The Novice-as-Expert

One key to students’ making the transition from high school to college writing revolves around what Sommers and Laura Saltz call the “novice-as-expert paradox” (134). According to Sommers and Saltz in “The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshmen Year,” freshmen “build authority not by writing from a position of expertise but by writing into expertise” (134). Students must assume the role of expert or adopt the voice of authority which they do not yet possess. This observation recalls a similar claim made by David Bartholomae. Sommers and Saltz argue that students’ lack of expertise results in the “prevalence of the descriptive thesis in freshmen writing” (134). A descriptive thesis “names or reports on phenomena rather than articulating claims based on analysis of the evidence” (134). Students write descriptive theses rather than truly analytic ones because they must devote so much energy to comprehending the subject matter. Yet, Sommers and Saltz do not see this as a failure, so much as a “symptom of a novice working on an expert’s assignment” (135). The data from Sommers and Saltz’s longitudinal study of Harvard students suggests that the most successful students embrace the idea that they are novices being trained as experts. Although “asking freshmen to do the work of experts invites imitative rather than independent behavior” (135) it enables students to practice the skills which they will employ as experts.

Sommers and Saltz’s findings suggest that it may be beneficial for instructors to explicitly frame their courses in terms of stages on the path from novice to expert. Moreover, instructors can show students examples of descriptive theses and analytic ones to help them understand the level at which they are being asked to engage with their sources. Some students will still have trouble writing analytic theses, but they will begin to apply vocabulary from the course to their own writing. Instructors can scaffold assignments so that students first practice summarizing material, then learn to synthesize the arguments of others, and finally make arguments of their own. Sommers and Saltz observe that many freshmen embrace writing as an opportunity to participate in a wider conversation about important issues. It is essential for instructors to help students conceive of their arguments as forays into this larger discourse, rather than mere exercises.