Using Metaphors as a Form of Writing Tutoring
Speaking to Students Through Images and Objects
Jun 17, 2009
When students approach their writing pieces as words on a pages rather than as processes and cohesive, coherent thoughts made for a reader, they need to have their entire ideas about writing turned around. Even if they're on the right track, but not quite clear on how to write a thesis, a metaphor can still poetically ingrain in their heads what the function of a thesis is. Here are several comparisons that can successfully describe parts of the writing process.
The "Funnel" or "Hourglass" as Structure
The "funnel" or "hourglass" metaphor, used in several Messiah College English classes, describes the way a paper should begin, focus, and end. A paper should begin with a broad statement, as beginnings of conversations begin with broad statements. Before one goes into detail and begins to argue a point, one needs to introduce the point.
This is why papers begin broad in the first paragraph, and narrow down the focus throughout that paragraph to a tight and debatable statement that will be argued with that same tightness throughout the rest of the body of the paper. Thus, from the end of the first paragraph to the end of the second-to-last paragraph, the body is the thin tube of the funnel, or the middle of the hourglass. By the end of the paper, when the point is made, the paragraph should be able to widen in scope, coming back to the original matter-at-hand.
Road Signs as Transitions
Many students don't understand how to transition from one point to another, or from one example to another. It might help to talk about transitions as road signs, pointing the way for the traveler to go. The audience is the traveler, and they know they have to get from point A to point B, and could technically do it with only the road map, but the signs are what alert their attention to the fact that they need to turn at a certain area.
Tell the student to use these signs, perhaps by saying, "right now you have led me 'here,' and I want to know what it's like to get from here to here. Will it be the same or different? Thus, will you use the word 'similarly' or 'on the other hand'?" Road signs are necessary at every turn, so show the writer when he/she has made a turn, and tell them why their direction is necessary.
Downward Arrow Verses Squiggly Line as Paragraph Development
The image of a downward arrow tells a student that his/her writing needs to go toward one place. Not two, or three, or four. Draw a line showing the student where their statements are heading in relation to each other, and tell them why the line is squiggly (or slanted) by saying what you were expecting as a reader and where the paragraph went instead.
Microscope as the Area of Focus
Though the area of focus is already called "scope," a tutor can remind the student that it is called such because it must block out related information that does not fit in the field of vision, and central point of the field of vision is what the paper is trying to prove. Scope gets clearer as it gets closer to one point; the lines become more distinct. In a paper, the lines of argument and examples must be as clear as the lines and edges of bodies under a microscope.
Metaphors such as hourglasses, road signs, arrows, and microscopes all teach writing students in a more visible, tangible way. It is especially effective to discuss a student's writing with him/her, noting why it does or doesn't succeed as a piece.
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