Stealing the Good Stuff

            I’m inspired by all I’m learning in my Rhet/Comp classes about voice and process, yet I’m frustrated by the difficulty of communicating their importance to my English 109 students.  The perception of writing as a product manufactured (often at the eleventh hour) for a grade is deeply ingrained in many college freshmen.  As a SIL, I can only be minimally effective, so long as students come to have me “look over” a finished product.  I think there needs to be more emphasis on process vs. product in Summer Bridge, so students begin their first year with an attitude more conducive toward writing improvement.

            My students tend to write multiple drafts using Write Lab, which does not address higher order concerns such as focus and development.  Often, the result is a grammatically correct paper that says nothing.  I’ve been encouraging (nagging?) students to see me earlier in the process and trying various ways to convince them of the need.  Last week’s reading may have provided an answer.  Dr. Cauthen always encourages us to look for what we can “steal” from our readings, and I stole from Donald Murray for this week’s SIL Workshop (Lindemann 115).

            Murray’s sequence of freewritings is a miniature model of the process of writing and revision.  I gave students the “Ethos Statement” prompt (stolen from Cauthen), and had them write, receive feedback, and revise three times.  This was preceded by a popcorn reading of Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts,” which also emphasizes the value of revision.  Results were mixed.  Students whose first drafts were vague created rewrites with more specific details.  Those with little on the page found the feedback useful for adding content.  One young man whose first draft was wildly off-prompt got back on track (sort of).  Overall, I believe the class understood that there was improvement with each draft, however incremental.  I hope they’ll come see me in my frozen 5^th floor lair well before the next due date.