Yesterday in the one credit course I take in conjunction with working at the English Writing Center, the program director had us break up into groups to read through a student essay while using one of lenses from Elbow and Belanoff's Responding and Sharing: a lens that we avoided. I was in the group who avoids Says & Does.
Says & Does is a combination summary and what I call a craft analysis, or looking at how the paragraphs in the essay function to create the whole. In 2004, when I first started teaching, Says & Does was incomprehensible to me—especially because no one demonstrated it or spent time allowing me to practice it while providing feedback. But now, with close to five years working with and analyzing writing, I’ll say I am more comfortable using it.
My group of B and T and me started to read this essay on identity and were immediately stumped by the first paragraph that was positioned to introduce the essay’s idea and approach, but which told us something about the paper being on identity and something about how different authors found their lives changed and thus themselves changed. We as a group had to stretch for this meaning as it was not on the page.
As the three of us read, it became very clear that the paragraphs after the first introductory one only summarized four authors’ articles on identity, with four articles summed up on one paragraph and one in two. At the end of two of the paragraphs, the student attempted to discuss how the author’s narrative evidenced identity, but the attempt fell quite short--especially so because the preceding summary did not support the attempted connection with identity.
Since I was the only one in my group who had taught the class that produced this type of essay, I realized that while the student was summarizing the various essays, they were not summarizing for a purpose. Whether the instructor demonstrated how to summarize with a purpose, I cannot say. But I realized that when I return to teaching, and when I teach Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say I Say kinds of summary and analysis, I need to spend some time demonstrating to students how to paraphrase, and then summarize with different purposes.
So while working through the seven paragraph student essay using Says & Does, we identified that the essay was mostly summary, uneven, and disconnected. But we struggled with the Says & Does, and we were experienced college students: a junior, a senior and a grad student. I don’t think that I would use this lens for new tutees, but another lens, such as Sayback & Metaphor. And the group focusing on that lens came up with the same diagnosis, but also a Rx by helping to generate possible connections the student writer may have benefited from. The best help I received was how to teach They Say I Say so the class understood, had practice in how to summarize with a purpose.
I think a way to do this is to choose an essay that can be viewed through multiple lenses (at least five or six), and then to do one myself and walk students through the decisions I made in writing the summary and why. Then assign the summary of the same article to different groups but each with different purposes. Then spend the following instruction day reading through and discussing the more successful summaries focused supporting a different purpose. I think a concluding goal would be to allow students time to free write and then share what summary with a purpose requires them to do as readers and writers. Then assign the next essay with different lenses for them to practice summary with a purpose yet again.
