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Articles Conference Reviews |
A.1 Renewing GenresA.1 Renewing Genres: 5 Paragraph Themes and Personal Criticism Like religion and politics, the five paragraph theme (FPT) has become, at least among composition faculty, one of those topics that summons so many strongly-held corollary beliefs that a serious discussion of it can seem more like a battle between good and evil than a conversation about writing pedagogy. We are either for creativity or rigidity; we either see students as genuine authors taking their first wobbly steps into academic writing, or as ingénues who must be protected from the wild forces of disorganized thinking. Our feelings about the FPT, like the question of how we voted in the last election, have become “code” for our other values; and as a result we passionately (and maybe mindlessly) defend our own pedagogical ideologies. Full disclosure: I am not a fan of the FPT (or, for that matter, of rhetorical modes), and on the continuum of “Very Negative” to “Very Positive” that one of the speakers posted on the wall during the session so that we could affix colorful stickers to define our own positions, I was far to the negative side. On the other hand, I want to offer my students viable ways to structure their essays so that original thinking is elicited rather than constrained. Consequently, I arrived at Renewing Genres: 5 Paragraph Themes and Personal Criticism with feelings somewhere between ambivalence and readiness for battle. The speakers in the session, however, took a refreshingly pragmatic (rather than dogmatic) approach to peaceful coexistence with the FPT. Michelle Tremmel, of Iowa State University, Ames, started the session with “What to Make of the Five-Paragraph Theme: History of the Genre and Its Implications,” a report on her year spent researching the history of the theme as a genre, and of the FPT in particular. Daily “themes,” she explained, were apparently common pedagogical strategies as early as 1884, with the FPT solidifying into its current form in 1959. Tremmel cited such factors as the efficiency movement, privileging of science, material teaching conditions, commoditization of education, and the rise of standardized testing as forces that abetted the FPT’s rise to superpower status. Despite repeated assaults beginning with the expressivist movement in the 1970s, the FPT has soldiered on. In fact, one of the greatest forces sustaining the FPT is students themselves, who, Tremmel pointed out, habitually turn to the FPT without prompting, testifying to how strongly it is embedded in student writing. In addition, an essay with predictable moves is easier to grade, giving it appeal for overburdened teachers. Given the remarkable reach and staying power of the FPT, Tremmel offered, we should look at its effects on novice writers and whether (and how) it “subsumes” process pedagogies. Though more of a critique of the FPT seemed outside the scope of her historical overview, I found myself wanting one. The FPT, after all, marked its ascent to power the same year that brought us those other two icons of conformity, the Barbie Doll and the Xerox machine; and the trajectory of the talk seemed to encourage resignation rather than resistance to the FPT’s hegemony. Should we just stop worrying and learn to love the five-paragraph theme? Sort of, implicitly answered Thomas Allbaugh, of Azusa Pacific University, in the talk he said he wanted to entitle, “What Kind of Pill Are We Swallowing?” but didn’t. (The real title was “Renewing a Tacit-Making Tradition or Remixing the ‘Other Lesson’ of the Five Paragraph Theme.”) In his discussion, he proposed a “third way” of thinking about the FPT, in which we acknowledge the sweep of its power and lead our students incrementally towards more rhetorical flexibility. Like Tremmel, he made the observation that students feel comfortable with the FPT structure and frequently revert to it when performing complex writing tasks. He briefly recapped the major objections to the FPT – it encourages shallow thinking, it values product over process, etc. – but instead of indulging in knee-jerk condemnation, he asked this burning question: How can first year writing practices build on what students already know? In answering this question, he considered Angela Rounsaville’s study of first year writers, which found that students have ample knowledge of written genres other than the FPT – for example, creative writing, song lyrics, text messaging – but mysteriously restrict themselves to the FPT when writing for school. Allbaugh’s solution was to alter the FPT from within rather than attempting to overthrow it completely, and he provided a handout of questions to prompt students to improvise, making suggestions like “Try expanding one section that seems more important than the other two,” “Try having an introduction of more than one paragraph,” and “Try writing an essay with four body paragraphs.” Such a strategy, he suggested, helps students begin to make writerly choices without asking them to abandon an organization strategy with which they feel comfortable and secure. I found this approach compelling for a number of reasons, not least of which that it forced me to confront the idea that, while bashing the FPT is satisfying, doing so does not necessarily help my students’ transition away from it. Also, because I come from a background in which the FPT and modes were scorned but now work at a college where they are the dominant form of writing instruction and where many wonderful faculty use the terms “thesis” and “blueprint” interchangeably, I’m very conscious that my students will need to maintain the FPT (and its variations) in their rhetorical repertoire. Finally, I also appreciated that Allbaugh distributed a set of prompts with concrete adaptations to the FPT he has asked his own students to use. When I consider that our students encounter far more forms and genres – many of them multimodal – than I did when I was a student, I can understand their need for explicit instruction in how to construct that unfamiliar edifice, the academic essay. Perhaps, especially in environments like the one in which I teach, remodeling the FPT is a better choice than trying to dismantle it and build an alternative. The last speaker, however, Kate Levin of Barnard College, had done that very thing in her literature course, in the form of a comprehensive approach that subverted the FPT. In “Teaching Personal Criticism; or, Making Writing Matter,” she discussed how she led students through a series of assignments, starting with a description of the physical experience of reading, followed by a conventional literary analysis of a passage, and finally by an examination of the relationship between the two pieces of writing. Levin felt that this approach to the first year essay made the writing more immediate and personal, but she expressed concern that the resulting work – though much more insightful and pleasurable to read than the standard FPT essay – was not “academic enough” (or, in a women’s college, she wryly commented, “too female”). On the other hand, she offered the example of Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran as an example of a fruitful combination of autobiography and literary criticism; and she took issue with the results (though not necessarily the essence) of New Criticism’s emphasis on responding to literature only through the words on the page. Her students, she said, felt liberated by the experience of integrating the personal and critical. One student commented that the assignment helped students “unleash their true potential as writers.” Such is the value of forms other than the FPT: they are nearly always more fun to write and to read, and they almost always elicit a more interesting thought process than the FPT does. Like I do, on the other hand, Levin seemed to struggle with whether this type of writing is sustainable within institutions that expect a more formal product situated in standard academic conventions. At the same time, she took obvious pleasure in her students’ richer enjoyment of literature when they could integrate their own experience of reading into their writing. Levin’s talk also exposed the disconnect between scholarship on composition – which favors innovative forms like the one she has been using – and more traditional expectations for academic writing, especially outside the English discipline. The resolution of these differences may well lie, as Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff have argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education and elsewhere, in careful consideration of how we deploy explicit teaching. Students have to negotiate a contradictory environment where they are often expected to produce both the FPT and the sort of nuanced thinking the FPT can sometimes undermine. They need to be aware of the diverse audiences for whom they write, some of whom may, like their students, conflate the FPT and the essay. Rather than simply defending our genre battle lines, it seems necessary that we provide more rhetorical choices - perhaps, as Allbaugh argues, encompassing the FPT - so that students can develop more flexibility in the various writing situations they will encounter both in and out of academia. |