The $5,000 Approach to Teaching Writing.
Article Responses: All article responses must be typed in MLA format (see syllabus and
“Sally Smith” handout) and submitted electronically via www.turnitin.com. Since article
responses are always weekend homework, they must be submitted no later than midnight
Sunday prior to the Monday they are due. Please do NOT ask for exceptions! Follow the
following instructions for creating each article response:
1. Read the article thoroughly. As you do so, make sure you understand the
author’s main idea and the central point he/she is attempting to convince
the reader of. Begin your response by
a. Stating the author’s main idea in your own words and then
I). Elaborating on what you have paraphrased (“In other words, the author is trying to
convince the reader that…”).
fip: Do NOT spend a lot of time summarizing the article. I’ve read the article, too, so all you need to do
is make sure I know YOU understand the author’s main point(s). Most of your time should be spent
RESPONDING to what was said, and I should be able to tell by your response whether or not you’ve read
the article.
NEXT
2. State YOUR main idea: (“I think Semmens makes some excellent points. ” OR “Although
Semmens makes some good points about government becoming more and more intrusive in our
lives, I largely disagree with his main point”)
3. Elaborate on your main idea (“In other words, I believe, for the most part that because
smoking is bad for people, it should be made illegal”)
4. Give eXamples to support the point you’ve just elaborated. (For example, health care costs
would be drastically reduced if more people were required by law to give up smoking. This
reduction in health care costs would benefit everyone who pays for health care.)
5. Illustrate your point by making a comparison with something similar (if you’re in favor of
banning or severely penalizing the use of tobacco. you might illustrate your point by praising
seatbelt laws, helmet laws, other laws that protect us from our own stupid behaviors) OR (if
you’re against banning or severely penalizing the use of tobacco, you might illustrate your point
by comparing its banning to Prohibition or the loss of other sorts of personal liberties to
government intrusion).
Make it SEXI. Make sure you demonstrate in your response that you have read and understood the
article, and make sure you make a sensible case in responding to the author’ 5 opinion or insights. You
can agree or disagree with all or some of the article and focus your response on just one or two points
the author makes, but make sure I can tell you’ve read and understood the ENTIRE article.
SEX. ChECkliSt: Be sure to use the following checklist to be sure you have followed all
June 29, 2009
The $5,000 Approach to Teaching Writing
By BOB KUNZINGER
Almost every day I hear my fellow professors complain about their students’ poor writing on papers and tests. The papers lack
depth, my colleagues say, and reflect a lack of commitment to good writing. Having read countless examples of such sloppy
college writing over the past two decades myself, I’ve identified the main cause. Weak writing has little to do with students’
innate writing ability, even less with how much time they spend working on their papers, and less yet with how ill-prepared
they are to do college-level work.
The real problem is this: Students know that professors must read their papers, no matter how poorly they might be written,
how irrelevant their cited examples, or how “uncollegiate” their content. Poor writing persists because students know that
professors are obligated to suffer through endless garbage in hopes of finding something salvageable. They are well aware that
many professors will highlight their papers’ weaknesses and then allow rewrites, and that some professors will accept
nonwritten extra-credit projects to improve their final grades. In short, students know there are usually ways to avoid putting
forth a gallant effort on a paper.
I realized this great truth about five years ago, at the beginning of a semester in a composition class, after I finished reading a
paper by one of my students. During our next class, I asked, “If I were to skim only the introductions of all 20 of your papers, but
read in their entirety only the five papers with the best introductory paragraphs — the ones that entice me to continue
reading — and automatically give the rest failing grades, would your introductions improve?”
They all said yes and admitted that they would put more of an effort into capturing my attention and solidifying their theses.
I’ve continued to ask each new class of students the same question, and I invariably get the same response.
So a few semesters later, I added to my proposition a more tangible, albeit hypothetical, reward. I asked, “What if I had a check
on my desk for $5,000? And what if I rewarded the writer whose introduction most caught my attention, who most effectively
made me want to continue because of a solid and clear thesis, with a check for five grand? Would your introductions improve
even more?”
Cries of “Absolutely!” filled the room — to which I replied, “Then you always could do it. You just couldn’t be bothered.”
Silence followed.
I still do this, pointing out to class after class, “You know you write better than these half-baked attempts you typed up late at
night. There just wasn’t anything tangible in it for you.” The students will agree. Some will even acknowledge that conditioning
throughout high school left them believing that a “good” attempt is good enough.
Now, I’m confident that my students aren’t sitting at home saying, “I’m going to make this as pathetic as possible.” There is no
malice on their part. But there’s little “real world” risk involved, either. “What’s an A on a college paper worth in the grand
scheme anyway?” they reason.
While the answers are obvious to those of us who do the grading, to the average student with 12 credit hours, a full-time job, a
family, and essays to write, excellent work is often simply getting it done at all. Professors are in competition for attention not
only with family, friends, classes, and jobs, but also with ever-increasing news-media onslaughts that rarely require students to
focus for more than 20 seconds at a time.
We must reshape students’ thinking so they understand that “good enough” isn’t, and that doing better is simply a matter of
seeking the rewards of excellent writing in the same way one might seek a bigger paycheck for working overtime. We aren’t
offering them real training in earning rewards if we allow them to pass their courses despite weak effort and poor results. In the
real world, people often get only one opportunity, one job opening, one chance to move ahead. Most of us know that the
amount of time that a person commits to a project usually leads to better outcomes, but many students work under the
delusion that almost any results are acceptable.
But what if we teach students to write their essays as though professors simply won’t read them if they are of unacceptable
quality?My most successful approach to improving my students’ writing has resulted from teaching them to break the essay into stages.
Each semester, I dedicate an entire class to writing an introduction with a solid thesis, emphasizing that the beginning of their
papers is so essential to making the whole work excellent that it demands close examination.
I have my students write their introductions in class, and I grade those separately — as though the grade for the entire paper
were based solely upon that section. I then move on to the body of the paper, repeating the sectional grading.
Doing so underscores how important the parts of the whole are, and helps students take each paragraph more seriously.
In the end, the grades are averaged together, but such detailed concern over the parts makes the whole essay more unified and
lends more depth. Yes, the process is time-consuming, but it drives home the point that sometimes, getting it right means
making extra effort.
In the past, when I asked students to read all or part of their papers aloud, I rarely got volunteers. But since I’ve begun teaching
the students to break down their papers and focus on each element, they are almost always willing to stand up and share their
work. It’s rewarding for everyone involved.
By driving students to improve their efforts, we can teach them how to maximize their ability and overcome their lack of
motivation. We must repeatedly remind them that doing poorly in college through halfhearted effort and mediocre work could
lead to doing poorly in the real world, too, damaging their reputations and chances to advance in their careers. We want our
students to view us as gatekeepers to what comes next in life instead of as mere grade distributors. Combined, those strategies
are often sufficient wake-up calls for students to improve their efforts.
We need to show students that we expect the same effort to get an A that they put forth to get a job, establish a career, or win
a trophy. They can do it; they just need to be reminded of the difference between short- and long-term rewards.
Anything less than a $5,000 effort should mean an F — failure in college, fired in the real world.
Bob Kunzinger is an associate professor of English and the humanities at Tidewater Community College.
