One of the issues I’m learning about in India is that some employers feel there is a gap between the English language proficiency and higher-order thinking skills that they need in their employees and the skills of many graduates. I’ve also learned that many teachers are using literature in the classroom, but that there is often a strong focus on cultural facts and memorization. My goal with this new series of presentations is to offer teachers who use literature some techniques that will help them make their literature classes more student-centered and language oriented, so they can help to close these skill gaps.
These presentations discuss a number of concepts and practices. One useful practice is assigning writing that will encourage higher-order thinking skills. In other words, teachers can assign writing that will lead students toward the initial skills needed to produce academic writing. These assignments help students prepare for further study or for analysis, evaluation, and creative-thinking needed in many jobs.
One of the assignments I give my beginning writers is an excellent example of a first academic writing experience.
Begin with a question on which everyone has an opinion. When I do this assignment in my classes for beginning writers, I like to ask the students if they believe humanity should search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In my experience, everyone has an opinion on this, but there’s no real emotional weight to the question. The goal is simply to get some opinions, not to generate a debate. The exercise works best with a question that just has two basic answers.
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For this presentation, I recommend teaching the well-known American poem, “The Road Not Taken,” then using this writing assignment as a way to follow-up on that teaching.
Begin by asking the students to write down, in only a sentence or two, their interpretation of the poem. Next have the students move around the room asking the opinions of other students. This dramatizes the way writers research what other’s say in their fields before writing about their own ideas.
Encourage students to gather information such as how many people agree with them and how many disagree. Encourage them to find one quote from another student. The students need only respond with the sentence they already wrote down.
Remember, the exercise is not about generating debate. It’s a way of dramatizing how writers gather information from research, how they “listen” to the academic conversation before reporting on that conversation and adding to it.
Finish the exercise by guiding students into using the information they’ve gathered in the common “Many people think….” template.
For a first exercise, it may be too much to explain more complex templates or ways that templates will organize assenting or dissenting opinions. It’s enough just to show students how they can use their research in writing and how their writing incorporates the opinions of other sources.
From this initial experience, the teacher can direct students to textual sources (such as those found on the Modern American Poetry site). Encourage them to use the same methods of reporting what others say before responding to it when they begin to use written sources.
