Reach Teach!

Again, I found a controversy between readings. In Williams’ book Preparing to Teach Writing, he claims that every good writing assignment should:

• Be part of a sequence designed to develop specific discourse skills.
• Tell students exactly what they are expected to do. The mode of the response should be clear.
• Tell students exactly how they are expected to write the assignment….
• Tell students something about the purpose and the audience for the paper…..
• Tell students what constitutes success, including some statement regarding the criteria the teacher will use to assess the quality of response. (Williams, 288-289)

Williams believes in concrete assignments that give students clear instruction about the writing process and what is expected in their papers. He believes students are not fully capable of exploring without direction, “When assignments ask students to ‘discuss,’ ‘examine,’ or ‘explore,’ they may express a teacher’s understanding of what is expected, but this understanding is based on years of education and experience. Students seldom know what they are supposed to do when asked to ‘discuss’� (Williams, 288).

Tom Romano, in his book Blending Genre, Altering Style, suggests bringing a different writing style into the classroom: multigenre papers. This style contradicts Williams’ ‘specified assignments’ by giving students a chance to explore their writing styles while learning about themselves and the world around them. Students can learn about topics through the use of this exploratory form which Romano provides working examples of. Romano suggests giving students examples of multigenre papers before assigning them, but also encourages students to create their own example of an exploratory paper on a learning topic.

While I believe Williams’ idea of forming assignments with exact instruction and process are ideal for grading purposes, I believe it is restrictive for students developing their mode of expression. To gain a full learning experience through writing should not be restrictive, thus I strongly appreciate Romano’s introduction of multigenre papers in the classroom.

I also find it interesting that Williams takes no consideration of students who need abstract assignments to learn. Romano, however, does consider the fact that some students work better with expository writing and states that “we should give such students opportunities to refine and further develop their narrative thinking skills� (Romano, 56). Williams does not consider the possibility that while some students may indeed have a hard time knowing what to do when asked to ‘discuss’, others may know exactly what to do, and if given proper examples and direction more students may also benefit from ‘exploring’ assignments.

The link below will bring you to a website that provides a brief overview of multigenre writing, lesson plan ideas, links to other resources, and even an example grading rubric for a multigenre paper.

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=279

As a personal aside, I did not know much about multigenre writing before reading Romano’s book, and I am so inspired by it! I want to write my own and definitely bring it into the classroom!