Teaching with Writelike ARCHIVED NOV 2023

How do we decide what text to sample?

It's a good question.

Let's say we want to "write like the greats". Which greats? From whose canon?

Shakespeare is the canonical example of a great English writer—should we all be trying to learn to write like a 16th century dramatic poet?

It would be cool, but maybe not a priority.

What about Herman Melville? Everyone loves the opening of Moby Dick, should we all learn to write like that?

Sure, but do we really want to encourage students to go overboard (as it were) on subordinate clauses and elaborate turns of phrase?

And anyway, what's with all the white dudes?

Where are the women writers? The LGBTQ+ writers? The Black, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Hispanic, Indigenous writers? The disabled writers?

We need a diverse, modern canon for diverse, modern times.

Or actually, since we're all in peak capitalism, maybe writing should be purely vocational. 

What about resumes? Everyone needs a resume. Should we be sampling the best resumes from around the world?

Well, yes, but... Writelike is a complicated way to teach resume writing, and resumes are not a great way to learn higher-order writing skills.

You get the idea. It's complicated. So what do we choose?

Conscious eclecticism

Since there is no straightforward list of 'greats' to write like, we try to be consciously eclectic.

We sample diverse texts from diverse perspectives, from canon to ephemera, Shakespeare to cereal boxes.

While acknowledging that some writing is richer and more rewarding than others, we try to create a sense that approaching any piece of text analytically can yield rewards (even if only as fuel for parody, insight into a culture, or a cautionary tale).

We believe in a blend of push and pull: helping students explore texts with which they are already familiar and interested, as well as introducing them to texts which are unfamiliar and challenging. 

Ultimately we want to broaden students' frame of reference, help them see a wide range of texts as being part of 'their world', and give them the skills to navigate those texts independently and proactively, like treasure-hunting pirates on the high seas of prose.

(The ultimate success would be a student pointing at that last line and saying, "That metaphor's a bit much, don't you think?")