Collaborate + Imitate: Two Ideas for Possibilities in Teaching Writing

{Collaborate}
Two Writing 100 classes each write their first paragraphs, say, on how they got an important/prominent/significant scar (an actual assignment in Andrea Graham's classes). They discuss the assignment, generate some ideas (the one on my leg from the bike wreck, or the one over my left eye from saving that stray dog in the alley?), and bang out a draft.

Then, they trade. Class A gets Class B's paragraphs, while Class B sends their paragraphs to Class A. Both classes dissect from first sentence to last. Both groups ask what is there and what is not there, what is done well and what questions still hang in the blank white space between the black ink marks. Class A's writers get to mentally pick apart, to explore, to venture questions, without the worry of knowing their paragraph is somewhere in the room, lurking incomplete and imperfect. Class B's writers learn how to dissect--really, is there a more perfect verb for this action?--what others have put on a page but are not present to elaborate on or defend: what is on the page is all they have as readers, and thus they (hopefully) see that is all they give as writers, so they should take care to put on the page what they want others to pick off the page. Both classes learn to ask specific questions, to look for the pieces that should be there, to encourage and applaud what is truly good with better phrases than "That's good!"

The student-dissectors return the paragraphs and then revise. So much of writing is learned in revision. Most, I would venture. Everything before is just experiment and hope.

In doing this write-and-switch between classes, the process of looking closely at incomplete and imperfect work is taught, is focused on and addressed thoroughly. Student writers need that from their experienced mentor-writers and -scholars.

{Imitate}
People learn by observing and repeating. Only the truly brave or brash or innovative enjoy striking out on their own. Most of us are intimidated or simply expect the coming failure.

So: Controlled Imitation. I often wonder about the use of non-textbook texts in Writing classes (because those books and magazines and Internet columns are written by people who want to write for some specific purpose), and that wondering has honed in on the idea of letting a class loose with a teacher-chosen set of magazines, books, and even Internet columns, asking them to read and make note of articles that catch their attention (and their attention is caught), and then asking them to choose one to imitate.

They can observe and learn from a specific text. They can get inside it, figure out why it works, and then try to build the same type of rhetorical machine. I think I would start by having them type parts of, or maybe even the entire text*. That way, they could feel what writing these kind of polished sentences and specific details is like. Then, we could look at the ideas contained in that piece and the students could learn to think along the lines that writers who want to write (and get paid to write) use to sniff out stories, construct arguments, and string readers along through their entire piece. In addition to ideas (but after after after), we could get to technical stuff: organization, paragraph development, sentences, intro+conclusion. Then, they would be off to write a similar piece from their own slant or about their own subject.

It's a launching pad, really. Also an apprenticeship in a way.

I think there is space for this in the learning process.

*Watch Finding Forrester.