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More than Form: Teaching Analytic Essays about

Literature to High School Writers

 

Andrew Morabito

 

“Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst… They are for nothing but to inspire.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

As current and future English teachers, we all have multifarious reasons for making the same career choice.  Maybe a teenage fondness for corduroy and tweed made you feel drawn toward your English teacher as an exemplar of prestigious intellectual knowledge which you aspired to, maybe most of your high school English teachers were grossly inept and decaying before your eyes while they were supposed to be teaching and you feel compelled to right a wrong by being a competent teacher, maybe lots of things.  But, most certainly, the unifying force which has brought us all to this field of work is an unwavering, spirited passion for literature which we hope to imbue in the burgeoning, easily distracted youths which inhabit the high school English classrooms.  So then, with a field of work which is inherently altruist and certainly doesn’t amount to easy money, why haven’t American English teachers actualized an educated citizenship which is not only highly literate, but also has an appreciation for literature and recalls fondly their time spent in English class?  Is literature being systematically abused in the American high school curriculum, becoming one of the worst of things and ringing true Emerson’s dictum?  And is the analytic essay the culprit?

           

As many of us who are young enough to have still been in high school when the most recent form of the New York State English Regents Exam was first administered or in its nascent years know, and those who have proctored and graded the notorious exam themselves know, the exam is rigid, exacting, and preparation for it is exhaustive and tends to saturate the curriculum during the three years leading up to it.  Students are no longer learning vocabulary, reading literature and subsequently writing about it because it has the possibility of being great and interesting to them, but because they need to be able to meet expectations when they meet their destiny: the NYS English Regents exam. 

           

It’s no wonder that so many of us who have been grilled and drilled in preparation for the Regents have trouble recalling fond memories of writing in English class.  The reading was often fun, but once the writing part was due, the fun was drained out of it.  The formal analytic essay about literature never seemed like a place for your real opinions; it’s where you parrot back those unquestionable nugget-like ideas that your teacher gave you in a lecture or where you play the find-the-literary-device game and wrote “This is an example of irony.”  The formal analytic essay tends to be reductionist, and as Randy Bomer states when speaking of students subjected to this genre of writing, “Though their first impressions may be subjective, ultimately they must squelch their response in favor of genres of writing that aspire to more objectivity” (104).  English students are led to believe that their opinions have no place in formal written analysis, and with the oppressive Regents exam looming over their heads for the first three of their four high school years, it’s not surprising that morale is often low in the English class concerning formal writing about literature. 

           

With the inevitability of the Regents, the question must become, “How do we prepare our students well enough to write formal literary analysis without draining all the fun out of it and squelching their personal identity?”  Well, as I’ve learned in my research, by employing a curriculum which contains various styles of writing assignments, reading assignments which are made approachable for the students, and not immediately harping on the eventuality of writing for a major grade (particularly the finality of the state exam as judgment day), high morale in the English classroom can be established and maintained.  Students can develop as writers through un-institutionalized and varying styles of writing and studying literature while also becoming suitably prepared to succeed in the area of formal written analysis while maintaining their enthusiasm for the text. 

 

Letting Literature Inspire and Maintaining Enthusiasm

 

The ultimate goal of teaching the formal essay about literature is to teach students how to convince a reader that their interpretation of a text is valid, and to do so in their own words.  This is not an easy task, though.  Novice writers need time to become accustomed to analyzing literature verbally and informally before they will be able to successfully translate their thoughts into the unnatural, rigid structure of formal written analysis.  Before their arrival at secondary school, most students have had no experience with formal written analysis of literature.  When speaking of the great demands made on these beginning analytic writers, Linda Flowers said, “There is only so much room in the writer’s conscious attention for all that needs to be accomplished due to the complex nature of writing” (29).  It’s important to remember that our students are humans, not robots, and not only are they going to take to new forms of expression at different rates, but their thoughts are inherently messy and come out scattered.  To write formally, students need to be taught over time that formal analytic writing should not squelch their initial response, as Bomer says, in favor of sequential orderliness and structure, but that it  should allow them to infuse voice into their writing. 

           

Preparing students to write formal analysis of literature can be a delicate process though, and before we discuss it, we need to understand how students respond to literature.  George Hillocks distinguishes responses to literature in three dimensions:  the cognitive, the affective, and the aesthetic, as Margot Soven explains it. 

 

“The cognitive dimension includes understanding the explicit and implicit meanings in the text, drawn from the author’s use of ‘words, images, characters, and events’ in the work.  What Hillocks calls the ‘cognitive response’ should sound familiar to you because it describes what we think of as the traditional approach to interpreting literature, which has as its purpose the discovery of author’s intentions.  The affective dimension describes the emotional impact of the work on the reader, how the reader is affected by the work.  The aesthetic dimension describes the pleasure we feel in the art and artifice of the work; it involves the total artistic impact of the work, the unique blend of words, images, and characters, and events.” (158)   

 

The usefulness of viewing students’ responses to literature in three distinct classifications is to allow us to see that in order for students to arrive at a somewhat encompassing awareness of the text, we need to allow enough time for them to develop all three types of responses before the cognitive dimension, the traditional written analysis, can be properly utilized by them in the classroom.  “According to Hillocks, it is the inseparability of these three dimensions that makes literature a distinct way of knowing” (Soven 158).  Hillocks’ three dimensions are inseparable and highly dependant upon one another.  For example, if a student is misinterpreting a major aspect of the text on the cognitive level, then his or her affective and emotional responses may be irrelevant or inappropriate.  And once students begin to develop their affective responses, how they feel about a text, they are drawing on their cognitive response.  The aesthetic response comes third because it draws on both the cognitive and affective responses.  When explaining Hillocks’ theory, Soven explains that, “We seem to appreciate what a writer has done with language as we respond with understanding and feeling” (171).  Students can only analyze the effectiveness of author’s techniques after they have interpreted a work and understood the effect it has had on them. 

 

The best way to incorporate student response in all three dimensions is to assign both formal and informal writing.  But, informal writing should be introduced in the curriculum before any rigorous formal essays are.  As Soven says, “Many instructors begin the study of a literary work by assigning informal writing, such as journal entries.  Informal writing gives students the opportunity to respond to a text without worrying about the elements of the formal paper” (158).  And as previously stated, introducing the elements of formal written analysis too early can be daunting to novice writers. 

           

A precursor to Hillocks’ view of response to literature as being three dimensional is Louise Rosenblatt’s “Reader Response Theory.”  Rosenblatt’s theory says that “the basis for intelligent productive reading is in the unique, individual, perhaps idiosyncratic connection between readers and the text… Meaning is the product of active minds and the words on the page—it does not reside in the ink, to be ferreted out, unearthed, uncovered” (168).  Rosenblatt’s theory values individual reader responses as the beginning of interpretation. 

           

Rosenblatt outlined the following principles for teaching literature:

 

1.  Students must be free to deal with their own reactions.

2.  There must be an opportunity for “an initial crystallization of a personal sense of the work.”

3.  The teacher should attempt to find points of contact among opinions of students.

4.  The teacher’s influence should be an elaboration of the vital influence inherent in the literature itself. (167)

 

These principles show us that students will develop their views of a text through the sharing of their various interpretations in classroom discussion.  The teacher should not be solely a lecturer and provider of valid interpretation.  Traditionally, teachers are often viewed as omniscient and students may be reluctant to ask questions and contribute their own interpretations for fear that they will be wrong.  On the other hand, a Reader Response approach aims to arrive at the “widely accepted interpretations” by allowing students to “deal with their own reactions” and develop understanding with not only the help of the teacher, but also their classmates, with the teacher serving as a guide. 

           

Employing a Reader Response approach to teaching does not by any means imply a lawless classroom though, where students completely dictate the path the curriculum takes.  Students still need to be given daily tasks, no matter how brief they may be.  As Soven explains, “one method for applying Rosenblatt’s principles to the classroom is to construct a set of questions such as those developed by Robert Probst,” which I’ve listed in Appendix I (163).  Probst recommends developing about ten prompts per unit stapled into a small book, allowing students to explore things such as their first reactions, feelings, associations, judgments, evolution of their reading, etc.  According to Probst, “The questions suggest the possibility of moving from response to analysis without denying the validity of initial responses, of unique personal interactions and associations” (Soven 163).  We can see that the formal analysis will grow out of these initial seeds of important questions and thoughts which students develop individually and collectively, maintaining interest as they go because their responses are not the teacher’s, but their own. 

           

Maintaining students’ initial interest in literature is a difficult task, and to achieve this, Bomer says that “student writers need to learn to be affected by literature” (107).  Nurturing students’ personal responses is imperative to the entire process of teaching formal written analysis because this way, when it becomes time for the formal writing they will have developed a lively, vested interested which they can explore further in written analysis.  Bomer accomplishes this “student affectation” by literature in a similar way to Probst’s questions.  Bomer asks questions like, “How did you feel about that? And what do you think it is, from your own life, that causes you to feel that way when you read this?” (108). 

           

When it comes to formal written analysis, Bomer suggests that it should arise out of students natural inclinations to further explore the subjective ways that a text “touches them.”  English teachers should not be objectifying pieces of literature for the sake of formal written analysis (108).  Bomer’s stance is a noble one, but those of us teaching in New York State and other states with mandated English exams need to prepare our students to tackle analytic writing assignments in which creativity is not particularly accounted for and in which their topic is given to them.  That is not to say that we have to limit the writing curriculum to just formal analytic writing though.  Nurturing students’ personal responses early in the process as Probst, Rosenblatt, and Bomer suggest, can help to fully engage our students in the process of reading literature and writing about it analytically.  By teaching formal written analysis as a process that feeds off students’ personal responses and interaction with a text, we can allow them to become analytic thinkers about literature before formal writing demands are made upon them.  Teaching formal written analysis in this manner can also encourage greater student interest in their formal writing when the time comes and won’t overload them with the transition of learning analysis and the restrictions of formal writing simultaneously. 

 

Transitioning from Interpreting Literature to Writing about Literature

 

For most of our students, formal written analysis is an unnatural act.  It can be greatly discouraging to them if we approach it the wrong way.  In Thinking through Genre, Heather Lattimer describes the traditional literary essay as “formulaic, cold, and clinical” (244).  And I think that most of us would be willing agree with that assertion.  Lattimer believes that “students deserve more.  They need to know that a response to literature is more than just a requirement set out in the state standards.  They need to integrate response into the fabric of their readerly lives, thinking of it not as an end-of-the-book, teacher imposed assignment but as a necessary part of understanding and creating text” (244).  Following Lattimer’s advice, even if the format for testing students’ abilities in written analysis doesn’t change (and it’s highly unlikely that it will), we can change the perception of the genre and improve the final product of the traditional essay by changing students’ perception of what it is to study and write about literature.  It’s clearly not as simple as it sounds, but it’s not impossible either. 

           

In order to nurture interactions in which students actively question the text, infer its meanings, relate to its characters on a personal level, and synthesize their prior understandings with the new ideas which the text presents, Lattimer suggests that “we think of responses to literature as being in three categories:  reflective, creative, and analytical” (245).  If we incorporate all three of these responses into the writing curriculum we will be developing a variety of student writing skills as they study literature which will build off of each other.

           

Reflective response, as Lattimer suggests, can include “mini-lessons, peer discussions, margin notes, reading response journal prompts, and end of class sharing” (245).  These informal activities all encourage reflection and initiate critical thinking about literature, serving to get the gears turning in students’ minds, encouraging meaningful interaction with literature.  As Lattimer says, “Being able to consistently and thoughtfully reflect on text is one of the most important measures of a literate individual” (245).  After all, how can we expect our students to produce quality, formal written analysis without providing maximum opportunity for them to reflect and develop the interest which will spawn the analytic thought which is not merely a parroting-back of the teacher’s thoughts presented in lecture?  Ideally, optimal opportunity for reflective response will imbue students with a vested interest in the text, one which will carry over to and enliven their formal written analysis.

           

Creative response, though not assessed on tests such as the Regents exam, is essential to student writers becoming more aware of literature and thinking of literature in the way that professional writers would.  As Lattimer says, “Professional writers not only reflect on text.  They use texts to inspire their own writing.  A line of a poem, the actions of a character in a story, a quotation in a journal article, an argument in an editorial may be the inspiration that will lead to a great piece of original text” (245).  A writing curriculum which only requires formal written analysis tends to objectify literature and separate the student from creative writing, making literature seem untouchable.  But, a writing curriculum which also incorporates creative response gives the student the eye of the writer, encouraging them to key in what makes things work as they read.  Bomer likens this process to his amateur attempts at carpentry: 

 

“I am a very bad carpenter, but occasionally, when the house needs a new set of bookshelves, say, I build something.  When I am thus engaged, I have eyes for carpentry; I notice every joint of every cabinet I see, constantly telling myself, Oh, sure, I could do that, or Maybe if I had the right tools, or just, Wow.  That’s what it’s like for authors to read.  Responses analogous to mine about carpentry go into their notebook, and from the accumulation of such noticings, art grows.” (106)

 

When Bomer mentions “their notebook,” he is referring to the inclusion of a writer’s notebook in the curriculum.  In Time for Meaning Bomer shows us that the purpose of the writer’s notebook is to encourage students to record what they believe to be their poignant “noticings” as they read.  If students use the writer’s notebook to record quotations, craft their own original ideas for pieces, and document their thoughts and reflections about their reading, then when the time comes for them to write their own fictional piece or formal analysis about literature, they’ll simply be able to “plumb their notebooks for ideas and inspirations” (Lattimer 246).  Lattimer stresses that, “Although there are many standards to address and many tests to prepare for, the year should not become so packed with units of study and curriculum that we remove the opportunity for students to think and respond creatively to literature” (246).  And though the state exams won’t be demanding our students to prove their creative writing abilities, the incorporation of creative writing assignments at points throughout the year will likely boost morale and students’ interest in literature. 

           

I know from a reading and writing survey I recently conducted at Whitney Point High School in two ninth grade classes, that the students value opportunities to express themselves creatively.  When asked what their favorite in-class writing assignment was, 42% of the students chose a fable writing assignment that they had recently completed and most students cited that the reason they chose the fable assignment was the free expression which it allowed.  A creative writing assignment like a fable is not only useful in sparking student interest in literature, it also helps students “internalize the structures of the essay, which is an abstract kind of writing that grows naturally by starting writing instruction in forms that closely resemble literature of the oral tradition” (Soven 175).  Marie Ponsot and Rosemary Dean believe that assigning diversionary writing like fables (see Appendix II for an example assignment) which utilize the imagination to be a more successful approach than the traditional ways which English teachers have taught how to write essays by simply laying out the features of the formal essay and its stages of writing.  They define the fable as “a two part structure of which each part is a literary structure.  The first part is concrete, a dramatic dialogue; its other function is to demonstrate the second part.  The second part is abstract, an aphorism; its other function is to sharpen the focus of the dialogue, making an analogy, a memorable statement about it” (14).  The result of the fable writing assignment is a desirable one; it gives students experience adhering to a specific, though simple, form and will prepare them for the format of the traditional literary analysis essay.

 

Teaching the Formal Literary Essay

 

“For English teachers who have been well trained in the practice of writing the five-paragraph theme essay it can be very difficult to let students choose their own texts, find their own thesis, develop their own arguments, and explain their own evidence.  There is a constant temptation to ‘just let me tell you what to write and how to write it” (Lattimer 249).

 

Despite our tendency to sometimes tighten the vice on the class when it comes time for formal written analysis, in order for students to grow as writers, we must allow them to first struggle through the traditional essay.  To attain our goal of moving away from the student sentiment of the formal essay as an “end-of-the-book, teacher imposed assignment” (Lattimer 244), students need to have more at stake in the formal writing process.  If they’ve previously been given class time to have a voice, an opinion, and opportunities to reflect personally, those liberties should carry over to, and provide the basis for, formal essay writing.  We should encourage students to scour their notebook reflections for recurring interests they have in the text, and on a more general level, to choose which text they will write about for a grade.  The idea is that, given these liberties, students’ initial appreciation and questioning of literature will carry over to their written analysis.  As Lattimer suggests, we should offer students an authentic purpose for written literary analysis, “beyond the typical ‘you need to be able to do this for state tests…middle school…high school…college’ response that we have all used but that simply indicates we don’t really have a good reason for making them write something that they don’t want to write and we don’t really want to read” (Lattimer 247).  If we encourage students to infuse their formal analysis with prior personal inquiry and interest, not only will they be more likely to retain interest during their writing, but their writing will be more interesting for us, as teachers, to read. 

           

Once we have given students adequate time to grow as readers of literature and to become engaged in the processes of reflective, creative, and analytical thought, then we should introduce the criteria for formal written analysis.  In order to not overwhelm students with the entire format of typical literary analysis too soon in the process, we should introduce the general rules of argument first in order to provide the base for essay creation.  As Soven outlines, “Toulmin identifies three basic parts of any effective argument:  the claim, the data, and the warrant.  The claim is the conclusion or the thesis statement, the data include the evidence for the claim, and the warrant is the explanation of why the data justify the claim, or, in other words, how you can make the connection between the data and the claim” (Soven 161).  When writing formal literary analysis, student writers often have trouble finding specific and relevant evidence and relating it back to their thesis, or they simply neglect to do so.  By introducing the simple sequence of claim, data, and warrant, and allowing students to employ these rules of developing argument before we introduce all the necessary criteria of formal essays, we can habituate students to the process of developing arguments and convincing another person that their arguments or interpretations are valid before they necessarily learn how to frame their arguments properly in a formal essay. 

 

Taking another cue from Soven, a good way to prepare your students for developing arguments is to evolve your daily informal writing tasks into Evidence Abstracts.  Here is an example evidence abstract:

 

Students have been given the following assignment:

 

At several points in The Great Gatsby, Gatsby shows his love for Daisy.  Do you believe that Daisy is in love with Gatsby?  Write five specific examples or details from the novel that support your viewpoint. 

 

A student might write the following Evidence Abstract to respond to this question:

 

Evidence Abstract: Student A

 

Thesis: Gatsby’s love for Daisy is demonstrated through his actions and his words.

 

1)     Gatsby buys a house near Daisy’s house in order to be near her.

2)     When he sees the green light at the end of the dock, Nick thinks about Gatsby’s attraction for Daisy.

3)     Gatsby invites many people to his parties in the hope that Daisy will come.

4)     Gatsby asks Nick to arrange a meeting with Daisy.

5)     Gatsby tries to protect Daisy after she has run down Myrtle with Gatsby’s car.

 

After students have written their drafts, based on their Evidence Abstracts, they can review each other’s drafts to evaluate the quality of evidence in the draft.  (Soven 161-2)

 

The Evidence Abstract poses a question which requires students to choose a side of the argument, which will become their thesis statement.  They then have to defend the thesis with specific evidence. This sort of prewriting assignment can be helpful for showing students how to develop their arguments, and it can evolve into a formal essay, which can be particularly helpful for students who have trouble finding an essay topic on their own. 

 

We must also be sure to present model analytic essays as “touchstone texts” to our student writers so that they have a sense of what we expect of them from the essay assignment.  Using model analytic essays may seem impractical due to the fact that finding good samples can be difficult, but countless writer’s handbooks and English Regents prep books have sample literary analysis essays (see Appendix VII for an example) and even sample introductory and concluding paragraphs (see Appendices III, IV, and V).  Using sample essays and paragraphs from books may not provide you with exemplary “touchstone texts,” but using these samples can provide opportunities for you and your students to read and evaluate the criteria and overall effectiveness of anonymous writing.  Using models from books can seem inauthentic, due to the fact that they are written by a random or anonymous person and that we don’t often read pieces of this sort, but a useful way to make the presentation of sample essays or “touchstone texts” seem more real to your students would be to save student essays from previous school years or, even better, to write an analytic essay of your own for students to dissect.  Supplying your own model essay constitutes some extra time and effort on your part, but it is the only truly authentic way of giving your students a model essay which displays all the particulars you want them to see before they begin drafting their own essays..

           

Once your students are familiar with writing argument defense, have been presented model essays, and have located a thesis which they would like to prove in a longer, formal essay, then you can introduce the format for writing an analytic essay.  As a pre-outlining activity, the literary analysis web (see Appendix VI), developed by Mary Ledbetter, can be used to expand upon your students’ experience defending arguments as they did with the evidence abstracts.  The literary analysis web is a more visual instructional tool which requires students to not only practice supporting a thesis with evidence, but also to develop main points and divide subtopics into their main paragraphs.  The web can be particularly useful as a pre-outlining activity when introducing the format of the literary analysis essay to younger writers who may be writing their first analytic essay.  The next thing to do is to distribute a sample essay criteria outline, with the types of outlined info you expect from them.  I have included a particularly good example which I have used with the permission of Robert Hesch, who is an English teacher at Whitney Point High School and hosted me during my fieldwork.

 

Literary Essay Outline

 

I.  Introduction

← Interest Catcher – 1-3 sentences hooking the reader’s attention (should NOT be the thesis statement) (Ex. Question, General Statement, Quote, Interesting Fact, Anecdote)

← Thesis Statement – The statement that tells exactly what you are going to prove in your paper or what you are going to write about.

 

II.  Body

A.     Main Point 1 – Your first reason or generalized example that supports your thesis.  (This should NOT have a reference to the text; it should be a general statement)

1.      Example from the text – this should either be a summary from a specific part of the text or a quote from the text.  You will probably need more than one example for each paragraph.

2.      Literary Device – This should support your example. 

B.  Main Point 2 

1.      Example from the text

2.      Literary Device

C.  Main Point 3

1.      Example from the text

2.      Literary Device

 

III.  Conclusion – This is the last thing you say as a conclusion to what you’ve said in your paper.  Now that your paper is done, what do you have to say?  A weak conclusion would be a restatement of thesis or main points.  A strong conclusion would be an insightful statement based on what you’ve said in your essay but something different than what you’ve said in your essay.

 

As Mr. Hesch did, presenting the necessary criteria and sequencing of the formal essay as a visual for your students to see is imperative; simply telling them or making them take note of the format is not enough for some students to grasp the organization and sequencing of ideas which a formal written analysis requires, and which they will need to be familiar with for the state exam. 

           

By the time you introduce the format and requirements of the formal analytic essay about literature, most students should have a thesis statement.  Even so, it is a good idea to present some further information to them about writing thesis statements.  Distribute handouts on developing good thesis statements. Some useful free resources can be found on online writing workshops such as Purdue University’s, which can be found at and ’s, which can be located at .  In many cases, having students entirely rethink, rewrite, or just revise their thesis statement with the help of a thesis guideline can help them tailor their thesis to be more specific, debatable, and better warrant literary analysis.  It is also important to spend ample time not just stressing the organization and functions of the various parts of the formal essay, such as the ever-important thesis statement, but also detailing what those parts are not.  Three common areas that need reiteration are the fact that the main points leading off each of the body paragraphs are not to include direct quotes or references to the text, and that the conclusion is not simply a restatement or summary of the essay; a good conclusion would be a new, final insight on the topic. 

           

Once students are ready to write their formal literary analysis essay, an additional handout on the stylistic conventions of literary essays should be distributed and explained.  A list like the following one compiled by Soven will serve the purpose.

 

Literature Essay Conventions

·        Use the present tense when discussing works of literature and events within those works.

·        Use the past tense only when discussing events that have happened in the past, whether in the author’s life or in the story itself.

·        Work quotations into your paper smoothly, conforming to correct sentence structure and grammatical form.  Quotations should always have lead-ins.

·        Incorrect:  “I have been acquainted with the night” (543).  This is an example of Robert Frost’s metaphorical language in his poem, “Acquainted with the Night.”

·        Correct:  Robert Frost uses metaphorical language in his poem “Acquainted with the Night,” in which he describes his loneliness as his acquaintance with the night (543).

·        Quotations should not be overly long; instead they should become a part of the text, acting as support for your points.

·        Use parenthetical documentation for all quotes and include a Works Cited page, according to MLA (Modern Language Association) documentation style.

·        Identify works of literature correctly.  Titles of novels and plays should be underlined or italicized (e.g., a novel, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a play, The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller).  Titles of short stories and poems should be enclosed within quotation marks (e.q., “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a short story, and “The Raven,” a poem, both by Edgar Allen Poe”.

·        Avoid contractions and colloquialisms.  (Soven 169-170)

 

Many novice writers, even if they’ve written formal literary essays before, are unfamiliar and unsure of what is expected of their essay stylistically, so students should always be provided with a guide to writing a stylistically proper formal essay that is tailored to the expectations of each particular essay writing assignment.  And even though citing quotations with proper MLA documentation should be practiced throughout the curriculum, distributing a handout on the particulars of MLA citation such as the one at compiled by UW-Madison’s Writing Center can help to ensure that students know how to document every type of source.

           

Once you have introduced the formal analytic essay structure and students start drafting their essays, your initial focus should be on structured content, the substance of their essay.  And though the Regents exam essays do not allow for peer reviews and multiple revisions, these parts of the writing and revising process should be taught to student writers.  Peer reviews will not only allow your students additional feedback, but will also help them to further internalize the necessary components of the formal literary essay and the qualities of good thesis development, which will hopefully carry over to their own revision process.  As teachers, in order to not discourage our students, we should refrain from making any spelling, grammar, or punctuation corrections on the drafts until the final revision could be helpful.  Throughout the initial process of outlining and drafting their essays, we should encourage students to get their ideas down, plan, organize, and develop them before worries of minor corrections distract their thoughts while writing and revising the content of their essay.  Multiple revisions of spelling, punctuation, and grammar can easily discourage young writers and make them feel early on that they can’t succeed as writers.  As Soven says, “Intensive correction can destroy the writer’s morale” (111).  We need to allow students to hone the major areas of developing and supporting the thesis before we address minor corrections.

           

Maintaining Balance in the Writing Curriculum

 

In order to maintain something resembling high morale in the English classroom and encourage passionate inquiry of literature, we need to nurture the initial, personal student responses and place a high value on student input and allowing them to develop their own arguments and help them to arrive at their own conclusions.  Yet, we have to make them accustomed with writing formal literary analysis at some point; inevitably they will be required by the state to take the Regents exam.  But, that does not mean that the entire writing curriculum has to be chock full of repetitive and dry formal literary analyses.  As Lattimer aptly suggests, “Students should not be required to respond with a formal analysis to every text that they read or every genre that they study” (247).  If we want our students to translate their initial reflective response into an effective, lively analytic piece of writing, we must not require them to produce formal, in-depth analysis so often that the entire process becomes tiresome or simply overwhelming.  Lattimer suggests that “studying and writing analytical responses two or three times during the year, in conjunction with appropriate units of study of a particular genre, author, or text, is effective” (247).  By not overusing formal written analysis and making ample use of, and developing gradually, the reflective and creative responses as well, it is entirely possible for us to maintain students’ interest in literature and allow them creative liberties from time to time, while simultaneously developing their critical thinking skills and helping them to internalize the structure and feel of formal analytic writing which will ultimately prepare them for the impromptu nature of the formal analysis essays on the Regents exam.  There is no prescribed, perfect balance between the reflective, creative, and analytic response; you must gauge what your students need as they go, taking care to vary your approaches as a teacher to keep your students interested in writing about literature so that they are invested in the process enough to help them improve as writers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Bomer, Randy.  Time for Meaning: Crafting Literate Lives in Middle and High School.              Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995.

 

Cooper, Charles R., and Lee Odell.  Evaluating Writing: Describing, Measuring, Juding.              Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1999.

 

Flower, Linda.  “Writer Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing.”              College English 41 Sept. 1979: 19-37.

 

Hesch, Robert.  “Literary Essay Outline.”  Whitney Point, NY: 2006.

 

Hillocks, George Jr., Bernard J. McCabe, and J.E. Campbell.  The Dynamics of English             Instruction.  New York: Random House, 1971.

 

Lattimer, Heather.  Thinking Through Genre.  Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2003.

 

Ponsot, Marie, and Rosemarie Dean.  Beat Not the Poor Desk.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Boynton / Cook, 1982.

 

Probst, Robert.  “Dialogue with Text.”  To Compose: Teaching Writing in High School             and College.  2nd ed.  Ed. Thomas Newkirk.  Porstmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1990.

 

Rosenblatt, Louise.  Literature as Exploration.  5th Ed.  New York: Modern Language             Association, 1995.

 

Scarmedelia, M., and Cary Bereiter, and Hillel Goelman.  “What Writers Know: The             Language Process and Structure of Written Discourse.”  The Role of Production             Factors in Writing Ability.  Ed. Martin Nystrand.  New York: Academic Press,             1982.

 

Soven, Margot.  Teaching Writing in Middle and Secondary Schools: Theory, Research,             and Practice.   Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999.

 

Young, Art and Toby Fulwiler.  When Writing Teachers Teach Litrature: Bringing             Writing to Reading.  Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995.

 

Appendix I

 

Sample focus questions:

 

Focus                                      Questions

 

First Reaction                         What is your first reaction or response to the text?                                                                          Describe or explain it briefly.

 

Feelings                                  What feelings did the text awaken in you?  What emotions                                                             did you feel as you read the text?

 

Perceptions                             What did you see happening in the text?  Paraphrase it—                                                    retell the major events briefly.

 

Visual images                         What image was called to mind by the text?  Describe it                                                     briefly.

 

Associations                           What memory does the text call to mind—of people,                                                          places, events, sights, smells, even of something more                                                        ambiguous, perhaps feelings or attitudes?

 

Thoughts, ideas                      What idea or thought was suggested by the text?  Explain it                                                 briefly.

 

Selection of textual                Upon what in the text did you focus most intently as you elements                                 read—what word, phrase, image, or idea?   

 

Judgments of importance       What is the most important word in the text?  What is the                                                 most important phrase in the text?  What is the most                                                           important aspect of the text?

 

Identification of problems     What is the most difficult word in the text?  What is there

                                                in the text or in your reading that you have the most trouble                                                 understanding?

 

Author                                     What sort of person do you imagine the author of this text                                                 to be?

 

Patterns of Response              How did you respond to the text—emotionally or                                                                intellectually?  Did you feel involved with the text or                                                         distant from it?

 

Other Readings                       How did your reading of the text differ from that of your                                                    discussion partner (or others in your group)?  In what ways                                                             were they similar?

 

Evolution of your reading      How did your understanding of the text or your feelings                                                     about it change as you talked?

 

Evaluations                             Do you think the text is a good one—why or why not?

 

Literary Associations             Does this text call to mind any other literary work (poem,                                                 play, film, story—any genre)?  If it does, what is the work                                                 and what is the connection between the two?

 

Writing                                   If you were asked to write about your reading of this text,                                                   upon what would you focus?  Would you write about some                                                             association, some memory, some aspect of the text itself,                                                   about the author, or about some other matter?

 

Other readers                          What did you observe about your discussion partner (or the                                                             others in your group as the talk progressed)?

 

 

 

Appendix II

 

Using the Fable Assignment to Teach the Essay

 

Ponsot and Deen begin instruction in fable writing with what they call a diversionary tactic.  They give a lesson in punctuation—how to use quotation marks, commas, and paragraphing to punctuate dialogue.  They then suggest that students practice using these punctuation marks by writing an imaginary dialogue using the following guidelines.

 

Imagine in the world of the imagination, it is the middle of the night in the middle of a countryside through which a road runs.  A horse is coming down the road and meets a bear.  For your first paragraph, write what the horse says to the bear.

      Now for paragraph two, write what the bear says to the horse.

      In paragraph three write what the horse says to the bear.

      All of a sudden a storm breaks out—lightning, thunder, rain.  Write a sentence or two about paragraph four.

      In paragraphs five and six write one more exchange between the horse and the bear.

      Now skip a few lines and write, “the moral of this fable is…”

 

When students have written the final sentence, they begin to experience a “sense of accomplished structure.”  After they read their fables aloud, they discuss what it was like to write them.  Ponsot and Dean argue that this method helps students to gain a concept of form that carries over to their writing of exposition.

 

Appendix III

 

Teaching the Introductory Paragraph (Sarah Myers-McGinty.  The College Application Essay.  P. 46.  New York, New York: The College Application Board, 2004.)

 

The General-to-Specific Introduction

 

This type of introduction does not outline the paper.  Instead, it draws the reader into the topic slowly, leaving the presentation of individual points to the body of the essay:

 

            A general statement (in the topic area)

            More specific statements that lead to thesis

            Thesis (main idea)

 

Here is an example of this type of introduction for the same paper on the novels of Dickens:

 

The nineteenth century took the family seriously.  Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were a model family, the parents of nine children.  And in the novels that were meant to be read to the family group, family connections and relationships were major themes.  Charles Dickens felt the presence of these themes and, as the unhappily married father of 10 children, knew what family life was like.  His novels, however, often present the family in a rather inverted manner.

 

This introduction slowly defines the areas to be discussed and gradually brings the reader to the topic.  The sample begins with the nineteenth century and nineteenth-century families, then goes to Dickens’ own family, and finally to the families in Dickens’ novels.  The actual novels are not named, but the topic is suggested in the last sentence. 

 

Appendix IV

 

Student Samples of Introductory Paragraphs (Murphy, Barbara L. and Estelle Rankin.  5 Steps to a 5: Writing the AP English Essay.  Pp. 143-5.  New York, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.)

 

Student A

 

The culmination of moral reconciliation and spiritual awakening is most evident at the end of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.  This gradual enlightenment, rather than a sudden epiphany, is portrayed through Milkman, the heroic character of the novel.

 

Comments

 

This brief, but on-target, introduction indicates a student writer who is in control of his or her subject.  Not only does the writer state the subject and purpose of the essay, but he or she also employs mature diction and presents insights using phrases such as moral reconciliation and spiritual awakening, and rather than a sudden epiphany to point out an inherent contrast.

 

Student B

 

In her op-ed piece, “Pretty Poison,” Maureen Dowd examines and modifies Anna Quindlen’s earlier insight into the categorized life span of a woman, that is, “pre-Babe, Babe, and post-Babe.”  Reflecting on the new “Botox-injection craze,” Dowd facetiously updates Quindlen’s classifications to, “pre-Babe, Babe, Botox-Babe, and Cher.”  Ms. Dowd employs variety of rhetorical devices to expose the absurdity of the female ideal of presenting herself as a younger, more attractive woman than she believes she is.

 

Comments

 

This introduction clearly presents both the subject and purpose together with the writer’s definite attitude toward Ms. Dowd’s and Ms. Quindlen’s topics that this student refers to with quotations from the op-ed column.  Using words such as craze, facetiously, and absurdity, the reader also becomes aware of an upcoming “prickly” analysis of the columnist’s presentation.

 

Student C

 

The reader of Norman Mailer’s passage walks away with great empathy for Benny “Kid” Paret and a better understanding of what it was like in that arena the night of his massacre.  Mailer’s diction, syntax, and use of specific animal imagery recreates this event with a dichotomous tone and a sense of the bestiality of the “sweet science.”

 

Comments

 

Here is a student who has a definite point of view and is not afraid to make that point of view known to the reader who is brought immediately into the essay.  The writer’s tone is obvious from the very beginning with the use of words such as massacre, and bestiality, and the thesis incorporates the prompt without a bland restatement of its purpose and object.

 

 

Appendix V

 

Student Samples of Concluding Paragraphs (Murphy, Barbara L. and Estelle Rankin.  5 Steps to a 5: Writing the AP English Essay.  P. 169.  New York, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004.)

 

Student A

 

Throughout history, the rich and famous have enjoyed privileges that the common man hasn’t been allowed.  Many current headline stories reveal the depth to which money and fame can infect the justice system.  Meanwhile, those clothed in “rags” continue to get shafted by a system they do not influence nor control.

 

Comments

 

This conclusion aggressively finalizes the writer’s position.  With no rehashing of the prompt and no repetition of the thesis, this student leaves his reader with an implied challenge—do you dare to agree or disagree with me?

 

Student B

 

In any case, that’s what it comes down to.  The Calvinists believed that wealth was a sign from God that a man had been pre-selected to reside in heaven.  So, our wealthy folks are really heaven-sent.  Perfect angels don’t need laws anyway, right?

 

Comments

 

Using a sarcastic rhetorical question to end this essay is a thought-provoking way for this student writer to make his or her own voice and point of view heard loudly and clearly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix VI

 

Literary Analysis Web (taken from Mary Ledbetter’s Helping Students Meet and Exceed Writing Standards.  P. 88.  Bellevue, WA: Bureau of Education and Research, 2005.

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix VII

 

Sample Literary Analysis Essay (taken from Sebranek, Kemper, and Meyers’ Writers Inc: A Student Handbook for Writing and Learning.  P. 229.  Wilmington, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

 

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