RE: Against Formulaic Writing -Reply

[Wendy Smith <wesmith@ucsd.edu>]

Denise,
I have used the I-Search Paper many times and find that various takes on it
can work for all levels. Some of my favorite student papers (the ones I've
kept for years) have been I-Search Papers.  I love the whole book.   I wish
Macrorie (or SOMEBODY) would update this classic, last revised in 1988.

I wish the I-Search was the "basics," the "formula" to build on.  I think
we'd see a lot more analysis and thinking in student writing.
Wendy


>I have been thinking about alternative models, and I want to suggest that
>people look at Ken Macrorie's I-Search model. A couple of years ago when I
>was a grad student working in the University of Arkansas' tutoring center,
>we had a young woman come into the center to get some help preparing her
>thesis for her B.F.A. in painting. She was having trouble figuring out how
>to structure it. Her topic was fairly personal--a response to a set of
>Frieda Kahlo's paintings about family relationships. I had been using the
>I-Search model for my research essays, and I thought she might be able to
>adapt it. She did, and the director of her committee said that hers was one
>of the best theses he had ever read.
>
>Anyway, the model, for those of you interested in it, is basically:
>
>1. What I Knew About My Topic Before I Began
>2. What I Want to Know and Why I Want to Know It (Demonstration of the
>importance of the search to the searcher).
>3. The Search (the story of how the writer found the answers to his or her
>questions).
>4. What I Learned (or Didn't Learn) (from conducting the search).
>
>
>You can find the sample essays in Macrorie's book, The I-Search Paper. I
>believe it's a Boynton-Cook book.
>
>Denise
>University of Southwestern Louisiana