Last week, I discussed Professor Linda Flowers’ theory about the difference between writer-based writing and reader-based writing. However, even the clearest explanation can still leave students unsure about how to transition from the writer-based writing of a first draft to the fuller reader-based writing of a good revision. Below are 5 “actionable steps” that I find help my students add depth and clarity to their writing.
When I read first drafts, I tell my students to delete their entire introduction--that paragraph they worked so hard on--except for the last sentence, which becomes the new first sentence of the essay. This forces them to break away from the process of arriving at a thesis to explore its merits and implications, paving the way for higher-order thinking to occur.
Every paragraph must have a topic sentence that expresses a claim. It cannot be a plot point or a quote. If the paragraph doesn’t make a claim that’s related to the essay’s main argument, it isn’t doing its job. The writer’s job isn’t to retell the story, but instead to explain it in a way that will help readers understand the story better.
Avoid fill-in-the-blank words like thing, similar, different, and interesting. They are overused and uninformative. Replace them with specifics: What kind of thing? Similar in what way? Different how? Consider this sentence by a student about Christopher, the narrator protagonist of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime: “I find the fact that this is his favorite dream interesting because the things he does in the dream is very weird.” Here, we have a string of fill-in-the-blank words--interesting, things, and weird--that the writer needs to fill in. Otherwise, all the reader understands is that the writer had an unspecified, but possibly negative, reaction to Christopher’s dream.
No paragraph may contain more than two sentences of summary before the writer explains how it connects to the argument. I tell students who summarize to replace the summary with a discussion of why that moment of plot is relevant to their essay. I give the same advice when they repeat themselves: “If you’re repeating yourself, it must be because there’s something important that you’re trying to get at. Why is this moment important to your argument?”
Quotes must be as short as possible to convey the writer’s point. They must also be followed by at least one sentence of explanation about why the quote is relevant enough to merit inclusion in the essay.
These rules make the goals of reader-based writing easy for even the least skilled students to achieve. They are easy for students to use when conducting peer reviews of each other’s work, and they make students better readers of their own work.
Of course, there are at least a dozen great models for eliciting critical thought from students. Not every method works for everyone. How do you inspire your students to do the hard work of critical thinking?
Elizabeth Breau, Ph.D. (she/her), is an award-winning writing coach and private English tutor. Her book, History According to SAT: A Content Guide to SAT Reading and Writing, won a silver medal in the teen category from the Nonfiction Authors Association. You can reach her at www.elizabethbreau.net.
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