Category: Standards

I have a problem with timed essay-writing, and you should too

9/1/2023

by Rebecca Green

In my College Composition I class last semester, I assigned a personal narrative essay to my students. When I initially reviewed the project guidelines, I was worried. What if they won’t gain anything from this essay? What if they struggle to connect sources to their own personal experience?

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

I was hesitant, but I knew my students deserved the opportunity to write about themselves, to be creative, to take risks and not feel restricted by strict project expectations. I prepared them as best as I could: we spent weeks close reading, responding to sources, discussing our topics, and partaking in creative free-write exercises as a class. We talked about writing as a process, instead of a five paragraph formula. When that fateful Friday night arrived in which students were expected to hand in their essays, I sat by the computer anxiously waiting for a disaster to take place.

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Dropping the Beat: Why I Won’t Let Anyone Tell Me Not to Listen to Music When I Write

11/1/2021

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by Marissa Stanko

Trying to find your identity as a writer is nerve-wracking. There’s pressure on all sides to do certain things or be a certain way or write at certain times and so on and so on. It took me a long time to feel like I was a writer, and even now I struggle with feeling like I don’t write “the right way.” One of the things I always felt forced to justify as a writer, even to myself, is that I like to listen to music while I write, and it isn’t instrumental. Studies, blog posts, and articles galore tell me that I shouldn’t listen to music while I write, or that if I do, it should be classical, instrumental, or a playlist designed to fit the piece I’m working on. Lyrics distract from writing, they say. Music puts your focus somewhere else. And I know for many people, that must be true.

Photo by C D-X via Unsplash

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A Writing Revolution in American Education and Culture

4/1/2021

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by Connor Buckmaster

For decades now, the study and practice of writing has been on a revolutionary roller coaster. Leaps in pedagogy surrounding college composition classes, translanguaging, and collaborative learning have changed the way college students today learn and produce writing. At the same time, the (dated) values of Standard American English, the five paragraph essay, and the thesis statement are still upheld in many pockets of American public schools. We wonder why Americans struggle to write, and there seems to be a host of answers: an inability to construct sentences, a fundamentally bad approach in teaching how to read, and a school culture which rewards surface learning and quick responses, viewing texts as inert information rather than an argument. The more and more we look, America seems to be in a literacy crisis.

Photo by Joseph Chan on Unsplash

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Writer's Block is a Choice

4/1/2020

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by Mick Bratton

Writers have a tendency to conjure up the familiar term “writer’s block” as an excuse for not being able to produce content. The spewing of this writerly phenomenon, infamously treated as a common illness, is simply an excuse to not write at all—and it’s probably subconscious. We base our day-to-day lives around the world in which we experience life with our senses—our truths—and so it can be very believable that a blockage has been formed when there’s just a lack of motivation and inspiration. We need any liable subject to blame rather than owning up to our own actions. To blatantly dissect this disillusioned label and pluck it out of the book of excuses: writer’s block is a choice that has made its imprint on the world and has been alive and breathing for far longer than it should have.

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Feel-Good Ink: A Defense of Standards

8/1/2019

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by Mark Krupinski

“Anything and everything can be art!” is, I feel, a deceptively sinister phrase. You could substitute the rather generic “art” in this situation with your medium of choice, be it poetry, film, literature, or what have you, and the situation remains unchanged. It seems innocuous at first, even encouraging. Anything can be art; no matter how lost you may feel, no matter what vision you lack, your expression has merit. You exist and you are valid. As someone who has spent more time than perhaps he’d like to admit pacing fretfully to and fro, hyperventilating into a McDonald’s bag because the words don’t sound the way they’re supposed to, I understand. Writing is a painful, clumsy, often fruitless task, so positive affirmation is as valuable as it is rare. But there’s a danger in creating that sense of comfort, tossing standards by the wayside in favor of blind positivity and confidence. The idea that everything, every single careless, thoughtless, witless, messy, wishy-washy, meandering, pointless thing is art gives me pause.

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I have a problem with timed essay-writing, and you should too

Dropping the Beat: Why I Won’t Let Anyone Tell Me Not to Listen to Music When I Write

A Writing Revolution in American Education and Culture

Writer's Block is a Choice

Feel-Good Ink: A Defense of Standards

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