Essay Why I Should Not Talk In Class

(By “text” we mean a literary work, artwork, event, engineering problem -- any document or piece of art, nature or science subject to careful scrutiny and analysis.) After looking closely at that first moment and figuring out what she thinks is going on there, and why it matters -- that is, after analyzing the phenomenon -- the student may apply what she’s learned to a second moment and ask a new question.Eventually, she extrapolates, showing how what she’s learned adds up to a new way to look at a character or issue in the text as a whole.If we do, they’ll go back to the old game of trying to figure out “what the professor wants.” If we want students to really learn through writing, what we actually want, of course, is nothing more (and nothing less) than student inquiry and convincing, evidence-based thinking and writing.

(By “text” we mean a literary work, artwork, event, engineering problem -- any document or piece of art, nature or science subject to careful scrutiny and analysis.) After looking closely at that first moment and figuring out what she thinks is going on there, and why it matters -- that is, after analyzing the phenomenon -- the student may apply what she’s learned to a second moment and ask a new question.Eventually, she extrapolates, showing how what she’s learned adds up to a new way to look at a character or issue in the text as a whole.If we do, they’ll go back to the old game of trying to figure out “what the professor wants.” If we want students to really learn through writing, what we actually want, of course, is nothing more (and nothing less) than student inquiry and convincing, evidence-based thinking and writing.

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Close reading is what lets students see how to find evidence from the text rather than from common sense or general knowledge.

The process work we’re advocating here is multistaged, iterative, messy work.

She may even go a step farther, thinking about ways in which the new idea tells her something about the world into and out of which the text is created.

In any case, the essay ends somewhere different from where it began.

That process is inquiry based and student directed -- it requires a student to look for a tension in the text, something strange or interesting that she doesn’t yet comprehend, and to ask questions about it.

That means she must begin by admitting, “I don’t understand” -- a daunting and difficult prospect.To get there, we tell our students, they’ll need a meaningful, effective, multistep writing .We ask students to begin by exploring something specific in the text, rather than a big idea or generalization.Others advocated replacing the essay with more “real-world” forms that would force students to think in fresh ways.Although all of those arguments have merit, our own thinking on the subject is both more old-fashioned and more radical.The student may move from the text to questions to freewriting or brainstorming to drafting, then go back to the text and so on, deepening her analysis by asking questions.She may use a range of visually rich, active-learning methods to generate ideas, get her thoughts in order and fill gaps.She’ll come to her overall claim, introduction and conclusion from her discoveries -- not the other way around.Risks and Challenges Giving students the reading, writing and thinking skills required for a process like this is, to put it mildly, challenging -- for students and instructors alike.As instructors, we also have to give up some control over our assignments.For a truly student-centered process to work, we can’t ask leading questions or make decisions for our students.