Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Bad First Drafts

It was my first year of teaching, and my first time to teach a high-intermediate writing class to ESL students. The class was supposed to write a persuasive essay. I spent weeks preparing the students. I taught them how to write their opponents’ argument, rebuttals, and finally their own arguments. We acted it out orally. We practiced it six different ways. And eventually the end of the session was upon us; the students handed in their papers, their works of art. I had been looking forward to reading their work. I felt I had put as much effort into their papers as they had. When I read the first few papers, I was shocked! I continued reading in disbelief. These were by far the worst papers I had ever read.  While going painstakingly through their work, I remembered a book that I had stolen from my mom, Bird by Bird - Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. I flipped through her book hoping for some age-old wisdom that I could give to my students. That’s when I found it. Page 21. “Shitty bad first drafts .” (My mom crossed out shitty and wrote ‘bad’. She has never liked bad words!) Anne writes, “Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.” Relieved, I photocopied the chapter and gave it to my students the next day in class. Then I returned their bad first drafts for revision!
           
Writing is a process. It takes time and effort to put down in words exactly what we mean. “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something – anything - down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft – you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft- you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.” – Anne Lamott 

If it’s this much work for native speakers to write well, how much MORE work is it for non-native speakers – our students – to write well?

         This blog is written from one ESL teacher to another. I hope to give practical ideas and worksheets to help you teach your adult students the basics of academic writing. These ideas come from plenty of bad first attempts at teaching writing, lots of fix it up lessons and some humbling, ‘dental draft’ teaching moments, which I am sure, could be tuned some more. I also hope to hear from you – what you do in your writing classes and how you help your students write terrific third drafts.