Schemas, Forms, and Other Things That Go Bump on Student Papers

by Christine Olson Davis

BSU English Department I remember being furious with my mother one summer morning when I was about seven. Since I didn't want to be punished for talking back, I wrote her a letter:

Dear Mommy,
I hate you. I hate you.
I hate you.
Love,
Christine.

This letter demonstrates more than my childish anger. It is also a perfect example of a schema at work. The fact that the message of my letter was in direct opposition to its closure didn't bother me a bit. At seven, my letter schema told me that letters began with "Dear ..." and ended, "Love," plus a signature. On a more sophisticated level, this dependence on schema can happen to adults as easily as to seven-year-olds.

What Is a Schema?

A schema is what allows you to form that first image that automatically comes to mind when you hear a particular word. Linguists Richard C. Anderson and P. David Pearson define the term as "an abstract knowledge structure . . . [which] summarizes what is known about a variety of cases that differ in many particulars."

For example, think of the word "kitchen." In 1994, in the United States, a kitchen has a stove, a refrigerator, a sink, and an assortment of counters, cupboards, and drawers. These items are essential for a room to be considered a kitchen. Kitchens may also include a wide range of other items. This room may or may not have a table and chairs, a toaster, a microwave, an automatic coffeepot, or any number of various appliances. The lists of items considered essential and those which may vary are subject to continual adjustment as each of us modify our schemas because of our experiences. Basically, schemas allow us to organize our knowledge about the world in meaningful chunks.

Developing Schemas

People develop schemas as a result of their experiences, including formal classroom teaching. But the majority of our schemas develop from informal experiences gained in the process of living. Consider Jenny, whose family owns a St. Bernard. Since a schema begins with a single experience, until Jenny has other encounters with "dog," she may under-generalize and believe that "dog" refers only to animals that look like St. Bernards.

On the other hand, Jerry, whose neighborhood has an abundance of dogs of all shapes and sizes but whose family owns no pets, may over-generalize "dog" to include cats and other small quadrupeds until he is corrected often enough to understand the subtle differences.

Even though adults consistently identify various small pets for their children, problems may still arise for the child who is learning to distinguish between the many characteristics which are important to "dog." If all the animals identified as dogs for Jerry are black and white, he might decide that this color pattern is essential to "doginess." He may be quite confused, then, to discover that the neighbor's black and white "dog" is really a cat.

Learning a Writing Schema

Let's return now to the childish letter with which we began. As a child, I learned to write letters because my parents insisted that I send thank-you notes. Because my grandparents didn't live close by, I also wrote and received letters from them. Sometimes my cousins and I corresponded as well. All these letters began with "Dear" and ended with "Love." My schema for letters, while incomplete, was certainly understandable.

Then, in the sixth grade, we studied the United States. Our teacher brought in the addresses of state tourist boards, and we were introduced to the "business letter." Since that time, my schema for "letter" has continued to be both expanded and refined. Because of my wide experience with letters, at this point, I have quite a sophisticated "letter" schema with many subcategories and variables.

The more experience people have with any particular category, the more complete their schemas will be, and the better they will function as writers. All too often students arrive at BSU with incomplete and naive schemas for university-level writing. For many beginning college students, "report" may mean "go to the library; copy information from the encyclopedia; try to be grammatically correct." Their schemas for the term "essay" may be so underdefined as to be useless. They may believe that only direct quotes need to be "documented," and they may not understand that using another's ideas may also be plagiarism. Worse yet, our students' schemas for academic style frequently produce syntax which is pretentious at best and unclear at worst.

This is not surprising when you remember that schemas are formed through experience. Learning to write requires more than practice of the craft. We develop our schemas for writing primarily through reading, though speaking and listening also contribute to our sense of language and its use. Unfortunately, a large number of students who enter our classes are neither well-read nor experienced in thoughtful conversation. Their schemas for sentence structure are dependent on informal oral language, advertising slogans, People magazine, and perhaps a local newspaper. They have heard few speeches of any substance and have read little non-fiction beyond sports or fashion. It is not that these other forms of communication are bad or wrong in any way; they simply do not prepare students for the kinds of communication we expect.

Academic Writing Schemas:
Organization and Layout

Not only do our students arrive with incomplete schemas for academic writing in general, but each discipline at the university relies on slightly different schemas for academic writing. The most visible differences have to do with documentation and layout, but these differences, while sometimes frustrating, are not the major problems. Chicago/ Turabian, APA, MLA or any other research style can be mastered with a good manual and careful attention. No, the problems for most students have more to do with organization and writing style.

Sometimes we as teachers forget that organization and style not only change across disciplines, but that they may vary depending on purpose and audience within each field. A quick survey of academic periodicals can remind us of some interesting and important differences. Sciences such as botany and social sciences such as psychology, for instance, follow a similar organizational pattern. In these fields, published articles are prefaced by an abstract. The article itself begins with an introduction which presents pertinent background information, sometimes including a review of the literature, and defines a problem. Each of the following sections is clearly identified by a topic subheading: "Materials" and/or "Methods," "Results," and "Discussion." Charts, graphs, and tables offering pertinent data are used liberally throughout. Occasionally a photograph may be included.

In contrast, articles in Byte and Harvard Business Review, both listed as academic periodicals for their disciplines by the Katz and Katz Magazines for Libraries index, use a narrative organizational pattern. Subheadings, if present, indicate subject matter rather than form. Visually, their articles follow popular magazine standards. They use quotes from the article set in a larger and bolder font to catch the reader's eye. Color is also used to capture the reader's attention. And while appropriate charts, graphs, and tables may be used, photographs and illustrations are almost always present. In addition, though sources are credited within the body of articles, documentation as we normally think of it is basically absent.

Academic journals for English and history follow a third pattern. They, too, use a narrative organizational form, and subheadings, when present, are used to indicate subject matter rather than separate organizational sections (rather like this article). You will seldom find charts, graphs, and tables in these articles, but you may find an occasional sketch or photograph. You will find numerous block quotes, endnotes, and a "Works Cited" page in most English journals, while articles in many historical journals offer extensive footnotes.

Academic Writing Schemas:
Style

Writing styles demonstrate an even wider and harder to define variety within academic schemas. Each discipline has developed conventions which control various components of writing. For example, some sciences and social sciences require heavy use of passive verbs, while most arts and humanities discourage passives. In most sciences, it is not hard to avoid gender bias in language, because by the nature of the writing the issue rarely comes up. In other fields, writers have to deal with gender bias all the time. Differences between the disciplines may also be reflected in register. The articles in Byte, for example, are much less formal than those in The American Journal of Psychology. Each discipline's register is marked by the frequency of subordinate clauses, latinate and polysyllabic words, sentence length, the use of I and you as opposed to the third person, and the use of irony or puns and other verbal playfulness.

How to Help Our Students Develop Their Writing Schemas

Though it's hard to teach this kind of complexity, it is essential that our students expand their writing schemas if they are to succeed at BSU. Since more complete schemas are developed through more experience, our students need to expand their experiences with the written word. They must read more. Yet it is not enough for students to passively run their eyes over the words of a text. As instructors, we can help our students become aware of the kinds of variables in a text by making these differences explicit.

Ideas for Making Schemas Explicit

Anyone who asks students to write for their classes should develop a collection of student papers and file them by genre. This way, when you make an assignment you can show your students what an A paper looks like. If you want your students to write summaries, give them summaries to read. If you want your students to write good essay tests, allow them to read strong answers to the kinds of questions you intend to ask. If you want your students to write a critical analysis in your discipline, offer them a clear and concise example of a critical analysis.

But in order for students to modify their present writing schemas, they must "see" the features which are important in the academic community. One way to familiarize your students with the macro- structures of your discipline's written work is to have them investigate the published work in your field. Have students go to the library and find an issue of a periodical you'd like them to investigate. Ask the students to list all the similarities among the articles in one issue. Then, discuss the students' findings in class.

If you're teaching a class where not all the students are majoring in your discipline, however, you may not want to use published articles. You may be thinking, "I just want my students to stay focused on the topic and write clearly." But you must ask yourself what you mean by this. How focused is focused? Do you want them to offer just the "facts," or do you want them to use examples from their personal experiences? Will you allow narrative to illustrate a point, or will you insist on a strict expository style? And what exactly is "clear writing"? For many entry-level students the word "clear" means either a "See-Spot-run" style or the same language they use when talking to their peers-- neither of which is an appropriate academic voice.

A good way to address this problem is to find or create a variety of short writing pieces where the subject matter stays constant, but the form or style changes. For example, if you are teaching introductions, write four or five different ones, or use a variety of introductions from student papers on a single topic, which show both acceptable and unacceptable styles of writing. Hand these out to your students and discuss the exact reasons why each introduction works, or fails to work. Then, give them a short essay which has no introduction, and ask them to write one.

Another style exercise you can use is to have students do copy-changes (imitations). Hand out a short paragraph and have your students try to use the same style of writing, but cover a different subject than the original paragraph.

If you want to work on register (degree of formality), offer your students a paragraph of writing with all the words which you feel are important to that register underlined. Have the students look up these words in the dictionary. They will find that most of these words are of Latin or Greek origin. You can then discuss what this means in terms of academic writing.

Another word-level exercise you might try is either leaving words out of a paragraph and asking students to fill them in, or putting simplified words in place of the latinate ones and asking students to substitute more appropriate words.

As you design exercises to improve your students' writing, remember that any component of writing which you can isolate, can be taught by making its schema explicit.

Next Word Works coming in February

After eight years and 71 issues, the editors of Word Works feel the need to slow down a bit. Instead of the usual eight issues a year, we are changing to a six-issue schedule. So if you're a loyal follower, don't panic if you don't see WW for a little while. It will be back soon.

The December and January issues seemed the most logical ones to drop, because they have always been the most difficult for us to publish -- and also probably the most difficult for you to get around to reading -- what with finals, winter vacation, and the start of a new semester.

Meanwhile, if you have any ideas for topics you'd like us to cover, or if you'd like to do a guest article about writing in your discipline, call us any time.