| Writing at Rice 10/3/00 |
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I got some interesting questions from one of my friends who is a HS English teacher. Apparently, her students are giving her a hard time because they say that you don't really have to know how to write when you get to college, so why is she wasting their time by making them write papers for her class? Here are her questions, and my take on writing at the college level follows. Questions: Anyway, what do Rice profs expect from the students there in their writing? Is there a formula? Are there important things to put into a paper about critical analysis? What do they require of you? Do you remember your freshman year? How did you feel about the English classes? How did high school prepare you for college English? When you walked into your English class, what did they expect you to already know about writing? What did you learn? Please add any other info. that would help me explain to my class how vital it is for them to know how tow write effectively for college and the rest of their lives. It seems the teacher's opinion is just not enough for them. My Response: Freshman year I took English 101 which was an intro class geared towards freshmen, taught by a grad student. I was a pretty good writer in HS. I got A's in all my English classes and I got a 4 and 5 on the English language and literature AP's. My first paper at Rice I got a C. I was pretty shocked, but I definitely improved over the semester, and after that, in every other English class I've taken, my lowest grade on a paper has been a B, and I've managed to pull out with at least an A- at the end of the semester for every class. In general, English profs (and also any other class that requires writing, like Sociology, History, Philosophy, Political Science, etc) expect students to come up with a coherent thesis and defend it using readings from the class. In English classes, the texts are novels, short stories, poetry, and occasionally, other criticisms of the text and/or writings about major themes that appear in the works we read. Most of the English classes I have taken have been focused on novels. When you write a paper, there are usually little or no guidelines as far as what you're supposed to write about. In some cases, the professor will list suggested paper topics, but you can do whatever you want. So you basically pick a novel (or maybe multiple novels), and assert something about it. It doesn't matter if the prof agrees with you or not. If you can show that your argument is a valid reading of the text, and you do it well (i.e., grammar, word choice, organization, etc, are also important) you'll probably get an A. Major pet peeves of Rice English profs: --Writing in passive voice** --Mistakes in subject/verb agreement --Misplaced modifiers --Unnecessary repetition (You say the same thing 3 different ways when you could have said it in one sentence. It shows that you really don't have too much to say on the subject and you're just trying to take up space.) --Using quotes from the text ineffectively (Again, space fillers are really obvious) --Making sweeping generalizations or conclusions in your paper About the last point, you have to be specific and you can't assume that everyone agrees with you either. For example, instead of "All tragic heroes must have four qualities, (list them). The protagonist in (insert title of work here) is not a tragic hero because he fails to meet the necessary requirements to be considered a tragic hero," say "In this text, we can define four characteristics of a tragic hero, (list them). The protagonist in (insert title of work here (different from first text)) fails to meet these necessary requirements, and therefore is not truly a tragic hero when we compare him to the protagonist in (the first text)." **About passive voice, the worst thing about HS English is that they teach you to write in passive voice instead of active voice. That was why I got a C on my first paper. Also, another thing that is totally unnecessary is the "intro paragraph" in which students say, "In the eighteenth century, there were many changes taking place in England. People were moving from rural areas into cities, blah blah blah.... Charles Dickens, an author who lived during this time of drastic change, wrote about some of these changes in his novel, Hard Times." All you really need is a good thesis, and the rest of the intro is explaining kind of how you came up with the thesis and then stating what you're going to do in the rest of your paper to prove it. A big difference between HS and college writing is that in HS, you analyze language, like, word choice, metaphors, etc. Like in HS, your thesis is like, "Charles Dickens uses diction, analogies, allusions, and personification to make his protagonist seem really sympathetic to the reader." In college, you write about bigger themes, and you're trying to assert something that is not obvious at first glance. Like, everyone knows that Charles Dickens wants the protagonist to be really sympathetic to the reader. A better thesis might be, "Charles Dickens is critical of the education system and wrote David Copperfield as a scathing commentary on the need for educational reform in England. He does this by creating sympathy for his protagonist and allowing him to ultimately triumph over his early educational experiences." Ok, now I will talk about Huma 101 and 102. These cover the things you should have already covered in HS English, like, all the way from The Aeneid to Shakespeare to Jane Eyre to TS Eliot. These are required for science/engineering majors, and although most of the stuff I wrote above holds true, it is toned down a lot. Like, the profs who teach those classes know that they are working with people who don't really enjoy reading or writing and are only taking the class to meet a requirement. Most people I know take it pass/fail, which means, as long as you get a D or above, you fulfilled the requirement. So even if you write a bunch of BS in your papers, if you go to all the classes and put in a good amount of "effort" (they also have midterms and finals in this class so you have to show that you kept up with the reading the whole semester), you'll pass. But it's a really easy class, and you might as well get an easy A to pull up your GPA. To get an A, you are expected to do what I already wrote above. I don't think it's as rigorous as for other classes that are required for English majors or other humanities majors, but you'll only get an A if you can show that you can come up with a thesis and defend it well. Another note: Rice doesn't accept the English Language or English Literature AP's. They let you count it as 3 hours each towards graduation, but no class credit, so even if you were an awesome writer in HS and aced both tests, you still have to take at least Huma 101/102 or Engl 101/102 to fulfill the Writing Competency requirement. I'm pretty sure it's similar for other universities, although there might be some out there that accept it for class credit. (I'm pretty sure the more selective universities don't.) Last thing: The 5-paragraph model that a lot of HS's teach is just that, a model. Don't tell the kids that they can't do more than that. Like, if they have more stuff to say and they can't fit it in 3 body paragraphs, they should understand that they can expand on what they're talking about. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence, but you can use as many paragraphs as you need to in order to explain a main idea in the outline. Topic sentences and main ideas are two different things. There doesn't have to be a main idea in every paragraph, because you could be building towards a main idea over 3 or 4 paragraphs. The average length of my papers has been 5-6 pages, double-spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman, 1 inch margins. People will try to fix the margins, etc to make their short paper look longer. Profs can tell how long your paper is, not necessarily by the overall length of the paper, but by the quality of your arguments. If you don't go in-depth enough to fully persuade the reader to agree that what you're saying might be true, the paper is not long enough. On the other hand, you don't want to go the other extreme either. If you can say what you want to say in one sentence, do it. If you need a paragraph, that's fine. But a lot of people include a lot of unnecessary sentences and even adjectives or adverbs that can easily be cut out to make the language in your paper more crisp and efficient, and your overall argument more effective. So don't include anything that doesn't need to be in your paper. (Unfortunately for some people, this makes it a lot harder to fill out a 5 page paper with quality writing. I think that's the difference between an A and a B paper. How efficient you are with your own language.) 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