep breaths, defiled Conroy's carefully constructed prose. I added unnecessary words and phrases, exchanged Conroy's precise nouns and verbs for drivel. (My version used the term "New York-y." No joke.)
In class, I gave students my trainwreck and asked them to work with a partner to make it less awful. Cut words. Replace phrases with exact words. Trade a vague word for a specific one. The students apprehended the paragraph, determined to rectify the injustice.
Smirking, I eavesdropped on my students while they worked. As I passed by Meaghan and her partner, she said, "This just makes me angry. It's so bad."
"Good," I smiled. "Make it better."
After hearing the students' revisions, I read Conroy's original paragraph slowly, letting them savor the richness of the prose.
When I looked up, Meaghan's lips were parted, her sapphire eyes brilliant beneath her freckled brow. "It's like poetry." She said. And she asked me the name of the novel.
I hope she'll think about language as she reads it.
2.27.2010
2.18.2010
An Abandoned Craft
"I enrolled in this class so I could be better prepared to write short fiction," one of my Grammar 200 students wrote me in an email. "Do you have any advice for me?"
My chest swelled. Yes, I have advice. Number 1: Read lots of good short fiction. (I attached some of my favorite short stories and essays.) Number 2: Revise, revise, revise. Murder your darlings. Number 3: Just write. I quoted Stephen King's Memoir, On Writing: "The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things only get better."
And there I stopped. I thought of the post-its and scraps of paper with my ideas for plot lines, characters, themes; the blank screens of too many Word documents.
I promoted Number 3 to position 1 and clicked send.
My chest swelled. Yes, I have advice. Number 1: Read lots of good short fiction. (I attached some of my favorite short stories and essays.) Number 2: Revise, revise, revise. Murder your darlings. Number 3: Just write. I quoted Stephen King's Memoir, On Writing: "The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things only get better."
And there I stopped. I thought of the post-its and scraps of paper with my ideas for plot lines, characters, themes; the blank screens of too many Word documents.
I promoted Number 3 to position 1 and clicked send.
Two Thumbs Up
Yesterday I taught a lesson on the reader/writer relationship in my freshman composition class. I've taught this lesson a few times before, but I thought I might change it a bit.
I began by asking the students to list specific things they enjoyed reading and why, then what they didn't enjoy reading and why. I drew two columns on the board: one labeled Thumbs Up and the other Thumbs Down.
To my surprise, the thumbs-up category crowded the other. And with good literature, too. The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, The Little Prince, The Things They Carried. What's more, their reasons for listing these works in the thumbs-up category wasn't to gain my favor. (At least not entirely.) The students cited how enjoyable or easy the novels were to read, how they had engaging plots and characters with whom they empathized.
And the thumbs-down column? Emma, The Awakening, Twilight ("It's so clichéd," one student complained), and, oddly, Catcher in the Rye. They didn't like the characters, they didn't care for the language.
In the end, we discussed good and bad writing for about forty minutes—about twenty-five minutes longer than I had planned. But that was ok. By the end of the discussion, students were nodding their heads. Oh, their body language said, I'm writing for a reader. I hope that not only will these students be able to better recognize good writing, but they will also be more inclined to create it themselves.
I began by asking the students to list specific things they enjoyed reading and why, then what they didn't enjoy reading and why. I drew two columns on the board: one labeled Thumbs Up and the other Thumbs Down.
To my surprise, the thumbs-up category crowded the other. And with good literature, too. The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, The Little Prince, The Things They Carried. What's more, their reasons for listing these works in the thumbs-up category wasn't to gain my favor. (At least not entirely.) The students cited how enjoyable or easy the novels were to read, how they had engaging plots and characters with whom they empathized.
And the thumbs-down column? Emma, The Awakening, Twilight ("It's so clichéd," one student complained), and, oddly, Catcher in the Rye. They didn't like the characters, they didn't care for the language.
In the end, we discussed good and bad writing for about forty minutes—about twenty-five minutes longer than I had planned. But that was ok. By the end of the discussion, students were nodding their heads. Oh, their body language said, I'm writing for a reader. I hope that not only will these students be able to better recognize good writing, but they will also be more inclined to create it themselves.
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