Reading Student Texts as Texts

In “How Many Writing Teachers Does It Take to Read a Student Essay?” Tobin Lad argues that “the student essay seemed to be the only form of writing and only material artifact that we as English professors would or could not treat as a text” (23). Lad recounts his initial mystification at reading “The Googu Manifesto,” written by one of his Indian American students about certain stereotypes about a particular group of Indian immigrants. Instead of pointing out the ways in which the student’s piece lacked coherence, Lad treated it like any other text. After consulting with a number of colleagues, who brought various theoretical lenses to bear on “The Googu Manifesto,” including performance theory, postcolonial theory, and humor theory, Lad developed a rich interpretation of this student text. Issues of parody, hybridity, and sublimation emerged from various readings of what initially appeared to be a confusing and haphazardly organized essay. Had Lad merely urged this student to iron out the essay’s structural “problems,” he would have completely missed its generative ambiguity.

Although Lad’s exercise was incredibly time-intensive and for that reason hard to duplicate in most classes, the idea of reading student texts as texts seems important. Sometimes student texts are ambiguous because the student is having trouble articulating a clear thought, but other times students are expressing genuine ambivalence about a complex issue. When the latter is the case, it would be far better for writing teachers to help students think through their ambivalence–and write about it in an interesting way–rather than simply try to get them to express a clearer, more simplistic idea.