Elise Page Dixon
My new writing construct focuses primarily on the five-paragraph essay. Many students come into college prepared to plug their “points” into the organized formula of the five paragraph essay. Most research I have found so far on whether the five paragraph essay has any merit is either just pro or con. However, I still have yet to find the solution to the problem that the five-paragrpah essay is trying to solve—that students have a hard time with organizational skills in their writing when they aren’t given a formula to follow. However, many educators from the college and university level reject the five-paragraph formula because it inhibits creativity and keeps students from actually analyzing the texts they use to research. What I have not seen, between the sources I have collected so far, is a way to teach a student organizational skills while allowing him or her to still be creative while writing and researching. Davis and Shadel's article "Building a Mystery" discusses an alternative to the modernist research paper, and gives some possibilities on how to teach writing to promote creativity. The projects Shadel and Davis described are not linearly organized-- however they still work well. I want to investigate if there is a way to teach new writing students how to play with and learn from their research while writing, and how to do it effectively and efficiently.
EP,
ReplyDeleteSounds like you began with the five par. form and ended up with a question about teaching form and its relation to creativity in English composition.
Please note that Davis and Shadle CLAIM that these projects work. Not all readers will be persuaded of this.
Areas to look into:
creativity and constraint. See Nachmanovitch. e.g., for work on how constraint is necessary for artistic creativity.
genre studies suggests that it is difficult to write successfully outside of genres--one writes within and against genre expectations.
See work on the overlap- between composition and creative non-fiction (Hesse; Heilker; Wendy Bishop; Ostrum). See also Sirc and J. Shipka who both bring in electronic media and other genres/forms.
--AR
Elise,
ReplyDeleteI was going to say something along the same lines as Albert: the question you wish to pursue at the end of your proposal is different than the question you started with. However, your research on the 5-paragraph essay need not be in vain... you can always use it when discussing creativity if you choose to go in that direction.
To do more than simply parrot Albert, let me also suggest a source you may want to consider: Patrick Sullivan's "'A Lifelong Aversion to Writing':What if Writing Courses Emphasized Motivation?"
In way of a preview, Sullivan states, "My argument here is a simple one: we must attend carefully and systematically to issues related to motivation because students who are motivated typically do not underachieve" (119). I'm just spitballing here, but I suppose you could make the case that motivation and creativity are intimately linked!
Elise,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up one of this biggest constructs I can think of-- the five paragraph essay. It does sound like you want to explore a larger topic though-- organization. Have you found any scholars, other than Davis and Shadle, who promote a different organization strategy? What do you want students to learn from "playing" with their sources as they write?