Write What You Know

This week’s reading was extremely helpful in not only creating my own rubric but in also summarize the semester’s readings thus far. While most of this chapter is about creating rubrics that try to fairly asses a student’s grasp of the concepts, I was fascinated with some of the early features of this chapter. I had a major light bulb moment and am so elated to share it with you all. A wise mentor-teacher told my high school freshman writing class that her only rule for the year was to write what we know. At first we all nervously laughed because we thought the whole point of a classroom was to teach us stuff we did not know and our grades would showcase the extent of our hard work and discipline in conquering the material. However, I did not realize the depth of her wisdom till this weekend. In this blog, I will try and “show” you my point.

The whole point of write what you know is not solely fixed in the content of the material but rather the understanding and recognition of the audience. If I am going to write a book, I am first going to decide the genre. Most people would argue that I would then be putting the primary focus of my book on the content rather than the audience. However, I argue that the board and generalized genre of my book allows me to focus on my readers and thus, will allow me to actually write a book that a member of the particular community would seek to read. For example, if I would write a medical crime book, I would utilize medical jargon because my audience is medical personnel. The “know” part is about understanding the shared and accepted community jargon. Throughout his book, Williams tries to stress the importance of audience but what is also equally vital is that of the shared understanding between the writer and readers. This common or shared understanding will allow the writer to either enhance his or her point (through the use of vivid descriptions which will allow the reader to conjure up an image that will once again allow the reader to mutually share in the visions of the writer [be on the same page]) or to aid the writer in not overdoing it (by boring and or belittling my audience) on an already mutually shared point. For example, I will offer up textual evidence to support my expanded ideas while at other times, I simply refrain from using certain comments or statements to further develop a point since I am aware of my audience and our common vocabulary. In chapter two, Williams writes that
“Many English teachers try to set aside this paradox [to write an English paper] by asking students to write about world affairs or local issues rather than works of literature, but these well-intentioned efforts merely encourage journalistic prose and do not address the underlying issue, which is that most writing is produced for a particular audience, not a general one, and therefore must follow conventions specific to that audience” (68).

At another point in chapter two, Williams reiterates this point. He states
“that if the audience of a paper ‘belongs to an identifiable group, . . . [one] will be writing for insiders.’ But if the audience ‘does not belong to such a group, . . . [one] will be writing for outsiders.’ Writing produced for insiders is , by its very nature, exclusive, whereas writing produced for outsiders is inclusive. . . . Articles in professional journals use language, concepts, interpretations, and references that only insiders fully understand…” (73)

Thus, one can see that Williams believes that we write for our audience and the way we write depends on whether or not we know our audience.

Williams continues to write that most of the classroom writing is centered on being broad “because the teachers in these classes lack sufficient content-area knowledge to help students produce texts for insiders” (73). This quote led me to this week’s assigned chapter. This chapter is focused on “assessing and evaluating writing” (297). Yet, Williams is not solely focus on outlining his readers (most are teachers or soon to be educators) the best or easiest way to quickly read and grade numerous students’ papers. He is arguing that teachers have for too long been dependent on time honored and outdated methods and thus, we should not be surprised that our students have come to dislike writing. The problem is that students do not hate writing. They despise grammar and have not yet had an authentic writing experience. We have talked about in class how grammar, usage and mechanics are areas of study that teachers need to learn in order to aid (after appraising a students’ writing samples) their students but students need to actually write. We have discussed how students’ writing does not improve through the extensive study of grammar and that this is the problem that Elbow seeks to fix. Williams writes that “In the typical language arts class, ‘writing instruction’ focuses almost exclusively on surface features such as punctuation, subject-verb agreement, the three types of sentences… and the parts of speech…” (302).A writing class needs to be writing otherwise, the grammar focus education will stunt the writing ability of students. Williams states that “These features are taught through exercises that provide students with lists of error-filled sentences that they must correct and with fill-in-the blank worksheets asking them to identify terms… as though such knowledge somehow is related to effective writing” (302). Thus, students are assigned papers in response to books so that the teacher can once again decide (assess) the student’s grasp of the information. After all don’t most schools have a summer reading list in which the students must read a book and then write a paper? These papers are graded in the first few weeks of school and are used to not only test the student understands of the book, like Watership Down, but also to evaluate the student’s knowledge of grammar. After grading the papers, the teacher will decide (evaluate) whether or not this class needs to redo drills on prepositions, commas, etc. According to Williams, “it is silly to suggest that the study of the play is somehow related to learning how to write a piece of literary analysis. Likewise, it is incorrect to suggest that students can transfer what they learned from the punctuation exercises to their own writing” (302).

Lastly these exercises do not allow students to better understand the vital role of audience and audience accepted language into the creation of a paper, article or book. Williams writes that “freshmen enter college having received nothing but A’s on all their high school essays… these students discover that they cannot earn anything higher than a C in freshman composition. The skills that served them well in high school will not enable them to excel at university” (300). The students are unable to recognize their new audience member and shared vocabulary because they have never been trained to write first for the audience and then edit. In other words, our students are able to do the telling part of writing but they cannot do the showing part. Elbow informed us last week that telling is “talking about the actual writings…” and that students can describe a piece by stating “ first this happened, then this happened, then this happened, and so on” (Elbow 89, 87). Showing on the other hand is “like installing a window in the top of your head and then taking a bow so the writer can see for himself. There’s no need to try to remember what was happening as you read… Showing conveys more information but in a more mixed and ambiguous form” (Elbow 92). Students are use to telling because they have done it for years in order to receive grades but the showing part is the real sticky issue. A writer needs to remember his or her audience otherwise the paper, article or book will never be well received. A quick way to understand the difference between telling and showing can be found in the musical “My Fair Lady”. The one song, “Show Me” really highlights Elbow’s outline of both tell and show. Here is a website to listen to the song : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8zyF0ZOy3k&p=E15427EA30609A20&playnext=1&index=11

Looking forward to Thursday’s discussion. This chapter really got me “excited about an idea” and I just had to share it with you all (299).