RESPONSE: THE RIGHT TO FIND YOUR OWN VOICE

As I mentioned in an earlier response, I don’t know when I first became aware of voice in writing, but I certainly recognized when it was missing in my students’ writing.  By the time I encountered students in high school, many had learned to adapt their writing to fit the expectations of standards/assessments.  If our only purpose in teaching students to write is for a test, then I suspect that “voice” will be missing.  However, the most memorable writing, writing that really touches us, definitely includes voice.  “Voice is at the heart of the act of writing.”  (p. 76 in Inside Out: Strategies for Teaching Writing, 3^rdEdition, by Dan Kirby, Dawn Latta Kirby, Tom Liner)

The diversity of the classroom with the variety of experiences/cultures is a great resource for observing/developing voice in writing.  Think how you are able to quickly recognize a student – personality (choice of words, etc.)  Probably the best place to help develop voice is by having students keep journals where they can try different strategies.  These writing journals are usually not graded (except for maintaining) and often not even read by the teacher, unless the student offers or is asked to select an entry for submission. 

One activity I used with my students was to have them borrow (without permission) a friend’s car and have an accident.   Then they were to write a note to the friend – write a note to their parent – write a note to the police explaining the accident.  By comparing the choice of words, sentence structure, and tone in the notes, they noticed how purpose/audience determine voice.  This activity could easily be adapted to other situations/audiences.  Chapter 6: Different Voices, Different Speakers in the Kirby/Liner book contains excellent strategies for helping students recognize and develop voice in their writing.  

Even in writing academic papers, students need to be aware of voice.  It is extremely important to be able to control the subject matter.  I had a professor who recommended that we free write about a topic at least three-four times to determine our commitment to a subject and to discover whether we had a workable understanding of the topic.  Remember those warnings from your writing instructor:  Don’t use first person! Don’t use any contractions!  If we take a look at effective writing – writing that really has a purpose, I suspect that we will discover the writer doesn’t heed these warnings.  Have your students bring in examples of writing they find to be quite effective and discuss the characteristics in class.

As American short story writer and poet Raymond Carver shares, “I think that a writer’s signature should be on his work, just like a composer’s signature should be on his work. If you hear a few bars of Mozart, you don’t need to hear too much to know who wrote that music, and I’d like to think that you could pick up a story by me and read a few sentences or a paragraph, without seeing the name, and know it was my story.” 

This is a worthy goal for all of us writers!