Unfortunately, Planning and Structure do not Equate to Comprehension and Creativity
In the realm of our Unessay research, researchers cannot seem to agree on a few questions. What is the best way to teach students to write with vibrancy? Is it to give free reins and let them run with anything? Or is what is needed a more central focus on the tools needed to write effectively, like grammar, syntax, and other stylistic concerns? And where does argumentation fit in? Where will students learn to think critically and insightfully about the issues they are presented with, rather than just forming unoriginal, albeit well supported, formulaic essays?
These were my questions as I begin to search for the ways in which other researchers, apart from Dan and our Unessay crew, have approached the issue of teaching essay writing to students. Many approaches mirrored that of Dan and Michael’s, in that they favoured a more analysis-centred approach, leaning more towards giving students the opportunities to think and to question. Form and structure typically take less of a focus, and the emphasis in instruction is placed on critical thinking and questioning.
For students with learning disabilities, planning and a focus on structure seems to be the key to writing a good essay. Sexton et. al. (1998) conducted a study in which they helped sixth graders with learning disabilitiesmore effectively incorporate the aspect of planning and development into the essays they write. Now this is an interesting notion. These students were writing poorly formed essays based on their mental function that often removed the planning stages from their writing. Could older writers be doing the same thing? It certainly appears as if students without learning disabilities have taken the emphasis on structure and used it as the measuring stick for all of their essays?
Perhaps a lack of planning often contributes to undergraduates’ essays. Many write essays by pulling an all-nighter, and simply getting it done in one twenty-four hour timespan. While adult brains have a significantly larger capability to understand and comprehend things in the long-term, maybe undergraduate essay writers are not utilizing this ability. Papers come out stilted because they have not been planned, simply been stuck in. Originality to some extent comes from thought about a topic and its counter-arguments. When students write essays, they are not thinking about the writing process, and how they are to formulate an essay, Instead, they are thinking about how they can take the form they were already given and plug into it what is needed.
The exercise of planning helps students with learning disabilities get a grasp on the form of the essay as a whole, so it can be tied together and its separate parts joined. University students are missing this step in the process. They see the five-paragraph form not as a way to tie things together, but a way to break them apart, into easily manageable pieces that require no originality and no planning, only the evidential proving of each separate piece in a sequence. As opposed to using these building blocks to build a bridge to bigger and more complex ideas, university students tend to use them to build a wall around themselves, one that keeps them from seeing and understanding the flexibility and possibilities of the essay form.
But why? Is laziness simply the answer? A lack of time, or rather, adequate time management? Or has there been something so engrained in our students that teaches them when it is time to reach down into the very depths of their knowledge and understanding, and to discourse effectively on it, the only thing to do is replicate their model?
This seems like a rather alarming precedent. In a society that professes to value creativity, in terms of students’ essays, there seems to be a disconnect in what we practice and what we preach. More can certainly be researched about how the essay format influences students’ and instructors’ individual perceptions of what is required for a well-written essay, and how these expectations differ.
Works Consulted
Gary, William L. “Letting Students Teach Themselves.” Community College Week 15.7 (2002): 4. Web.
Andrews, Richard et al. “Teaching Argument Writing to 7- to 14-year-olds: An International Review of the Evidence of Successful Practice.” Cambridge Journal of Education 39.3 (2009): 291–310. EBSCOhost. Web.
Fallahi, Carolyn R.Wood. “A Program for Improving Undergraduate Psychology Students’ Basic Writing Skills.” Teaching of Psychology 33.3 (2006): 171–175. EBSCOhost. Web. 13 June 2013.
Prosser, Michaelwebb. “Relating the Process of Undergraduate Essay Writing to the Finished Product.” Studies in Higher Education 19.2 (1994): 125. Web.
Sexton, Melissa, Karen R. Harris, and Steve Graham. “Self-Regulated Strategy Development and the Writing Process: Effects on Essay Writing and Attributions.” Exceptional Children 64.3 (1998): 295–311. Web.
Lavelle and Zuercher, Ellen and Nancy. “The Writing Approaches of University Students.” n. pag. Web.
Young, Beth Rapp. “The Grammar Voyeur: Using Google to Teach English Grammar to Advanced Undergraduates.” American Speech 86.2 (2011): 247–258. EBSCOhost. Web. 13 June 2013.
“Let’s Kill the Term Paper – The Conversation – The Chronicle of Higher Education.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Web. 31 May 2013.
“In Teaching Composition, ‘Formulaic’ Is Not a 4-Letter Word.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Web. 31 May 2013.
