English 101/103

Dinan

Major Writing Project – Multiple Voices, Multiple You’s [Parts 1 & 2}]

When you and I talk to people, we do not always sound exactly the same in every situation; we tend, rather, to talk a bit differently to different people. For example, when I talk to my wife over the dinner table, I don't "sound" the same as I do when I give a formal speech on composition teaching to a group of strangers. In the same way, I'm sure you sense that you don't talk to your best friend in quite the same way that you talk to your English teacher. (People always seem to feel they have to "watch their English" when they speak to English teachers.) What you and I do, then, is adjust how we speak to the particular audience we're dealing with. All this is true of speaking; it is also true of writing. (For example, I don't begin my letters of recommendation with "Hey, Dude!")

I like to begin a semester of freshman composition by having students play around with the different voices they use when they speak and write. I want them to become more aware of those voices, to become comfortable with them, to use them consciously by manipulating them. Actually, you already know how to do this when you talk to people because you do it all the time. This assignment asks you to "put it in writing," as they say.

I like to think of this assignment as a play-with-language activity, one where you can mess around with your writing, manipulate it, make some things happen. As our class discussions will suggest, a very important part of writing is having a sense of how you want to "come across" to the people who read your words. In class we will be talking mainly about two general ways that a writer can come across: (1) informal, conversational, down-to-earth ("talker-style"); and (2) formal, "educated," maybe a bit stuffy ("writer-style"). We will also discuss the different kinds of specific "moves" a writer can make in order to come across in either of these two ways. Of course, these two extremes are not the only possibilities; there is a lot of middle ground. Also, neither of these two voices is absolutely right or absolutely wrong for all situations. In some situations (more than you may think) a relatively informal style will be most appropriate. In other situations you should probably try for some unstuffy formality. Good writers have mastery of both voices as well as the “vocal” range between the extremes. That's one of the reasons for this assignment.

What I want you to do for this part project at this point, then, is to write in two "voices." Your subject matter should be some aspect (or aspects) of your high school English experience: your teachers, your classes, your writing experiences (or lack thereof), your ups and downs. (My reasons for choosing this topic are selfish but also professional: since part of my job is to help pre-service teachers get ready for teaching high school English, it’s helpful for me to hear from students such as you just what’s going on out there in the “real world” of high school.)

For the first part of the assignment, write about this subject so that you come across as consistently informal and conversational, much as you would if you were talking to (or writing a note to) a close friend. (In fact, many students actually address this casual note to someone they actually know, just to get themselves in a “down-home” mood.) That is, write the first piece in "talker-style." For the second part, I want you to use basically the same subject matter as you did in the first half, but this time express it in a consistently formal voice, much as you might do if you were trying to show off your formal writing skills to a stuffy college professor. That is, use "writer-style" moves to create a formal, perhaps even stuffy, effect. If you wish, you can deliberately overdo these two pieces; that is, have some fun with the two styles, play with them, even poke some fun of them by exaggerating them. But if you aren't comfortable doing that, simply try to write consistently and informatively in each of the two styles. Either way of going about this assignment is fine; I'm pretty flexible.

Which of the two pieces should you draft first? Start with the conversation piece. That one is more fun, and it’ll let you get on a roll about your topic free from a lot of the worries that can slow writers down when doing pieces for English classes. Also, this will be the first of the two pieces that you will share with peers as part of a peer-editing session.

Each self-presentation should be about one typed page. If they are much shorter than this, I will ask you to expand them when you revise. For reasons I'll explain in class, it's always in your best interests to do a full draft the first time around. Use two separate pieces of writing (two different files, if you are doing this on a computer), one for each part of the assignment. Use centered headings (“Informal” and “Formal”) to title the different pieces. Remember: basically the same subject matter, but different "voices." Your formal piece will in effect be a “translation” of your informal piece, just as you might translate a piece of writing from a foreign language into English. I’ll provide you in class with examples of this “translating” process--stuff that I’ve done myself as well as the work of past students in this class.

[As suggested by the title of this handout, there will be a third version of this essay to create as well, but that will come later, after you’ve done some playing around with the first two versions.]