Telling Stories vs.
Structuring Essays:
Understanding
Contrasting Rhetorics

Writing standard academic prose poses a challenge for many students -- a challenge particularly important for those planning to attend college. Academic writing requires students to step outside casual conversational discourse. Students whose linguistic background is grounded in a different rhetoric -- for example, storytelling -- face additional hurdles.

Is it possible to define the features of different rhetorics, help teachers to understand those differences, and, in turn, help their students to understand and bridge them? These are questions that CELA researcher Karen Redfield, is seeking to answer.

Having taught American Indian¹ women in college-level composition courses, Redfield noticed that they told beautiful stories in writing but had trouble following "college writing rules." For example, they did not employ a paragraph structure. They would not write about themselves, even when assigned to do so; rather, they wrote about a family or a community. The concept of a thesis statement seemed foreign to them -- at least at the beginning of a piece of writing. Repetition was a feature of their work, especially in an Ojibwa woman's writing.

The women's writing styles rekindled Redfield's interest in "contrastive rhetoric," a framework of inquiry that seeks to explain the similarities and differences between two rhetorical systems. Redfield is interested in the differences between academic writing, and "domestic rhetoric," particularly the "vital and pervasive form of storytelling used in American Indian homes and communities to pass down traditions, knowledge, and values." She is also working to help students make the transition from domestic rhetoric to academic writing.

Bridging Different Rhetorics

"Many American Indian students, whether or not they speak their native language, are deeply influenced by the stories and the storytelling forms they hear at home," Redfield says. Her research aims to show that a storytelling form may underlie American Indian students' writing. "Composition teachers who recognize this," she says, "are less likely to grade such papers only on their deficiencies." A teacher's awareness of the storytelling form may help to reduce the loss of confidence students experience when they are told they cannot write and, further, to reduce the high attrition rate of American Indian students.

"The differences in writing styles becomes more of a factor as students who graduate from two-year tribal colleges enter other college and university systems," Redfield says. She and other researchers have noted that "the inability to write acceptable academic prose serves as a major stumbling block for academic success."

To demonstrate the influence of a domestic rhetoric in student writing, Redfield is examining student writing samples and field testing a curriculum she is developing for American Indian students. At a tribal community college in northwestern Wisconsin, Redfield teaches a composition class, works with individual students, and studies the Ojibwa language and the tradition of storytelling.

Preliminary Findings

Her study, "The Use of Contrastive Rhetoric in the English Classroom: Seeking the Influence of a Domestic Rhetoric in Native American Students' School Writing," is still in its early stages, yet she has found that:

• A framework of contrastive rhetoric facilitates discussions with students about their writing. It allows students to talk about a wide array of rhetorical forms from various cultures and forms for specific purposes. From her initial discussions in asking students to comment on their own writing styles, Redfield learned that this exercise needs further development more structure from the teacher; more thought on the part of students.
• Student essays seem to reflect the variety of storytelling forms; in any culture a good storyteller adapts the story to fit the needs of the audience.² Composition teachers cannot be given a storytelling "blueprint," but students can explain their own forms, if asked respectfully, given useful terminology, and persuaded by the teacher to do so.
• Tribal college students entering non-tribal colleges and universities can bring with them a renewed strength and richness of culture that could revitalize these institutions; however, this renewed cultural strength could also cause the students serious problems in adapting to an extremely different system.

In the Classroom

Redfield began the Spring semester by asking students to analyze short stories and to discuss what makes a good story. Students then drafted papers comparing a conventional short story, a non-conventional short story, and a traditional story told by a tribal elder. Students were also asked to share their perceptions of the academic essay form. That exercise provided a framework for discussing the similarities and differences in goals and structures of sharing information in varied situations.

When asked to analyze the stories, one student retold her favorite part of one story in affectionate detail. At the end of her paper she gave a main point. Another student gave her main point in the first sentence, and then repeated it several times until concluding with it. While neither essay fit standard essay form, both were effective storytelling forms, Redfield says. "Both students chose what they felt was important in the story and passed it on," she adds.

Meeting students in individual conferences, Redfield referred to classroom discussions to value the students' writing before talking about the different structure of college essays. This was found to be very helpful. Redfield aims to give students translation skills, or "bridge-building" skills, between story telling and college essays. "From their comments," Redfield says, "the students believe that I have their best interests at heart, but they are still puzzled about the college writing form."

Redfield hopes that her study will eventually provide information that will help educators not only help students write better conventional essays but also revitalize the composition classroom with a spectrum of rhetorical forms, including storytelling.

¹  The researcher has chosen to use the term American Indian throughout, recognizing that other terms (e.g., Native American) are preferred by some and that such preferences vary by tribe and by region.

²  For more information on storytelling and persuasive forms, see Perspectives on Written Argument, D.P. Berrill, Ed., Hampton Press, 1986.