Week 3--Writers' Voices

The section of this week’s chapter that reflects on voice and audience most resonated with me. Ryan and Zimmerelli instruct, “To improve the voice of the paper, ask the writer, ‘Do you talk like this?’” (40). I’ve noticed over and over again in my Interpretation of Literature classes that students regularly say brilliant and insightful things during our discussions. The second that blank page stares them down from across the computer screen, though, these same students struggle to articulate. In most cases, I suspect that they feel they must translate their great thoughts into academese. They have imagined an audience for their writing that will only accept complex syntax and academic jargon. Over the last year or so, I’ve increasingly encouraged them to begin writing without writing at all. Rather, I’ve told students that one way to begin writing (or pre-writing) is to record on their phones either a conversation with a friend or just themselves talking alone. This conversation can be about the paper topic, what their ideas are, what parts of the text they want to look at, etc. By having them talk out loud to a friend or to themselves, they are able to use their actual voices, and they can begin to get their ideas out, transcribing ones later that they wish to preserve. The Writing Center process seems constructed to encourage just this, as we sit with students and help them verbalize their ideas and to get those ideas down on paper. It connects verbal audience with writerly audience in a similar way. And it enables conversations about audience and how understanding one’s audience intersects with voice.