Walvoord, Barbara E. Fassler. “Planning to Coach the Writing
Process.” Helping Students Write
Well. Second Edition. New York: MLA. 1986.
Walvoord’s
writing-as-process thesis is that the instruction of writing is in some
significant part instruction in behavior, or, to borrow David Foster Wallace’s
term for essentially the same position, instruction in demeanor. In Walvoord’s
own words, “if you are to help students write better, you must teach them how
to behave when they are trying to produce an effective piece of writing” (29).
I find this position compelling in part because my students do tend toward
binge-writing, but more importantly, Walvoord’s words resonate with me because
they imply something at stake that is larger than paper-writing / college
assignments. Casting effective writing as a matter of behavior draws ethics and
the universalizable into the project of composition instruction. My instint is
that if comp is to be useful to students in all courses of study, then it
probably has to zoom out from English, humanities departments, and even
college, to respect and celebrate and cohere within the human project of
existing. I do think that a good class in anything taps into this dimension,
and addresses (even if only tacitly) “the timeless questions” such as how on
earth a person ought to hold herself in relation to her world. But my own
struggle as an instructor is in building curricula, syllabi, assignments, and
activites—practical, concrete manifestations of this attitude—that not only
correspond to such a perspective but that cumulatively build it. How can an
instructor coach behavior through the lens of composition? Walvoord has ideas.
In this posting I will study them. My task here is thus to inventory and examine
Walvoord’s practical approaches to instruction in writerly behavior, though my
scope here is limited to Walvoord’s suggestions that pertain specifically to
the earliest stages of drafting.
Pacing—specifically, slowing the
writerly pace—is central to Walvoord’s approach. Helping students pace their
work may (but does not have to) require much instructor participation. Walvoord
advocates having students bring in a thesis statement or an introduction even
if the instructor never looks at them—have students pair up and explain their
thesis to a buddy; anyone without a thesis will at least have to explain to
someone why they don’t have a thesis yet, and might get feedback or an idea
about how to go about crafting one. Walvoord does not advocate the “loosest”
level of seriousness in pacing; that is, she points out that offers to look
over a draft during office hours are offers rarely taken up and rarer still by
students who need the attention most. “A tighter weir will bring more fish to
your net” (36), she writes.
One resource Walvoord offers is a
two-column list, “Developing a Topic Through Reading” (56-58). These pair
questions to ask of a text with associated paper topics. Likely it is worth
typing up in its entirety, handing out (properly cited), and devoting classtime
to modeling and developing an intentional practice that incoporates text,
reader response, questions, and resulting paper topics. Group work could come
of this pretty naturally. I envision practicing the basic progression: having
students ask a question of the text, identify a tension or grey zone, and
taking a stance on it. In writing, this then requires that an aspect of the
text be summarized or inventoried, that a problem therein be explained or a
question raised, and that that the question then be answered or the problem
commented upon.
Generating a thesis is not, for
Walvoord, a part of the writing process that ought to be completed and then
checked off the list. She points out that a thesis often starts as a list of
random thoughts generated by reading, pondering, talking, freewriting (&c.)
and goes on to argue that students need to “list ideas more fully and stay
longer at the listing stage” (66). Her idea is that the greater the wealth of
possible focuses, the better off a student will be in selecting one as a
foundation for a strong thesis. It seems to me that the implications here
involve the potential for self-critique: if a student has practiced criticizing
student writing, identifying strengths in student writing, as well as identifying
weaknesses (and mine have/are), then these critical skills can transfer to
their own work—but the skills translate more meaningfully if students have more
material to work with in the early, early stages of writing, because only
through working with multiple options can students practice discerning
comparative strengths and weaknesses within their own efforts at thinking
through a problem/argument.
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