Currently, I am teaching a Composition I class for Freshmen level college students. Traditionally, it is one of my least favorite classes to teach. I prefer to teach Literature above all but Composition II is also nice because the basic foundations of writing have already been taught.
When I teach Comp I, I always struggle with a way to get students excited about writing. Most of them have learned to hate writing through bad experiences in high school. They have had teachers who made the subject boring or didn't allow them to explore subjects they were really interested in. To counteract this, I try and come up with fun and inventive ways to illustrate my lessons.
On Monday, we were learning about how to incorporate good details in writing. The students are going to be turning in a personal narrative soon and I told them it was important for them to paint a picture not write a list of things that happened to them. (This is what I normally get. Students write a long list of activities they participated in but the stories lack all sensory details and interest.) The students normally try to turn in a 3-4 page narrative that covers several years of their life. I try to explain that you cannot properly detail several years of a person's life in a few pages. I instruct them that it is better to pick a small moment, for instance, a few hours of their life.
To get them thinking creatively, I had the students write a character sketch. They were to create a character and give me the who, what, when, where, why, and how of that person. They weren't supposed to simply list traits but illustrate them through a short narrative. The students really seemed to have fun with this and came up with better ideas than they probably could have imagined.
I did the project along with them... Here is what my idea of what the project looked like.
Talio Stewart was a rotund, squat man in his early fifties. He had smooth hands though, from never doing a hard days work in his life, and they reminded him of his youth when he looked at them. He rarely smiled and his mouth had been turned down so long there were permanent lines on either side. His friends liked him, but only in the way you might like a mystery you can never figure out. They asked him often, "Have you ever been happy?" He would always sigh, force a chuckle, and say, "Sure. . . You know."
The truth was he had been happy at one time. He remembered being a kid and dreaming of everything adventurous. Then, it was all possible. What had happened though? He could not remember when the lines formed or when he took the first step on the easy route. When he took the safe job, the safe wife, the safe LIFE for that matter. . .
Now, it was all gone, and where did it go, his youth? It clung to his damned hands, a bitter reminder and he often though that reminder of something better, and not a true happiness for what was kept those lines on either side of his mouth, ad kept his friends wondering. It was a vicious circle of remembrance.
All in all, I think the assignment worked to at least show the students that creating a character can be fun, which in turn, might coax them into believing that writing is not the worst possible class for them to be in.
As a teacher, it is very important to keep students engaged in an active process of learning. Lecturing about writing does not help students improve. It is vital that they actually practice it and participate in writing as much as possible. Even with this, writing is a difficult lesson for students to grasp.
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