Identity Narrative Assignment: How Writing About Students’ Identities Shapes Their Writerly Voice

Literature Review: Voice, Identity, and Assignment Design

When I began teaching in the U.S., I was heavily influenced by Donald Murray and his works. Donald Murray writes about four responsibilities of a writing student: i. A student must find his own subject because a student writer must have something to say, ii. A student should be able to “form his own opinion” to convince his readers, iii. A student must write in a way that he “earns an audience” and iv. A student must “write in many forms to know the appropriate genre” of writing what he must write (120-1). He also shares four responsibilities of writing teachers: i. A teacher must create a “psychological and physical environment in which the student can fulfill his responsibilities, ii. A teacher must enforce a deadline to foster more frequent and rigorous writing, iii. A teacher needs to cultivate “a climate of failure” to normalize students’ drafts and missed attempts and iv. A teacher needs to be a “diagnostician” who would listen to his students’ problems and then diagnose their papers instead of looking for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors (121). Based on Murray’s suggestions, I designed the “Identity Narrative” assignment to help my students explore and write about different aspects of their identities. This assignment is primarily intended for first-year composition students. Its goal is to teach the concept of writer’s voice, which students will develop by reflecting on and writing about the diverse facets of their identity. In my teaching, this assignment was instrumental in encouraging students to move beyond traditional narrative writing. By guiding them to reflect on their identities, I was able to foster a deeper connection between their personal experiences and their writing process. Murray’s emphasis on the importance of self-reflection in writing resonated with me, helping me shape this assignment as a way to build both their confidence and their ability to express themselves authentically.

The writer’s voice is an important phenomenon in the field of composition studies. Sherry Seale Swain writes, “voice grows out of the soil of student writing, not from drills, lectures, or admonitions, not from workbooks or textbooks. Voice emerges during the composition process, a by-product of writer’s focus on content, purpose, diction, style, and audience” (33). Though the spoken language is different from the written language, in writing, it is still possible to inculcate a writer’s own unique voice. Composition scholars have written about voice in writing in several journals as I have addressed in the following paragraphs. However, there are rarely any discussions on how to teach voice to the students. What kind of writing assignments are helpful? How can teachers write their feedback on students’ scripts that will not mute their voices? How can students revise their papers by retaining their writer’s voice there? Can students even know that they have a writer’s voice that is related to their social and personal identity?

When students write, they usually tend to emulate the voice of the sample texts. They write what they are required to, but they often weave in their own perceptions and ideas into their writing. When they become professional writers, as Findley writes, they often establish their identities as “nonauthors and non-owners” in their writing (434). Hiding the authorship often leaves the writers in disillusionment and distress. Readers only read the written piece without acknowledging the challenging work and even sacrifices the writers have made in the composition process. William Carpenter and Bianca Falbo find that “students’ identities as writers are formed first by extrinsic responses to their texts rather than by the content of their texts themselves” (105). They did their research on 130 literary narrative samples written between 1999 and 2001 to compare narratives of fresh writing students with the returning ones. For fresh writing students, success in their academic writing forms their writerly identity. For the returning ones, the process of writing indicates the identities of them as writers. They write, “speak to the important role that reflective practices play in students’ improved awareness of themselves as individuals who think, read, write, and speak in the world” (107). Though it is a frequent practice in college composition courses to have the students compose reflective notes, many students still struggle with writing about their writing processes.

On this note, Rebecca Gemmell suggests that keeping and maintaining a writer’s notebook is a great idea to develop a writer’s voice in academic writing. Though journaling in a notebook is more of a reflective writing practice, a student writes more autonomously when they acknowledge their own voice. Gemmell finds that students write thesis statements that “presented a clearer stance,” use personal experience to support their claim, be more aware of their audience and witness the larger goal of writing (67). Using a notebook as an assignment or in-class activity changed students’ perspectives about class and writing. She also finds that putting students’ opinions into the classroom discussion has freed their voices and prepared them better for college education. An assignment that offers a free space for students to author their personal stories is useful for them to find their own voice because a student’s writerly voice is closely tied to their personal identity.

The idea of identity comes in two basic categories: individual/personal and plural or group/social identities. Personal identity develops the way people uniquely define themselves. The “I” is personal. On the other hand, social identity refers to people’s self-categorizations in relation to their groups or communities. The “we” is social. Travis L. Dixon uses both Social Identity Theory and Social Categorization Theory synonymously and writes, “Our personal identities can become tied to our perception of our own group in relation to other groups” (249). He argues that the level of importance of a group-category depicted in a media content impacts the individual’s favoritism. Michael Hughes et al. define Social Identity Theory as “a multifaceted social psychological theory of how people’s self-conceptions as members of social groups influence intergroup behavior and group processes” (26). When students are asked to write their life stories about the identities they are assigned to and claim, they write both personal and collective stories. In their stories, their families, educational institutions, teachers, peers, and any sort of negative and positive sponsor comes along with the memories of challenging experiences.

Therefore, it is important to have students compose personal stories. Sometimes, students have issues that prevent them from becoming better writers. They often struggle with forming their writerly voice. It happens increasingly often to multilingual and other marginalized students who already have a struggle translating their thoughts from one language to the other. For multilingual students, having a voice of their own, which they can use in their writing, is liberating. They develop critical language awareness, which liberates them from the shackle of white language supremacy. When students write life-writing or autobiographical narratives, they can resist standard English and incorporate multiple languages and dialects to claim their own unique writerly voice. On the contrary, when students practice academic writing or research-based writing and aim to get published in mainstream publication platforms, they understand the power of standardized convention of English language and emulate the genre of research writing and write accordingly. Through my assignment, I aim to foster a pedagogical practice that helps students develop their own voice and feel confident and comfortable about it.

For marginalized writers, Nancy Mack points out, “Having grown up in a culture full of misrepresentations, marginalized students need to question how they want to be represented in their writing. If they are not permitted to testify for their lives as writers, marginalized students might as well have never come to the university.” Therefore, having a valid space, like a writing assignment, is important to let marginalized students write about themselves in their voice because “marginalized students must be seen and heard as complex individuals” (Mack).

María P. Carvajal Regidor writes about how educators and teachers can help college students handle their traumatic literacy experiences better and become better writers and second language users. Since multilingual students find it challenging to always stay grammatically “correct,” Regidor suggests that one of the effective ways to encourage students is to exclude the concept of grammatical accuracy from the idea of ”good” writing as it only conforms to the white language supremacy.

But how can educators know that students have diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds? It is not suggested that educators should ”assume” their students’ identities or backgrounds or thought processes. In this case, assignments like “Identity Narrative Assignment” serve as a safe zone for the students to comfortably disclose their identities; as Mack writes, “writing assignments need to be enlarged to include the cultures and identities of students.” When students understand that the teacher is only interested in their stories, they have less fear of judgements or grammatical errors. Hence, they gradually develop a writerly voice in the writing process. However, teachers need to be aware of the learning environment which can potentially stimulate and reintroduce trauma. My primary goal is to help my students develop their own unique writerly voice stemming from their own life stories. Thus, I remain mindful of the prompts (see Appendix 2) I provide before they write, the questions (see Appendix 3) I ask after they write and offer my feedback after they turn in their final draft.

Nevertheless, why do writing teachers care about the voice of their students? It is because the voice that comes through personal writing is important, powerful, has the ability to reinforce social justice, and “may empower social change” (Case and Hunter). Teaching voice through personal writing is one way to be an empathetic teacher. Colleen A. Ruggieri writes about the importance of personal writing in discovering the power of students’ voices. Personal writing, to Ruggieri, is a wonderful way to encourage expression that can “create peace in students’ minds and hearts” (48). She notices that students, despite writing personal assignments, find no personal connection to their work when they are asked to write after being encouraged to find a similar voice in the works of other authors. Most of the time, students do not use the “voice lens” to read a text. Peter Elbow, in “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries,” explains why reading a text using the voice lens is useful. He claims that readers tend to read a written work more when they hear a voice from it. We sometimes offer mentor texts to our students to emulate the style of an established writer. However, it is crucial to help students identify and practice their own writerly voice first and then read multiple mentor texts. Students find better connections with the mentor texts that are close to their own voice because there is an inevitable connection between the voice and the self.

Another way of helping students find their writerly voice is to encourage them to write more and in their own way. Donald Murray writes, “I have my own way of looking at the world and my own way of using language to communicate what I see. My voice is the product of Scottish genes and a Yankee environment, of Baptist sermons and the newspaper city room, of all the language I have heard and spoken” (67). So, when students write, they use the voice that has existed in them since their childhood. A writing assignment only helps them to articulate in their voice. Assignments are the vehicle to travel through students’ minds and brain and understand their thoughts. Ann N. Amicucci and Michelle Neely write about how teachers understand students and their voices in writing. They write that “students’ positions as aged, gendered, raced, classed, bodied individuals shape how they approach the task of writing” (Neely and Amicucci, “Knowing Students”). They ask teachers to “bring the subject of voice construction into the classroom explicitly to teach students how to navigate the challenges of writerly voice” (Neely and Amicucci, “Knowing Students”). The best subject to bring voice into the classroom is students’ own lives. Blitz and Hurlbert highlight the importance of understanding and responding to “the personal and cultural implications of what each student is telling us, the uniqueness of each student, of each life” (29). The “Identity Narrative” creates the opportunity for students and teachers to have a dialogue to know each student from their unique embodied experiences and identities.

The inspiration for creating the assignment comes from the research of Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner, who claim that personal connections promote meaningful writing experiences to undergraduate students (320). They designed a writing project for undergraduate students from three different universities and collected their samples. Then they applied a grounded theory approach to find “personal connection” coded in their responses. The findings of their study prove that first, students find writing projects meaningful when they can connect their writing to their personal factors (329). Second, students find the writing project meaningful when they can relate their writing to their peers, family members and friends (331). Third, students find their writing project meaningful when they can connect to their topics or subjects (331). However, they also emphasize the importance of creating a relevant and meaningful writing project. I thought if I could create an assignment that motivates students to write about their stories, experiences, and how they shaped their identities, my students would benefit.

The importance of designing a meaningful writing assignment is, thus, crucial for writing teachers. Elliot Jacobs finds that “Effective place-based writing assignments are process-focused, inquiry-based and genre-specific” (50). He argues that process-based writing is reflective, observational, and personable. It is like environmental literature. It allows students to reflect on their subjective experiences, and perceptions of land. When students find their connection with land and environment, they find themselves speaking meaningfully about themselves without even mentioning themselves directly. The “Identity Narrative” allows students to reflect on their childhood experiences, environments, backgrounds, and personal connections with the surroundings. However, the assignment works on the students at its optimum level when the assignment is clearly instructed to the students.

Different instructors make various choices while writing a writing assignment. Allison Rank and Heather Pool use Bloom’s taxonomy as an inspiration for offering writing instructors a typology linked to course objectives to reduce the confusion and confused writing responses of the student writers. They suggest that assignments should be linked to course objectives and evaluated accordingly. Free-writing and ungraded assignments offer a wonderful place for students who struggle with their thoughts and are willing to receive feedback to further improve their writing. Whether free-writing or guided writing, it is important to begin an assignment with a broader primary question followed by other secondary questions. Among several prompt categories, Rank and Pool write about an additional prompt category called “reflect,” which tests students’ ability to assess their own views and opinions about their writing process and progress. When I designed the assignment, I focused more on the “reflect” category in rubrics as the assignment requires students to constantly reflect on their lives.

In the appendix section of my paper, besides the prompts and general set of questions I ask students at the conference, I have included the abridged assignment sheet, which has learning outcomes related to the College Composition course learning outcomes, and “reflect” prompt category to allow students to use the process of metacognition to write about their own identities as constructed and perceived. The genre-based approach was instrumental in preparing this assignment. Irene Clark writes that writing assignments “can be viewed as a performance-oriented text genre, the purpose of which is to generate particular understanding and action that will ultimately lead to a subsequent genre--the college essay” (“Genre Approach”). The goal of the “Identity Narrative” assignment is to help students find their writerly voice by reflecting on their lives.