WA3 - Standardized Literacy

Why do students hate writing? What is it that makes them so completely resistant to the very idea of writing as they first come to college? Previous experiences, mainly; at some point most, if not all, of these students have had negative experiences with writing and with literacy in general. These experiences usually come from the schools they’ve attended; most of the students that actually do enjoy reading and writing do so because of influences at home, rather than at school. Their idea of what literacy is has been drilled repeatedly into their minds so many times that they don’t have the will or the energy to question it any more.

On the first day of my lab course, I asked each of the students to introduce themselves and to tell a little bit about their impressions of literacy, reading, and writing. It took some (figurative) prodding, but eventually we had a discussion going about what their main issues were with literacy. When I asked them what their previous experience in high school was like, the word “TAKS” got thrown around a lot, with many a grumble and moan. They pretty much explained to me that the teachers exclusively taught to prepare them for this standardized test, and, as a result, they naturally hated reading and writing. “Drill,” in any academic sense of the word, has a very negative connotation, as it implies that information is forcefully (and perhaps painfully) crammed into the minds of students, the implication being quite accurate.

Standardized testing forces us to ask a question not often acknowledged: can literacy be used against us? I suppose this depends on what sort of literacy we’re talking about. For example, I spent the first seventeen years of my life obeying authority figures. Probably more, but it was mainly in my most formative years. Parents, teachers, anyone with any amount of power, I was taught to obey. They tell me, “Don’t talk without permission,” and suddenly they’re surprised by how quiet I am. But, it also meant that I had to learn their way of doing things. So, naturally, I became a very good test-taker. Test-taking can be viewed as a form of literacy; it requires a specific set of skills, and it isn’t necessarily limited to one field of study. A certain amount of knowledge of how the test works, and one can discern what the correct response is to a question with little actual knowledge of the concepts. Study five minutes before the test, and I did better than most other students. But did I retain that knowledge? Of course not; the amount of effort required to gain it—even temporarily—was reflected in my ability, or lack thereof, to recall the knowledge years down the line. So I was a great test-taker, but that’s all I had really learned.

Therefore, when people who actually did possess true knowledge that they had attained and retained took a major standardized test (either SAT, ACT, or what was then referred to as the TAAS test), they fell far below the accepted standard by which students were judged simply because they didn’t know the specific facts that appeared on the test. They were very bright students, but on record, they were below average. The type of literacy that I possessed was used against them, even though their literacy may have been more vital.

This is the situation that most of these students have been put in. Their teachers have taught them according to this specific format, and even teach test-taking techniques in order to do well on standardized tests. I recall quite clearly during my senior year in my AP English course a lesson that focused around how to get the highest score on the SAT and ACT. On the former, we were encouraged to not answer questions if we were unsure of the correct answer, as false answers counted for negative points. This implies that it is actually better to never answer a question rather than to venture a guess, take a risk, and be wrong, even if a student learns from the risk taken.

Going back to the idea of “drilling,” it is important to remember that these first year composition students have had several—often arbitrary and contradictory—rules about grammar, sentence structure, and writing format drilled into their minds. Since these rules tend to change—often with time, but more often due to different teachers with varying degrees of stodginess and militant loyalty to “correct English”—the students are already confused as to what “proper” writing should be, and they naturally view themselves as terrible writers. I asked my students one day whether they consider themselves writers, and almost half of them said no, despite having already written in my class.

The problem is that, when asked to write an essay for an English class, all of those bad experiences and preconceptions and paranoia about “correct English” come rushing forth, and they’ve already got a huge mental block to writing before they’ve ever started. Since the rules are contradictory and always change, why learn them? And since they haven’t learned the rules and will write the “wrong” way, why write at all? It makes sense from their perspective.

I’ve tried to take steps to overcome this problem in my class, though since this is my first time teaching, it remains to be seen whether or not it will work. I make use of their dialogue journals by telling them to write. Just write. Sometimes I’ll give them a not-so-specific prompt that they can elaborate on, but I emphasize the importance on just writing. More importantly, I tell them to not worry about grammar or punctuation or proper English or format or even thesis. I noticed the vast majority of the class visibly and audibly relax when I said this. I also made the point of telling them that, should they get stuck, write the first thing that comes to mind, whether it has anything to do with what they were talking about or not. The point of this is to try and get rid of that mental block these student have, even on the most basic level from mind to paper, and to get them accustomed to putting ideas down in a written format. I told them that writing is like any other skill, in that it takes practice. I also use my own examples to illustrate that writing is a process, that the first draft always sucks. I rarely have a thesis until I finish a paper, much less a decent introduction, since I never quite know what the paper is about until it’s been mostly written. There is little point, for some people, in trying to come up with a thesis statement first and working from there, but since everyone writes different, this method may very well work for others.

As these students progress through school, they are expected to only really know one type of literacy, which is how to take tests well and to get high scores. The emphasis is very rarely on teaching the students concepts that will be useful to them in the future, much less to even think for themselves. According to the general consensus in my lab class, most of the students prefer prompts that are very specific and that outline in detail exactly what the instructor wants, rather than a vague or open-ended prompt that requires them to think critically or find a creative means to meet the requirements of an assignment. They aim to give a teacher the “right” answer, rather than an answer that most suits themselves. So, cryptic as many of us are as English teachers, they feel intense frustration when asked to write for us.