One of the features which makes my services different is feedback. While numerous English teachers and writing instructors make comments on their students’ papers, I try (as often as possible) to do my assignments with my students.
“What’s good for the student”—after all—“is good for the teacher.”
This is a technique I first learned from my own 11th– and 12th-grade English teacher, Dr. Emerson “Doc” Littlefield. Over the course of a year, we students would receive multiple example essays, always written by “A. Student,” on texts such as Frankenstein and Hamlet. These examples would give us better ideas for thesis-statements, transitional words and phrases, and authorial tone, and I have copied “Doc’s” practice in my own teaching.
Example analytical essay
As humans, we learn by example. Indeed, this insight is not new: according to Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-century pioneer of monasticism in Western Europe, a good teacher teaches “more by examples than by words” (Rule, ch. 2). However, this insight was driven home for me when I participated in a government-sponsored study of student and instructor performance at a major Canadian university.[1] When our students were told that their thesis-statements were “too vague,” these students showed little to no improvement. On the other hand, when our students were given a concrete example of a better thesis-statement, then the students improved.
An example made all the difference.
For this reason (especially if you sign up for one of my Small Classes or Seminars!), you will periodically receive:
- Example analytical essays
- Example persuasive essays
- Example narrative essays
- Example research papers
In my view, this is one of my most important and successful methods as a teacher. Students need to know where the bar is, if they are going to reach for it!
[1] History 101: Introduction to Historical Studies: The World Before Modernity—An Introduction to Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern History, taught by Mairi Cowan, fall 2016, University of Toronto—Mississauga.
