\u2018I asked my teacher how long the essay needed to be and he said, \u201chow long is a piece of string?\u201d\u2018<\/p><\/li>
\u2018Wait! You can start a sentence with \u2018but\u2019?\u2019<\/p><\/li>
\u2018What is the process for answering an essay question?\u2019<\/p><\/li><\/ul>
These students attend good schools. They are above-average smart and capable. Yet somehow, despite towers of assignments and torrents of instruction, they lack basic writing skills and confidence.<\/p>
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Reflecting on my own experience and writing practice, this isn\u2019t a huge surprise. My only memories of writing instruction are my seventh-grade teacher\u2019s spiel on five-paragraph essays and, years later, the guidance of Penn\u2019s luminous creative non-fiction professor, Paul Hendrickson.<\/p>
Like many students, I spent most of my education writing without a clue.<\/p><\/div>
In the end, I learned to write in the newsroom, not the classroom. Not because the student editors of the Daily Pennsylvanian<\/em> were literary geniuses (though some grew into such) but because they worshipped at the altar of structure.<\/p>
Head.<\/p><\/li>
Subhead.<\/p><\/li>
Lede.<\/p><\/li>
Byline.<\/p><\/li>
Pyramid.<\/p><\/li><\/ul>
The discipline of x-point headers and y-column inches taught me that writing is 95% organization.<\/p>
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However brilliant or clever or downright earth-shattering ones ideas, they are meaningless until organized and presented in a way that makes sense to a reader.<\/p>
Put another way: to write well, one needs an audience, a reason to address them and strategy for delivering the message.<\/p>
Based on my students\u2019 comments, what they are getting, instead of practical, actionable teaching, is either prescriptive nonsense (\u2018don\u2019t start a sentence with \u201cbut\u201d or \u201cand\u201d\u2018 \u2014 er, why not?) or no meaningful guidance at all.<\/p>
This leads to problematic assumptions, such as \u2018you\u2019re either good at writing, or you\u2019re not\u2019 or \u2018it doesn\u2019t matter if I write well because nobody is going to read it\u2019 or, worse, \u2018I\u2019ll just ask ChatGPT.\u2019<\/p>
Problematic because students who do not learn to write all too often do not learn to think.<\/p><\/div>
What students ask, day in day out, class after class, are not sophisticated technical questions about writing, but questions answerable with basic reasoning and critical thinking.<\/p>
How do I find evidence in the text?<\/p><\/li>
How do I know what a character is like?<\/p><\/li>
How can I write more about this topic?<\/p><\/li>
How do I explain this?<\/p><\/li>
How do I identify the theme?<\/p><\/li><\/ul>
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