I considered e-book options for my upcoming introductory lit. classes, but I chose a physical book instead, primarily because of the difficulty of teaching and practicing close reading using digital devices that can impede sustained focus.
When weâre online, nothing has our undivided attention, not for long.
The textbook for ENG 231 with a draft of this blog post
Browsing on our smart phones and tablets doesnât engage our minds the way that close critical reading does. Recent research bears this out: Studies conducted by neuroscientists in collaboration with Michigan State literature professor Natalie Phillips reveal that âclose reading activated unexpected areas: parts of the brain that are involved in movement and touch. It was as though readers were physically placing themselves within the story as they analyzed itâ (ctd. Thompson and Vendatam).
Similarly, studies of note-taking by researchers at Princeton and UCLA demonstrate that students who wrote their notes longhand rather than typing them âhad a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who took notes with their laptopsâ (ctd. in May).
Despite the cognitive benefits of reading offline and putting pen to paper, using those older technologies in the classroom may seem like a step backward. So as the semester approaches, I find myself grappling with how to convey to students the value of putting away their phones. To begin with, I’ll talk about the research I’ve mentioned here.
Thompson, Helen and Shankar Vendatam. âA Lively Mind: Your Brain on Jane Austen.â Narr. Shankar Vendantam. Morning Edition. Natâl Public Radio, 9 Oct. 2012. NPR.org. Web. 8 Aug. 2014.
How do actors learn their lines? Itâs not the same act of memorizing that we perform as students when we commit to memory the steps of photosynthesis for a biology midterm. Actors learn lines to repeat them over and over in performance after performance, and yet must do so as if they have never spoken them before, to create âthe illusion of the first timeâ (Stanislavsky qtd. in Strasberg 35). Earlier this semester, I managed to learn lines for a play and repeat them in six performances, but I still donât know how I did it. In fact, it was only after the play closed that I could bring myself to count the words. I was curious to know how many Iâd memorized, but if I had counted them before Iâd learned them, the process of memorizing would have been too daunting. And counting them during the run of the play could have undermined my performance; dwelling on how many words I was keeping in my head might have made me more prone to forget.
So how did I learn those 1,567 words and remember them?
My fascination with learning linesâand admittedly, my anxiety about the possibility of forgettingâled me to research the process. I found that teachers of acting tend to downplay memorizing lines. In fact, the most influential acting teachers of the twentieth century spoke rarely on the subject in their lectures. Though itâs essential to the craftâactors canât read from their scripts or call âline, pleaseâ in performance, after allâit isnât a focus of instruction. Still, itâs a process worthy of our attention because of what it may reveal about memory and how line-learning may benefit our cognitive health.
Acting teacher Stella Adler instructed her students (among them, Marlon Brando and Robert DeNiro) not to memorize their lines, but instead to build a relationship with the words. In her first lecture to her students in The Art of Acting (âFirst Steps on Stageâ), she tells them to read The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, and select one idea from it to paraphrase and perform on stage (25). Later, when she returns to that exercise in her fourteenth lecture (âUnderstanding the Textâ), she refers to the process as something âwe must do with every textâ (162). According to Adler:
Paraphrasing allows the ideas to become part of you. By putting the text into your own words you build a relationship. It becomes part of your heart as well as your head, which is essential before you can communicate the words to an audience. If the ideas are clear to you, they will be clear to them. (162)
Notably, the texts that Adler asked her students to paraphrase arenât scenes. Kahlil Gibranâs The Prophet isnât a play but a collection of prose-poem essays. By choosing lines that her students would never perform in a play, Adler emphasized to them the importance of understanding the words on the page rather than the act of rote memorization.
Like Adler, Lee Strasberg instructed his students (including James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Paul Newman) to study texts that they wouldnât perform. But rather than assigning them the prose-poems of The Prophet, as Adler did, Strasberg required his students to read short stories, among them Ernest Hemingwayâs âHills Like White Elephants.â Strasberg chose short stories over scenes because the conversations are often more realistic than the dialogue of plays, which, as Strasberg remarked, include âelements that characters would never say but convey necessary information to the audienceâ (161). Strasberg also found short stories useful teaching tools because âthe short-story material forces the actor to really find out what he is talking about, not just what he is saying, and to find out how that relates to what the scene is all aboutâ (161).
The same emphasis Adler and Strasberg placed on understanding rather than memorizing is apparent in the teaching of their contemporary Sanford Meisner (whose students include Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, and Sydney Pollack). In the documentary Sanford Meisner: The American Theaterâs Best Kept Secret, Pollack discusses how Meisner downplayed the role of dialogue:
What Sandy did is begin to examine the fact that dialogue is the last thing that happens, at any time, between two people. Itâs all supported by behavior and attitudes. You say something. You mean a certain thing to me when I see you because of whatever relationship we may have. You say something. I hear it. Depending on the state Iâm in when I came into the room, it means something to me. It produces a reaction in me emotionally, and the last thing that happens is that I respond with dialogue.
Similar to Meisnerâs notion of dialogue as the âlast thing that happens [. . .] between to people,â is the belief of Uta Hagenâs (teacher of Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino) that learning lines is a âby-product of the workâ (117). Instead of coaching her students to focus on memorization, she instructed them to make every element of the play real to them, âevery person, thing, event, and landscape, even the weatherâ (117). Hagen asserted that creating those particulars will lead the actor to the lines:
As you make your particularizations, much of what you have to say will become inevitable, and, when followed up in rehearsals by the discovery of your verbal intents and expectations, the words will be further validated until âlearning the linesâ has become a by-product of the work, replacing the outmoded method of mechanical memorization. (117)
February 20, 2014: seven-eighths of my hair gone for “Third”
I didnât know that I was following Hagenâs instruction when I asked a hair stylist to cut off seven-eighths of my hair or when I asked a seamstress if she could help me solve a head-scarf problem. My instinct simply told me that I needed to make my character, Nancy Gordon, as real as possible. Â That meant figuring out how to keep scarves on my head in the fall and winter of Act One, when she’s hiding her hair loss from chemotherapy, and cutting my hair for her appearance in the spring of Act Two, when her hair has started to grow back.
In the first weeks of rehearsal, I simply tied my Act-One scarves over my hair, which I was then wearing in a ponytail (I hadnât cut it yet), and they repeatedly came undone and fell off on stage. Can you sew these so they appear to be simply tied? I asked a seamstress. They keep falling off on stage, and I need to make sure that doesnât happen. More importantly, I realized that I needed not to worry about the scarves. Doing so would take me out of the scene. On stage, I had to be Nancy, not myself, wondering if my scarf was about to slip and fall.
The seamstress said yes. She could sew the scarvesâ knots for me. But if I do it now, she added, the scarves will be too loose after you cut your hair. So I went back to see her after I cut my hair. I tied on each scarf as tightly as possible, and she sewed the knots. Wearing them with their knots sewn and with double-sided tape securing them at my temples solved the problem.
That head-scarf problem and the seamstressâ solution are details I offer not as digression but as an example of the âparticularizationsâ that Hagen instructs her students to make. With a scarf secured tightlyâfused to my head, it seemedâI was Nancy Gordon in a way that I hadnât been before. She was more real. But I still donât understand how a particular such as a scarf or a haircut makes âmuch of what you have to say [. . .] inevitableâ (Hagen 117). Still, I know that it was part of the process that transformed me into the character who spoke the words I spoke.
But why should anyone who isnât an actor care about this? you may ask. Simply put, the answer is cognitive health. Though we arenât all actors, we all experience diminished memory as we grow older, and cognitive research that explores the memorization process specific to acting indicates that it may improve our memory and other cognitive functions. The research team of Helga and Tony Noiceâshe a cognitive psychologist and he a director and actorâhave studied acting and its cognitive effects for more than twenty years. In âWhat Studies of Actors and Acting Can Tell Us about Memory and Cognitive Functioning,â the Noices address the process of learning linesâspecifically memorizing large amounts of dialogue in a short period of timeâand how actors reproduce those lines verbatim with spontaneity. Applying that process to other activities, including learning techniques for undergraduates and memory improvement in older adults, they conclude that the essence of actingâwhat the Noices term active experiencing or AEâmay enhance memory (17).
The Noicesâ recent studies of older adults who took part in four-week acting classes found marked improvements not only in memory but also âcomprehension, creativity and other cognitive skillsâ:
Subjects showed a 19 percent increase in immediate word recall (a test of memory), a 37 percent increase in delayed story recall (a comprehension test) and a 12 percent increase in word fluency (a measure of creativity). (Noice and Noice ctd. in Hanc)
So should we enroll in acting classes to improve our cognitive skills? The Noices findings certainly make a case for it, especially when you consider that the acting classroom may be one of the last places where students are required to commit words to memory. In the information age, itâs far more important to develop our critical thinking skills. We donât need to memorize whatâs available at our fingertips, but we need to be able to distinguish the credible information from the dreck. And if the act of memorizing really does improve our cognitive health, perhaps we should look to the stage as a place to do it. I hope to return there, myself. But if I do, donât ask me how many lines I have to learn. I wonât count them until the play closes.
Works Cited
Adler, Stella. The Art of Acting. Ed. Howard Kissel. New York: Applause, 2000. Print.
Hagen, Uta. A Challenge for the Actor. New York: Scribnerâs, 1991. Print.
Noice, Helga, and Tony Noice. âWhat Studies of Actors and Acting Can Tell Us about Memory and Cognitive Functioning.â Current Directions in Psychological Science 15.1 (2006):14-18. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
When I began work on the paper that Iâm writing as a model for my studentsâ Unit III essay, I didnât plan to compile an annotated bibliography of potential sources. I did, however, write one bibliographic entry as part of the preliminary work that I shared with them. When we looked at the sample entry in class, I told them that I wrote it because all of its elements would appear in some form in my paper. In other words, I told them, if you know you will need to write a works cited entry for your source, why not go ahead and write it? If you know you will need to summarize your source, why not go ahead and write a summary? And so on.
Still, I wrote the one bibliographic entry, thinking I would move on to more general note-taking afterward. But I found myself returning to the process of summarizing each source. I realized that what I recommended to my students as a useful but optional step was essential to my own process, at least in the case of this paper.
A couple of the summaries are the welcome result of a problem I encountered with two of the books, namely no index. Without an index, I couldnât simply turn to the pages where the authors, both acting teachers, specifically address the subject of learning lines. Instead I was forced to engage in a form of concentrated skimming, reading portions of every paragraph for mentions of line-learning or memorization. My careful study of those two booksâand of a third that did include an indexâenabled me to produce general summaries as well as notes specific to my subject: learning lines.
The bibliography that follows brings together the insights of four of the most influential acting teachers of the twentieth century, in books by Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, and Lee Strasberg; and in a documentary film on the life and career of Sanford Meisner. It also includes an academic article chronicling research on line-learning and cognitive function.
Adler, Stella. The Art of Acting. Ed. Howard Kissel. New York: Applause, 2000. Print.
The Art of Acting (2000)
From audiotapes and notes on Stella Adlerâs lectures, Howard Kissel produced TheArt of Acting, a book whose twenty-two chapters, or classes, emphasize a technique informed by the work of Adlerâs father, stage actor Jacob P. Adler; Harold Clurman, a co-founder of the Group Theatre (and one of Adlerâs husbands); and Constantin Stanislavski, the Russian actor and director who developed the Stanislavski method, or âmethod acting.â Rather than instructing her students to memorize their lines, Adler taught them to build a relationship with the words. In her first lecture to her students (âFirst Steps on Stageâ), she tells them to read The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, and select one idea from it to paraphrase and perform on stage (25). Later, when she returns to that exercise in her fourteenth lecture (âUnderstanding the Textâ), she refers to the process as something âwe must do with every textâ (162). According to Adler:
Paraphrasing allows the ideas to become part of you. By putting the text into your own words you build a relationship. It becomes part of your heart as well as your head, which is essential before you can communicate the words to an audience. If the ideas are clear to you, they will be clear to them. (162)
Founder of the Stella Adler Studios in New York City and Los Angeles, Adlerâconsidered one of the most influential teachers of actingâtaught both Marlon Brando and Robert Deniro. Her writing on the craft includes The Technique of Acting (1988) and Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov (2001).
Hagen, Uta. A Challenge for the Actor. New York: Scribnerâs, 1991. Print.
A Challenge for the Actor (1991)
In A Challenge for the Actor, Uta Hagen expands on the ideas she presented in Respect for Acting (1973), addressing both the goals of the actor and the particulars of technique. When Hagen discusses learning lines, she refers to it as a âby-product of the workâ (117). Instead of coaching her students to focus on memorization, she instructs them to make every element of the play real to them, âevery person, thing, event, and landscape, even the weatherâ (117). Hagen asserts that creating those particulars will the lead the actor to the lines:
As you make your particularizations, much of what you have to say will become inevitable, and, when followed up in rehearsals by the discovery of your verbal intents and expectations, the words will be further validated until âlearning the linesâ has become a by-product of the work, replacing the outmoded method of mechanical memorization. (117)
Uta Hagen originated the role of Martha in the Broadway production of Edward Albeeâs Whoâs Afraid of Virginia Woolf and later became of the most distinguished acting teachers of the twentieth century. At the Herbert Berghof Studio, she taught, among others, Al Pacino, Jason Robards, and Jack Lemon. Her books on acting include Respect for Acting (1973) and A Challenge for the Actor (1991).
Noice, Helga, and Tony Noice. âWhat Studies of Actors and Acting Can Tell Us about Memory and Cognitive Functioning.â Current Directions in Psychological Science 15.1 (2006):14-18. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Apr. 2014.
In âWhat Studies of Actors and Acting Can Tell Us about Memory and Cognitive Functioning,â Helga and Tony Noice address the process of learning linesâspecifically memorizing large amounts of dialogue in a short period of timeâand how actors reproduce those lines verbatim with spontaneity. Applying that process to other activities, including learning techniques for undergraduates and memory improvement in older adults, they conclude that the essence of actingâwhat the Noices term active experiencing or AEâmay enhance memory.
Helga Noice, a Professor of Psychology at Elmhurst College, researches acting and memory. Her current study of memory training in older adults receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Tony Noice, an adjunct member of the theater faculty at Elmhurst College, co-authored with his wife, Helga Noice, The Nature of Expertise in Professional Acting: A Cognitive View (1997).
Sanford Meisner (left) teaching at the Neighborhood Playhouse, 1957 / risabg.com
Sanford Meisner: The American Theaterâs Best Kept Secret. Dir. Nick Doob. Perf. Robert Duvall, Joanne Woodward. YouTube.com. YouTube, 18 Nov. 2006. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.
An episode from the fifth season of PBSâs American Masters Series, Sanford Meisner: The American Theaterâs Best Kept Secret (1990) documents the life and career of actor and teacher Sanford Meisner, founding member of the Group Theatre and master teacher of acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, where he developed the Meisner technique, based on Constantin Stanislavskiâs method system. In his interview, director Sydney Pollackâone of many students of Meisnerâs featured in the filmâdiscusses how Meisner downplayed the role of dialogue:
What Sandy did is begin to examine the fact that dialogue is the last thing that happens, at any time, between two people. Itâs all supported by behavior and attitudes. You say something. You mean a certain thing to me when I see you because of whatever relationship we may have. You say something. I hear it. Depending on the state Iâm in when I came into the room, it means something to me. It produces a reaction in me emotionally, and the last thing that happens is that I respond with dialogue.
Hailed as one of the American theatreâs most influential teachers (along with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg), Sanford Meisner joined the faculty of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in 1935 and later served as the Director of its Acting Department. His students at the Neighborhood school include actors Robert Duvall, Tony Randall, and Joanne Woodward, as well as director Sydney Pollack and playwright David Mamet.
Strasberg, Lee. A Dream of Passion: The Development of the Method. Ed. Evangeline Morphos. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987. Print.
A Dream of Passion (1987)
A Dream of Passion chronicles Lee Strasbergâs training with Richard Boleslavsky, a student of Constantin Stanislavskyâs, and details Strasbergâs application of Stanislavskiâs system to his work in both the Group Theatre (which Strasberg co-founded) and in the Actorâs Studio (for which he served as Artistic Director). Strasberg observes that the actorâs central problem lies in the fact that he knows what his character does not and cannot know: âRegardless of the skills with which the actor may pretend not to know what will occur next on stage, his normal scenic activity is actuated by his memoryâby his carefully prepared and memorized words and motionsâ (107). The challenge for the actor then, Strasberg notes, is to recreate that experience believably not once but over and over for every performance, and âyet include what Stanislavski called âthe illusion of the first timeââ (35).
To help his students understand the meaning of scenesârather than simply memorizing their wordsâStrasberg required them to read short stories. He chose short stories over scenes from plays because the conversations are often more realistic than the dialogue of plays, which, as Strasberg remarks, include âelements that characters would never say but convey necessary information to the audienceâ (161). Strasberg also found short stories useful teaching tools because âthe short-story material forces the actor to really find out what he is talking about, not just what he is saying, and to find out how that relates to what the scene is all aboutâ (161).
Considered the father of method acting in the United Statesâa system that revolutionized acting on the stage and screenâLee Strasberg co-founded the Group Theatre (with Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford), served as Artistic Director for the Actors Studio, and founded the Lee Strasberg Film and Theatre Institute in New York City and Hollywood. His students include actors James Dean, Robert DeNiro, Marilyn Monroe, Paul Newman, and director Elia Kazan.
My last blog post, Friday, March 21, featured a sample paper draft that I composed as a model for my students. The draft included lines for a script selected from an academic essay on Sherman Alexieâs short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and its film adaptation Smoke Signals.
As a model for their collaborative revisions, I revised my script to include lines from an interview with Alexie and lines spoken by his characters Victor Arnold and Thomas Builds-the Fire. And to tie the parts together, I added myself as a moderator. Similarlyâbut collaboratively, in groups of four and fiveâmy students will fashion their individual drafts into one-act plays, placing their sources in conversation.
The setting for my sample revision, which follows, is the Coeur dâAlene Reservation in Idaho, where Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, Gordon E. Slethaug, and I sit atop the KREZ weather van.
From âThis is What it Means . . .â to Smoke Signals, or Sherman Alexieâs Road Trip from Page to Screen: A One-Act Source Play
Character Guide
Sherman Alexie: A poet and fiction writer who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Northeastern Washington State. His books include the short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), which he adapted for the screen. Smoke Signals, the film adaptation, received both the Audience Award and the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998. More recently, his semi-autobiographical novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian (2007) received the National Book Award for Young Adult Literature.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire: One of the characters in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Smoke Signals
Victor Joseph: The central character in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Smoke Signals.
Jane Lucas: An Adjunct Assistant Professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University, who along with her students is studying Sherman Alexieâs short story âThis is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizonaâ (from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven) and Smoke Signals in conjunction with Alexieâs appearance as part of the Universityâs Visiting Writers Series.
Gordon E. Slethaug: An American-Canadian Professor of English at the University of Southern Denmark and author of Teaching Abroad: International Education and the Cross-cultural Classroom (2007), Beautiful Chaos: Chaos Theory and Metachaotics in Recent American Fiction (2000), and The Play of the Double in Postmodern American Fiction (1993). He also co-authored Understanding John Barth (1990) with Stan Fogel.
Lester Fallsapart (Leonard George) delivers the KREZ weather report in “Smoke Signals” / ejumpcut.org
At the Coeur dâAleneIndian Reservation in Idaho, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Victor Joseph, Jane Lucas, and Gordon E. Slethaug sit atop the KREZ weather van, which has been stationed at the crossroads since it broke down there in 1972. Oddly, tribal meteorologist Lester Fallsapart is nowhere in sight. Jane Lucas picks up his red- and white-striped umbrella and looks it over a moment before she speaks.
Jane Lucas: First, Iâd like to thank Randy Peone, the voice of Coeur dâAleneâs KREZ, for letting me meet with you atop the weather van. I was hoping Lester Fallsaparts would be hereâisnât he always here, like the weather?âand Sherman Alexie should be here, too. Alexieâs running late, it seems, but we should get started. As someone whoâs studying âThis is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizonaâ and Smoke Signals, Iâm interested in the differences between the two. Gordon, youâve written of the âdifferent perceptionâ (131) of the film.
Gordon E. Slethaug: Yes, it âpresents a different perception from the short story collection [. . .] the short fiction gives a comprehensive representation of the entire Spokane reservation community and includes a typically Alexie critical and cynical view of the systemic problems of unemployment, poverty, hunger, inadequate housing, violence, drugs, alcoholism, and premature death in a culture removed from its traditional mooringsâ (131).
JL: Arenât many of those problems that you mentioned apparent in the film as well?
GS: Yes, but âthe film presents a warm-hearted, compassionate view of Victor and Thomas through the medium of the road narrative and engages the audience on the level of humor and sentiment even while it gently critiques white society and racist treatments of Native Americansâ (131).
JL: Itâs an engaging road-trip story, alright, but Iâm not so sure about what you call the gentle critique. Some of the charactersâ exchanges on screen are less gentle than their counterparts on the page. For example, Victor, thereâs what you say on the bus to Cathy, the gymnast, who was an alternate for the 1980 US Olympic Team.
Victor Joseph: Yeah, I was just thinking about that. In the short story, our conversation with Cathy ends with that line of yours, Thomas. What is it you say?
Thomas Builds-the-Fire: (Opening his eyes) âSounds like you all got a lot in common with Indiansâ (67).
VJ: Yeah, but in the movie, I keep talking. I say, âyou said you were an alternate for the team, right?â And she answers, âyeah.â And I say, âwell, if you were an alternate youâd only compete if someone on the team was hurt or something, right? And she answers, âyeah.â And I ask, âwas anybody hurt?â And she says, âno.â And I say, âThen you werenât really on the team, were you? I mean, it didnât matter if there was a boycott or not. You were staying home anyways. You got nothing to complain about, so why donât you just be quiet?â
JL: That isnât what Iâd call gentle.
(Sherman Alexie climbs the ladder attached to the back of the van.)
Sherman Alexie: Sorry Iâm lateâflight delay from Seattle. So it goes.
JL: Sherman, you said in an interview that you âdidnât have any problems with mutating [your] own bookâ (qtd. in West and West).
SA: (Nodding in agreement) âRight from the get-go, I said, âOK, Sherman youâre going to do composite characters, compress time, take bits and pieces from stories you need for this screenplay, and youâre not going to care.â The narrative integrity of any one story was never the point, it was all about taking situations from the twenty-two short storiesâit actually ended up being adapted from four short storiesâtaking the best you can find in this book to make it a screenplayâ (qtd. in West and West).
JL: So the changes you made were your answer to the question, how can this story work best on the screen?
SA: Yes, âIâve always separated them [books and movies] as two very distinct art formsâ (qtd. in West and West).
JL: I wish we had more time, Sherman, but I know youâre heading to Albuquerque for a reading at the University of New Mexico, and I need to get back to Lenoir-Rhyne. Iâll leave a tape of our conversation for Randy Peone. Whether it airs on KREZ or not, I have a feeling that our words here today will become one of those stories told by you-know-who.
TB: Sometimes itâs a good day to die, and sometimes itâs a good day to write a one-act play.
Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. âThis is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.â The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. 1993. New York: HarperPerrenial, 1994. 59-75. Print.
Slethaug, Gordon E. âHurricanes and Fires: Chaotics in Sherman Alexieâs Smoke Signals and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.â Literature and Film Quarterly 31.2 (2003): 130-40. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Smoke Signals. Dir. Chris Eyre. Perf. Adam Beach and Evan Adams. Miramax, 1998. DVD.
West, Dennis, and Joan M. West. âSending Cinematic Smoke Signals: An Interview with Sherman Alexie.â Cineaste 23.4 (1998). Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
Since writing academic papers requires placing sources in conversation, why not begin the writing process with an actual conversation on the page in the form of a play? Thatâs the idea behind the assignment developed by some of my former colleagues at VCU and one that I adapted for my own UNIV 111 classes.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)
Rather than requiring each student to produce a play individually, I altered the project to focus on collaboration, assigning students the responsibility of producing individual preliminary drafts consisting of one characterâs lines (quotations and/or paraphrases from one source), which they collaboratively place in conversation with their group membersâ characters in a one-act play that they perform in class. The final product consists of quotations and paraphrases from three-to-five sources, a character guide with a biographical note on each sourceâs author, and a works cited list. I encourage (but donât require) students to include a description of the setting and stage directions as well.
Itâs an assignment that many of my former students at VCU viewed in hindsight as a particularly helpful exercise in synthesizing a variety of materials (articles, essays, books, etc.). Though it involves more compiling than composingâat least in the initial stagesâitâs a critical step in the process of writing an academic essay.
Returning to this assignment with my ENG 131 students at Lenoir-Rhyne, I composed the following sample as a model for their preliminary drafts. I chose as my subject Sherman Alexieâs short story âThis is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizonaâ and its film adaptation Smoke Signalsâadapted for the screen by Alexie, himselfâbecause my students are studying the story and the film in conjunction with Alexieâs appearance on campus March 27 as part of the Lenoir-Rhyne Visiting Writers Series.
Working Title: From âThis is What it Means . . .â to Smoke Signals, or Sherman Alexieâs Road Trip from the Page to the Screen
Character Guide
Gordon E. Slethaug: An American-Canadian Professor of English at the University of Southern Denmark and author of Teaching Abroad: International Education and the Cross-cultural Classroom (2007), Beautiful Chaos: Chaos Theory and Metachaotics in Recent American Fiction (2000), and The Play of the Double in Postmodern American Fiction (1993). He also co-authored Understanding John Barth (1990) with Stan Fogel.
Slethaugâs lines for the play follow.
Gordon E. Slethaug: âAlthough there has been some interest in depicting a more historically authentic view of Native Americans than that presented in the typical post-World War II Western, the reality of their lives and perspectives still seems sadly underrepresented and diminished in mainstream Hollywood filmâ (131).
GS: âSmoke Signals provides an important step in remedying this problem [of stereotypes]. Itâs âbased upon the first third of his collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heavenâ (131).
Smoke Signals (1998)
GS: âThe film, however, presents a different perception from the short story collection [. . .] the short fiction gives a comprehensive representation of the entire Spokane reservation community and includes a typically Alexie critical and cynical view of the systemic problems of unemployment, poverty, hunger, inadequate housing, violence, drugs, alcoholism, and premature death in a culture removed from its traditional moorings; the film presents a warm-hearted, compassionate view of Victor and Thomas through the medium of the road narrative and engages the audience on the level of humor and sentiment even while it gently critiques white society and racist treatments of Native Americansâ (131).
 Works Cited
Slethaug, Gordon E. âHurricanes and Fires: Chaotics in Sherman Alexieâs Smoke Signals and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.â Literature and Film Quarterly 31.2 (2003): 130-40. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
To develop this individual draft into a one-act play, I will place Slethaug in conversation with Alexie, using these sources:
Alexie, Sherman. âThis is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.â The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. 1993. New York: HarperPerrenial, 1994. 59-75. Print.
Smoke Signals. Dir. Chris Eyre. Perf. Adam Beach and Evan Adams. Miramax, 1998. DVD.
West, Dennis, and Joan M. West. âSending Cinematic Smoke Signals: An Interview with Sherman Alexie.â Cineaste 23.4 (1998). Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
Wendy Wasserstein’s “Third,” the acting edition (2008)
For their first paper of the semester, an annotated bibliography, my students have the option of choosing as their subject something theyâre studying formally (for a class) or informally (on their own). As a model for them, Iâve composed a bibliography on Wendy Wassersteinâs Third, a play Iâm studyingâboth formally and informally, in a senseâas I rehearse for the upcoming production at the Foothills Performing Arts Theatre.
The bibliography that follows includes the play itself, as well as two secondary sources: a review of the original Off Broadway production at the Lincoln Center Theater, and an academic essay by a professor of theater and literature, a harsh critic of Wassersteinâs who reexamined and reevaluated the playwrightâs work after her death.
For me, as I rehearse for Third, Wassersteinâs words are far more important than what any drama critic or theatre scholar has written about the play, but I value what Iâve learned from Ben Brantleyâs review and Jill Dolanâs essay, regarding both the critical reception of Wassersteinâs final play and the differences among the productions at the Lincoln Center, the Geffen Playhouse, and the Philadelphia Theatre Company.
Ben Brantleyâs âAs Feminism Ages, Uncertainty Still Winsâ reviews the original production of Wendy Wassersteinâs Third, which opened Off Broadway at the Lincoln Center Theater on October 24, 2005. Observing the similarities between the playâs main character, Laurie Jameson (Dianne Weist), and title character of Wassersteinâs Heidi Chronicles, Brantley asserts that Third shares the shortcomings of her other plays: âan overly schematic structure, a sometimes artificial-feeling topicality and a reliance on famous names and titles as a shorthand for establishing character.â Brantley also notes that the supporting characters are more convincing than Laurie Jameson, both as written and performed. Nevertheless, Brantley commends the play as an affecting portrait of a woman confronting the âcertainty of the uncertainty in life.â
Brantley, chief theatre critic for The New York Times, is the editor of The New York Times Book of Broadway: On the Aisle for the Unforgettable Plays of the Last Century (2001).
In âFeminist Performance Criticism and the Popular: Reviewing Wendy Wasserstein,â Jill Dolan cites the death of Wendy Wasserstein as the impetus for rethinking her harsh criticism of the playwrightâs work and the mainstream feminist playwriting that it represents. Dolan asserts that a close examination of Wassersteinâs last play, Third, demonstrates the impact of her work as well as its importance in raising public awareness of the debates within and about American feminism. Along with her analysis of the playâs text, Dolan presents a study of two divergent productions: one at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles (2007), and a second at the Philadelphia Theatre Company (2008).
Jill Dolan is the Annan Professor in English, Professor of Theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts, and Director of the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism on Stage and Screen (2013).
Wasserstein, Wendy. Third. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2008. Print.
Wendy Wassersteinâs Third spans one academic year at a prestigious liberal arts college in New England. The play focuses on Professor Laurie Jameson, an acclaimed feminist literary scholar, coping in midlife with her fatherâs advancing Alzheimerâs, her daughterâs departure for college, her husbandâs detachment, and her best friendâs recurring cancerâall amid the onset of her own menopause, replete with hot flashes. On the first day of class, when Laurie encourages her students to contradict her, she has no idea what challenges sheâll face when one of themâthe title character, Woodson Bull, IIIâtakes her up on the offer. Angered by what she perceives as the Bush administrationâs rush to war, she sees Third as a âwalking red stateâ (27). When she accuses him of plagiarizing a paper she believes heâs incapable of writing, Third claims heâs a victim of âsocio-economic profilingâ (22).
Wendy Wassersteinâs other plays include An American Daughter (1997), The Sisters Rosensweig (1992), and Uncommon Women and Others (1977). Her most critically-acclaimed play, The Heidi Chronicles, won both the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1989. Third opened Off Broadway in late September 2005, four months before Wassersteinâs death from lymphoma.
Even if I’d lived at my current address longer than five months, it would’ve been unusual to open my mailbox to find what was there on Saturday: a handwritten letter from a former student. I often hear from former students online, but handwritten snail mail: that’s a rarity. I cradled the envelope with the care I’d give any other endangered species.
Though I know that most of my students won’t compose handwritten letters after they leave my classroom, it’s an assignment I still require to supplement their writing practice. I don’t read the letters I ask them to write; I simply require them to submit letters mail-ready, in addressed stamped envelopes. I credit the students with the act of composing–not with what they write or to whom. Some students think it’s a pointless exercise; others ask if it’s okay to submit more than one letter. (It’s okay–no, it’s more than okay.)
I started the practice nearly fifteen years ago when I was teaching at Salem College. At the end of that school year, I received a note from a student’s mother, thanking me for the written account of her daughter’s freshman year–something she wouldn’t have had, she said, if not for all that required letter-writing.
Not all students write to their families, but many do. One of my students at VCUÂ reported that the letters he’d written home were all posted on the door of the refrigerator. Earlier this month when my students at Lenoir-Rhyne submitted their last letters of the semester, one student handed me a stack of envelopes, each addressed to one of the teachers at her high school. At the end of her first semester of college, she was writing to say thank you.
I don’t write much snail mail, myself, though I do write a letter once a month along with my students. Â And Monday I wrote back to my former student–the one whose letter arrived on Saturday. Â I should write more letters, considering how much some of the ones I’ve received have meant to me. A note from one of my teachers five months before her death and one from another teacher–still very much alive and well–encouraging me to continue my writing, are ones I keep in my briefcase. Having them there makes me feel as if the women who wrote them are walking with me into the classroom. And in a sense they are–their words invigorate my teaching.
Sometimes at the end of a difficult day, I pull one from my briefcase and reread it.
The letter that I received from my student on Saturday is one I’ll carry with me as well. In it, she writes (I quote with her permission):
When my students and I read Wendy Leibowitzâs article âTechnology Transforms Writing and the Teaching of Writing,â I found myself drawn less to the details about blogs, word processing, and email that dominate the article and more to a single observation about composing longhand: âI encourage students not to write their first drafts on a computer, so they might actually think before putting words on the pageâ (Bernard qtd. in Leibowitz). That sentence led me to reflect on the continuing role of old-school writing in my own classes. Although my students use new technology (posting blog entries and submitting papers to the universityâs Learning Management System, or LMS), they frequently put pen to paper as well. I have persisted in requiring them to write longhand as a way of cultivating focus and depth in their prose. But is writing by hand still relevant in the digital age? That questionâone thatâs frequently raised now in response to the new Common Core Standardsâprompted me to explore the science of handwriting and to consider what new technologies teachers are using with, or in place of, the old.
The bibliography that follows consists of Leibowitzâs article, which spearheaded my research, and two additional articles: one that examines the role of handwriting in cognitive development and a second that investigates how blogs have become a fixture in many college courses, in some cases replacing the traditional term paper. Together, the three articles create a strong case for preserving the tactile custom of putting pen to paper while embracing the new technologies that will inspire the best writing.
Whether these annotations (all drafted by hand) will serve as preliminary writing for an essay of my own, I cannot say. Either way, the insights I have gained through this research will inform the choices I make as my teachingâitself, a work in progressâcontinues to evolve.
In âTechnology Transforms Writing and the Teaching of Writing,â Wendy Leibowitz reports that writing in the digital age presents both âperils and possibilitiesâ for students (138). Her conversations with professors reveal that their attitudes and approaches vary considerably. While some require students to use digital technology throughout the writing process, others advocate limiting screen time, correlating online reading and writing with diminished critical thinking and writing skills. Whether they adhere to April Bernardâs view of Web writing as âadjunct to traditional formsâ (140), or to Robert Cooverâs belief that itâs a âfundamental element of literacyâ (141), professors find themselves rethinking the tactile experience of putting pen to paper and seeking effective strategies for using the newest technologies to improve writing instruction.
Leibowitzâs interviews with eleven professors do not constitute comprehensive research, but her article presents an informative overview of the variety of ways professors teach writing in the digital age. Though she writes for academicsâspecifically readers of The Chronicle of Higher Educationâher straightforward prose speaks to a general audience as well. Readers who encounter her article now, more than a decade after its initial publication, may wonder how the professors she interviewed have since adapted their teaching to address the prevalence of social media and texting in studentsâ lives.
In addition to publishing articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Leibowitz, an attorney turned journalist, has written on technology and the law for The National Law Review and The American Lawyer.
Keim, Brandon. âThe Science of Handwriting.â Scientific American Mind 24.4 (2013): 54-59. Academic Search Complete. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.
In âThe Science of Handwriting,â Keim Brandon explores how his belief in the benefits of writing longhand finds scientific support in recent studies. Keim recounts a five-year research project conducted by Virginia Beringer, an educational psychologist at the University of Washington, that demonstrated second, third, and fourth gradersâ ability to write more rapidly and express more ideas when they composed by hand. Along with Beringerâs study, Keim outlines brain-imaging research conducted by Karin James, a cognitive neuroscientist of the University of Indiana, Bloomington, revealing that learning cursive activates multiple areas of the brain that remain dormant when we type.
Writing for readers of Scientific American Mind, Keim addresses a general audience of readers interested in psychology and neuroscience. His reporting of Beringerâs and Jamesâ studies points to the critical role of handwriting in cognitive development, a subject of particular concern to many parents and educators as the Common Core Standards Initiativeâwhich deemphasizes handwriting in favor of keyboardingâhas prompted a national conversation about the future of cursive in the classroom.
Brandon Keim, a freelance science journalist, has written articles for Wired and Psychology Today, as well as Scientific American Mind, and has been featured on broadcasts of National Public Radioâs Science Friday and Talk of the Nation.
Richtel, Matt. âBlogs vs. Term Papers.â Newyorktimes.com. The New York Times Co., 20 Jan. 2012. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
In âBlogs vs. Term Papers,â Mat Richtel reports on the debate in higher education on how best to teach writing in the digital age. While some professors have followed the lead of Duke Universityâs Cathy Davidson, replacing the traditional term paper with shorter, more frequent blog assignments, their detractorsâincluding Douglas B. Reeves, columnist for The American School Board Journal and William H. Fitzhugh, editor of The Concord Reviewâargue that blog writing lacks the academic rigor that fosters critical thinking. For Andrea Lunsford, professor of writing at Stanford University, pitting blogs against term papers creates a false opposition. Rather than replacing term papers with blog posts, Lunsford requires students to produce multi-modal assignments: term papers that evolve into blogs, websites, and video presentations.
Richtelâs article offers New York Times readers a glimpse of the contrasting teaching approaches adopted by writing professors who find themselves at a critical juncture, illustrating for a general audience how, as Andrea Lunsford says, professors are âtrying to figure out how to preserve sustained, logical, carefully articulated arguments while engaging with the most exciting and promising new literacies.â
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Matt Richtel writes for The New York Times about technology and its impact of society and culture. His series of articles âOur Brain on Computersâ (2010) explores how our constant use of digital devices affects not only our behavior but also our thought processes. His 2009 series about the dangers of distracted driving won the Pulitzer for national reporting.
In âDisruptive âSexualâ Voices in English 101,â writing teacher Lizbeth Bryant recounts a semester marked by studentsâ sexual comments that she tried unsuccessfully to silence. To learn why their innuendos and puns persisted, Bryant interviewed students, studied composition theory, and re-examined the studentsâ words, leading her to conclude that she erred on two counts: labeling the comments (as sexual and inappropriate), and seeing the studentsâ voices solely from her own perspective. Seeing the error of her ways, Bryant shifted her focus from defining the studentsâ voices to the interactions among those voices, allowing them to develop rather than quelling them. Bryant concludes her essay by addressing how she could have âtransformed these conflicts into teaching momentsâ (100), offering a list of talking points for classroom conversations about voice.
While Bryantâs efforts to make meaning of her studentsâ voices merit praise, the voice of her own essay reveals how academic jargon invites the very mimicry she seeks to understand. When she turns away from the research that focuses on what âstudents should be doingâ (97), her journey seems promising, but Kay Halasek and Mary Louise Pratt, the scholars whose theories she adopts as an alternative, write in academic jargon that scarcely invites dialogueâexcept with those who speak the same academese, as Bryant proves she does. She writes that Halasek âasks teachers to examine the preformative nature of our pedagogy as an act that âentails answer-abilityââ (97). Does Bryant mean performative rather than preformative? And what does she mean by our pedagogy entailing âanswer-abilityâ?(Who knows?)
Bryant credits Pratt with helping her understand how she âus[ed] the power of the academy to impede a studentâs process in voice developmentâ (97), yet she offers no evidence that she has considered how her own voice as a writer might impede communication with her readersâor how traces of that voice may influence the voices of students in the classroom or in the interview she conducts with them.
Her discussion of the interview reveals that Bryant spoke with only two students, both female. Readers can only wonder what conclusions Bryant believed she could draw from such limited data. The interview prompts other questions as well: Did she request interviews with more students, both male and female? If so, did they decline? And if they did, what are the implications of their reluctance? Notably, in her account of the interview, Bryant quotes the students but not herself, missing the opportunity to let readers hear her own voice in response to theirs. And the absence of her spoken words prompts even more questions: What traces of the academese of her prose might infect her speech, and how might they impede her conversations with students?
Applying the theories of Halasek and Pratt, Bryant reconceives the classroom as a construction zone where her disruptive students ânavigated the discourse waters of the academy and decided to bring aspects of their voices of community into the construction zone of the classroomâ (99). Her almost-mixed metaphor of navigating discourse water to enter the construction zone brings to mind American Ninja Warrior, which most studentsânot just hersâwould find more appealing than her talking points on voice.
Bryant views her studentsâ disruptive sexual voices as a response to her power in the classroom. As the one who wields the gradebook, she does possess power that her students lack. But that power alone doesnât distinguish her from the students. Except for the rare prodigies who pen their dissertations in puberty, professors donât have the libidos of eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, and the frontal lobes of their brains arenât still in development, either. Simply put, freshmen and professors arenât in the same place sexually or cognitively. A study that considers the body as well the mind might offer more insight into studentsâ âsexualâ voices and professorsâ responses to them. But even if Bryant initiated such a studyâpartnering with a neurobiologist, perhapsâwould she and her collaborator write in voices that students or general readers would understand (or want to)?
In a better world, if the jargon of one academic field met the jargon of another, the two would crash and burst, scattering smaller, more intelligible words and phrases. In the real world, though, itâs more likely for the hyper-specialized vocabularies to merge, yielding a mutant form of impenetrable academese seemingly devoid of any real-world relevance. Writer Victoria Dailey calls it âacademioticsâ in a recent spoof on The New Yorkerâs website, where she fashions this monstrosity from the first sentence of Jane Austenâs Pride and Prejudice:
âThe heterogeneity of assumed intentions may incur a conclusory stereotype regarding gender selections in marriage-based societies, especially in those where the masculine hegemony of capital resources presupposes the feminization of property and uxorial acquisition.â
Such writing seems ridiculous because it is. Thatâs why it becomes the subject of ridicule, as the words Bryant spoke to her students became the subject of their mimicry. And the essay that Bryant writes in response to that mimicry risks inviting more of the same. If a student says in class, âI wouldnât stick mine in there. Donât know where itâs been,â asking yourself why and reconsidering your own reactions are valuable practices. But a two-thousand-word study of why-my-student-said-I-wouldnât-stick-it-in-there may not only seem ridiculous, it may also perpetuate the worst stereotypes about scholarship.
Admittedly, Bryantâs initial audience wouldnât ridicule her essay. The first readers of âDisruptive âSexualâ Voices in English 101â encountered it as a chapter in Voice as Process, a book written primarily for them: scholars of rhetoric and composition, readers fluent themselves in the academese, or academiotics, thatâs so ripe for parody. But Bryantâs decision to include the chapter in Essays on Writing, her textbook for first-year writing students, demonstrates her belief that her words speak to freshmen as well. She seems to be saying, I can have a conversation with you that I couldnât have with those students back then.
Can she? If she turns to her talking points, asking students âHow asymmetrical power relations operate in the academy,â or how students âattempt to subvert control by the hegemonic structuresâ (100), will they answer, or will silence fall on the construction zone?
Byant, Lizbeth A. âDisruptive âSexualâ Voices in English 101.â Essays on Writing. Ed. Lizbeth A. Bryant and Heather M. Clark. Boston: Longman, 2009. 95-100. Print.
or Revisiting Roy Peter Clark’s Essay with My Students
Essays on Writing (2009)
Two weeks ago, after my students read Roy Peter Clarkâs essay âI Wonât Use Writing as Punishment, I Wonât . . . ,â I asked them to compose responses to his claim that âwriting as punishment is still with usâ (4). I admit I doubted its relevance; Clark wrote the essay years ago, âmore than 20,â he observes in the authorâs note in our textbook, adding that he wishes âit was too old-fashioned or obsolete to reprintâ (4).
Maybe Clarkâs essay was too old-fashioned or obsolete, I thought. I certainly didnât expect the majority of my students to recount stories of writing as punishment. But they did. Most had their own stories; others recalled instances of classmates forced to put pen to paper in detention hall.
Iâve been thinking about all those stories, ones of sentences starting with the words âI will not . . . ,â others of dictionary entries, textbook chapters, and Bible versesâyes, Bible versesâcopied longhand for various offenses. Sometimes rather than copying someone elseâs sentences, students were required to compose their own. Showing up for school with facial hair landed one student the assignment of writing an essay extolling the importance of being clean-shaven (as the school handbook required). Others had to explain in writing why they were repeatedly tardy. Some recalled the assignment of writing letters of apology addressed to teachers whom they or other students had treated disrespectfully. Just what they did to the teachers, I don’t know. (Details, like batteries, not included.)
I suppose, at least, that writing those letters of apology proved more instructive than writing one-hundred times, âI will not disâ the teacher.â Still, the act of copying a sentence, not to present as your own–I would hardly advocate plagiarismâbut to recreate its rhythm with your own hand can be a vital exercise. (Thatâs one reason I require students to write quotations in their journals, and I do in mine.) But if students have copied sentences as punishment, it may be hard for them to see the act of transcription as anything other than punishment. And writing their own words may seem punitive, too, if theyâve been sentenced to write letters and essays in the service of explanations and apologies.
My studentsâ responses to Clark’s essay reveal that basically every form of writing that I require of them is one that theyâve written or witnessed other students write as a form of punishment. It shouldn’t surprise me that the problem remains prevalent, but it does because itâs clearly so wrong-headed. Just how wrong-headed, Clark showed more than twenty years ago when he first asked readers to imagine ourselves telling a child that because heâs been bad, he has to draw a picture or play the piano. Of course we donât punish children with art or music, but teachers continue to punish students with writing and then lament the fact that they donât like to write or that they donât write well. That said, memories of punishment aren’t the only obstacle, or even the main one, for us–yes, “us,” I write as I struggle to finish this paragraph. Simply put, writing is hard. And now in the digital age, the difficulty of developing our ideas grows as our writing shrinks to fwr ltrs & wrds.
Every year as I prepare to teach a new group of freshmen, or first-year students as theyâre now called, I ask myself how I can make their first college writing class seem like more of a first rather than more of the same. This year one of my answers is the two books that I choseâones that Iâve never used beforeâwhich approach writing in vastly different ways. The book that includesClark essay addresses social and cultural aspects of writing. The other book, Stanley FishâsHow to Write a Sentence, as its title tells us, focuses on technique. Iâve also changed the daily journal assignment. Along with writing a quotation from their reading, they write one from something they werenât required to read. It may seem like more punishment to them, and yes, Iâm aware of the irony of requiring them to write lines from something they read for pleasure. But I want to convey to them the importance of reading for themselves by placing a value on it, giving it a place in their journals and in class discussion. And I also want to instill the importance of writing that isnât evaluated, which I do through private freewriting in class and through letter writing. For their monthly letter-writing assignment, students submit a letter mail-ready: stamped and addressed in a sealed envelope. I donât read the letters because Iâm not evaluating them; Iâm crediting students with the act of writing, which may seem like even more punishment.
Yet perhaps when they notice that Iâm writing along with themânot just when theyâre freewriting in class, but that Iâm also composing journal entries, letters, blog entries, and essaysâsome will begin to see all of this as something other than punishment. Then again, they may not. (They may see me as inflicting punishment on myself as well as on them.)
By approaching my teaching as I approach my writingâas a work in progress, subject to revisionâmy own ideas about how to teach writing continue to evolve. Attitudes developed over the years arenât likely to transform over the course of one semester. But they can change. And writing about our attitudes toward reading and writingâas I have here, and my students will in their first papersâoffers a place to start.
Work Cited
Clark, Roy Peter. âI Wonât Use Writing as Punishment. I Wonât . . .â Essays on Writing. Ed. Lizbeth A. Bryant and Heather M. Clark. Boston: Longman, 2009. 4-10. Print.
Jane Lucas 