Matthew: Today. I'm here with Tracy Seeley and we're going to be talking about practice and feedback, but before we get started, Tracy, could you tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do. I think for the purposes of this interview, we really don't need to know about your research per se, but what department you work in, what are your typical classes, that kind of thing.
Tracy Seeley: Well, hello Matthew. It's nice to meet you. I teach in the English department, primarily literature classes, and so I teach the whole range from beginning English majors to core students who are not English majors, to upper-division English majors. I have students across a range of abilities and experience levels.
Matthew: Fantastic. Thank you. Well, I wanted in this interview to do things in a strange way. I wanted to start off with something very specific and then ask you some more general questions. I know in the past you've told the story that I've heard that's at least compelling to me, I wanted to explore that first, which is you've told a story of working, I don't remember what course this is or what level it is, but where you essentially do this one paragraph exercise with your students. I'm wondering if you can take us through that. Part of that is why did you even start going in that direction anyway? Because what you're doing is something that on the surface looks extreme.
Tracy: Just to describe what the one paragraph assignment is that I do, I have my students in every literature class write a paragraph response to the reading for every class, especially for the first month or five or six weeks of the semester. The reason I do that is that one of the chief goals of literary study is to be able to write complex, analytical studies of a piece of literature. An essay has a lot of moving parts. It's very difficult to achieve a level of excellence in that particular set of many skills over the course of a semester by having students write a lot of papers.
The reason that that's really just not a sustainable practice for me as a professor is I can't read that many pages. Ideally, students would write six or seven or eight papers over the course of the semester and it's just not possible to do that, but what I discovered is that most of the issues that students have with writing can be addressed at the paragraph level. By having students write a paragraph once a week or twice a week throughout the semester, they are practicing the skills that go into writing about literature, writing analysis, and most of the problems that students typically tend to have, happen at the paragraph level and can be addressed that way.
I can have students doing a lot of writing and practicing almost every class writing something, which I can very quickly turn around and give back to them with feedback so that they can continue to practice the parts of writing a paragraph that they're still struggling with. It allows me to really target a very specific number of tasks that go into writing a good paragraph or an effective paragraph without overwhelming the students.
When I give them a paragraph at the beginning of the semester, I'll tell them, "I'm going to evaluate this paragraph in these three areas. Does it stay on topic? Does it use quotations appropriately?" That's one of the most complex tasks for students is to choose appropriate quotations, incorporate them grammatically, and then provide some analysis of them. It's rather a complex set of tasks. Does the paragraph stay on focus? Is it grammatical? Are the sentences clear? Does it use evidence from the text to support the discussion?
That's what we focus on, say for the first two or three weeks, it's just those three things because that helps them understand what are we really doing when we write about the text? They can practice that again and again and again with very quick feedback, just focusing on a very few parts of an effective paragraph. Then, as the semester goes on, we can target other aspects of effective writing. Students who are more advanced can move on and write longer pieces. It allows me to individualize instruction and it allows me to give the students a lot of feedback. They get a lot of practice. They understand what the different parts are of effective writing that are going to be most important for this course.
Matthew: Beyond the one paragraph, part of what I'm hearing is you've really pulled out three things that you're going to focus on. I think I have to imagine for you in terms of giving them feedback, that makes it more streamlined and simpler.
Tracy: Very streamlined, and if I'm particularly busy or when we move into writing longer pieces, sometimes I'll just use a quick checklist. Was the use of quotations effective? Why or why not? I can just write a couple of sentences, and that way they get really useful information and it takes me maybe for a core class if I have 40 students, I can knock out a set of paragraphs in a couple of hours with appropriate feedback that really helps target what they need to work on as they move forward.
Matthew: Extrapolating from that, maybe 20 students in an hour.
Tracy: Yes.
Matthew: For people who teach different courses.
Tracy: That's right. Students get a lot of practice. It's very efficient because I'm not trying to give them feedback on everything. That can sometimes overwhelm us when we're responding to everything in a student's writing that's at issue. That kind of feedback doesn't help them and it certainly wears us out. It's really, really efficient.
Matthew: Over, and I may be just losing track and you've already said it, but so over the course of a typical semester because you start to phase out the one paragraph, how many, and I know you make it a little more complex over time, but how many of these paragraphs do you think they write in a typical semester? I know it may vary from course to course.
Tracy: I would say they write between 15 and 30, depending.
Matthew: Oh wow.
Tracy: Sometimes they write the paragraphs in class. Sometimes it's really helpful when I'm going to return a set of paragraphs. I might just address the whole class and I'll say, "Here are some patterns I'm seeing, here are some things I'm seeing in most of your papers. Let's look at examples of assignments that really do this particular thing well. Now, I want you to write a new paragraph about today's material. Here's the question I want you to address. Let's practice that particular thing right here in class."
I can give them feedback orally and address what I'm seeing in general in the class. If I do a lot of that, they might write as many as 30 paragraphs over the course of the semester, but I would say typically between 15 and 20. It's fairly front-loaded at the beginning of the semester and then we move on to longer pieces.
Matthew: Wow, that's fantastic. What have you noticed? I know it's a more efficient way to give them feedback, but then there's the bottom line, bottom line being what they are able to produce at the end of the semester. As best as you can, reflecting on before you did this, I don't know how long you've been doing it, and after, what are the major benefits that seem to accrue for the students from this approach that you've taken, that you've seen in their final work?
Tracy: I find this technique most effective or I noticed the biggest difference between the beginning of the semester and the end of the semester with students who are not English majors because most of them have chosen other majors because literature and writing is not necessarily their strength. A lot of them come in with very little prior experience and some come in with prior experience that's caused them a lot of trauma. We know we undo a lot of damage from poor English teaching in their high school experience, or they're really rusty and just haven't done it in a long time. It's not something they've kept up because they're majoring in things that don't require it.
I noticed that the biggest difference in their work between the beginning of the semester and the end, and what I find with their repeated practice and feedback is they learn very quickly what are the components that go into an effective piece of analysis about literature, and they also get the feedback that help them focus not only on what they need to work on, but they come to understand what they already do well so they don't have to worry about that so much anymore.
I can say, "Here's where you are relative to, where I hope you can achieve by the end of the semester. Here's where you are in these five areas, so let's prioritize and let's focus on these two skills." I can do that very quickly in a paragraph, then we write two paragraph pieces. They can learn very quickly. It's not part of their toolset initially to even recognize what an effective piece of analysis looks like. They make the most progress relative to where they started, but it's great for English majors too because they're reading enormous amounts of material. They get a lot of practice leading up to their first papers and that gives them a lot more confidence and they know exactly what they're expected to do.
Matthew: Yes, I can imagine. Is this the primary tool you use or are there other tools you also use for practicing feedback to help students with their writing? I don't work with undergraduate so much, but I've worked with high school students before and I know this issue of developing writing skills is a big one. As I understand it, it's a big one here too. I don't think we're very unique in that way. In addition to this, are there other techniques you use for providing feedback and special practice for them?
Tracy: A couple of different things. I use a rubric. Students, when they receive an assignment, I give them a chart that lays out what are the hallmarks of a really excellent product. If they're going to write a paragraph, what does an excellent paragraph look like? It has these five components. Here's what an A paper looks like, here's what a B paper looks like. We break it down that way so that when they get their papers back, I'm also providing feedback in those areas so they can immediately see, "Okay, I'm doing a great job on organization. I can see that I have some grammatical errors. I still need to work on incorporating quotations, or I need to provide more support for my argument."
I give them a rubric so they know exactly what I'm going to be looking for, they know exactly what the criteria are for excellence. The other thing I do frequently is post samples of successful assignments that they can read. Sometimes I'll distribute a passage in class that we can all talk about why is this a good paragraph? Why is this an effective opening to an essay? Why is this an effective conclusion?
Mathew: These samples are price samples written by previous students?
Tracy: They're written by previous students from previous semesters. In any given semester, I'll ask students do I have your permission to use your work in the future for other students to learn from? I have a kind of body of examples that I can post depending on what we're focusing on. Between the rubrics, so that they know what the criteria are and the samples of other students work, that also gives them a much clearer sense of where they can aim their efforts.
Mathew: Do you ever give them examples of bad work 'cause some people do and some people don't?
Tracy: Yes, I've done both and I actually I don't feel good about handing out samples of bad work, it has to be handled so deftly and so carefully-
Mathew: and much harder to get permission. [laughs]
Tracy: It's much harder to get permission and I think it's hard for students to have bad work kind of paraded in front of them, because then they become very self-conscious about, they might at some point be the target of this kind of class-wide criticism of their work. I think that's really a kind of a delicate issue. I do sometimes present them with bad examples that I have created. I'll just pretend it I'll say, "Here, I wrote this last night really quickly, and I intentionally made some of the errors that are very typical." I try to normalize what the problems are that they see okay, everybody does this or I'm not unique in my own challenges here.
I'll just kind of make fun of myself, but if I told them that another student had written it, even if it was from a different semester, I think it brings in a level of self-consciousness or anxiety that doesn't need to be there.
Mathew: But also what I'm hearing from you is now forgetting the examples of previous students, by bringing in your own, it kind of demystify the process a bit too. Now I'm not talking about their final product, it's kind of an emotional level, it's like, "Oh, this doesn't just magically turn out well, the first time around all the time."
Tracy: That's right, and with my more advanced students too, I think that's an especially effective technique because one of the things that's very hard to persuade students about the importance of is revision. I will often bring them in a paragraph that I wrote as a very quick first draft of something and then I'll bring in the final version of that paragraph once it had gone through several revisions and I will just talk through with them, what are the changes I made, but they can see. When I write something, even though I'm a professional at what I do is pretty clunky and it's missing some things and the prose might be awkward, and there's some syntactical issues.
I think it really helps students to know that everybody has to work at this, everybody has to revise, it doesn't matter. It's not going to come out well, the first time, that doesn't mean it's always going to be bad, I can keep working on it.
Mathew: I remember one of the most enlightening experiences I had, and I didn't even care that much about writing was I went to a presentation by Tom Stoppard where I don't know why he decided this time but at this particular presentation, he decided to bring in his first draft of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 'cause everybody thought it was matt and because he's so good with words, and people just thought it's easy for him. He read it. He didn't read the whole thing, but he read the first two or three pages and you could see everybody in the audience including me was going, "That's crap."
But you could see there was a germ of an idea there and then he talked through this doesn't happen magically where the real work in this is.
Tracy: Right, and that's a really good-
Mathew: But he could have said that and we wouldn't have believed them, but by giving the example of where he really started, it hit home.
Tracy: Yes, 'cause students are so hard on themselves when they find out that they get something back from me and they realize there are a lot of problems with it or they're just not doing well. It really helps them to see that they can work with what they have and make it better, that nobody's writing comes out perfectly the first time. It helps them kind of ease off the pressure on themselves.
Mathew: I asked really the best questions I could, given I want to keep this relatively short but are there any other aspects of the practice and feedback cycle that you'd like to talk about? Are they some kind of maybe key issues that we haven't touched upon?
Tracy: I think that one of the things I find especially in large classes is that I don't think our students are necessarily unique, but we tend to talk a lot as a faculty about the fact that we get students with an enormous range of abilities, and the one thing that this kind of targeted feedback goal-directed practice does for me is it allows me to individualize instruction for students even when I have a lot of them in a given semester.
Because I'm training myself to focus only on the three things we're working on this week, I can quickly identify who are the four or five students in this class who really got it down, who were the four or five students who really need some individual attention that they can become better. It helps me to identify very quickly what people need and I can call those students in and work with them individually.
If I were waiting until mid-semester for students to write their first paper, and that's the first time I see their writing, it's already really late in the semester to start working with students who really need more support. It makes me a better teacher by enabling me to do some individualized work and it's no more time consuming than it would be if I were waiting and having them turn in a five-page paper and that's the first thing I get, I'm going to be up against a lot more problems in the writing then, which I won't really have time to address as the semester goes on.
Mathew: I think students are pretty much like us in terms of energy levels, probably as the semester goes on, they tend to have less and less, it doesn't mean they give up but a little less, and maybe a little more cranky just like faculty get at the end of the semester. It would seem also that for them getting feedback early in the semester when they have the most energy in the least amount of crankiness even on an emotional level, they're like more willing to go for the ride and really improve things, whereas, in the end of the semester, they may blow it off.
Tracy: Exactly, well, by the end of the semester is kind of too late. Well, that's the whole point of practice is they need-- it's like anybody who can play the piano or ride a surfboard, or juggle eight bowling pins, or whatever, some advanced skill, you don't get good without a lot of repeated practice. If students are only writing one or two papers a semester, they're really not getting the practice they need to get better. They're much better riders by really front-loading the semester with a lot of repeated assignments and a lot of chances to get better.
Mathew: Yes, and what I find inspiring about this one paragraph example that you've taken us through is that it's something that can work with large classes too. Now, I'm not thinking about the absurdly large class like 350 or 400 students, but at USF I know there are some classes larger than 40, but by and large, that's more or less our maximum for probably at least 90% of the courses.
Tracy: Yes, I never have more than 40 students. These kinds of really short assignments where everybody is really targeting two or three, or we increase the number, we may by mid-semester be looking at four or five different aspects or there might be five different criteria of evaluation. It allows everybody to be more efficient and allows the work to be more effective and students because they're getting a lot of feedback, they have a very clear sense of how well they're doing in some aspects and where they need to focus their attention, and when their energy is fresh in the first half of the semester, we make the most headway.
Mathew: I can imagine. Tracy, thank you much for the generosity of your time.
Tracy: You're most welcome.
[00:17:47] [END OF AUDIO]


File name: Tracy Seeley on One Paragraph.mp3
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