One on One with Second Language Writers: A Guide for Writing Tutors, Teachers, and Consultants

3. Understanding the Assignment: Purpose, Conventions, and Preferences

Understanding the Assignment: Purpose, Conventions, and Preferences Don’t Assume: The Situatedness of American Academics • “Choose one of the texts from our supplemental reading list and write a book report about it.” • “All work should follow the guidelines of the APA Handbook .” • “Choose one or more of the texts we’ve been reading this semester and write a critical analysis of the author’s use of. . . .” • “Papers should be at least five typed, double-spaced pages long.” • “Write a paper about the lingering effects in Latin America of the encomienda system during the Spanish colonial period. In your response, be sure to think analytically.” • In a coherent paper, discuss your opinion of White’s argument regarding. . . .” It should be fairly obvious that these sentences were lifted from academic writing assignments. They reference course features (reading lists, the encomienda system), production guidelines (double -spaced, APA Handbook), and academic buzzwords (critical, analytically) in the context of a writing task. What may not be as 34 ) obvious is that hidden within these sentences are several culturally bound concepts. What is the difference between a book report and a critical analysis? If the instructions say at least five pages long, does that mean I should aim for five and a half pages, seven pages, or fifteen pages? What is APA, and more important, which of the guidelines are really important? Does your response mean my feelings ? These are not specifically language issues, but whether you can even begin to answer them may depend a lot on how much of your previous education took place in the United States. In the United States, learning to write usually starts with kindergarteners or first graders writing descriptions and accounts of their immediate world and experiences—“my dad,” “our class trip to the zoo,” or “what we did for Thanksgiving.” Building on children’s love of storybooks and fantasy, creative genres such as stories and poems are soon introduced as a tool for building engagement in writing. Somewhere around the third or fourth grade, however, standardized writing tests appear on the scene, and students start working on their abilities with narrative and descriptive language into the paradigmatic five-paragraph essay— a form that will dominate their assigned writing through at least the end of high school. The five-paragraph essay represents a culturally approved archetype for structuring and expressing an argument. Frequently it is taught as a formula: an introductory paragraph that ends with a thesis statement, three body paragraphs—each of which develops an aspect of the thesis—and a conclusion that emphasizes what has been said in the paper. It is more than just a structural template, however. It is a genre, meaning that it is associated with conventions for style and form, generates conceptions of likely audiences, and persists because it has name recognition. With respect to style, students learn that for a good five-paragraph essay they should slip their beliefs into sentences written with the third-person instead of first (X is surprising because Y instead of I was surprised that X). They also learn to combine thoughts using complex sentences with dependent clauses and lots of adjectives. With respect to form, they begin thinking of 3: Understanding the Assignment 35 three points to make about any topic and the need to make a clear distinction between points and supporting material using phrases like for example. Finally, they learn that they should use factual information and authoritative quotations rather than emotional pleas to convince their audiences. I am not trying to say that all academic writing in the United States is a five-paragraph essay, but rather that it is the principle vehicle through which U.S. school children learn how to write for school. Depending on the classes they take in high school, they may also enter the university with some knowledge of a research paper, a lab report, a journalistic news story, a book report (a.k.a. a plot summary), and creative fiction or poetry. Teachers often teach these genres, however, by pointing out how they are different from the essay. Thus, if U.S. students have had experience with these other types of writing, odds are they will have an even keener awareness of the distinguishing features of the fiveparagraph essay and its cultural defaults. For students from other educational systems, the whole notion of assigned writing may be different. In the United States, assignments tend...