Writing on Purpose: How Ought We to Instruct Young Writers?

To teach writing is to teach an art form. It takes lots and lots of practice to write well. The way we think about writing can sometimes limit students, so that they don’t gain the practice they need to write effectively. In order to write effectively there are three concepts that should guide our goals as instructors of writing:

1) The Primacy of the Audience

2) Perspective is Power

3) Multiple Styles

In teaching an art form, we can tend to focus on the technical aspects of the art, but we also need to take a long-term view of the role an art form will take in the person’s life. How will the art form enable a person to create meaning and purpose in life? How will the person use the art form to connect to others? These kinds of questions cannot wait until after students have learned to form complete sentences, paragraphs and essays. It should already be integrated into writing instruction from the time a student enters the abstract reasoning (formal operational) stage of development.

The Primacy of the Audience 

First, students should be taught to think about their audience. Most students write for an audience of one: their teacher. But the teacher is the worst possible audience to write for. The student that writes for a teacher is thinking predominantly about the grade a teacher might give. Now a teacher has to read what the student is writing. That’s what a teacher is paid to do. But in the real world you don’t want to have to pay others to read your writing, you want to get paid when others read your writing. Sure, this sounds a bit crass, but it’s the reality of professional writing. 

A quick aside. What do I mean by professional writing? We can all picture journalists and novelists as the epitome of professional writers. But what I mean is anyone for whom writing is essential to the accomplishment of their job. Lawyers, for instance, must spend a significant amount of time writing professionally. Office managers, musicians, museum curators, police officers, legislators, advertisers all have to write in some capacity. Their ability to excel in their profession often comes down to their ability to write effectively within their field. And writing effectively means serving the widest possible audience within that field. I am writing predominantly to teachers through this blog. Think about all the writing tasks your job entails: lesson plans, classroom newsletters, report card comments, lecture notes, emails, etc. Effective writing in this field requires thinking through who your audience is. The next time you write, say, a classroom newsletter, would it impact your style if you thought to yourself, “I want to write in such a way that these parents want to share this with their friends.” What if you create a culture where the parents can’t wait for your next newsletter? Okay, enough with the aside. Back to the students. 

Students should be taught to write for somebody who will be interested in what they have to say. Students should be writing, so that the person who reads this (basically you as the teacher) can picture and advocate for their potential audience. My feedback as a teacher incorporates a sense of effectiveness in getting noticed by an audience. I could give comments like, “You really grabbed my attention with that illustration.” Or “Consider moving this idea into the introduction to draw your audience in.”

My thinking on writing as communicating with an audience was crystallized by the excellent work being done at the University of Chicago. There is an excellent YouTube video by Larry McEnerny. At the time of recording he was director of the Writing Program at the University of Chicago. I don’t know how many other universities are teaching writing in such a forward-thinking manner—my guess is not many. The premise McEnerny is working with is that students in his class will largely be in academic and professional fields. However, his advice is pertinent for creative fields as well.

Too often colleges and universities teach an orthopraxis of writing to fit students into the mold of accepted procedures for student writing in college courses. What better way to kill inspiration, creativity and motivation? This trickles down to secondary education as well. We teach writing with a view to the conventions of the college classroom. It is well and good to be prepared for college, don’t get me wrong. However, students should have already cultivated a love for writing for an audience before leaving for college, so that they can glean the most from their college education for the benefit of those they will serve as writers. There’s no switch that gets flipped at graduation that makes students stop being classroom writers and start being writers attracting an audience. They need to learn all along the way to be writing for an audience. For fear of losing my own faithful audience, I will end my diatribe there.

One final thought before moving on. Recently several prominent voices have offered advice for those seeking to build an audience. (I’m thinking predominantly of Seth Godin, Simon Sinek and Tim Ferriss, although I’m sure there are others who would lay claim to giving this advice as well.) The idea is that seeking to build an audience is the best way to alienate an audience. Instead, writing for an audience of one—namely yourself—is the best way to build an authentic audience. I think this has serious implications for teaching writing to students. We need to be careful to help them find their own voice and to promote their own interests as writers.

(Again, I need to carefully define what I mean: to find one’s own voice actually means to ingest many ideas from others—the great books—and to imitate the work of others. This is NOT some free-association exercise where a student discovers some special source within.)

Our ultimate aim is to promote the audience of one ideal, which means that the teacher/grader cannot be the audience of one. Students should learn how to create the pieces they desire to see exist in the world. What thesis, poem, novel, film script, sports analysis do they want to enact for no other benefit than their own interest? It is exactly this kind of impulse that attracts an audience.

Perspective is Power

Second, students should be taught to write about their perspective. They should learn how to write a thesis. They need to give an opinion, to share their perspective. If they can’t share their perspective, then all they’re doing is giving information. In this day and age information is cheap; it’s everywhere. The internet is glutted with an infinite amount of basically free information.  What people really want and need is perspective. If our students can learn how to convey their perspective, then they will be creating something of value for their audience.

I recently had a student who was struggling to create a thesis statement. He couldn’t articulate his perspective. So what I told him to do is practice in an area of interest. He likes to watch soccer. So I told him to start a blog (“You don’t even need to publish the blog…”). Analyze the game and give a perspective as to why your team won or lost. Then support your perspective by marshalling evidence such as how effective the team’s formation was, what players were on the field, were bad fouls committed or did the referee manage the game poorly.

Notice how highly transferable these skills are. This student can now apply these skills to an analysis of literature, a review of recent legislation, or the impact of events on a historical era. The student has learned to provide something of value to his audience: perspective.

Let me be clear about what this entails. Obviously to share a perspective, an author must work with information. One must differentiate the best information from the chaff that the wind drives away. One must plumb the depths of what the information means. One must connect one piece with another, especially finding links that perhaps others haven’t seen or given enough consideration to. One must bring to bear upon the information the accumulated background knowledge, even while humbly admitting a sheer lack of knowledge in the face of the infinite information out there. Yet, the work of writing is not just to repackage information, it is to bring perspective to the information.

Multiple Styles 

Third, students need to learn how to write in multiple styles. What do we mean by multiple styles? Too often we try to teach only an academic style. The academic style is great for particular kinds of writing, but it’s very limited in accomplishing the first and second ideas I mentioned. It is not a great style for attracting the widest possible audience, and it is not always the best style for conveying perspective. It can be great for conveying perspective if what you’re trying to do is present a very detailed argument in an academic setting.

Now don’t get me wrong, academic writing has to be part of any writing curriculum. Students should learn how to write judicial and deliberative essays. This is a style that demands precision and logical skill. However students should also be encouraged to explore different kinds of style—narrative styles, poetic styles—so that they can expand their sense of how to communicate ideas. I also want to add that there is no dichotomy between academic and other styles. Really effective academic prose incorporates narrative and poetic elements.

Learning about different styles and stylistic choices contributes to the first two points. To attract an audience and to provide perspective, students should be exposed to and practice different styles. Teachers should have students read different styles, analyze their attributes, and then imitate those styles, so that they can gain power in what they have to say. A great way to do this is through assigning a written narration or more complex imitation responses, like modernizing a work.

When I’m working with students, I find that when they are trying to work in an academic style they will often use overly elaborate sentence structures, thinking that’s what academic style is. This elaboration, using compound and complex sentences, feels sophisticated. But what happens is students start to lose clarity and focus in their writing, and if you lose clarity and focus, you lose power. You lose command of language. You lose the ability to communicate to an audience and provide perspective. So I encourage them to cut those sentences down. Find your subject and verb. Use short sentences. Create power through smaller sentences. Then build them together. You’re now maximizing clarity over complexity. 

Updating Classroom Aims

So what have I not mentioned as keys to an effective writing program? I haven’t mentioned such elements as topic sentences, paragraph structures, or the organization of writing such as introductions and conclusions. I haven’t mentioned the use of evidence, which is perhaps the bulkiest aspect of the formal writing curriculum. Students certainly ought to learn MLA style for quoting, referencing and citing sources. But if these elements receive primary focus, we can lose the reason why we write in the first place.

A practical consideration is how one incorporates this view of writing into our classroom instruction. Over the years I have drawn on a few different rubrics for assessing and giving feedback on written assignments. ERB’s WrAP rubric is quite helpful. Similar rubrics exist for other standardized tests, such as the SAT or ACT. These rubrics help get at some of the nuts and bolts of academic writing. (I also use rubrics for creative writing, simply to develop categories to discuss with students.) To these one can add the two broad categories outlined above. Does this piece of writing show an awareness of audience benefit? Does this piece of writing communicate substantive perspective? When marking papers, one can add notes about how a student is connecting with a potential audience or bringing perspective. I’m also mindful to show places where these aspects can be further developed. 

Students should come away from our classes on writing feeling that writing serves a grand purpose in their lives. Writing is a craft, and they should sense that they are part of a community of craftspeople who enjoy this kind of work. Writing for the widest possible audience and giving perspective to that audience is meaningful work. Students who start viewing writing in this way find greater enjoyment in their writing tasks.

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