In his 1953 play “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller depicts the slave Tituba as the source of witchcraft in Salem and a woman who uses her wits to survive. As the play opens, Miller states that Tituba is “very frightened because her slave sense tells her that, as always, trouble in this house eventually lands on her back (832). When she is accused of conjuring spirits in the forest by Abigail, Tituba quickly defends herself, saying, “You beg me conjure! She beg me make charm—” (847). Under the intense pressure of interrogation, Tituba is able to deflect the blame from herself by implicating Reverend Samuel Parris, whom she knows is not popular. A turning point in the first act comes when Tituba begins revealing what she knows about the Devil’s work in Salem, and even better, she has resisted the Devil’s request to kill Parris. “Oh, how many times he bid me kill you, Mr. Parris!” By taking this approach, Tituba transforms herself from a damned woman bound for the gallows to a valuable informant. “God will bless you for your help,” Hale assures her (848). She chooses her words carefully, sensing both her newfound power as well as imminent danger. Her position in Salem perilously vulnerable, Tituba is gravely serious when she cries out, “Oh, God! Protect Tituba!" (848).
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
WEEK 5 Journal
From Self-Analysis to Academic Analysis: An Approach to Expository Writing
Author(s): Marilyn Katz
Source: College English, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Nov., 1978), pp. 288-292
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/375789.
Accessed: 25/09/2011 20:39
Although written in 1978, New York English professor Marilyn Katz’s article on how to help students approach expository writing with the same enthusiasm and fluency as they approach creative writing is fascinating—and I want to try her methods. She begins by stating the well-known fact that students enjoy writing expressively with imagination about themselves; but as for prescriptive, formal essays and research papers—not so much. Observes Katz, “…too often we discover that the energetic involvement we see when they express their personal experiences in the story and poem of a creative writing course is absent when they are asked to write an extended academic essay or paper” (288).
While teaching in a summer program at Sarah Lawrence College (great place to try whacky experiments), Katz decided to tackle this contradiction by designing an expository writing course that uses the student’s personal experience “not only to stimulate intense interest in self-expression…but also to stimulate disciplined analytical thinking that the expository writing assignments demand” (288). She reasoned that since college students (and I believe all students) are quite interested in understanding themselves, then self-analysis would be a logical starting point for teaching them how abstract thinking relates to writing. Katz believes passionately that most writing problems stem from organizational gaps which in turn come from an inability to think analytically. She argues that the student who cannot write well has difficulty drawing abstractions from concrete details and seeing patterns and relationships between ideas. “In effect, the student who cannot write a well-organized paper," states Katz, "cannot do so because she or he has not analyzed specific material sufficiently to see either the abstract patterns contained within that material, or to related these paterns to one another logically and thereby develop a thesis and exposition” (289). As I mentioned in last week’s journal, my colleagues and I are trying to address this issue through the strategies of Dr. Michael Degen, who teaches at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. His approach to writing is evidence-associations-relationships and seems to echo Katz’s premise regarding abstract thinking and organizational struggles.
Through a series of six writing assignments, Katz led her students from self-analysis to academic analysis, carefully calibrating and extending the abstract thinking requirements. In each assignment, students had to determine a single-sentence thesis. She explains how students responded and developed a thesis by discovering patterns and relationships in their descriptive writing. States Katz, “…they realized that because their theses emerged from the concrete details, their papers were neither too abstract nor too concrete, the excesses of most weak student papers. They were able to achieve the balance between general statement and specific evidence” (290-291). I appreciate her reasoning that when students examine a text carefully they discover things they had not realized was there and begin “to find patterns that could be stated in topic sentences, connections among them that could become transitional phrases, and an overall issue that could be expressed as a thesis” (292).
I plan to keep her article with her assignments close by and begin strategizing how to organize writing assignments that can help students make this journey from introspecitve expression to expository writing.
Katz, Marilyn. "From Self-Analysis to Academic Analysis: An Approach to Expository Writing." National Council of Teachers of English 40.3 (Nov 1978): 288-92. Print.
Author(s): Marilyn Katz
Source: College English, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Nov., 1978), pp. 288-292
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/375789.
Accessed: 25/09/2011 20:39
Although written in 1978, New York English professor Marilyn Katz’s article on how to help students approach expository writing with the same enthusiasm and fluency as they approach creative writing is fascinating—and I want to try her methods. She begins by stating the well-known fact that students enjoy writing expressively with imagination about themselves; but as for prescriptive, formal essays and research papers—not so much. Observes Katz, “…too often we discover that the energetic involvement we see when they express their personal experiences in the story and poem of a creative writing course is absent when they are asked to write an extended academic essay or paper” (288).
While teaching in a summer program at Sarah Lawrence College (great place to try whacky experiments), Katz decided to tackle this contradiction by designing an expository writing course that uses the student’s personal experience “not only to stimulate intense interest in self-expression…but also to stimulate disciplined analytical thinking that the expository writing assignments demand” (288). She reasoned that since college students (and I believe all students) are quite interested in understanding themselves, then self-analysis would be a logical starting point for teaching them how abstract thinking relates to writing. Katz believes passionately that most writing problems stem from organizational gaps which in turn come from an inability to think analytically. She argues that the student who cannot write well has difficulty drawing abstractions from concrete details and seeing patterns and relationships between ideas. “In effect, the student who cannot write a well-organized paper," states Katz, "cannot do so because she or he has not analyzed specific material sufficiently to see either the abstract patterns contained within that material, or to related these paterns to one another logically and thereby develop a thesis and exposition” (289). As I mentioned in last week’s journal, my colleagues and I are trying to address this issue through the strategies of Dr. Michael Degen, who teaches at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. His approach to writing is evidence-associations-relationships and seems to echo Katz’s premise regarding abstract thinking and organizational struggles.
Through a series of six writing assignments, Katz led her students from self-analysis to academic analysis, carefully calibrating and extending the abstract thinking requirements. In each assignment, students had to determine a single-sentence thesis. She explains how students responded and developed a thesis by discovering patterns and relationships in their descriptive writing. States Katz, “…they realized that because their theses emerged from the concrete details, their papers were neither too abstract nor too concrete, the excesses of most weak student papers. They were able to achieve the balance between general statement and specific evidence” (290-291). I appreciate her reasoning that when students examine a text carefully they discover things they had not realized was there and begin “to find patterns that could be stated in topic sentences, connections among them that could become transitional phrases, and an overall issue that could be expressed as a thesis” (292).
I plan to keep her article with her assignments close by and begin strategizing how to organize writing assignments that can help students make this journey from introspecitve expression to expository writing.
Katz, Marilyn. "From Self-Analysis to Academic Analysis: An Approach to Expository Writing." National Council of Teachers of English 40.3 (Nov 1978): 288-92. Print.
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