For some, reading is a poor substitute for the enjoyment that one gets from watching a movie or listening to music. The most likely cause for this opinion is the inability to imagine the scenes that have been written out. My imagination has always been rampant and reading has supplied me with more entertainment than both television and music combined.
Elementary and middle school teachers love to prescribe the class reading time, partly for the exercise in reading and partly to get students out of their hair. Out of the 27 boys in my class, only a few were ever excited about class reading time. Most welcomed the break from learning but could only keep themselves entertained for a short time. The 11 girls in my class were more open to the idea of independent reading, but several merely used the time to spread the latest gossip. I lived for these times both because it offered me a break from the classroom clamor and because I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to covertly read beneath my desk anymore and risk public embarrassment.
Even the small summarization essays of lectures that were assigned were a reprieve from the memorization of history and science classes. Though I hated sharing what I had written, I was creative enough and I read enough that these essays were a chance for me to have fun in class. Another type of assignment, short stories were an exciting way to practice new skills in grammar and composition that we had learned in English class but that allowed everyone to use the creative abilities that were so often undervalued in the age of STEM classes. The assignments valued structure and correctness over creativity, but the lessons set the stepping stone for further learning. It was only once I got to high school that I began to dislike how critical research papers and analysis papers limited my creativity. Teachers had certain formats that they expected critical research papers to be in and if we strayed, points were taken off. Also, quotes were the substance of our analysis and though we could analyze them uniquely, further content was based on those snippets.
Each quarter, teachers slowly helped us through the process of reading and analyzing a book, finding a topic, finding quotes, and then piecing together a well-crafted and elegant argument. That totals eight critical research papers (CRPs) for my high school career and in truth, I admit I only enjoyed writing one of them, a research paper on the differences between psychopathy and sociopathy and the origins and misconceptions of the two. I was required to use quotes, but I chose the topic and could take the purpose of the paper in whatever direction I chose. I love writing and reading, but I do not enjoy either of the two when I am instructed to do so. For me, writing is a personal activity that should be done when the motivation to write hits me and I need to find a pen and paper as soon as possible to get all my thoughts out.
The papers were often based on books that we had read, books in which it was difficult to appreciate the story when we were forced to analyze the text so closely. Most my classmates mechanically went through the motions of analyzing texts and then piecing together various sentences to form a coherent thought. It was a rare case that someone enjoyed writing the first, second, or final drafts. It was only once we were allowed to write about a subject of our choosing that the future English majors and minors became excited about the assignment.
Crowley defines the other side of the argument, the troubles that teachers have in teaching a composition class:
Anyone who has taught the first-year composition course, or who has even cursorily read its professional literature, knows that its central challenge is to provide students with occasions and contexts for writing that are sufficiently specific and interesting to engage them with the process. But even the most inventive assignments cannot entirely disguise the fact that in the universally required composition class, the primary motivation for composing is to supply teachers with opportunities to measure student performance. (8)
Writing is a very personal activity. When a person is asked to write for a grade in a class, that diminishes the personal aspect.
There are, of course, other reasons for writing that are less personal. Writing evaluations, for example, or summaries for business purposes. However, those pieces are not graded and are not a measure of your strength as a student or, in this case, as an employee. As a student, writing is about displaying your thoughts in a way that you believe the teacher appreciates. Rhetoric is the main factor in this form of writing: students are making an argument, or a point, that the teacher will most strongly respond to. The audience is the most important factor of collegiate writing, which is why it is so much more difficult to display your own personal style in assigned writings.
Aristotle declares that the most important aspect of rhetorical writing is logic, yet he also acknowledges the importance of an emotional appeal. “Logical appeals are regarded as superior to the other two… At the same time, [Aristotle] argues that emotional appeals are needed in the effective speech, though he and his successors lament the fact that rational appeals alone are not enough” (Bizzell and Herzberg 4). Though he is disgruntled by the fact that it is so difficult to make an effective argument without an emotional appeal, he affirms that emotions play a large part in creating a strong case. This explains why it is so difficult to write a compelling paper when the writer is not invested in the subject; even the best of writers cannot conjure up emotions about a subject that they truly do not care about.
Crowley delineates the difference between collegiate and academic writing: “This makes for a highly artificial writing situation that may explain, at least in part, why such instruction never seems to stick. The writing done in required writing classes is an imitation, or better, a simulacrum, of the motivated writing that gets done elsewhere in the academy and in the culture at large (8)”. Collegiate writing forces students to write about subjects that do not interest them for the sole purpose of receiving a grade. Collegiate writing is also a good practice for teachers to measure composition progress and for the student to practice and improve their writing skills. However, the purpose that most students are focused on is the grading. Academic writing, in contrast, allows professionals in their field to write about something that they if not love, then at least are interested in.
I do not agree that freshman year composition courses should be ended altogether; I felt that my course on critical thinking and writing was extremely beneficial to my upper-level writing. Critical thinking is an essential aspect of good writing and so that class, while still specific, was invaluable for all classes that I have taken since that have required me to use either of those skills. A class that is completely based on writing, however, should be amended to include other topics that directly or indirectly relate to the writing process so that students can choose courses that most interest them. For example, my high school had English classes that intertwined the theology in the Narnia books with general writing practices. Interdisciplinary classes are common in colleges; if the core classes of majors were interdisciplinary, students would be able to choose one that they most strongly responded to and hopefully could write with greater ease. If given the chance to write about a subject in which they have a genuine interest or at least a stronger interest than general composition courses, the resulting essays would be much more interesting for both the writer and the reader.
Works Cited
Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg, ed. The Rhetorical Tradition. 2nd ed. Boston, NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1990. Print.
Crowley, Sharon. “Composition in the University.” Composition in the University. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998. Print.