Engaging Students in Writing

Do you recognize the following introductory paragraph?

The book we read was___________. It was written by ___________. The book is about ___________. In this essay I am going to write about the theme. My examples are ___________, ___________, ___________.

You can insert any title and author and adjust the examples accordingly, and there you have it: A teacher-proof essay. It does everything the teacher asked: Identify the title, author, and premise, and present a plan of the essay.

And it is dreadful. In teaching programs professors love to say that it is impossible to write without thinking, but essays like this disprove that theory.

Maybe in an effort to engage students in writing, you have tried creative responses to literature and personal essays, but you have found time after time that the responses are writing exercises to please the teacher rather than essays in which students grapple with big ideas. What’s a teacher to do?

Give Students an Audience

Essay assigned by the teacher, handed in to the teacher, read only by the teacher, and then returned with a grade (which students read as a judgment) too often result in teacher-proof essays, because the student, consciously or not, has determined his audience as merely the teacher. Given a broader audience, the student must find a different approach.

Broadening students' audience has many benefits including

• Students become engaged in their writing.
• Students become interested in each others’ opinions.
• Students receive more feedback on their writing.
• The classroom becomes a community of readers and writers.

Requiring students to read their essays aloud provides an audience—and a critical one at that. In fact, the eagerness of students to criticize one another is the greatest asset and greatest danger of requiring students to read aloud.

When the assignment is carefully structured and the teacher is clearly in command of the discussion of students’ essays, the sharing of student work can change the entire dynamic of class from a room full of students being evaluated by the teacher to a community of readers and writers with a diverse chorus of voices, but a teacher must predict and plan for some of the challenges.

Challenge 1: Perception of Higher Stakes.

When students are told they must present their essays aloud to the class, for many students the stakes go up, and they should. The teacher is asking them to take a risk. Thus it is essential that the teacher create a safe environment for such academic risk taking.

Here are some ways the teacher can help to lower the stakes:

• Read his/her own essay aloud.
• Establish the notion that what students read aloud to the class is a first draft that students may )or even may be required to) revise.
• When allowing classmates to provide feedback, structure the discussion around students commenting on what they like and asking questions of the author rather than criticism, which the teacher can constructively provide in written comments.

Challenge 2: Time Management

With large classes, it can be overwhelming to imagine listening to thirty or so students each reading his or her essay aloud.

Consider the following when planning assignments:

• Don’t be afraid to spread an assignment out over a month or even a quarter.
• Schedule students in advance, one or two students per class session. Students can either hand their essays in all at once on the first “reading” due date or each can hand in his essay on his “reading” date (which makes fast feedback from the teacher easier).

Challenge 3: The Pitfalls of Audience

Audience has benefits, but it also has drawbacks. Students might try to “engage” their audience by shocking them or go out of their way for a laugh. In order to make the assignment as effective as possible, set and enforce high standards.

• Make grading criteria clear, especially indicating that any essay perceived as making a mockery of the assignment, the teacher, any school staff or students will result in a zero.

Conclusion

Making presenting one's work a requirement for essay assignments forces students to address concerns about audience. By writing not only for the teacher but also for their peers students begin to learn the power of their voices and become more engaged in the writing process. This requirement works well with all types of writing from creative writing to personal writing to analytic essays.

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