Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Teaching Writing
I am wondering if anyone has found any books that are useful for teaching writing beyond, say, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. I think that improving writing skills requires highly reflective practice with critical, constructive feedback from others, so I wonder if anyone has found any books very helpful (since, to improve writing, you have to just do it -- i.e., write, reflect and revise -- and not so much just read *a lot* about writing) or if, for most people, briefer, free online materials like Jim Pryor's guidelines and Jonathan Bennett's "Improving Academic Writing" are sufficient. Thanks.
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Everyone should read Geoffrey Pullum on The Elements of Style. See his CHE article 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.
ReplyDeleteWhile not a style guide, I've found Silvia's How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing invaluable as a graduate student. A lot of the problematic writing habits he targets are ones that I developed as an undergrad, e.g. binge writing.
I recommend Anthony Weston's "A Rulebook for Arguments." I've used it in my writing classes. It's the Strunk and White for constructing an effective argument.It's slim, cheap, and beautifully written. (And Weston is a philosophy prof.)
ReplyDeleteI also like "The Craft of Research" by Booth et al. It has a few good sections on setting up a research question, and some excellent pointers for making a paragraph flow.
I do like Feinberg and Shafer-Landau's Doing Philosophy. It's probably the best book I'm aware of that empahsizes what's stylistically and substantively distinctive about philosophical writing.
ReplyDeleteLewis Vaughn's "Writing Philosophy" Probably not suitable for upper-level classes, but I find it perfect for Intro-level classes.
ReplyDeleteI've assigned Graff & Birkenstein's They Say, I Say this semester. I don't have any data yet on how helpful it is to students, but it's interestingly different from most of the others, and it seems like it should be particularly helpful to students who don't "get" academic writing. On the other hand, as this review points out, their approach has its limits and potential downsides too.
ReplyDeleteFeinberg and Shafer-Landau's Doing Philosophy teaches very well, as does Vaughn's Writing Philosophy. There is also Martinich's Philosophical Writing.
ReplyDeleteAnything by Peter Elbow (particularly Writing With Power and Writing Without Teachers) is excellent and does a great job of knocking down a lot of myths and anxieties that surround student expectations of what academic writing is like. Honestly, he may not be a philosopher, but I can't think of anyone better for students to read.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Nuts-Bolts-College-Writing/dp/0872205738/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319679352&sr=8-1
ReplyDeleteNut's and Bolts of College Writing Michael Harvey is inexpensive and effective. I use it in First Year Writing courses. I will assign three papers and during the first I use the first two chapters, and focus on clarity and concision, then for the second paper I'll emphasize Flow and Gracefulness and then finally Paragraphs and Intro's.
Harvey is remarkably good at explaining simple concrete improvements to college student prose that work very well for peer review sessions.
Students have responded very well to it, and sometimes had a moment of realization about what bad writing look like. The chapter on the "pompous style" is devastating and brilliant.
If what you are looking for is a general style guide and not something geared to philosophy in particular, then it probably is a good idea not to use Elements. I love Elements, personally, but it is outdated.
ReplyDeleteFor an excellent and practical style guide, nothing beats Joseph M. Williams, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grade. It is not cheap, but there is a version without the exercises that is affordable for students.
This may not be the sort of thing you have in mind, but you might check "Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose" by Constance Hale.
ReplyDeleteThere's a discussion going on at Leiter's blog in which people list the books and sites that they recommend to their students.
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