Fact And Fiction: Modeling The Research Practices Of Fiction Writers

By Author: Alex Lee
Total Articles: 365
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Not two full hours after the last bell rang, I was riding in the car headed west, destination Portland. I plunged into a novel and before reaching Salt Lake City I was finished with the first must-read on my summer book list. Despite my intentions, my mind wandered back to the classroom, back to my students and their writing. Unfortunately, like a gnat in my ear, the research writing unit kept nagging at me.

Perhaps one explanation for my frustration and for students' difficulty with the research writing unit is because what I am asking students to do is so unlike my usual requests in that we take a timeout from creativity and focus mainly on the technical aspects of writing. This leads students to research without their writers' hats on, creating a forced experience in which inquiry is artificial. In the past, I have inadvertently fueled students' opposition by making research writing an isolated chapter in their English career—one they gladly forget about as soon as it's over. From my experience, it seems clear that there isn't a magic assignment to teach students something. Repetition of and the reflection on ...
... skills is necessary if they are going to retain and take ownership of their learning, especially when it comes to the intricacies of research documentation.
I have asked my students to research and write a persuasive speech, a multicentre paper, an I Search, a historical and comparative connection to literature, a country brochure, and a social criticism essay. While I found benefits and disadvantages in all of these assignments, I was particularly discouraged by the disconnect between research and writing that these assignments allowed, and therefore I sought an additional research experience that would help close this gap for students.

I eventually discovered a natural venue for studying research in the English classroom when a community of writers explores fiction, which in combination with some of the other assignments I mentioned can provide a well-rounded, research writing experience for high school students. I came to consider this approach to teaching research as I was reading for pleasure. Immersed in Nineteen Minutes, I began to consider how the author, Jodi Picoult, did a significant amount of research about grand mal seizures, the justice system, and posttraumatic stress disorder. And that aha moment rippled into a series of ideas, eventually culminating into a Researching Fiction Unit, which I implemented during the following semester with my sophomores and juniors.

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