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A New Writing Classroom
Listening, Motivation, and Habits of Mind
By Patrick Sullivan University Press of Colorado
Copyright © 2014 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87421-944-9
CHAPTER 1
THE SIMPLISTIC ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY
Argumentative Essays
Argument, of course, has long enjoyed a central place in our educational curriculum and in our rhetorical tradition. Founded on major works like Aristotle's Rhetoric and Cicero's Orator, our argumentative rhetorical tradition has helped shape the way we think and write now in the west for thousands of years. Argument has also played an important part in our democratic tradition, providing Americans with a means to assess truth and determine value in our grand "marketplace of ideas."
There are many different kinds of argument, however, and not all of them help us to assess truth and value in mature and useful ways, as we will see. What I propose that we examine together in this chapter is a particularly pernicious and detrimental strain of argument — the simplistic argumentative essay, ubiquitous and often highly valued in high school and first year composition classrooms.
The argumentative essay is currently at the very core of our curriculum, 6 — 13, and it has become the standard model for "writing" as it is taught in high school and first-year composition (FYC). We see it prominently positioned now at key threshold points across the academic environment (Lunsford and Lunsford 2008; see also Melzer 2009). The SAT Writing Test and the AP English Tests, for example, routinely require argumentative essays. Argumentative writing is also featured prominently in the Common Core Standards, beginning in the 6th grade:
Grade 6: "Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence."
Grades 11 — 12: "Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence." (45)
Students demonstrate writing proficiency now almost exclusively by writing arguments.
Furthermore, and in what I believe we should regard as related news, the National Commission on Writing has concluded in their report, The Neglected "R," that 12th-grade students currently produce writing that is "relatively immature and unsophisticated" (National Commission 2003, 17). There is significant evidence to suggest this is, indeed, the case, and I would like to suggest here that this problem is directly related to simplistic argumentative writing.
High school students producing "immature and unsophisticated" writing is a significant problem for our profession, of course, especially as it relates to our ongoing work related to articulation and alignment. We have seen a number of recent high-profile reports addressing this issue, including Department of Education's A Test of Leadership (United States Department of Education 2006); the American Association of Colleges and Universities' (2007) College Learning for the New Global Century;Achieve, Inc.'s (2007b, 2013) Closing the Expectations Gap; and Stanford University's Bridge Project report, (Venezia, Kirst, and Antonio 2003) Betraying the College Dream: How Disconnected K — 12 and Postsecondary Education Systems Undermine Student Aspirations. Articulation, alignment, and college readiness continue to be important concerns for our profession and probably will continue to be for many years to come.
Of particular importance for our purposes here is AACU's report, College Learning for the New Global Century (Association of American Colleges and Universities 2007). The authors of this report urge teachers across disciplines and institutional boundaries to focus more rigorously on developing skills in "inquiry and analysis" (3) and assessing "students' ability to apply learning to complex problems" (26). The writers of this report echo Robert Kegan's claim in his book, In Over Our Heads, about the cognitive challenges adults face in modern life, calling for a curriculum that invites students to engage "challenging questions": "In a world of daunting complexity, all students need practice in integrating and applying their learning to challenging questions and real-world problems" (Kegan 1994, 13). The writers of this report also call on educators to become more "intentional" about the kinds of learning students need:
The council further calls on educators to help students become "intentional learners" who focus, across ascending levels of study and diverse academic programs, on achieving the essential learning outcomes. But to help students do this, educational communities will also have to become far more intentional themselves — both about the kinds of learning students need, and about effective educational practices that help students learn to integrate and apply their learning. (4)
What might such an "intentional" pedagogy look like? What kind of theory would inform its basic principles and practices? What kind of learning would students engage in? What kind of writing would they do in a composition class? And what does current scholarship and research tell us about these important questions?
In many places across the curricular landscape, rhetoric and the strategies of classical argumentation have been incorporated into the practice of teaching writing. The "WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition," for example, positions rhetorical knowledge at the center of first-year composition instruction:
Rhetorical Knowledge
By the end of first year composition, students should
• Focus on a purpose
• Respond to the needs of different audiences
• Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations
• Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation
• Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality
• Understand how genres shape reading and writing
• Write in several genres
Faculty in all programs and departments can build on this preparation by helping students learn
• The main features of writing in their fields
• The main uses of writing in their fields
• The expectations of readers in their fields (Council of Writing Program Administrators 2000)
Furthermore, many high schools now offer sophisticated instruction in rhetoric and argumentation in advanced-level English courses and in AP classes. Many first-year composition programs use rhetoric and classical argumentation as well. There is good work obviously being done here in high schools and in first-year composition programs in college.
A Bridge to Nowhere
Unfortunately, however, we should probably not be surprised to learn that more simplistic types of argumentative writing are also being taught, especially at lower levels of curriculum in high schools and in basic writing classes in college. Workload issues come into play here (Mosley 2006), along with state-mandated testing programs that typically drive curriculum as well as teaching and learning (Koretz 2008; Perlstein 2007; Ravitch 2010; Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder 2008; Sacks 1999). This type of simplified "argument," often using the five-paragraph theme format (Hillocks 2010; Seo 2007; Smith 2006; Tremmel 2011), is often the default writing assignment in high school and basic writing English classes. It is particularly common in circumstances where high stakes testing drives curriculum. The rationale for this approach is well known and seems, at least at first glance, commonsensical. This type of writing gives students a "place to begin." It is typically theorized and employed as a kind of "bridge" assignment — a kind of writing activity that is "challenging enough," until a student develops the skill to do something more sophisticated. But there are significant problems with this approach, as Ed White notes:
Powerful formulas help students get going and often help them to pass tests — but at the cost of creativity or really thinking about what they say. I would like to argue here that formulas — and especially the five-paragraph essay formula — should be regarded by teachers as a way-station on the path to more real writing. This formula should only be used to meet short-term goals. Unfortunately, I think most students are happy to stop with the formula, so teachers should avoid it whenever possible. (White 2010, 213)
In an ideal world, we would have moved beyond this type of writing long ago, even for our most underprepared and unmotivated students. A good deal of evidence however, suggests that this type of writing is still very much with us — even though we know that in most important ways this is not real writing. How else to explain, for example, the extraordinary trove of material available online related to the five paragraph essay? A recent internet search using the phrase "the five-paragraph essay" returned 889,000 results. The size of that number suggests that this kind of writing is still stubbornly and unfortunately with us. This is a version of "writing" that is radically impoverished in a number of significant ways, as these guidelines for teachers available at About.com (and brought up from among the first of my 889,000 results) suggest:
This simple step-by-step guide might make a great handout for your students!
Difficulty: Average
Time Required: 45 minutes
Here's how:
1. Before you begin writing, decide on your answer to the question asked of you. This is your basic thesis.
2. Before you begin writing, decide on what three pieces of evidence/support you will use to prove your thesis.
3. Write your introductory paragraph. Place your thesis along with your three pieces of evidence in order of strength (least to most) at the end of this paragraph.
4. Write the first paragraph of your body. You should begin by restating your thesis, focusing on the support of your first piece of evidence.
5. End your first paragraph with a transitional sentence that leads to paragraph number two.
6. Write paragraph two of the body focusing on your second piece of evidence. Once again make the connection between your thesis and this piece of evidence.
7. End your second paragraph with a transitional sentence that leads to paragraph number three.
8. Repeat step #6 using your third piece of evidence.
9. Begin your concluding paragraph by restating your thesis. Include the three points you've used to prove your thesis.
Tips:
1. Never use I or you (Unless specifically told that it is allowed).
2. Do not use contractions in formal writing.
Source: http://712educators.about.com/cs/englishlessons/ht /htwriteessay.htm
Completing an essay like this is not much different than filling out an activity sheet in a workbook. As Paul Heilker notes in his withering critique of our discipline's love affair with thesis and support writing in The Essay: Theory and Pedagogy for an Active Form,
While the world is a complex and problematic web of perplexities, the thesis/support form keeps offering our students the same simple, straightforward, and insufficient answers. Our pedagogical reliance on this form suggests to students that they need only know how to use a single tool, that their mastery of one simple and easy procedure will allow them to "fix" the infinite variety of interconnected problems they will face in the world. (Heilker 1996, 6)
This is a crucially important point, and as we will see when we turn our attention to learning theory, one that has serious ramifications well beyond the writing classroom. One of Heilker's chapter titles summarizes his overall position (and mine, too, as it happens) eloquently and boldly: "The Need for an Alternative Form in Composition Instruction." I enthusiastically support Heilker's call for an alternate form of composition instruction, and I am in fact attempting to theorize such an alternate form here.
Unfortunately, simplistic argumentation continues to persist and flourish across our curriculum, and it is easy to find additional evidence of this problem. When George Hillocks examined a number of statewide writing assessment programs, for example, he found much writing that required only lower order thinking skills and simplistic kinds of argumentative writing, including the five-paragraph format (Hillocks 2002, 88 — 89, 108 — 10, 112 — 14, 116 — 17, 121 — 22). As he reports in The Testing Trap,
It should be clear by now that writing assessments differ enormously, from the 40-minute assessments in Illinois to the portfolio assessments in Kentucky. Statements of standards lead people to believe that the stories of assessments are obvious in the standards, but they are not. As I have shown, it is imperative to examine the prompts, the criteria, and the benchmark papers to understand what the standards mean. Only upon such analysis can we discover the banal writing that assessments in Texas and Illinois not only encourage but hold up for admiration. Only then do we see that the Illinois criteria encourage the five-paragraph theme. Only then do we see that Texas and Illinois ignore the need for real evidence in making a case. Only then do we see that in Illinois narrative turns into exposition. Only then do we see that "in-depth analysis" in New York actually means relatively simple analysis. But at least it involves some analysis and requires actual evidence in some responses to the assessment. (Hillocks 2002, 189)
Importantly, Hillocks defines "writing" in this book as a way of thinking: "In the past 30 years, researchers and theorists have come to know that teaching writing entails teaching thinking" (6). He suggests here that students at most levels of instruction need to do much more "systematic thinking about difficult problems" (6 — 7).
Scherff and Piazza were also clearly disappointed by what they discovered from their survey of approximately two thousand high school students in Florida about the writing they did in school, as the title of their essay suggests: "The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: A Survey of High School Students' Writing Experiences." Scherff and Piazza note that despite advances in research and scholarship, little of this work appears to get translated effectively into classroom practices and pedagogy. "In spite of advances in writing research," they conclude, "little has changed in many high schools" (Scherff and Piazza 2005, 290). It is important to note here that Scherff and Piazza also found "an alarming trend in which writing was being used to achieve a narrow band of functions" (291) and that "much of the writing" taking place in Florida high schools was done solely to practice for standardized, high-stakes tests (285), most of which require simplistic types of argumentative writing. Like Hillocks, Scherff and Piazza did not find much evidence of higher-level cognitive engagement required of the students they surveyed or much call for "systematic thinking about difficult problems." Instead, it appears that most of the writing assignments were requiring students to "primarily use writing for the informative function" (291) and that much of the writing these students were doing appeared to consist of simple explanatory assignments requiring little higher level thinking or analysis.
There is also evidence in Anne Beaufort's important longitudinal study, College Writing and Beyond, that suggests this kind of simplistic argumentative writing is alive and well in writing classrooms in the United States. Tim, the student writer who is at the center of this study, appears to have had considerable exposure to this kind of simplistic argumentative writing in high school. In fact, he sums up his transition from high school to college writing this way:
She [Carla, Tim's first-year composition instructor] basically came down on the five-paragraph essay and just said, "That's not what we're about here." That plucked a chord with me. I was like, I know this is right and I'm glad I'm finally hearing it and now I can begin to learn. Because I felt very frustrated with ... the arbitrary kind of you have to have five sentences in every paragraph and five paragraphs in every essay. The only thing I did learn in that class in high school was the transition because you do have to transition from paragraph to paragraph. (Beaufort 2007, 56)
Like Hillocks, Beaufort recommends that student writers in high school and college spend more time engaging complex problems patiently and thoughtfully (something simplistic argumentative assignments often work against). One of her primary recommendations for writing program directors, in fact, is to "coach faculty to assign serious intellectual questions for exploration in writing courses and instantiate the inquiry in particular discourse communities" (Beaufort 2007, 158).
Both the SAT and the ACT writing tests also encourage this kind of thinking and writing. Recent sample essay prompts for both the SAT and the ACT (2013) suggest how central this kind of argument has become to the assessment of writing:
ACT Writing Sample:
Educators debate extending high school to five years because of increasing demands on students from employers and colleges to participate in extracurricular activities and community service in addition to having high grades. Some educators support extending high school to five years because they think students need more time to achieve all that is expected of them. Other educators do not support extending high school to five years because they think students would lose interest in school and attendance would drop in the fifth year. In your opinion, should high school be extended to five years?
In your essay, take a position on this question. You may write about either one of the two points of view given, or you may present a different point of view on this question. Use specific reasons and examples to support your position.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A New Writing Classroom by Patrick Sullivan. Copyright © 2014 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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