Critique Magazine :: On Writing II

A tireless presence in writing practice and theory, Peter Elbow has been a guiding force, teaching teachers to educate with style and students to write with power. With Writing With Power and Writing Without Teachers, Elbow reformed the teaching of writing, and he continues to do so today with Everyone can Write: Essays Toward the Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing and with Being a Writer. Elbow has influenced education so much that he is a veritable icon of how to teach writing; one cannot graduate from a composition graduate course without hearing his name, without studying and implementing his techniques. His many publications center on the art and experience of writing, offering so much practical advice that any student or educator can implement easily his techniques. As Peter Elbow asserts, everyone can be a writer, and his many followers would assert that he has certainly helped them get there. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Professor Elbow.

Bush: How does a teacher teach a student to provide interesting writing that all teachers are looking for?

Elbow: Well, my central answer has to do with the word safety. Over the years, I've finally concluded that safety in writing is my highest priority. Or, at least, it's a foundation that I've got. I must make a classroom where safety happens, but due to the lack of safety in some classrooms, student writers don't take risks; they don't feel safe when they write. They are trying to follow directions. But teachers like students to take risks and to be adventuresome: I'd like to use an analogy for adventuresome and risk-taking writing. We want students to jump off a diving board at twenty feet. That's taking a risk. But if we hold a gun to somebody's head while they're standing on a twenty foot high diving board, they're actually not taking a risk. They're reducing their risk by jumping off the board in order not to be shot. The only way you can get someone to really take a risk is to build up foundations of safety. We want to get them to jump from a one foot diving board, then a five foot diving board, then gradually, until they dare, jump off a twenty foot diving board. I think safety is terribly underemphasized, and with grading, it's hard to pull it off.

Bush: You would say that safety is building confidence, a strong sense-of-self?

Elbow: That's right, exactly. And self-esteem, and praise. I'm all for praise, but there's been some objection to praise. Notice, therefore, that safety doesn't require praise; it just requires safety, a safe environment where the student can take risks.
      Maybe I can talk usefully about the things that I do that help produce safety. I try to make a big distinction between these four levels of audience relationship: 1) Private writing that I don't see and nobody sees; 2) Writing that people see but they don't respond to it; they just share it for the sake of sharing; 3) Writing that we share with each other (or with me) and there is a response, there is feedback, but it's not negative feedback; 4) Finally, writing that gets criticism. I find it helpful to think of these four levels of audience and responses, and I build a classroom in which all four are honored because so often in classrooms, everything that the students write goes to the teacher and gets some kind of evaluative response, and that's a big problem. It's fine to have writing go to the teacher for an evaluative response as long as it's one of four levels of audience. I spell this out in the second essay in my recent book that's called, Everyone Can Write—Essays Toward the Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing. Students need writing that's private, writing that is not going to be shown to anybody. And then they need some writing that they just write and they read it to each other in pairs or small groups, or they give it to me and I just read it and say, "thanks." Next, they need some writing that they share with each other, and they give each other responses
      I have lots of ways of responding to writing that are not evaluative, like "tell me what you hear in there, what's the point..." and many other kinds of interesting questions that are not evaluative: "What are some ideas that are implied here, ideas that are not central, ideas that are not even quite stated, but are in there?" These are questions/responses that are not evaluative but help a writer find more ways to build an essay. Then they go to me and I give a response that's not evaluative.
      Of course, they need the fourth kind of reader relationship also, they need an evaluative response. But safety means there must be this foundation of these other kinds of reading, audience relationships and response where there's no danger. It's fine to have the criticism, as long as these other audiences are included, this balanced diet of four audience response relationships.
      Let me see, how else do I add safety? I say to students at the beginning of the semester (and I say it two or three times): "The main thing in here is writing. Giving it to an audience is great, getting a response is great, getting evaluation is great, but if those things get in the way of writing, that's a problem. The main thing we need is tons and tons and tons of writing. So write what's important to you, write what's true, write what you care about, and if you find yourself writing something that you can't share with each other in small groups, or you don't want to share with me, come talk to me. I want you to feel safe that whatever they write, you don't necessarily have to share everything. But I am going to ask you to share three-quarters of your writing." Sharing is important for feedback and improving writing and I want to see three-quarters of their writing, not all of it, and as long as they have the option to do this now and then, if they don't want to share it, we talk it over or something like that; usually it's not a problem, and this builds a little foundation of safety.
       And I'll tell you the third thing that works well and that I really care a lot about. I've come to use a contract for grading. It's described in an essay about grading in that same book of essays of mine I just mentioned. The contract says if you do all these writing activities for the course, all the activities that I think will help produce good writers—and it's a lot of work and a long list—you're guaranteed a B. For a grade higher than a B, we're back to judging quality. You can only get a grade higher than a B if you write pieces that I judge to be excellenthonors quality. B is an honors grade. But up to a B, we're not into this judging game at all. They have to do tons of writing. They have to take essays through lots and lots of drafts, giving and getting peer feedback, revising, etc. And when they revise, they have to make substantive changes. Revisions don't have to be better, they just have to be changed because students have to learn how to manipulate their writing. So it's a lot of work, and it's hard and it really produces learning, but they're safe. It makes a huge difference in my classroom.
       Now I do build in a few sneaky things to the contract there. One of the requirements is to have a certain element of perplexity in every piece of writing. A student can't just say, "Here's the seven reasons why I hate abortion or here's the seven reasons why I defend abortion." There's no perplexity in that there. To use another phrase from my contract, there's no "movement of thinking". Those are fuzzy criteria but, nevertheless, I can use them if I'm gentle. When there's a blatant case of no movement of thinking or no perplexity, I'll just say, "you haven't done it. I'll let it go by this time, but next time, you'll disqualify yourself for the criteria for a B, unless you sneak in some perplexity and movement of thinking." So the contract is a way to get all my students to do tons of work—I get much more work out of them—but they feel safe.
       I'll tell you one other thing I sneak into the contract that relates to revising spelling and grammar. I always have a final, final draft. It's usually the fourth draft of the essay. The only task is to copy-edit. For the serious essays, I always have a first draft that's very adventuresome and we usually write it in class. I lead them through a whole lot of creative writing activities and they make a big, interesting mess with the first draft. Then for the second draft they have to turn the first draft into some kind of an essay—give it some shape. They get feedback from each other on this second draft, and they get feedback from me. The third draft asks them to make the best essay they can, but they still don't worry about spelling and grammar. I'm trying to teach them not to confuse real revising with just fixing mechanics so I don't ask for any fixing of spelling and grammar for the third draft. I want genuine revised thinking and shaping. The only task for the fourth draft is to copy-edit and the contract says you have to be successful in copy-editing. You can get help, as most writers get help, but you need to learn how to do what's necessary to get rid of mistakes in spelling and grammar. Anyway, this contract makes the classroom much braver about adventuresome writing because they know that they can get a B if they just fulfill the criteria.
      Now, there's something very important here that a reader might not realize at first. The contract doesn't get rid of evaluation, it just de-couples evaluation from grading. In this way it makes evaluation healthier and more productive of learning. I still give them all this feedback—I tell them what doesn't work, how to make this better, where I'm lost, and so on. And they have to revise; otherwise, they're not fulfilling their contract. But what's different with the contract is that they have to think about my evaluative comments, not just go along with them for the sake of a grade.

Bush: Sort of like you're grading it as you go, but not letting them know?

Elbow: Not at all. I'm letting them know about my reactions as a reader, but it has nothing to do with their grade. With the contract, they have to revise. But they don't have to do what I said. They might do something different. So they're stuck in this wonderful position where most students aren't stuck. Most students, when the teacher makes a suggestion about revision, have to do it because they think, "Oh the teacher's giving me a grade. I have to do what the teacher wants." But the student is not really thinking about it. With my contract, I give them a suggestion or I tell them what doesn't work, and they say, "Well, maybe he's right, he's the teacher. But I don't know if I agree with that; I might do something different." They have to think about it. Now, of course, for grades over a B, they are dealing with my judgment.
What's great about contract grading is that teachers can work out their own criteria and figure out what behaviors and activites they think are most reliable for producing learning. There'sa lot of flexibility for the teacher to tailor contracts to their own needs and styles.

Bush: What's an A paper? Is it something that you can objectify?

Elbow: I don't have any criteria. One of the things we do in the contract situation is to have some class discussions where I say, "All right, for those of you who are really pushing to get a grade higher than a B, I'm going to be judging. Let's find out what you think is A writing." And we do it with some examples of student writing. We try and talk about it: "Would you give this a grade higher than a B or not and why?" I don't find it very useful to try and make formulaic pronouncements of what makes good writing. It's much more useful to have this as a concrete discussion with the students. When we look at the papers we often agree. We say, "yep, that one should get a grade higher than a B ... this one, no." But not always. This is the reality of human judgments about writing.
One thing I want to say here is that judging questions seem to me the dullest and least useful questions we can ask about a paper. There are so many more interesting questions—what does it say? How does the reader react? What is it almost saying? What is the structure? All those are non-evaluative questions. Anyway, of all the things I'm interested in, I'm not interested in trying to lay down guidelines of what constitutes an A. I'm much more interested in those other questions than I am in (I have a little litany here) how good or bad it is, what the strengths or weaknesses are, and how we make it better. Yeah, we have to do that sometimes, but there are so many more interesting questions.

Bush: I tell students I want to read as a reader, not as a teacher, which is a quote I have picked up somewhere. The writing achieving its purpose on real readers is important?

Elbow: Yeah.there is a powerful and interesting way to give feedback as a reader. I call it giving movies in the reader's mind; I tell the story of what was happening to me as a reader. You can't tell everything, but you can tell a lot of the events that happened as you read. And think about this. This kind of feedback is actually trustworthy. If you give me your definition of an A paper, that's not trustworthy because teachers disagree and different readers like different aspects in writing. But if you tell me what happened to you when you were reading a paper, those are facts. You are a human being and that's what was going on with you. Then I can tell the story of what was happening to me as I read the paper, and that's the best feedback for the writer. He knows what was actually happening in a reader. If you just say, "I think this is an A paper," the writer doesn't know what led you to think that. Or if I say, " I think this is a C paper," he doesn't know what led me to that evaluation. Each of us can tell the story of what was going on; you know, "I was lost here, I had the following thoughts when you made that point, etc. ... These are movies of a reader's mind. I talk a lot about that in Writing with Power. I still think that's the most useful kind of feedback.

Bush: Would you say that a writer must write as vividly as a movie then? I've heard it said that a writer must keep "ticking off sense impressions.”

Elbow: Well, sensory details are great, but when I use that metaphor movies of the reader's mind, I just mean the reader trying to tell in some detail what was going on in mind during the reading of a paper. Students and writers are in the dark about what's going on in readers. The main thing you need is a reader's honest feedback. If you tell me my writing gets an A, I'll feel good, but you're not telling me about the effects on a reader. The effect on a reader is what I really need to know.

Bush: Can one teach writing an how do you set up a writing classroom to do this?

Elbow: I don't think you can teach people by explaining: "here's good writing, now do it." But I think you can set up classrooms in which everybody can learn to write. In my view, the main thing is to get them to write an enormous amount, , get them to have lots and lots of safety, and get them to respond with movies of the mind. Peer feedback is extremely helpful, but students need help in giving it. You can't just say, "go on and give each other feedback." Pat Belanoff and I have tried to give lots of examples of good peer response methods in our pamphlet Sharing and Responding. This also forms the last section of our textbook (the larger version is A Community of Writers, and the shorter, newer version is Being a Writer (both from McGraw Hill). Response questions that are not evaluative and that are movies of the reader’s mind are particularly helpful for peer feedback. Many teachers and students don’t realize that we can give feedback without criticizing. This helps create trust and safety among peer responders.

Bush: You mentioned the quantity of writing being tons and tons. I've had students write tons of papers and then I've gone back to mastery of only a few papers. Which is best?

Elbow: I don't think it's a case of either / or. I try for tons and tons of writing, but I also have a few papers where I really push for mastery. I talked about four drafts (the fourth draft just copy editing). That's a lot of time on one paper, so I don't have very many essays like that. Over a semester of fourteen weeks, there are about four essays that go that way. But along side of those few papers where the students are pushing and pushing, there's lots of low stakes writing that is not revised.
Here's another way in which I can sum up my whole philosophy of teaching writing. The difference between high stakes and low stakes. Writing feels inherently like a high stakes activity because you're putting it down in black and white. It's graded. It's for the teacher. Most people feel as though writing is high stakes and speaking is low stakes. But actually, writing is ideal for the low stakes use of words, for exploring, for taking chances, for trying to talk about something that other people might disagree with or disapprove of. Writing allows us to write something and not show it to anybody. In speaking, we're almost always speaking to somebody—and once you say something, you can never take it back. In our culture, we tend to use writing in high stakes ways and speaking in low stakes ways. But if we look at the actual technology of writing, writing is ideal for low stakes: you can look at itthrow it away, try it out, delete the file. And that progression through four levels of audience: that’s a gradual progression from low stakes to high stakes.

Bush: One thing I'm interested in is trying to help the student find a voice. And I was thinking if I could help them find a voice, then everything else would naturally fall into place. Do you think the safety contributes to their finding a voice?

Elbow: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Just as you were talking, I was falling on the word voice. Yes, people tend not to use their voice unless they're safe. If people are nervous, they tend to talk in a monotone. When people start feeling safe, all of a sudden their voices go up and down and there's more energy and there's more laughter. That good qualities of voice that we use in speaking can get into our writing.
I want to emphasize something enormously simple about voice that in a sense I've only figured out in the last few years. If there's one activity that I think is the most helpful thing about writing, apart from just writing and writing , it is reading you’re your writing out loud and also reading the writing of others out loud. Saying the words in your voice, with your mouth: I think that's the most powerful way to help one’s writing and to help one’s voice.
Voice is a very slippery concept. There's a lot of argument about it, but the fact is, when a passage of writing reads out loud nicely, when it sits comfortably in the mouth, when it speaks itself nicely, comfortably, gracefully, then almost invariably it reads well on the page. And if students read their writing out loud over and over again, even just rough writing, low stakes writing, they get so they hear their words as they're writing, and they gradually write sentences that sound better, When people read their writing out loud, they can tell immediately when something doesn't work. They'll stumble, they'll change a sentence, they'll say, "wait a minute, let me say that differently" because it's not speakable. They learnan essential fact about voice, but they learn it with no teaching. They learn it with the feel of their mouth and the sound of their ear.

Bush: Maybe starting off a class each day or three times a week with reading a poem or piece of prose is ideal?

Elbow: Absolutely, I think that's great. I build as many occasions for reading out loud into my teaching as I can. And I often have mini-conferences with people for ten minutes. Instead of taking a paper home to give feedback, I get them to read it to me, and I just respond right there.

Bush: What makes writing memorable for you?

Elbow: Some people think I'm only interested in voice or feelings, but I'm interested in hard thinking, so I push for hard thinking, too. In my own writing, I'm always trying to think something through,. When I give feedback to students, I often talk about issues of voice, but almost always I’m trying to get the thinking to be stronger.

Bush: If you're safe, you gain that voice, and when you're safe you're able to think clearly?

Elbow: Yes, but of course I admit it can work the other way too. If I'm safe I can be lazy and not think something through. Therefore, my battle is to build safety but also to push students to think hard. That's why I have that condition in my contract about movement of thinking or perplexity. If someone gives me a paper where they just spout their seven reasons for or against abortion, they are not thinking hard. I'm looking for them to question—to write in areas where they're not sure. Then they have to think things through and they have to revise and get the thinking better. In the 3rd draft, the emphasis is not so much on style as on thinking. I am trying to push thinking, but I push them in conditions of safety.

Bush: Do you think notebooks ... writer's notebooks help to produce that kind of voice, that kind of safety as long as it's not evaluated by the teacher and as long as it's not a diary type of notebook?

Elbow: I think notebooks are great. Let me stress one particular kind of journal writing that I require in my contract: process writing. Every time they turn in an important assignment, they have to turn in a process letter or writer’s log where they give movies of their mind as writers: What was going on in my writing in this paper? How did I write it? What worked well for me? Where did I struggle? and so on. They have to look at their own writing process and notice what worked and what didn't work, where they got lost and when things broke down, where they got a good idea, how they got a good idea, etc... Most of them need help and practice in process writing. We do some process writing in class and we share examples.

Bush: What do you think about SAT writing tests and other writing tests?

Elbow: States are going crazy giving high stakes testing each year, and it seems there's more and more emphasis on high stakes writing. In this setting, free writing and being adventuresome often goes out the window. But think about the main ability students need in order to do well on these high stakes essay exams. They get twenty minutes or an hour to, write an essay. They have to learn to work out a train of thought on the spot. Freewriting gives direct practice for this So I think teachers should use freewriting regularly to help them with exam taking. We can say, "We are not going to do a ten minute free-writing, but a twenty minute free-writing, and I'll give you a topic. Under the conditions of safety, let's pretend this is a test. Use your free-writing muscle. Learn to keep writing, learn to explore the topic, learn to be creative. This is not a test, this is a trial; but you can practice thinking something through and being fluent, practice putting your voice on paper.” If students do that frequently, then when they walk into that exam they are raring to go. They don't panic and they can take an adventuresome train of thought rather than just a timid or fearful safe train of thought. It’s also reassuring to write together in class as long as it doesn't feel like too high stakes. In these practice sessions, they won't be punished if something doesn't work well. It's experimentation and they just go with it, but they become more and more fluent.

Bush: I feel guilty when I don't evaluate every piece of student writing. Should I?

Elbow: We are sometimes told that we are supposed to evaluate everything, that we are falling down on the job if we don't evaluate. But I turn this around and I say this to students; "I cant teach you to write unless I get you to writing an enormous amount of writing, and that means I have to get you to write lots more than I can ever read. So I'm going to make you do a whole lot of writing that I am not going to read." Sometimes they don't like this at first ... They feel the teacher is supposed to read everything andevaluate it. But they get used to it.

Bush: Should the teacher let them know which writings will eventually be evaluated?

Elbow: It's extremely important to be very clear about this. Again this is about safety and honesty and building trust. I always make sure to tell them: "this assignment is private, this one I'm going to collect, this one is for feedback, this one is for sharing but no feedback."—and so on. instead of saying I feel guilty if I don't evaluate every piece, I feel guilty if I don't make people write more than I can read.

Bush: Do you think prose models are the best way to teach writing?

Elbow: I don't think there's anything wrong with prose models. I'm just not fond of using them. Put it this way, I want to have a lot of published writing in classroom. I want them to read professional writing, but not so much as a model. I would rather just talk aboutthem. And, of course, reading out loud is very important. Let's hear what this prose sounds like, lets play with it, lets do a parody of it.
There’s a kind of publication that I like most—and that’s the publication of the writing of the students in the class. At Umass we have a lab fee that pays for printing up about four class magazines a semester in each class. But I learned to publish student writing before I came to Umass: If there are twenty people in the class, I get the students to bring in twenty copies of their essay back to back on one sheet of paper—,when its final and in the fourth draft and all cleaned up. They bring in the copies and we make a class magazine. It’s really powerful to do it more than once—not just as a celebratory thing at the end of the semesterWhen they know their classmates are reading their work—and when they read each other's work, this has a powerful effect on their writing. It also helps copy editing. They have to make their essays camera ready.

Bush: What is the biggest challenge: writing or teaching writing?

Elbow: They go together. What I love about writing is that it is difficult and scary even for us, . When we write, this keeps us in touch with our students' experiences. Writing is a leveler. Our writing experience isn't so different from our students'. We may be able to write better (though we often find a student who is really more skilled than we are), but we have some of the same struggles that they have. And that's helpful for teaching. And it's sad if a teacher doesn't do any writing along with the student. Whenever I ask for free-writing in class, it's crucial that I write along with them;and whenever we share writing out loud, I always share mine, too, so that they can see the kind of messes that I make. Let's put it this way, I'll answer your question by saying that by being a writer, I am helping myself teach writing.