Andersen Blog #9 - Teaching and Judging Voice

Teaching and Then Judging Voice

In primary education students are encouraged to write like everyone else and follow the pattern that the teacher has laid out. After students have learned, and eventually mastered, the formulaic essay writing processes, they enter university and are told that they have no voice in their writing. As Jeffery asks in her essay, “is it even possible to teach voice” (117)? How do we assist our students in not only finding their voice but making that voice apparent in their essays? This is a challenging prospect that even the experts have not yet overcome.  Jeffery says that more research is needed in this field while at the same time conceding that the need for voice in student essays are a part of the rubrics used to assess students entrance to college and other important aspects of their future. This research needs to be completed posthaste if we are to fairly judge the students and their attempts at including their voice in the essays that we assign. And we need to create some judging criteria that does not negatively impact the students we teach while we investigate these issues.