Moving beyond correctness:
Helping good writers get better

by Gadrie Edmunds
BSU Writing Center

I was one of the kids everybody hated in high school English. While my classmates spent days and even weeks on their papers, I did mine one or two nights before the assignment was due; they got C's and B's, I got A's. Since my papers came back with good grades and positive comments, I was hardly inclined to vary my writing process. I continued this method of writing into college as well. As long as I had read and grasped the material, I knew I needed to spend very little time actually composing the papers -- at least compared to others in the class. I viewed assignments that built revision into the classroom as a waste of time and refused to make any substantive changes to my drafts. After all, I had been told for years that I was a strong writer, able to organize my thoughts clearly and coherently. Why did I need to revise?

It wasn't until I became a tutor in the Writing Center that I finally understood the need for revision -- in all types of writing. Although we often talked during staff meetings about the necessity for reworking a draft, it never hit home until I started helping other students. One day fairly early in my experience as a Writing Consultant, I helped a student with her philosophy paper. She was dealing with complex subject matter and her sentences were remarkably clear and coherent, with a wide variety of constructions. Each statement seemed to dovetail nicely into the next. There was just one problem: every paragraph was over a page long. Although her paper seemed well organized, each paragraph was so long it was impossible for me to remember where it had begun. It was difficult for me to assess, in a twenty-five minute session, whether or not all of her paragraphs fulfilled the promise of their topic sentences; they were simply overwhelming to me as a reader.

I tried to suggest to this client that she might want to break up a few of the sections.

"But each paragraph is a complete thought," she said. "You aren't supposed to start a new paragraph until you change thoughts, right?"

She looked dubious when I told her that readers tend to expect such a break both mentally and visually, and that it's okay to start a new paragraph when the nuance of a thought changes even slightly.

"That's only because people are used to reading one-sentence paragraphs in newspapers. They can't handle something that's fully developed," she argued.

She had a good point, but I still tried to convince her that her writing might be improved if she worked on paragraphing. Otherwise, her audience might feel as overwhelmed by information as I did. Yet when she left, I got the impression that she still didn't agree with me; I had no idea if she would consider my suggestions once she was out the door.

What frustrated me most about this session was that this client was obviously a strong writer -- so strong she wasn't open to many suggestions. She knew what had worked for her in the past, and intended to stick with those tried-and-true methods. I started comparing her apparent attitude to my own experience and realized how often it happens that good, or even adequate, writers fall by the wayside. It sometimes seems as if professors are so overwhelmed responding to writers who need help that those who can hold their own are just given grades with few specific comments. Muriel Harris notes that instructors often shy away from long comments because of a stereotype that "a large number of comments means' (from the student's perception) that the teacher didn't like the paper" (38). It's no wonder, then, that students are happy with as few instructor comments as possible, and that professors may be leery of trying to push writers who seem to be doing okay.

I very seldom received any constructive notes once I turned a paper in. There were no suggestions for how I might improve either the paper I was holding, or anything I might write in the future. I had a solid understanding of the forms of academic writing, and as long as I followed these organizational schemes, professors seemed to require little else. In the same way, the writer I tutored had a grasp on what sort of structure to follow and saw no need to do anything different. While it is a good sign when students or clients "own" their writing and resist making changes just because someone suggests that they do so, it seems an injustice not to challenge good writers to improve in the same way we challenge their less successful peers. They, too, deserve to be shown a full range of writing options.

So who gets the responsibility of focusing on these already capable writers? Norman Najimy thinks such attention should come from the professors within a student's major field. After all, he argues, the instructor who gives a writing assignment has a duty to evaluate each paper fully and thoughtfully. Najimy goes so far as to call evaluation "a step in the writing process" and notes that all evaluation should lead to "future improvement" in a student's writing (4). Careful commenting on all student drafts is only fair. Students have spent a significant amount of time researching and composing an assignment; professors should give the same courtesy during the grading process. This means pointing out a paper's strengths and weaknesses to each individual student, even the strong writers, and offering specific marginal and end comments. With care, professors should be able to help each student turn in an even better paper next time.

Granted, this may seem like a daunting task, given the size of many classes, but it's worth it. Here at the Writing Center, all of the consultants are involved with The Write Project each semester. We usually see two or three drafts from ten students. For each draft, we're told to shoot for about four hundred words in the end comment. I always find myself shuffling the best papers to the bottom of the pile, because it's difficult to find something to say about strong drafts. I'm often tempted to just write "Good job, keep it up" (a comment I saw more than once throughout high school and early college), and move on to the students who seem to be having more trouble. But aside from our comment guidelines, I know it wouldn't be fair to good writers to skip over them so lightly. Like all writers, whether professional or student, advanced writers appreciate knowing what they did well in a draft and what could be improved.

This statement is borne out by many of the comments we've received about The Write Project. In our Writer's Response form, students often show their appreciation for specific comments-both the compliments and the constructive suggestions. And while visiting participating classrooms, I've had the authors of good papers say thanks for explaining why certain aspects of their drafts worked well, instead of just giving them a generic "good job." All of this supports the notion that every writer appreciates thoughtful comments, just the opposite of the stereotype noted by Harris.

What is so nice about The Write Project is that it builds revision time into the assignment, so writers have a chance to look at a consultant's suggestions and incorporate them into revisions. Ideally, every writing assignment would allow for such time, and include instructor guidance on revision to show the more intractable students its worth. Yet even if there isn't room for such structured revision in all courses, professors should use the same type of evaluative end comments when grading a paper as they would during a drafting stage. In this way, strong student writers will still benefit from thoughtful instructor comments, and will continue to improve.

Even with such great programs as The Write Project, it's the professors within a student's major field -- those who give the assignments -- who can do the most to help already competent writers. In a study of Virginia Polytechnic Institute's writing-across- the-curriculum program, John Muffo and Nancy Metz found that professors outside of the English department who emphasize good writing motivate students to push their boundaries. Writers who may have been doing only adequate work strive to excel when they realize good writing is valued outside of English classes. They also note that the "different modes of communication" in each discipline "can be refined best in courses in the major" (316). Russell Rutter seconds this notion, arguing that no one freshman composition class can address the future writing needs of all its students, and no professor can be well-versed in all of the "distinctive assumptions and . . . patterns of inquiry" found in different academic disciplines (146). With this in mind, professors of each major must step up to try and fill the gap in knowledge.

Advanced writers may have the most need for such specific, course-related help from their professors. They already have a good grasp of correct usage and academic conventions in a general setting, and now need to see how their writing fits into their major field. While they probably know topic invention strategies, grammar rules, and editing techniques, they may not be aware of extra-textual concerns. It is then up to the instructors of each major to create an awareness of rhetorical aspects, like accepted forms or the consideration of audience. It can be argued, in fact, that form and audience are closely linked, and in ways which student writers might not be aware of.

Advanced writers probably have a basic grasp of audience already, knowing that they may be writing for someone more than just themselves or their professors. Yet Helen Rothschild Ewald advocates pushing strong writers even further, so they think more about potential readers, if not while composing, at least while they're revising. Good writers must realize that "organizational choices" influence meaning "not because the writer is using them, but because the reader is" (89). This means that instructors should point out what an audience might expect -- what the readers of a technical journal would look for in an article, for example -- and how close the student's work comes to meeting those expectations. Do deviations from a standard format aid or hinder meaning? It is here that the need for a professor's involvement in the writing process is really underscored; these are the types of issues that are difficult for Writing Center consultants and freshman composition teachers to address successfully.

Perhaps the best way to help is by showing students examples of the many writing options open to them. By letting students see good papers from previous classes and/or writing published within their field, instructors can increase a writer's repertoire dramatically. It's important to discuss such examples with students, however; even strong writers might not know intuitively why a paper works or doesn't, or why the author made certain rhetorical choices. Talking about the choices made in a piece of writing helps students realize that they, too, have a broad range of options they can utilize while composing. And more available options means more interesting and diverse reading come grading time.

Like the rest of life, the writing process demands flexibility. The student I mentioned in my earlier example knew the rules for structuring her paper and that was that. She didn't realize her knowledge of paragraphing could serve as a basic guideline and that she could move forward from there. Advanced writers are ready to move beyond the basic rhetorical structures they're shown, but professors and consultants must be as open and flexible as the writers themselves. It might require more work from those who read and evaluate advanced writing, since we might find it a lot easier to assess a paper on whether it follows a certain form or touches on required points. Being open and flexible takes more work and care, and places more trust in the student writer. Still, we must realize that good writing is worth everybody's effort, and that these advanced writers will soon be writing in the workplace, in real-world conditions. With the combined effort of the English department, the Writing Center, and (especially) professors in all the major fields, we can help good writers move beyond simply being correct. Together, it's possible to create graduates who are really stellar writers.

Works Cited

Ewald, Helen Rothschild. "What We Could Tell Advanced Student Writer about Audience." Landmark Essays on Advanced Composition. Eds. Gary A. Olson and Julie Drew. Mahwah. NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum, 1996. 177-181.

Muffo, John A. and Nancy Metz. "Preparing Faculty for Writing Across the Curriculum." Assessment in Practice: Putting Principles to Work on College Campuses. Ed. Trudy Banta, et al. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996. 315-317.

Najimy, Norman C. Measure for Measure: A Guidebook for Evaluating Students' Expository Writing. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1981.

Rutter, Russell. "Research Writing in Advanced Composition: An Essay in Definition." Landmark Essays on Advanced Composition. 145-150.