Pet Peeves I: The Teaching of Writing

For about twenty-five years, I taught writing at the university/college level. I was a good teacher, consistently receiving positive evaluations from my students as well as from colleagues who visited my classes and evaluated my teaching. To prepare for that teaching, I took graduate classes in rhetoric and composition and taught a total of eight freshman composition classes in graduate school. Later, I learned from experienced colleagues, in the inevitable exchange of ideas with office mates, in workshops and in reading research. And I learned from my students. One of the most important things I learned as a teacher was not to underestimate my students. I treated them as practicing writers, and they became practicing writers. Oh, there were certainly failures--but the successes far outnumbered the failures.

And so it is with a sinking heart when I hear from students that their college writing teachers are telling them to write paragraphs with 7 sentences (or 11 or 10) in each paragraph, and to write essays with five paragraphs that develop three points. I tutor these confused students, who think the form is the rule rather than a (suspect-at-the-college-level) teaching tool.  The college instructor who tells her students that every paragraph should have so many sentences, no less and no more, is condescending to those students. She is assuming that adults cannot understand that writing is a messy process that involves discovery and experimentation. She is so concerned about whether or not that student is going to pass the state writing test that she has abdicated her role as a teacher, someone with experience in the craft who passes on to students the best of what she has learned.

Of course, I understand the frustrations the writing teacher encounters, especially at open enrollment colleges such as the one where I now tutor part-time. Because of the poor economy, colleges are filling classes to the maximum and beyond; full-time writing instructors teach at least five classes.  Students in those classes are variously prepared for those classes: some learned English as a second language, others don't quite meet the expectations of the proponents of academic English after twelve years of secondary education, and others are returning to writing after years in the work force where they weren't required to write academically. The easy way for the writing instructor to tame the unruly is to demand adherence to rules, no matter how arbitrary those rules might be in the apprenticeship of real writing:

• An essay is composed of five paragraphs: an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
• Each body paragraph has a topic sentence that states the focus of that paragraph. 
• Each body paragraph should have ____# sentences (7 sentences, 11 sentences, 12 sentences--number depends upon the teacher).
• Never begin a sentence with "because."
• Never begin a sentence with "and" or "but."
  
• Never use the second person ("you") in an essay.
  
• Never use the first-person ("I") in an essay.
  
• Never write sentence fragments.

The conscientious student, especially, takes these rules to heart. And so [woot! woot! here I am breaking a "rule" that is not a rule!] that is why today I had a student who was worried about which way was the "right" way to write an essay. The teacher in her first learning support class told her that she should have three points in every essay and that those three points should be developed in five paragraphs. The teacher in her second learning support class told her that it was okay to have two points in an essay and that if those points needed to be developed in six paragraphs, that was okay, too. "Which is right?" she asked me. That is also why I tutor students who have the most wonderful experiences that relate to the topic they are trying to develop but are frustrated because their instructor told them never to use first-person in their writing. And students who have a great, approachable "tone" in their writing but have been told by their writing teacher never to use the second person. [Woot! woot! the previous sentence is a sentence fragment AND begins with a coordinating conjunction!]

I was recently asked by a writing instructor how many sentences I suggest students include in paragraphs that they write for the state writing exam. I tried to give a nuanced answer, but it was clear that this instructor thought his students too stupid for nuance. "At this level [the freshman level of English composition]," the teacher said, "students need a number."

Take a number. That's education today. And that's my number one pet peeve.