Who are we writing for?

Of the three articles we read this weekend, Mem Fox’s article really made me think and reflect about why my students will be writing. As Lad Tobin confesses, he and many undergrad students write their papers the night before they are due, cursing themselves and the assignment, all the while swearing to themselves they will never wait that long to write a paper again, that is, until the next assignment is due. This idea of Fox’s though, where students are writing for more than just an assignment, is very intriguing.

In my junior English class we were asked to write an editorial for the local newspaper. The final part of the assignment was to actually send our responses to the paper. That one assignment took most of our junior class longer to write and correct than any other assignment. Everyone wanted to make sure their copy was as close to perfect as was possible before sending it to the editor. Looking back, this process is very good, yet very disturbing. It seems when we write and we know it is just us and the teacher reading our papers that although we try to write the best possible paper, it is ok if there are grammatical mistakes or questionable ideas because only two people will only ever see the paper, and for many of us, the teacher is someone we have come to know and therefore it is somehow ok that he or she sees a paper that may not be our best work. I think this is especially true for freshman and sophomore undergrads. If you add another element, however, a stranger who you do not know how he or she will judge your work, somehow the level of perfection in the assignment is uppped.

A friend of mine in undergrad had to submit, as part of his assignment, a creative piece to our schools literary magazine. I think this same principle holds true. The assignments were better read over, better developed than those just the student and teacher read. Maybe it is the element of the unknown that scares students into submitting only their very best work to a third party, or maybe it is the will to make sure he or she and the teacher are only seen in the best light that makes a student submit the very best to an “outsider.” Whatever the case, I think having someone else who matters read a student’s work is very beneficial. Fox tells us that it helps show students that there is a world beyond class assignments created just for a teacher to read. It shows them the world beyond college and helps them see the future. I agree with Fox, and I think providing student’s with another person, an unfamiliar third party, can be just what their writing needs.