A BASIC WRITER'S TOPOl FOR TIMED ESSAY TESTS

This article describes the problems the author's basic writing students have had in generating ideas for writing in response to timed essay tests. Since many of the common pedagogical approaches for helping students generate or create ideas for writing are ineffective, the author proposes an alternate technique based on the classical notion of the topoi. This ideological system enables students to generate ideas for timed writing tests and equips them for participation in the social and political dialogues that they encounter in higher education. Last summer, after studying and practicing various "pre-writing" strategies, one of my students, Virginia, asked me what I would do if I had to come up with ideas in response to a timed essay test. She made it clear that the creativity techniquesfree-writing, brainstorming, and clustering-simply had not worked for her. Every time she faced a timed essay assignment, her mind simply went "blank," and she could not think of anything to write. Even though she understood how to "cluster" for a textbook clustering assignment, she came up with nothing but empty bubbles when she had to get ideas for a timed essay. The rest of the students in the class sat quietly, waiting expectantly for my answer; Virginia, a "displaced homemaker," evidently represented many in this community college class when she asked this question. I suggested that they try a technique I use: When you get the essay topic, think about what other people might say in response to it. For example, if the topic deals with censoring rap song lyrics, imagine what friends, acquaintances, and others who have differing viewpoints might say about the topic, write all these ideas down, and then sort them out. The students were excited by the technique, and because it worked so well for me, I was certain that it could help them. However, when they tried it, they had only limited success: they had great difficulty imagining what these differing viewpoints could be. The method I Ann Kirch is an instructor in the Developmental Studies Division at Grayson County College in Denison, Texas. She has presented at state and national developmental educators' conferences on a variety of issues concerning basic writers, including the design of collaborative team activities and the retention of under-prepared college students. She is a doctoral student in the College Teaching of English program at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Her recent reseai-ch has focused on applications ofpostmodern theory for basic reading and writing pedagogy. Cl ]ournDl of Basic Writing, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1996