THE STORY WORKSHOP METHOD: WRITING FROM START TO FINISH

Originally published in College English Vol. 39, No. 4 December 1977. Based on the featured presentation by John Schultz and Betty Shiflett at the SUNY-Buffalo-NCTE Research on Composing Conference. A complete version appears in the book Research in Composing: Points of Departure, edited by Charles Cooper and Lee Odell, National Council of Teachers of English, 1928.

John Schultz

YOU CAN IDENTIFY the Story Workshop method of teaching writing by its structured, flexible time-period format; by its theory of seeing and voice; by its repertoire of oral word, oral telling, oral reading, writing and recall exercises; by its semicircle format, which heightens and facilitates the group process and the sense of audience; and by its teaching approaches, techniques, strategies, and tactics made possible by the exercises and their many variations. Used in class sessions and in one-to-one tutorial sessions, the Story Workshop method assumes that all forms of writing derive from image and story, from image and movement of voice organizing the expression of perceptions through time. The development of these human perceptual, imaginative, and verbal capacities through their many derivations in oral and written forms is always the Story Workshop objective. From "The Story Workshop Method Writing From Start to Finish," by John Schultz (College English Vol. 39, No. 4, Dec. 1977)

Before there was writing there was oral telling.

Two essential Story Workshop terms are seeing and voice.

Seeing is visualization, conceptualization, abstraction, but it is also, and begins with, seeing in the mind right now as clearly and with as much impact as one sees in a vivid dream. Because of seeing-in-the-mind human beings are able to conceive and anticipate the spatial and time and other relationships that they need and desire urgently to communicate to other human beings. Strong, vivid seeing produces a precision in speech and gesture which connects dynamically to writing.

Speech is a way to voice, speech is a part of voice, but voice is more than speech. Voice is gesture, voice is culture (including the personal background of the teller), voice contains the powers of the unconscious and the conscious and the possibility of style. Voice is also the movement of a telling/writing through time, the economy of which is to use what it needs and to leave out what it does not need. Voice is the articulation of all perceptions in verbal expression written and oral (including the so-called non-verbal which we want to get into writing too)...

STORY WORKSHOP AS A METHOD OF TEACHING WRITING

Originally published in College English, Vol. 35, No. 2 November 1973

Betty Shiflett

"WHAT PERCENTAGE DO YOU FAIL in Freshman English?" the college examiner wanted to know. It was a question I couldn't answer. However logical from his point of view, it assumed failure. I had been directing Story Workshops [classes] in Freshman English for four years, long enough to see that students who attended regularly would finish the term speaking and writing more vividly and with greater facility than when they entered the class. More importantly, I knew that I would witness "turn-around" liberations in my students' attitudes toward reading and writing. Many would go on to elect a writing major at Columbia College solely on the basis of Freshman English experience in which they were treated, and developed, as writers. Wherever they journeyed after leaving my semicircle, I knew they would go better equipped in their souls to learn, having found the imaginative connections and leaps of the mind which breathe life, and paradoxically logic, into textbook facts stripped of meaning by their loss of image and nuance.

Before there was writing, there was telling, language capable of sensitive expression, and human voice. Telling with voice and gesture, the simple and desirable communication of perception form one human being to another, predates our complex and somewhat rigid systems of "writing." [The] Story Workshop [Approach] redirects the writer to telling in his own voice as one of the main sources of talent and ability in the art of writing.

In the Story Workshops [classes], we consistently see students, who, when they experience the connection of the physical voice to the voice with which they write, become excited about learning the skills of verbal expression... The Story Workshop Method has been used effectively with backgrounds ranging from writers and teachers to students who are public school drop-outs. It accepts the person where it finds him, and guides him to the discovery of his own voice and perceptual powers. It enables him to learn at his own pace. At Columbia, [the] Story Workshop [Approach] has served since 1967 as the basic teaching method for the Freshman English requirement, as well as the core course for the Fiction Writing major.

"MY OWN VOICE": STUDENTS SAY IT UNLOCKS THE WRITING PROCESS

Originally published in Journal of Basic Writing, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1992

Zoe Keithley

ABSTRACT: This essay presents the quantified results of a questionnaire which asked students to distinguish the most helpful instructional factors and activities aiding their writing progress in a Story Workshop taught Comp 1 course. It explores the results -- six items ranking 80% or better -- and a strong confluence around personal voice. From a study of questionnaire responses, student's own voice is his/her most accessible tool for progress in writing, that acceptance of the student's voice is crucial to such progress, and that the speaking-writing connection is the most important working principle for developing writers.

A report by the Educational Testing Service finds students are poor writers, they do not like to write and they like it less as they go through school. -The New York Times (6/12/91)

The problem of helping students experience more immediate encouragement and progress in their writing is one that concerns nearly every teacher of writing.

At Columbia College, Chicago, five Composition I classes completed a 142-item questionnaire designed to find out which instructional factors and activities students felt most helpful in changing and improving their writing. Questions were asked in several ways to minimize "teacher-pleasing" responses, and touched every instructional dimension of the course. Respondents' previous writing education overwhelmingly did not include "process" or "expressionist" based approaches.

The computer-tabulated results quantifying these students' findings identified six activities, each of which no less than 80% of students responding found distinctly helpful to their development as writers:

1) Coaching to use your own voice 2) Hearing others' work read aloud in class 3) Hearing your own work read aloud in class 4) Conferencing with the instructor 5) Reading aloud in class of literary models 6) Class recall of your writing

Eighty percent and better found these activities useful, and 70% found nearly all of them enjoyable as well.

The following conclusions emerged form a study of this list and form overall questionnaire results:

a) The student's own voice is the single most useful and accessible tool for virtually all developing writers b) Acceptance of the student's own voice is the key to immediate progress in the writing classroom c) The connection between speaking and writing is the most important principle for developing student writers