In my teaching, I cultivate students’ attention to their own and others’ writerly choices across genres and fields. This goal emerges from the observation that students, especially those who may be new to university discourses, often face challenges with writing in ways that are valued in academic contexts. In nurturing students’ development as writers, I render visible expectations for writing that may often be implicit or unstated. Each of these principles manifests in concrete practices for modeling writing strategies, inviting spaces for student-centered discussions, and encouraging process-based writing and reflection.
While modeling writing strategies, I enhance students’ understanding of academic writing expectations. By encouraging students to identify specific writerly moves and strategies in sample essays, I empower them to understand concepts such as nuance as something more than abstract or impressionistic. For instance, I support students to conceptualize nuance as a recognition of the interpretive possibilities that arise from a passage in a text. This explicit attention to language translates into specific class exercises: in a collaborative annotation activity, students comment on the writerly moves in a close reading essay, noticing instances in which the essay writer entertains multiple possible interpretations of an image in Thylias Moss’s memoir “Wings.” By engaging students in this exercise, I encourage them to concretely recognize and describe essential yet often elusive qualities of writing. Following reflections on what each group noticed in the essay, students are equipped to parse the ambiguous significances of the words and phrases they encounter in texts. More broadly, students develop a meta-awareness of the ways writers construct interpretations in writing.
Moreover, I guide students to interpret writers’ strategies during student-centered discussions. For instance, while participating in Socratic Seminars, students synthesize three or more readings in a whole-class discussion. In this activity, members of an inner circle speak while members of an outer circle listen carefully, take notes, and observe the discussion. Then, each member of the outer circle comments on the inner circle’s discussion before the two sides switch roles. This active, dialogic process encourages students’ metacommentary on the discussion. In scaffolding the Seminars, I ask students to 1) discuss key ideas from the readings, 2) identify writers’ strategies and the effects of these choices on an audience, 3) synthesize concepts across readings, 4) draw connections with the course theme, and 5) consider the broader implications that arise from the readings. During the discussions, I take notes on a Google Doc projected onto the screen. The shared notes illuminate students’ collaborative construction of knowledge, rendering their critical thinking processes visible while enabling them to track the flow of ideas in a discussion. In their reflective journal entries, students share that the class readings and discussions complicate, even transform, their initial conceptions of a theme or topic. For instance, students often initially conceptualize literacy in relatively simple ways as an ability to read, write, and communicate. Yet while synthesizing literacy narratives including Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue,” Marjorie Agosín’s “Always Living in Spanish,” and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” students develop understandings of the ways language, literacy, and identity intersect across each piece. Meanwhile, students draw inspiration for writing about their own language and literacy development.
My commitment to furthering students’ careful attention to their writing choices extends to the process-based activities in which I engage my students. As one illustration, students comment on their peers’ rhetorical analysis essay thesis statements while participating in a peer review workshop. After reviewing model thesis statements as a class, students work in groups on shared Google Docs to annotate each other’s thesis statements with suggestions for refining qualities including 1) specificity – clearly defined or identified, 2) complexity – consisting of different yet connected parts, and 3) nuance – characterized by subtle or slight shades of meaning or expression. By annotating each other’s thesis statements, students become more critically attuned to the ways writers construct ideas by wielding delicately calibrated expressions. In a play of color and light, this process-based exercise supports students’ abilities to articulate their written arguments in specific and nuanced ways. In sharpening students’ attention to their own and other writers’ choices, I activate their awareness of elusive yet essential writing expectations including thesis and argument. Significantly, exercises such as these render writing criteria more accessible and transparent to students.
In my writing classes, I incorporate reflection as a central component of the writing process: by asking students to compose regular journal entries as well as reflective cover letters and annotations accompanying their final drafts, I enhance students’ metacognitive awareness of their own writing choices and processes. In daily free writing exercises, I invite students to brainstorm ideas for their essays and identify writers’ choices, strategies, and techniques from the readings that can inspire their own writing. Prior to a peer review workshop, I ask students to identify in their journals two-three issues that they would like to address in their in-progress drafts, and following the workshop, I prompt them to 1) reflect on insights they learned from their peers, 2) develop a revision plan for their final drafts, and 3) note any questions they have about their writing processes. By interweaving reflection into peer review workshops, I foreground students’ agency in relation to their progress and goals in writing. Beyond encouraging students’ reflection on a single lesson, I integrate reflective writing throughout the semester: for example, I ask students to compose cumulative reflection letters that articulate the central concepts they learned in the class. In their letters, students express the importance of attending closely to writers’ strategies and listening carefully to peers’ perspectives during class discussions. On the last day of the term, students take turns sharing lessons, insights, or pieces of advice they would offer a future student in the class. Students relate the ways peer review enables them to support others’ progress while also sharpening their critical attention to their own writing. By immersing students in reflective writing, I nurture students to recognize their growth as writers — to become aware of their own developing awareness of writing.
Undergirding each of these practices is my dedication to centering students’ diverse language backgrounds. On the first day of the term, I share a personal introductory letter relating my own experiences as a writer, learner, and teacher, and invite students to write letters in return that 1) describe their background as a reader and writer, 2) reflect upon their Directed Self-Placement essays and identify their strengths and areas for improvement in writing, and 3) set at least three goals that they intend to reach by taking the class, specifying how I can help them to achieve their goals. Reading the letters and meeting with students one-on-one throughout the semester serves not only as a way for me to come to know my students as individuals, but also to become familiar with their academic, extracurricular, and personal discourses. I also provide opportunities for students to share their interests and experiences with each other as we work together to create an inclusive and generative classroom community. For instance, in one activity, students draw maps illustrating the discourse communities to which they belong, then share their maps in small groups. As one student wrote in an evaluation, “I love the way this class was taught. Everyone grew together as writers.” Echoing my aim to support students’ development as writers, this statement offers a solid foundation upon which to build.
Ruth Li 