Talking Texts: Writing Dialogue in the College Composition Classroom
Publication:
Date: Spring 2002
Summary: Is it possible for an inexperienced writer to juggle the ideas of several authors to create a coherent, analytical essay? Levine encourages students to get these writers talking to one another.&
We're five weeks into the semester, and things are heating up. I just handed out the assignment sheet for the third essay. The first assignment was
something of a slow lob, a personal narrative piece, which proved to be well
within the comfort zone for the entire class. The second assignment was more
challenging: a textual analysis of an essay by Richard Rodriguez drawing on the
ideas of David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky in their introduction to the
Ways of Reading. This assignment required that I do some scaffolding,
leading students through a series of steps in a way not required by the first
assignment. And now, with the third assignment before my students, I face
expressions ranging from blank stares to baleful grimaces that tell me that,
this time, I may have gone too far.
"Any questions?" I ask. I wait. No one says a thing. A couple of heads are
now down, belonging to students who are, presumably, rereading the assignment
sheet. Here is what it says:
For your third assignment, frame a discussion of Paul Auster's essay "Portrait
of an Invisible Man" and John Edgar Wideman's "Our Time" using the terms
and ideas of Adrienne Rich as they appear in her essay "When We Dead Awaken:
Writing as Re-Vision."
We have spent the better part of the last two weeks reading and discussing these
three selections from
Ways of Reading. The class discussi
everyone seemed to connect to the readings on one level or another.
One student finally speaks up. "So you want us to write about all three of the
readings? In one essay?"
"That's right." Maybe they do get it, I tell myself.
"You mean, like, compare and contrast them?" another student offers.
"Not exactly," I say. I ask the class if anybody has any ideas about how we
might deal with three different readings, other than comparing and contrasting
them. I remind them that they worked with two readings in their last assignment.
More stares, more grimaces.
I press on. "You all read Auster's, Wideman's, and Rich's essays. And we've
had some great discussions about each of them. Now I want you to bring them all
together. In a dialogue. One text `talking' to the other."
"So you're saying we can't compare them," the compare/contrast student
tries again.
"You can, but I think what I'm asking you to do is more interesting. I want
you to engage the three texts in a dialogue," I say.
A collective groan.
Time to take a new tack.
"Please get out a piece of paper. . . . I want you to imagine that you are the
moderator of a panel discussion on revision
(`re-vision'). The distinguished members of your panel include Adrienne
Rich, Paul Auster, and John Edgar Wideman. Construct an imagined dialogue among
the four `voices' (the three essayists plus you) on the topic of writing as
`re-vision.'"
I explain that I want them to format the dialogue as though it were a script.
They are to write the panelist's name, followed by a colon, followed by his or
her words. I put a model up on the blackboard.
Rich: Xxxxx xxx . . .
Auster: Xxxxx xxx . . .
Wideman: Xxxxx xxx . . .
You (Your Name): Xxxxx xxx . . .
. . . and so on . . .
I give them approximately thirty minutes in class to work on their dialogues. To
my surprise, the entire class gets busy writing, and it is not until I tell them
that time is up that they stop. We spend the remaining class time sharing in
pairs and then it's time for them to go home and develop rough drafts of their
essays based on at least some of the ideas that came out of their in-class
dialogue writing. The rough draft is due in one week, and they are to hand in
their dialogues, along with their drafts.
The next week I'm impressed by the dialogues that I receive. Here is an
excerpt from one student, Parker:
Auster: For me, when writing of my father, I found it very difficult to look
back on past events with new eyes. I had a very sure idea of who my father was.
But, ironically, it was that resistance to look back that finally led me to
re-vision my relationship with my father.
Rich: I want to follow up on what Paul said by showing that re-vision is
inherent in writing and life.
Parker: I see what you're saying. Is it synonymous with the idea of "the key
to the future is the past," or something like that?
Wideman: I think that's the basic idea.
I'm pleased with this dialogue for two reasons: the student is allowing the
three texts to interact with one another, and he is weaving his own commentary
into the exchange of ideas. He also uses Rich's text to build on one of Auster's
Another student, Peter, discovers dissonance between two texts in the following
Rich: I was very impressed when I read John's essay "Our Time." In my
essay "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision," I state that "until we
can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves"
(604). John recognizes his prejudice towards his brother, he casts it aside, and
ends up discovering a new side to his brother. However, I feel Paul has a
problem in this area. I believe that Paul is unable to recognize and therefore
dispose of his previous conceptions of his father. Due to this, his essay is not
a revision in which he realized something new but, instead, he simply reaffirms
his outlook of his father.
Peter: Well, Paul, I can imagine that you would like to respond to Adrienne.
Auster: Indeed. I avidly disagree with Adrienne. I agree that one must enter a
revision process with an open mind. However, it is ludicrous to say that in
order for one to properly revise something they must discover something new. I
revisited my father's pa I just did not happen to have my
point of view changed by this revision.
Although his speeches go on a little too long, Peter's dialogue demonstrates
his ability to use Rich's text to comment on Wideman's and Auster's texts.
Getting students to construct dialogue is one thing. But how does this dialogue
exercise transfer when the students write their essays? Before going on, I
should explain how and why I came to use this approach in my writing classroom.
My background is in dramatic writing and, as a playwright, I felt less than
qualified when I first began teaching English composition. But when I graduated
from San Francisco State University five years ago with a master of fine arts
degree in creative writing, no one came banging on my door looking for college
playwriting instructors. Fortunately, while at San Francisco State, in addition
to my creative writing degree, I had completed a twelve-unit certificate program
in teaching college composition.
When I began teaching my first freshman composition class at Rutgers University,
I had already compartmentalized my graduate studies into two categories: my
playwriting toolbox and my composition toolbox. I told myself that my
composition skills would pay the bills so that I could pursue my playwriting
ambitions in my spare time. In other words, teaching composition would be my day
job. If someone had told me then that my work as a dramatist would be invaluable
to my composition teaching repertoire, I would not have believed her. As it
turns out, someone&the director of the Rutgers Writing Program&did tell me
just that. He assured me that playwriting is an ideal background for teaching
expository writing. The two genres are complementary in their use of multiple
perspectives. I appreciated his words of encouragement. But, I didn't believe
a word he said.
Fast forward five years. Plays are a staple of all the classes I teach, from
developmental writing to freshman composition to advanced critical thinking
courses. I have used works by David Mamet, Anna Deavere Smith, David Henry
Hwang, John Guare, Athol Fugard, and others. In the process of analyzing play
scripts, I talk with my students about the function of dialogue in a play. And I
also explain that when I write plays, I often begin with dialogue as a means of
getting started. Dialogue, for me, is a great brainstorming tool. Even if I did
not use plays as texts in the classroom, I would draw upon my knowledge as a
playwright in helping my students to interact with reading selections as a means
of complicating their arguments.
Back to Rich, Auster, and Wideman. Here is how another student, Alicia, develops
an essay from her dialogue. Her draft begins:
What exactly does the word revision mean to a writer? This is the question
Adrienne Rich tries to answer in her essay "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as
Re-Vision." If the word revision were broken down into two parts, it would
look like re-vision. Vision means "to see something," and the prefix re-
means "again" or "back." The word re-vision means "to see something
again." Rich takes it a step further, saying it is important to see it with
new eyes, and to look at it differently than before. . . . When studying the
works of Paul Auster and John Edgar Wideman, one can see how they use many of
the same principles of revision to help them in their writing process. Auster is
making an attempt to describe the man his father was, but uses many of these
steps of re-vision while making his discoveries. Wideman uses many of the ideas
of re-vision while giving a narrative of how his brother ended up in prison.
Alicia goes on to discuss Auster and Wideman in greater detail, using Rich's
ideas about re-vision as her guide.
Nancy asserts in her introductory paragraph that "Paul Auster and John Edgar
Wideman are using their writings to act out Rich's definition of re-vision to
persuade readers to believe that their writings are based on actual facts
instead of a make-believe fairy tale." This concept of using revision to
separate fact from fiction presented itself to Nancy in her dialogue exercise.
Since Auster and Wideman both write fiction in addition to nonfiction, and both
allude to their fiction-writing selves in their essays, Nancy zooms in on this
duality as she applies Rich's concept of re-vision to Auster and Wideman.
However they feel about their final essays, most students enjoy the dialogue
prewriting exercise. When asked to reflect on the entire process of putting
together the third assignment, Sohrab responds: "[The] dialogue initially
helped get some ideas out, but those ideas proved to be just the tip of the
iceberg." Peter writes, "The prewriting assignment was like an improvised
brainstorming for me. The majority of my main ideas streamed from the exercise."
And Alicia explains that the dialogue "forced me to look at what all of these
people think and how `re-vision' can be applied to their writing."
Admittedly, not all students make the leap from writing dialogue to framing two
seemingly disparate texts using a third, equally dissimilar text. But even if
their final drafts of this assignment are not perfect, these first-year college
composition students have begun to enter the larger conversation of academic
discourse. And it all begins with dialogue.
References
Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky. 1999.
Ways of Reading. 5th ed. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin's Press.
About the Author
John Levine is a lecturer in the College Writing Program at the University of
California, Berkeley, and a teacher-consultant with the Bay Area Writing
Project, California.
This article is featured in the NWP booklet .
Related Resource Topics
2016 National Writing ProjectCollege Students: Use Essay Writing Services Strategically, Wisely
It's the end of the semester, and the pressure is on to study for exams and complete final papers. A well written research paper or essay can mean the difference between an A grade or failure. Feeling overwhelmed, you may be tempted to hire a good essay writing service to help you cross the finish line. These services are useful in a pinch, but consider this: no matter how good the service, nothing beats developing strong writing skills for yourself and your future career. In , "Why Johnnie can't write, and why employers are mad," experts say the one critical skill that new Gen X and Gen Y grads lack is the ability to write well and at a professional level.
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An assistant professor friend of mine at a leading university in Michigan loves teaching but absolutely hates grading student papers. Waiting until the last minute to write their papers, they submit inferior work or end up asking for an extension. He says too many students lack the basic writing skills needed to perform at the college level, much less in the corporate world, and this makes his job difficult.
Companies are spending
on remedial writing training for employees. Interestingly, writing is often perceived as a "soft" communications skill and not as important as math, for example. However, based on my many years as a corporate writer and editor, I know this to be absolutely untrue. Writing is so fundamental to the bottom line and so ubiquitous within the corporate culture that it's easy to miss its importance. Poor writers may be given a pass through the university years, only to suffer once real life as an employee or entrepreneur begins.
Outsourcing
To compensate for bad time management, poor writing skills, or both, some students are outsourcing their papers to essay writing services. As a writer, I have mixed feelings about this approach. There's no shortcut to developing strong writing skills, and your class assignments are designed to not only grow your knowledge base but improve your writing. Hiring essay writing services to meet class requirements is a short-term fix for skill deficits in writing and time management. After graduation, as you're seeking employment and a big salary to pay back your student loans, you may be given a writing test during an interview. Once on the job, you may have to write a white paper, an annual report, or web copy. Will you be able to write with precision, clarity, thoughtfulness, persuasiveness, and organization? Will you be able to translate technical topics or complex research for lay readers? Will you be able to write with confidence?
On the other hand, I remember what it was like to have papers due in a few hours and not enough time to do them all. Full disclosure, I've been a sucker for more than one student's plea for help. To prevent nervous breakdowns, I've ghostwritten student papers on a variety of topics. Was this cheating? Undoubtedly some will see it that way. Companies outsource writing, editing, and proofreading services all the time and it is not considered cheating, but your school will not feel so kindly toward the practice.
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To repeat, there is no substitute for learning how to write well, but maybe we can call a truce between academe and essay writing services. I offer the following new ways to think about how these services could actually help students develop their writing and time management skills.
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Next semester, set a goal to manage your time more wisely. Don't wait until the last minute to write. Quality writing really means rewriting, editing, and proofing, and that takes time. I promise you, when you turn in quality papers and receive the A grade you deserve, your writing confidence and self-esteem will soar, and you'll enjoy a competitive edge over other new grads who failed to develop this important skill.
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