Writing Formulas: Are they worth it?
When I was learning how to write essays for the
first time, my teacher used formulas and graphic organizers to teach us. My
ideas on this have fluctuated over time, going from initially hating it, to
loving it, to now feeling wary of it.
At first, I did not like having to organize my writing
in the formulas and graphic organizers that were given to us. I felt trapped
and like breaking away from this would result in a bad grade even though up to
this point I had been doing fine writing and grade-wise. I had liked thinking
as I wrote and then going back and revising that draft to make sure it made
sense and flowed smoothly. Starting the formulas made my writing seem
emotionless, dry, and unreadable.
After working with these formulas for a couple
years, I grew comfortable with them. While I still felt like my writing was not
as good as it could be, it made banging out an essay easy. All I had to do was
follow the formula and I would get a good grade. It didn’t matter how much time
I spent on it or how well my writing even was as long as everything was in the
right place. Because of this, I started really enjoying the formula. I could
write quickly without even much thought, and still get a good grade.
This formula followed me even to college. While
in college, I learned to put life back into my essays, I still had the formula
as a backbone. After discussions in classes, with other students, and reading a
few articles, I started to get wary of the formula. Like Michelle Kenney in “The
Politics of the Paragraph,” I started to worry that these formulas were too confining,
but at the same time I worried about students passing their standardized tests
and being able to write well.
Writing formulas were not always used, though.
Kenney states that she had not learned through one and neither did Linda
Christensen, author of Teaching for Joy
and Justice. Luckily in Christensen’s text, she goes over different activities
that got students learning and writing. While this chapter specifically focused
on writing narratives, I feel that the tips she gives her readers can be used
for other forms of writing as well. For example, Christensen discusses how she
had her students read, highlight, and analyze professional and student examples
of writing before they wrote their own texts. This helped them learn what works
and what doesn’t, as well as shows them that not all writing, even in the same
genre, follows the same format.
Letting students explore examples of writing
and not forcing them to stick to a specific formula is more beneficial.
Students can experiment in their writing and give their essays life. There is
more than one way to write an essay.
The idea of the writing formula may be good for younger writers, in my opinion, because it presents a streamlined way of communicating genre conventions in writing (e.g. thesis statement, topic sentences), but I feel as students mature, this formulaic approach becomes ineffective because they have grown intellecutally. Given your own history, you say that you were able to write essays without much effort because you obeyed the formula, which yielded the results your teacher outlined. In high school, I feel students should disregard these formulaic approaches as a child abandons training wheels when she not only realizes she can maintain her own balance, but realizes that they in fact restrict movement and agility. By writing what matters to them, students can continue to grow as writers and thinkers, and by taking risks in writing, students can learn what works and what doesn't work for them and their individual writing styles.
ReplyDeleteI also remember learning different formulas for writing! The ones that stuck with me the most were the RACES and some sort of hamburger metaphor. While I agree it is important to let students explore writing on their own, I did find some of the formulas to be very beneficial as they provided a starting point for me. I needed them to ensure I would include all elements into my papers, or remember that for every quote I included I needed an explanation, as well as my own analysis of it. Some formulas were very useful, but I also remember some of them just adding confusion to writing.
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