-
I Write, Therefore I'm Right
- University Press of New England
- Chapter
- Additional Information
78 improve their written work, then the question being begged is this: are teachers using e-mail in a deliberate way to develop their students’ writing? So far as I know, they are not. Whatever advantage or benefit they see in their students’ use of e-mail is more of a passive or anecdotal observation that anyone who relentlessly pecks out information on a keyboard must be getting better at writing. But without the instructor’s oversight and direction, and without a willingness to edit one’s “work,” e-mail, in this regard, is about as helpful in developing written language skills as is eating bowl after bowl of alphabet soup. o p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p iwrite,thereforei’mright Nothing grants insight into a student’s understanding of a concept like asking him or her to write about it. During class, when I pause to ask, “Do you understand this?” the response is either a blank stare or a nod, both to me and the painfully slow-ticking clock on the wall. This ambiguous response tells me nothing except that the student wants me to go on with the lecture, as if my pausing to elucidate a concept will suspend time and delay the much-anticipated end of the class period. Students do not generally come into a science course expecting to write much of anything, save for the occasional essay question on a test. In fact, science is so terminology-heavy that it lends itself to multiple choice tests and short answers as a way of covering as much ground as possible. And yet, students will normally do what is asked of them, even if grudgingly. In this light, I ask them to write, at length, their observations I Write, Therefore I'm Right p 79 and interpretations of their laboratory experiments. I prescribe the format, akin to a step-by-step recipe, but still it is a long, difficult slog for many. There are two reasons for this: students don’t like to write; and, more toxically, they tend to believe that anything that does manage to flow from their pens—or keyboards —is valid. Here’s how it works. After each lab session I hand out a sheet outlining what I want to see in their write-ups. The format is as follows: Title. Purpose. Materials. Procedure. Results. Discussion . Conclusion. Everything—everything—except for the discussion is matter-of-fact and does not require them to think. The Purpose is a simple statement of what they intended to find out (“I wanted to see how the sow bug responded to light”). The Ma‑ terials section is simply a list of what they used (glassware, light source, sow bugs, etc.). The Results are just the facts: what they found out (“The sow bug always moves away from the light”). But the Discussion is where the students get to shine. This is the heart and soul of the laboratory write-up, because it is, in itself, an essay that explains their understanding of their results. And it is precisely here, in the discussion, that the students run their ships onto the rocks. But their Results section also provides its share of drama, because, once they get rolling, the students cannot resist the temptation to move beyond the facts and into the realm of speculation, or worse, how they “feel” about the sow bug’s experience, or worst of all, how the sow bug might feel. Let me put all of this in context with a concrete example. Take the topic of photosynthesis (the means by which plants convert sun energy to food energy, releasing oxygen along the way). As part of the laboratory exercise on this topic, the students place a sprig of an aquatic plant in a test tube filled with sodium bicarbonate solution, shine a light on it, and measure the amount of oxygen given off. Simple enough. The Results section should simply include numbers (the amount of oxygen produced), and students do okay here if they remember to stay on the straight and narrow and not stray beyond the facts. But, alas, stray they [52.90.181.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:23 GMT) 80 p o u r c o m m o n t o n g u e do. It’s as if the facts (my plant produced X amount of oxygen) are not good enough, or don...