One 2-hour session with a class focusses the mind

First published on Medium, Mar 11 · 6 min read

My Head of School turned to me, near the end of our annual chat about my performance and goals, and I could tell that I was about to be landed with a difficult job. “We have this new course teaching advanced skills to science and medicine students. One component is writing, and given you do a lot of writing for popular audiences, I want you to teach that component.”

One rule an old Professor taught me long ago is never to accept a request to do more teaching without appearing deeply reluctant, lest you appear willing to be given even more work. But so profound was my relief at not being asked to coordinate the entire course, or to handle some other awful administrative portfolio, that I accepted before my boss had a chance to say anything. And then I got the hell out of his office.

Teaching writing in a single two-hour tutorial seemed a cushy assignment, even if that tutorial repeated eight times over two days. Until I started giving it some thought. What the hell do you teach a group of bright, ambitious students about writing if you only have a two-hour tutorial period?

I’d really like to know. Please leave your advice, experiences, and actionable lesson plans in the comments section. But quid pro quo, Clarice, here’s what I did. It might seem obvious to you, but it didn’t to my students.

Read

Writers read. By reading, one observes and analyzes the craft, learning from the triumphs and mistakes of others. I ask the students to prepare for class by reading four short pieces of ‘science writing’.

• Yuval Noah Harari — An Animal of No Significance — Excerpt from Sapiens.
• Rebecca Skloot— The Woman in the Photograph — an excerpt from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
• Sarah L Caddy — Coronavirus: a single ‘escape mutant’ shouldn’t render a vaccine useless — published at The Conversation
• James D. Watson & Francis Crick (1953) Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Nature 171.4356 (1953): 737–738.

Harari and Skloot’s excerpts represent two of the finest non-fiction books I have read. The former takes a very big-picture, science-infused view of history. The latter is narrative non-fiction about the personal tragedy and dynamics of privilege and power behind scientific discovery. Caddy’s short-form piece updates the reader on the fast-breaking status of the fight against coronavirus. Crick and Watson’s classic paper delivers, in minimalist prose, the most important discovery in biology since Darwin first described how natural selection works.

In the classroom discussion about these pieces, I hope that my students will realize that science writing takes many different forms and formats. Secretly, I hope those who don’t read much science will surprise themself with a desire to read more.

Writing for readers

Any writing advice includes something about knowing and writing for one’s intended reader. The point is so obvious that it might not seem worth repeating. And yet many university students haven’t had much chance to aim their words at somebody other than the teachers and examiners who apply cookie-cutter templates to their essays and exam responses.

I ask the students to write a 250–350 word passage of their own. It could be about a scientific discovery, a scientific idea, an experiment, or a scientist. The only requirements are that it is original and written for a particular reader.

The students are also asked to write up to 100 words about their intended reader. Who are they? How old? How were they educated? What do they like to read? What are their interests?Getting Started as a Science WriterWhat some accomplished writers wish they’d known when they started outwritingcooperative.com

Filter your writing

Just as your barista doesn’t hand you hot water and some ground coffee beans in the morning, a writer should not turn over the written equivalent to their reader. The end product should be a rich espresso with perfect crema.

How does one learn to separate the coffee from the grounds? Identifying the rough, hurried, ill-chosen, poorly expressed or otherwise ineffective parts of one’s prose doesn’t come easily. Writers take years to get good at filtering their writing. How do we learn? More to the point, how can my students learn?

They need to employ filters. The course between idea and finished product never did run straight. Indeed, for most writers I know, producing anything longer than a paragraph involves a coffee-infused iterative cycle of planning, writing, and editing. Each time a writer reads and amends their text, they are filtering. But one needs more than one kind of filter.

I swear by reading my work aloud and then really listening to it. That act of listening closely simulates the reader’s experience. The clumsy constructions and awkward expressions float to the surface and can be filtered out.

My students often resist this step and the unpalatable aftertaste of hearing their own words in their own voices. But that discomfort is what makes this process so effective. Some of the bitterness can be masked by having voice software, such as the one that comes with macOS, read the text. I did this with my forthcoming book, and the disembodied robot monotone helped me identify where the prose sagged or snagged.

Readers are valuable

Of course, there’s no substitute for trying your prose out on human readers. Another human reader; a person you trust and who is likely part of the group of intended readers. Seeking the opinion and feedback of one or more readers can solve many of the trickier or more persistent writing problems.

Not all of us are lucky enough to have another reader or pool of readers who we can ask to help us filter our work. To ask for feedback is to impose unpaid labor on somebody else. I’ve occasionally made the mistake of thinking someone who shows enthusiasm for my work is also willing to help diagnose whatever ails it. To do so without some kind of reciprocal or transactional arrangement risks both friend and the ability to meet a deadline.

Readers’ time is valuable and should be treated accordingly. Fortunately, there exists another quiver of filters, abetted by the remarkable growth in artificial intelligence, that one can use to identify where our writing grows saggy, clumsy, unreadable, or grammatically awful.

Giving AI the last word

My students know very little about the wonderful tools available to help them write. I’m a fan of grammar checkers like Grammarly, Slickwrite, and Onlinecorrection.com. I also quite like seeing what readability aids like the Hemingway App and Virtual Writing Tutor have to say. So I get them to put the passages they wrote in preparation through as many of these tools as they can bear.

Those of us who have used these AI writing tools usually acquire a sense of what advice to take and what to leave. I fear that if I followed every suggestion from my current grammar checker — which shall remain unnamed — I would subside into beige American corporatese, never to emerge again. And yet there is merit in having my decisions questioned.

So I ask my students to learn what they can from the free AI apps, and use them as filters to improve their writing. While doing so, I caution them to remember that these tools are applying simple rules and learning from what other writers do. Once my students have taken what they can, I ask them to learn when to ignore advice — from humans or from machines— and retain whatever makes their writing distinctive and unique.