English Subject Centre Mini Projects

FINAL REPORT

Supplementary Discourses in Creative Writing Teaching at Higher Education Level

Authors: Project supervisor was Dr Robert Sheppard of Edge Hill College of Higher EducationProject assistant (responsible for part one of the project) was Dr Scott Thurston.

Feb-Sept 2002, March 2003

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The English Subject CentreRoyal Holloway, University of

LondonEgham, Surrey TW20 0EX

Tel 01784 443221 Fax 01784 470684

Email esc@rhul.ac.ukwww.english.heacademy.ac.uk

English Subject Centre Mini Projects

This report and the work it presents were funded by the English Subject Centre under a scheme which funds projects run by departments in Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in the UK. Some projects are run in collaboration between departments in different HEIs. Projects run under the scheme are concerned with developments in the teaching and learning of English Language, Literature and Creative Writing. They may involve the production of teaching materials, the piloting and evaluation of new methods or materials or the production of research into teaching and learning. Project outcomes are expected to be of benefit to the subject community as well as having a positive influence on teaching and learning in the host department(s). For this reason, project results are disseminated widely in print, electronic form and via events, or a combination of these.

Details of ongoing projects can be found on the English Subject Centre website at http://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk/explore/projects/index.php. If you would like to enquire about support for a project, please contact the English Subject Centre:

The English Subject CentreRoyal Holloway, University of LondonEgham, Surrey TW20 OEXT. 01784 443221esc@rhul.ac.ukhttp://www.english.heacademy.ac.uk

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Rationale and Scope

While there has been considerable debate, teaching and learning development and curriculum innovation in ways of teaching and assessing creative writing, very little attention has been paid to the varieties of discourse that creative writing tutors ask higher education students (from BA levels 1, 2 and 3, M level to postgraduate research) to produce to accompany, complement and/or supplement such writing. Words such as self-assessment, reflection, critique, commentary and poetics, are all used to describe this discourse. It was decided to adopt the term ‘supplementary discourses’ to encompass these types of writing in this project and report. In essence they are pieces of written work submitted, either as items of coursework in their own right, or directly accompanying creative work, for assessment purposes, although some might be non-assessed. Anecdotal evidence, validation experience, and external examining experience suggest that there is little uniformity over the value, principles, aims, techniques, level descriptors or assessment patterns and weighting, or even amount, of this writing. There appeared to be no uniformity of view as to the influence of this (usually) separately assessed discourse on the reception and assessment of the creative elements.

Aims

The aims of the project were to determine the range and extent of the discourses listed above, and to evaluate the functions of such discourses in terms of pedagogy and level.

At a time of expansion of, and diversity in, creative writing provision it was thought vital to collect quantative and qualitative data, from interest groups, and to draw conclusions and make recommendations for the current and future development of the discipline.

Method

The research was conducted in three parts.

The first involved the distribution of 60 questionnaires to a range of higher education centres known to teach creative writing. The questions concerned factual evidence as to the range and extent of the supplementary discourses, and sought to determine some basic attitudes about the functions of the discourses in terms of pedagogy and level, and to separate the possible functions of the discourse for different groups: lecturers, examiners, and students. Each respondent was a practising tutor. Eighteen centres replied, a return rate of nearly 30%.

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The second involved five face-to-face interviews with respondents to the questionnaire. Practitioners were selected in terms of the variety of courses and/or institutions at which they taught. The interviews followed up on qualitative issues raised in part one concerning the range, extent, function, and future development of the discourse. There was opportunity, therefore, for interaction, and interviewees were encouraged to raise issues that had not been covered by the questionnaire.

The third part involved a simple questionnaire distributed to groups of creative writing students at levels 1,2,3,MA and PhD. Following the discovery of a range of demands and assessment patterns of supplementary discourses, it was decided to limit the research to the students of a single institution (and in the case of the first three levels of a single Writing programme). It was also considered essential that, given the openness of the questions, students at each level of the sample should be responding to the same varieties of supplementary discourse, which could be succinctly described.

At each successive stage conclusions were drawn and these influenced the development of the project. For example, the need for part three became apparent after it was clear that the interest group of students had not been consulted thus far.

Facts and Views About the Purposes and Functions of Supplementary Discourses in Creative Writing Teaching

Basic Data on Questionnaire Sample

The range of responses to the questionnaire described in 1.4 reflect creative writing taught at all levels from levels one to three, through to MA and PhD level, through a variety of means of delivery, including single and joint honours, pathways and individual modules on English programmes. The majority of responses indicate that the teaching of creative writing at undergraduate levels is via modular delivery. In the sample 11 out of 18 respondents indicate that their institution has been engaged in teaching creative writing for ten years or more; six of these report a history of twenty years or more.

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Quantative Data on Supplementary Discourses

All tutors indicate that they ask students to produce supplementary discourses to accompany their creative work, except in two cases where students at the introductory levels are not required to produce supplementary discourses, and one where an introduction to assessed creative work is unassessed and optional.

There is great divergence in what these supplementary discourses are called, although the most popular terms, ‘commentary’ and ‘journal’ could be described respectively as reader-centred and writer-centred. Other terms (such as ‘reflection’, ‘self-assessment’, ‘critique’) suggest the importance of the analysis by students of writing produced or of the student’s process (or both).1

Most students are asked to reflect on individual pieces of writing and just over three quarters of students are asked to reflect on their progress over a module, programme or year.

Under 70% of centres have formally validated criteria/academic rationales for supplementary discourses expressed in course documentation. Most of these criteria are held in module handbooks, with a third of institutions holding them in validation documents.

Most centres assess supplementary discourses, with just over a quarter awarding a separate grade to it. A third do not award it a separate grade. The reason for this ranges from a lack of separate assessment criteria for the discourse, through to attendance requirements that demand that non-assessed work is completed as evidence of attendance.

1 The full list of terms is: reflection (4), self-assessment (5), critique (6), commentary (8), journal (7), poetics (1) (numbers in brackets indicate number of nominations). Other terms specified include combinations of the former: critical commentary, self-reflective essay, self-reflexive commentary, critical preface, reflective essay, critical/reflective essay, reflective commentary and critical response. Some responses simply identified essays, dissertations, synopses, a ‘personal writing project’ and a ‘self-evaluation document’.

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There is a penalty for non-submission of supplementary discourses at most centres, although this is expressed variously, from simple loss of marks to outright failure as a rubric violation.2

Where supplementary discourses are assessed by the institution the weighting of this in relation to marks awarded to creative work can be clearly expressed in most cases. These range, at undergraduate level, from a surprising 67:33 ratio between supplementary discourses and creative work to 20:80, although 30:70 is the most common proportion. 25:75 is the most common at MA and PhD level although 50:50 is often found at PhD level.

A minority of centres think that the concept of proportionality is inappropriate for courses on which supplementary discourses are assessed as part of a global, overall mark and is not assigned a separate percentage of marks. One tutor thinks this too simplistic: ‘I assess on “package”.’

This raises the question of whether students at these centres (possibly a third) have a clear sense of the value of their supplementary discourses to their final assessment.

There is little uniformity over the length of any given piece of supplementary discourse, although we can see that wordage is not left to the discretion of the student at most centres. The range is 500 words to 2500, but this reveals little, given that the exercises involved might range from a self-assessment on a short piece of writing to a major act of manifesto-writing! At PhD level the discourse ranges between 20000 and 30000 words.

2 Other respondents indicated a combination of approaches, based on a differentiation between undergraduate and postgraduate work:

UGs: 1% penalty for each (of 3) commentaries not produced for final assessment. MA: synopsis & essay of genesis of novel form part of a portfolio which is pass/fail (i.e. not numerically marked) at the end of the year. This module must be passed.

By subtracting the percentage given to the commentary e.g. in a first year course the creative work is valued at 80%, the commentary at 20%. After the first year, the absence of the commentary counts as a non-submission.

At BA level, the supplementary discourse is a necessary part of the portfolio of work submitted: the student is required to present/reflect on the work submitted. At MA level, the supplementary discourse is a necessary part of the coursework for the two core courses. In addition, it constitutes the 4th mark – in the shape of a dissertation.

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Views on the Roles and Functions of Supplementary Discourses

The perceived roles and functions of Supplementary Discourses for tutors and students, and the assumptions made by tutors about students’ perceptions of the discourse, are live areas for debate. They cut to the quick of what the discourse is doing for students who produce it and use it, and tutors who consume it and assess with it.

Functions of Supplementary Discourses for tutors

Most tutors agree or strongly agree that the function of the discourse is, for them, to assess students’ creative products and processes, although nearly a quarter have no view. This reluctance indicates a possible resistance to the conflation of process and product, particularly where one or the other is conceived as being the chief object of attention in the supplementary discourse. (See 2.61 for more on this.) ‘Not sure,’ one respondent muses, ‘ – process yes – but product is assessed via the creative piece’. Nearly all agree that it exists to facilitate discussion with students about their creative products and processes, and although most agree that one function of the discourse might be to monitor the originality of students’ work and combat plagiarism, 17% disagree.

While 11% estimate these functions vary between levels of tuition, 11% think they remain constant. This suggests that the profession is clear as to the discourse’s function, and receptive to the discrimination of level in terms of hoped for degrees of sophistication. One tutor remarks: ‘At basic levels, there has often been no previous reflection as the task may be of little value’, implying that for the writer at lower levels reflection is less likely to be productive (possibly while the student is learning to produce it, and, in some centres, being taught to produce it ). Another tutor comments: ‘Student’s work should become more ambitious as they gain writing experience. Therefore the commentary will gain in complexity.’ This comment expresses some faith in the symbiotic relationship between supplementary discourses and creative writing in writerly progression.

This project has not unearthed unbridled hostility to supplementary discourses (any centre not requiring such work from students may not have replied to the questionnaire). However, one respondent both expresses both scepticism about writerly poetics and a paradoxical affirmation of faith in its efficacy in the pedagogic context alone:

A good writer likes to write rather than talk about how to write – but the commentary can speed the gestation process and learning curve. I explain this so that they can see the purpose of the commentary. Our outstanding writers also produce excellent commentaries. I liken the commentary to speeding up the “put it in a drawer for the year” philosophy.

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Functions of Supplementary Discourses for Students

An overwhelming majority of tutors feel that the function of the supplementary discourses for their students is to enable the students to explain their creative products and processes. Slightly fewer think the function might be for students to evaluate and analyse critically their creative products and processes. Perhaps the suggestion of using ‘critical’ skills associated with academic English might account for the difference. However, nearly three quarters feel that the function of the supplementary discourses is to learn about literature through writing. Three quarters also agree or strongly agree that to speculate on their future practice as writers is a function. One tutor indicates a disagreement with the idea of evaluating creative products but agrees with the idea of analysing creative process, a distinction which will be examined in 2.62.

On questions of level, just under a half of tutors think that level makes a difference to the production of quality supplementary discourses, while just over a quarter felt it did not. Yet again, tutors thought, for example, that ‘One would expect that the higher the level, the more sophisticated, analytical and knowledgeable the discourse would be.’ Student ability will develop but the basic function of the discourse might not change.

As a device for demonstrating to students the value of toil and endeavour such activity and writing seems valuable, in the eyes of those who tutor them. One speaks of the discourse demonstrating ‘how important process is, what a myth “inspiration” is, the necessity of hard work.’ Another speaks of the relationship between reading and writing as developmental activities and the relation of that work to the world of literary production.

The supplementary discourses give students ways of discussing and understanding contemporary poetry and art – and ways of developing their own practice as a result.

Although asked to consider the issue from the student’s point of view, tutors (inevitably perhaps) emphasise aspects of assessment and monitoring in the discourses’ functions: to record attendance, to combat plagiarism, to demonstrate a record of reading by including a bibliography, to demonstrate research and scholarship or to ‘situate their work in relation to current debates in the field’.

But some of their concern for issues of assessment has student achievement at its heart, as when one tutor emphasises that ‘the commentary safeguards a student in that it allows the student to gain credit for working practices and specific experience gained, even if the creative work is not very successful.’ However, another clearly sees the discourse as speculative:

Students sometimes discover the clue to their piece of work which will allow them to redraft it to a professional level after assessment. Self-knowledge. Realisations of how a creative piece could be strengthened.

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The deepest difficulties for the efficacy of the discourse would be if the students producing it were antagonistic towards it or could not see its supposed value. Part three of the research project (see section 4) was devised precisely to question students on their views of the necessity of this activity, but the views of tutors are relatively encouraging. Well over half do not think that students see the activity negatively, although just over a quarter are worried that students do not see any point in producing supplementary discourses and do not take ownership and responsibility for them. But as one puts it, ‘The students who don’t, tend not to take responsibility for any part of their degree – thus it is a symptom of a particular kind of student, not of a particular task / module.’

Supplementary Discourses and Internal and External Moderation

The third audience for supplementary discourses is internal and external moderators of various kinds, who also perhaps exert an unacknowledged pressure on tutors (and, through them, on students). Asked to consider the role of supplementary discourses in internal moderation and in presenting teaching and learning to external scrutiny (externals, QAA etc), half of those questioned confirm that supplementary discourses are a part of internal and external moderation processes. Supplementary discourses play a prominent part in any kind of second marking where the original tutor (who can perhaps construct the context for the seminar exercise or the workshop discussion) is absent. ‘Supplementary discourses are essential: the portfolio is almost impossible to mark without the journal,’ says one, in a comment that is echoed by others.

While these practical considerations assist the smooth running of the assessment of work by others (internally and externally), and while there are no negative comments about the roles of external examiners and others within the profession (which is encouraging), there are clearly strategic concerns about those beyond it.

Supplementary discourses have an important role – I don’t think the team would have considered the module unless I had elements of supplementary discourse in the documents. Also, it wouldn’t have got past externals/QAA etc. I’m certain of that.

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Another tutor makes the revealing remark that ‘supplementary discourses are the only way of persuading colleagues hostile to creative writing that it has some “academic” probity’. Both of these (rare) remarks suggest that extrinsic pressures upon a subject that might not be regarded as ‘academic’ by some within the institution or department are partly met by the presence of supplementary writing of some kind (one suspects that more traditional forms of discourse are encouraged here, essays perhaps rather than journals). ‘But it’s not for that reason that I include it,’ concludes the first of the two tutors. It is encouraging that primarily the functions of the discourse are regarded as intrinsic to the writing course or to the activity of writing more generally.

The Influence of Supplementary Discourses on Assessing Creative Work

The presence of a supplementary discourse, whether assessed or not, may influence the reception of the creative work it accompanies. Sixty one percent of tutors appeared to agree with this, although around a third thought its presence did not. ‘I can’t think of instances where the supplementary discourse has changed the evaluation of the creative work,’ one states. Looking at it objectively, surely the presence of another discourse will influence the reception, but perhaps these tutors are denying that they are unduly swayed in terms of the mark given. The nature of this influence, whether, for example, a supplementary discourse can validate work positively (such as explaining techniques not immediately clear to a reader) or negatively (such as puffing up mediocre work by copious references to published writers, schools, theories) has to be considered.

This revolves around the issue of the supplementary discourse being a means whereby students can make their intentions for the creative piece clear, so that, should the creative piece be unsuccessful, the tutor is able to judge it against those intentions. It seems that one of the inherent assumptions here is that it is acceptable to have intentions that one then fails to realise and that this is a way of safeguarding students whose ambitions for their writing may exceed their competence. But it also raises the question (again) of what is being assessed, the process or the product. ‘The commentary should not be used to explain a piece of work but is a commentary on the process of writing.

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The creative work should stand alone,’ states one tutor, although the research aspect of process (non-writerly process one might call it) is recorded by the accompanying writing, an explaining that is still not requiring the student to read his or her work: ‘It explains individual elements such as biographical sources, personal reading habits, self-awareness, writerly discourse and familiarity with this’. Clearly the protection of the process against inadequate product is effected here. 3 A typical response, matching fitness to purpose is

Mainly, it can ensure I know what the student is trying to achieve in terms of market/genre, and so enable me to apply apt criteria. Also in the case of ‘glorious failure’ the student can demonstrate how much they’re learned despite a highly defective finished product.

Another adds a caveat, which brings to the fore not merely questions of process and product, but of risk and achievement. The supplementary discourse ‘can influence you slightly (favourably) if you see a student has taken a real risk that hasn’t actually paid off’. The shortcomings of current performance are justified if questions of future competence are raised: ‘If the student in question shows an awareness of the ways in which her work has failed, & speculates on the way in which this might in future be rectified.’

More sceptical tutors are aware that some students are manipulating their responses, that the writing of a supplementary discourse is a rhetorical exercise that can be dishonest or misleading: ‘One has to beware reacting to student praise or condemnation of one’s own module – I’m sure some students do this strategically.’ Another spoke quite precisely how a student might fall foul of specific assessment criteria in the production of an inadequate supplementary discourse.

A bland or overly-positive self-assessment can lower the student’s grade. This is particularly noticeable at a borderline, of course. If they are bland or vague, they haven’t learned the basics of a creative writing workshop, in my eyes, thus they fall down on one of the learning outcomes.

However, others feel that it was not usual to find ‘the creative work authentic and convincing until one reads the critique and then it falls in one’s estimate – in nearly all my experience the critiquing works in the student’s favour.’

3 This points up a tension between the promotion of a theoretical text like Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ and the long-standing investment in Wimsatt and Beardsley’s intentional fallacy that one also finds in the teaching of English literature in higher education. It seems that when one is invested in the teaching of writing (and the reading of one’s own writing) the consideration of the author’s intention is highly relevant, whereas in the teaching of literature it has become unfashionable to do this.

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The Relationship Between Supplementary Discourses and Creative Writing

The relationship between supplementary discourses and creative work is an issue that raises a number of questions. As one tutor put it: ‘I think this is a key issue – there seem to be a wide range of possible relationships, ranging from an intimate and personal account of process to an utterly separate “lit crit”’. Some tutors feel that supplementary discourses are ‘not supplementary. The study of writing is, and should be, on an equal par with the practice of writing.’ Another asserts: ‘The major emphasis must be on the writing itself, and not on critical skills which are attended to everywhere else in the syllabus’. Both of these responses raise the issue of the relation of the discourse to that of literary critical discourse of English as an academic subject, which is attended to more fully in section 2.9 Between the poles of account and analysis, between process-oriented and product-oriented responses, there are a number of views. ‘Supplementary’ (it is proposed by two tutors) might be better replaced by the term ‘complementary’ or even ‘symbiotic’. As one tutor puts it: ‘We place a VERY strong emphasis on reading, research and scholarship equal to the so-called creative process. The discourses, for us, are in no way “supplementary”.’

Writing and Analytical Skills in Relation to Supplementary Discourses and Creative Writing

Students of creative writing are often asked to demonstrate a variety of writing skills (and, as such, this might be one vocational rationale for the subject). In the case of creative work and supplementary discourses, with their various functions, there are two related but separate types of writing. It would not be unreasonable to suppose a discrepancy in students’ ability to produce these. Tutors seem broadly divided between those who suggest that there is generally a parity of quality between students’ creative work and supplementary discourses (‘In my experience, very few students produce a marked quality difference in their creative and reflective work’), and those who acknowledge disparity and who reflect on the implications of this for pedagogy.

Some tutors describe a relationship of compensation between both elements in this case: ‘The supplementary discourse is a safety-net’; poor work with good intentions but demonstrating ‘a bad creative decision’ may be rescued, and adventurous process rewarded. ‘Supplementary discourses sometimes allow you to reward the creativity of an otherwise less obviously able student,’ writes another.

The question of assessment is crucial here. ‘Except where there are separate grades for the two, I don’t let bad quality supplementary discourses bring down the grade. I once had a student who wrote an indifferent radio play with a splendid writer’s diary to accompany it. She got a good mark overall.’ This perhaps is an argument for a separate grade to ensure that such a student is routinely rewarded.

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A number of tutors emphasise that good quality supplementary discourses are a reasonable expectation of students at university, making a fair point about graduateness, but possibly making a problematic identification between literary-critical skills and writing supplementary discourses:

I really feel that it’s the quality of the writing itself that should count. Students should be able (if, that is, they’re taking an English degree) to discuss their own work ably, having acquired the skills to produce sophisticated critical discourse; but they should not feel that such discourse can make up for deficient creative work, or that the clearest and most fluent statement of intention is tantamount to the intention actually being realised!

At one centre where ‘creative work appears only in the third year of the degree, students are likely to have quite advanced critical and theoretical skills/knowledge, while creative work of the kind required by the course can be less advanced. Accordingly some students can produce supplementary discourses ‘superior to the creative work’.

It is clear that analytical and critical skills of a traditional English Literature kind are demanded here. Some tutors speak of other kinds of reflective practices. It should not be thought that any of these discourses is a naturally acquired discourse, or that personal reflection or writerly poetics is easier than exercising traditional literature skills. As one tutor noted, ‘Many produce good creative work and poor commentaries initially. Commentary writing needs to be taught, we find.’

The Focus of Supplementary Discourses in Relation to Written Product and Writing Process

One powerful view is that ‘the supplementary discourse can be seen as a lens through which to read the creative work’. Although this privileges the reader (tutor), such a formulation could be used for self-developmental purposes, particularly in discriminating between process and product. Another states that ‘the commentary is a tool, aiding self-reflection. The creative work is a product. The commentary is of less importance in some ways, though it can develop skills that lead to more sophisticated creative writing.’ This preserves the status of the writing as a product but permits process to be dealt with by the supplementary discourses, which then feed back into future writing processes. Supplementary discourses ‘allow the creative writing tutor to stress the function of writing as process rather than the product of genius which appears miraculously on the page without the need for editing,’ as another tutor puts it. But the importance of criticism is paramount here. ‘Students really only improve when they listen to criticism, and that includes listening to criticism from themselves,’ as yet another puts it.

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There are however, those who wish to limit and even exclude such discourses, and their revelation of process, either because of time constraints or because the skills needed to produce a ‘commentary’ are assumed to be those of analysis taught by English literature and hence already acquired by the students.

At best supplementary discourses are illuminating of the creative work. At the very least they are an insurance policy. On the other hand, I have sympathy with those students who say, “I have written a slim volume of poems and I want it to stand or fall on its own merits.”

This suggests that the ‘lens’ is irrelevant to the reading experience, or is a kind of cheat, an ocular short cut. One could have sympathy with such a student who wishes to present product – it is a highly professional thing to do - but still feel that the tracking (and therefore assessment) of process, achievement, or value added is not visible from the creative product alone. It is perhaps instructive to recall that the word ‘writing’ can operate as a verb, a processual activity, as well as a noun, the thing produced.

The Relative Pedagogic Importance of Supplementary Discourses and Creative Writing

In being asked to consider the relationship between what might be thought to be two types of writing (at least) with separate conventions (that will vary from centre to centre) tutors are faced with the question of primacy and secondariness, essence and supplementariness. Common sense dictates that the discourse of a ‘commentary’ is ‘secondary’ or at most ‘complementary’. One such response runs:

They can and should be secondary – at least in a creative writing course – though it is possible to visualize contexts in which they were more important. But that would feel to me like a reversal of the normal values - a course for would-be writers who began by accepting defeat.

This is an interesting response, but one that is slightly frustrating, since it not demonstrated what the ‘contexts’ might be that would reverse this assumed normative situation. Neither is it inherently clear why such a view might be ‘accepting defeat’ if reflection were privileged. Both responses suggest that creative writing needs protecting against this invasive other (perhaps here betraying a distrust of the English literature skills prized by others). However, other tutors not only visualize the contexts, but spell them out. ‘If one is assessing process, then the supplementary discourse is the primary method,’ asserts one practitioner, but clearly making the ‘primary’ method the servant of creativity. Another asserts ‘that the commentary is secondary as it can only be read as a reflection of the primary product’. One unusual exception to this is provided by the intervention of the enthusiasm of particular students:

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We have a module called ‘proposition module’ where students propose issue or problem – sometimes it happens they get so interested in the issue and research & that part of the process, that it takes precedence for them.

One tutor considers situations in which the supplementary discourse becomes primary as a speculative poetics, looking towards work in progress or future work, while remaining formally secondary in terms of assessment:

They are secondary in terms of the mark received for the overall creative writing portfolio, but they may be primary in the sense that self-reflection on the piece of work/s just completed may help the student to produce a better piece of creative work in the next instance. In seminars, students have commented that they found the supplementary discourses extremely useful to think about what they might write next, taking on board any ‘blind spots’ that they noted in the previous piece of writing.

Some tutors are even more sceptical of the dichotomy; ‘It depends on what you mean as secondary and primary.’ begins one tutor, before relating (again) the experience of a student, who opens up another debate about professionalism. ‘One of my students, in her reflective essay, acknowledged that she’d never be a professional writer … but she did say she had gained in overall confidence, both in writing and reading. That is primary, in my book! Fantastic! She got a middling 2.2, but for her that didn’t matter.’ If we are producing professional writers then the discourse will be secondary in an important sense (but still valuable); but not all of our students will be. They may indeed take themselves very seriously as writers during the course, but the transferable skills they develop by producing supplementary discourses and by responding to reflection, may be the most important legacy of their education. These students may also find the focus upon process over product valuable in assessing their cognitive and experiential experience.

In a similar light, perhaps with an eye to English subject benchmarking, which is it sometimes difficult to relate to this kind of practice-based learning, one tutor wishes to step out of the primary-secondary dichotomy and spotlight understanding:

Supplementary discourses can help students to understand the implications of formal practices – and to develop their own formal practice. They can thus be integral rather than secondary – operating at the same level as formal understanding.

Ultimately the distinction may collapse in another, more radical way: ‘The student can do an excellent commentary which is a piece of creative writing in its own right,’ which explodes the hierarchical dominance of ‘creative’ over ‘supplementary’.

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Other Forms of Reflection

Tutors generally indicate that they give students opportunities to reflect on their work in ways other than the writing of supplementary discourses. These other forms of reflection include workshop discussions (unanimously), although various forms of peer assessment practices are also mentioned. These practices, which relate to traditional workshop design, include writing ‘an extended critique of a peer’s original writing submission’; the annotation of others’ work and ‘filling in a peer-assessment form’. One tutor reports that ‘students are paired, and expected to have regular meetings with their partner to discuss work in progress,’ which extends the workshop beyond its physical bounds. It would seem that these formal exercises are designed to simulate or supplement the kinds of in-depth discussions that occur during workshops, between tutors and students and between students, about student creative writing. Whether creative writing courses are better at evaluating or even assessing seminar discussion and student-response than any other subject area is not clear. That would depend on how the profession rewards the constructive sensitive reader of other students’ work. From one angle, this is an oral activity beyond the scope of this research. From another, it is perhaps the most vigorous and useful ‘supplementary discourse’ that occurs in creative writing teaching.

Other opportunities for less formal reflection include the use of Web Communications Technology – one respondent indicating that ‘students put poems, mail, criticism, [and] comment on peer and published poems’ via this medium. Logs, journals and ‘self-diagnostic questionnaires’ are also used, in an unassessed way.

Tuition for Writing Supplementary Discourses

Eight out of ten tutors indicate that they provide tuition for writing supplementary discourses; one out of ten does not. One respondent indicates: ‘Suggestions perhaps, but no tuition.’

Materials and activities specified range quite widely from brief discussions in a first workshop, to the presentation and study of examples drawn from ‘craft-oriented’/‘how-to’ writing .4 Other specified activities are: master classes, workshops, one-to-one surgeries, seminar discussion, preparatory essays (unassessed), general guidelines (written down in student handbook), tutorial discussion, self-assessment questionnaire (and brief discussion of same), informal tuition by group discussion, a hand-out for guidance, and feedback on previous reflective essays. Some centres provide a ‘mock commentary on pieces written in the workshop’ or ‘written sample commentaries’.

4 These included texts such as The Writer’s Handbook, (ed. by Newman, Cusick, La Tourette), The Agony and the Ego (ed. Claire Boylan), How Poets Work, How Novelists Work, The Art of Fiction (ed. Janet Burroway) and Writer's Workshop.

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Others work by demonstration, tutors showing the genesis of their own creative work (an activity that reinforces the role of the tutors not just as creative practitioners but as fellow self-evaluators, showing that the discourse is not a bolt on, but is – whether formalised or not – part of normal writerly procedure).

Others adapt the tools of English literature (or other academic arts disciplines) to the creative writing context.

In both the BA module and the MA programme, students are required to engage in reading that includes both theoretical work (e.g. on gender) and poetics. (“poetics” would include writing by poets but also work relating to, for example, to site-specific art-work).

Or as another formidable list puts it: ‘Structuralist analysis / critical realist methodology / self analysis / creative practice analysis / activities related to imitative work / reader response.’ It is not clear how much discussion there is about the applicability of such methods to creative writing, although clearly these modes do not see writing merely as the acquisition of skills. Neither are these students reading their own work (see 2.9).

Links with Other Discourses: ‘Eng Lit’/‘Theory’

Nearly 80% of practitioners see a link between supplementary discourses and literary-critical and/or theoretical discourses. Just over 10% see no link. However, this should not be seen as an overwhelming endorsement of English Literature as a necessary co-practice for creative writers. The link, as one tutor puts it is ‘by contrast. It is important that students see why lit-crit approaches to their own work is inapt and unhelpful’. But another states, with a revealing opening adverb:

Obviously in introducing their own work students will be using literary critical skills and knowledge of whatever type they possess and develop in other parts of the syllabus.

There is a clear disagreement here over whether literary critical skills are useful or whether they are unhelpful as a model for supplementary discourse writing. However, it is clear that the kinds of theory that are employed might not be used to read or ‘explain’ the students’ work. The sources that are most often cited are those that theorise writing or readership at a general level,

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such as the theories of Barthes and Bakhtin.5 One centre was quite clear that the discourses and poetics utilised were

1) various theoretical discourses – including, for e.g. gender, identity, space2) various critical discourses – including criticism of contemporary poetry3) works of poetics – writings by poets / on poetry4) contemporary discourses relating to art practices.

Presumably the students are using such discourses to produce their own poetics to feed directly, through reflection, into their practice, not as analytic skills to read or explain their work. But analysing one’s own work with such tools is a categorically different activity, arguably even an impossible one.6

5 Roland Barthes’ work was cited 4 times, including ‘The Death of the Author’ (2), Image-Music-Text (1) and S/Z (narrative codes) (1), alongside two mentions of Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical principle and two references to Russian formalism.

Other examples are worth listing: scientific discourse; Aristotle’s Poetics; authors/writers/poets’ self-reflections (eg, Seamus Heaney, etc.); stylistics; Shklovsky’s ‘Art as Technique’; Todorov; Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with the Thousand Faces; gender issues; theatrical history (expressionism, epic, social realism etc.); autobiographical discourse; reader-response; feminism; structuralism; poststructuralism.

6 The present author has explored this issue in his The Necessity of Poetics (Ship of Fools: Liverpool) 2002. On pp. 13-14, in the section, ‘Don’t Explain’ I write:

None of the above poetics explain works of art. They permit. Explanation is not to the point of poetics. But why do I think that poetics cannot, or better not, describe? Part of the story, as I’ve hinted above, derives from the forward-looking usefulness of poetics; but there is another, perhaps deeper, reason, that we should consider. As CG Jung stated:

Being essentially the instrument for his work he (the artist) is subordinate to it and we have no reason for expecting him to interpret it for us. He has done the best that is in him by giving it form and he must leave interpretation to others and to the future.’ (Jung, p. 9)

Being the self and in its tightly scheduled now, how can the writer provide this kind of discourse, or be the work’s reader? As I read, as I do, poetry magazines from cover to cover, I obviously come upon my own work. Something happens as I read it. Try as I may, I cannot get it to inhabit the same space as the poems that surround it. I cannot read it, partly because as I read I read every design decision I made to complete it. There are palimpsest versions beneath the text. It is like trying to look at the back of my head; I cannot map it with the freshness reading requires.

Writers are notoriously bad at reading their own work; indeed, that they deliberately misread it in the service of speculating about future works is a constituent

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This is not to say that there is not a relationship, but there is evidence that the relationship is not one of the dependence of creative writing on English Literature to ‘know itself’ through discourse. As one respondent writes: ‘In general, students often say that they gain more understanding of how literature works by doing imitative and creative writing themselves than by reading critics.’ One imagines a rich mix of theory, criticism, practical examples and reflection upon process melding into a new kind of literary criticism.

Innovation in Supplementary Discourses

The above imagined hybrid discourse would be a considerable innovation in both creative writing and English Literature. However, this project has investigated a number of ways practitioners hope to innovate, all of which convincingly demonstrate active practitioner research and development and indicate an increasingly significant role for supplementary discourses in creative writing teaching. Nearly 40% of tutors said they were improving their work in this area, although half suggested they were content with their teaching, delivery and assessment procedures as currently validated. The changes contemplated include procedural amendments, such as ‘integrating supplementary discourses much more into coursework.’ Another admits to wishing to differentiate in the assessment of the discourses.

of poetics. This can be very productive, but is baffling for critics (and for students), who expect the kind of match they themselves might provide.

There have been a few examples where artists have been compelled to become their own works’ explainers. I would like to mention one of the most notorious of these. In 1946 Malcolm Lowry, faced with a hostile reader’s report and the threat of non-publication, was forced to write Jonathan Cape a 30 page letter, explaining, chapter-by-chapter, the meaning of his novel, Under the Volcano, and was forced to evaluate it, and write like this: ‘The chapter is a sort of bridge, it was written with extreme care.... It is an entity, a unity in itself, as are all the other chapters; it is, I claim, dramatic, amusing, and within its limits I think is entirely successful.’ (p72. ) This strikes a false note with me, the false note of the impossibility of this sort of thing. Indeed, the letter and the novel together might constitute an anti-model for the novel PhD as I envisage it: a text and commentary by an exegete who is also the writer. Put thus, does it not sound narcissistic? And if not, then possibly harmful? Especially when it is recalled that, unmentioned in the letter, which is factual, while not being non-emphatic, Lowry attempted suicide with the anguish of this epistolary nightmare.

The letter ends, though, with a piece of writerly poetics, one which actually shows the futility of the exercise (and indeed it deconstructs the notion of the monologic reading): ‘For the book was so designed, counterdesigned and interwelded that it could be read an indefinite number of times and still not have yielded all its meanings or its drama or its poetry....’ (p 88) And not all of those meanings are accessible to one reader, let alone the writer, with his or her unique memories of having written it.

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We’re looking at increasing the importance of commentaries of undergraduates – we’d like to be better able to penalise students who don’t produce supplementary discourses or put much effort into them, & acknowledge those who do.

However, this same tutor refined this, to express his hope that the supplementary discourse would enable a greater revelation of process worthy of assessment:

It’s not so much the commentaries, it’s the work that’s undertaken on the creative piece after workshopping (& obviously the revised or new commentary would give a view of this). This is what we want, & what we want to be able to acknowledge (or penalize!).’

There clearly has been some thinking on the question of level descriptors, one comment reflecting the way practices filter down from MA level (a number of centres began teachijng at M Level before developing undergraduate courses and programmes):

I want to put much more emphasis on the use of critique for the student looking to their future practice as writers. This element has been crucial in MA work & hitherto not so essential to BA work – I now think it is essential to all learning.

This comment also suggests the learning from experience that is occurring as the subject develops. Another centre was considering practices at the introductory level. Possibly the notebook might not be thought a variety of supplementary discourse, but the recording of (if not the commenting upon) process seems ancillary. Indeed, armed with such a notebook, a student may have much more to say, or more coherent things to say, about their processes.

We are foregrounding the notebook in our first year classes in order to inculcate independent writing skills in our students rather than rushing to the finished product, which we believed was shortcutting the process and causing work to be thin, underdeveloped.

Interviews with Selected Tutors on the Range, Extent, Function and Future Developments of Supplementary Discourses in Creative Writing Teaching

General Introduction on the Interviewing Process

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The five interviewees shall remain anonymous. Each was asked approximately the same questions, and read or had paraphrased some passages from the interim report (that is, the earlier draft of 2-2.10). See Appendix Two for the text of the sheet.

With the exception of Oxbridge, all sectors of higher education are represented. However, the exercise was not to demand that the interviewees represent the sectoral, institutional or departmental view of the subject, but to invite them to speak personally as active members of the creative writing fraternity who had answered the questionnaire, and who were willing to follow up on issues raised there. This furnished an opportunity for a freer exchange of views and for the emergence of more ‘qualitative notions; your attitudes, feeling, intuitions, hopes, fears, hunches and plans’ as it was explained at the outset. The text derives from notes made during, and summarised immediately after, the interviews.

A works at a University College (that had only recently converted from being a college of higher education), B at one of the 1990s new universities (i.e., a former polytechnic), C at one of the 1960s new universities, now quite prestigious, D at one of the colleges of a large collegiate university, and E at a traditional redbrick university.

Standardisation of Teaching and/or Assessment of Supplementary Discourses

The suggestion that there should be some form of standardisation of supplementary discourses (or of any other aspect of creative writing) is rejected by all the interviewees. It is thought essential that each centre should develop its own rationale, and clear assessment criteria, but that they should be flexible enough to withstand external pressures.

However, there is clearly thought to be a cohesive role for external agencies: the system of external examiners, the existence of English Benchmarking statements, and less formal exchanges within the subject community. Whereas the subject may have been ‘isolated and self-isolating’ as C puts it, increased networking, or ‘healthy interchange between increasing numbers of institutions’ has recently expanded these opportunities, which are considered stronger, but more responsive, than formal external scrutiny.

Only D had ever thought consensus on standardising was desirable, but attendance at a conference on the pedagogy of creative writing had convinced him that standardisation might lead to a separation of so called ‘academic’ work from the creative. He emphasises that if the philosophy of supplementary discourses is to enable students to respond to their practice in whatever way they see fit – and it is best generated by the student writers themselves – you cannot and should not standardise between centres. (He thought, by analogy, that the analytic component on art and design and music degrees is similarly not standardised.) Ultimately D thinks this is an ethical argument: that one has no right to dictate a standard mode of response for students between centres.

Since a certain amount of internal direction must exist in these centres, it is the external nature of the issue that is threatening. The development of

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Personal Development Profiles may also impose some unity upon supplementary discourses, since they are modes of reflection.

The Function of Supplementary Discourses for Creative Writing Tutors

Tutors must be used to explaining to colleagues and students the purposes of supplementary discourses, since the interviewees succinctly list functions in terms consonant with those of part two of this report. While D gives an overview of function in terms of past, present and (interestingly) future development – supplementary discourses give ‘a complete picture’ of ‘where they are up to’, ‘where I am’, ‘where I am going’ - A offered an enumerated list of functions for the tutor:

to give credit to hard work in draftingto examine the students’ learning processesto enable students to discuss drafts, to quote from themto discuss changes of voice and formto emphasise craftspersonship and skills

to investigate the inspiration or source of the textto credit research (both from experience and from book research)

to lay bare the processes of transformation of materials (which might be invisible in the project)

to speed up the process of development (which has the luxury of being slower in non-student writers).

C adds that another function might be to avoid plagiarism (if students have to account for process, though as B points out, the drafts are more revealing of this). B added another list of functions for the discourse, using metaphors used earlier in the report:

to provide a ‘lens’ through which the tutor can see/judge the workto provide a ‘safety net’ for unachieved experiment or ambitious writing, to redeem an aesthetic ‘failure’to judge intentions.

He adds that the supplementary discourse should be used to monitor and show evidence of student reading, to which the profession is not paying enough attention.

B adds the supplementary discourse should be: a defence of, or manifesto for, the work, giving it a larger cultural remit, one that could only derive from wide reading and the student locating herself in the field of literary production.

E is constructively sceptical about the function and value of supplementary discourses. Part of this is pragmatic. Creative writing is taught at his institution as a small but popular part of the English programme at level 3. Given the brevity of the course he feels it important to concentrate on the creative writing side. (There is also the question of how there would be time to

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teach reflective skills.) However, students are encouraged to write an introduction to their portfolio, for the benefit of an hypothetical ‘new reader’. E’s experience as an external examiner (to a teacher education course involving creative writing) reinforces his scepticism. He was asked to examine rather ‘self-satisfied’ supplementary discourses that seemed as carefully constructed as the creative work. They tended to confuse intention and attainment, to ‘rescue’ or even to ‘replace’ the literary work. He is not sure whether he saw these as acts to deceive the examiner or as acts of self-deception. He thought the students capable, as English Literature specialists, of writing a convincing supplementary discourse.

We have here expressed as a negative – the rewarding of intention, the rescuing of failure, the level of care in the production of the discourse – attitudes which are regarded as positive elsewhere. There is also an assumption that the possession of English Literature skills is adequate to a task which, for good practical reasons, E does not make compulsory in his own centre. His description of the ‘lack of dissatisfaction’ on the part of the students he examined, is worrying. C is less worried by this. She observes a tendency to ‘try to impress’ in the supplementary discourses, but points out that the ones that actually impress are the good ones!

The Relationship of Supplementary Discourses to other English subject discourses or the Uniqueness of the Discourse

Most creative writing courses in higher education grew out of contexts of English teaching, usually Literature. (Peter Redgrove’s teaching at Falmouth College of Art from the 1960s onwards is one early exception.) It may seem immediately obvious that students of Literature should be able to ‘describe’ or ‘analyse’ their own work (should this be thought desirable), but some reflection will suggest that the actual tasks that students are asked to undertake, at the very least, involve ancillary skills, or, at the most extreme, might involve completely different tasks and skills. (The difficulties of describing one’s own work are underestimated; see footnote 6.) Clearly the degree of connection to English may be institutionally determined. Thus A can state that her students ‘learn to read’ well studying English, but the courses are ‘tied in’ together thus offering opportunities for integration. Writing programmes completely autonomous from English (or taught in creative arts contexts) are not at all rare.

C sees the positive effect of the ‘marriage’ between the subjects in terms of the advantage that writing students possess. They write better than literature students, particularly with economy; they ‘use their poetics to read other writers’. Pastiche is one mode of apprehending literature that is open to them. They understand literary creation both from the inside and from the outside.

D also sees a bifocal aspect that creative writing-English students possess. He encourages students to produce supplementary discourses that take alternate ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ takes on the creative writing. Firstly to speak of the work as a process, an experience; secondly to speak of it as something ‘found’, to speak of it in the same way they would of ‘published’ work. The students are encouraged to move between the subjective, which is what the students want to say, and the objective, which is what they need to

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find out, because they find it difficult to ‘articulate much’ in the first attempt, although it is not clear how the sophisticated code-switching needed for the exercise is to be developed (or taught).

B sees a similar division between supplementary discourses and the journal (a form which has been discussed surprisingly little in this project.). While the latter might remain unassessed – it is essentially private, so also unmonitored – the former is more demanding, and can enable students to see the results or writing as ‘text’, not as self-expression. Notebook or journal materials are there for ‘transformation’.

A recognises that it is ‘odd to theorise your own writing’ and encourages students to trace contexts and influences in their own work. This is sometimes harder for the well-read student than the lesser-read. In common with B, A uses the term ‘Reading as a Writer’ to describe work which details, for example, ‘how poets work, interviews which open up the process’. This is recognised by both as a distinct ‘student-centred’ activity from traditional English Literature. In B’s case this is reinforced by the presence of non-English graduates on the MA course.

E again provides the sceptical but most instructive voice. In enumerating the elements of the introductions he allows to accompany portfolios as ‘a discussion of themes, an evaluation of strengths and weaknesses, and an element of course evaluation’, he realised that the modes of analysis required were not fashionable ones in literary studies. His realisation that the discourse is to some extent sui generis led immediately to his assertion of the fact that (if compulsory and assessed) it would have to be taught.

Supplementary Discourses and the Processes and Products of Creative Writing

In part two of the report there is some evidence of debate within the profession over whether the supplementary writing was addressing questions of the process of writing (as a verb) or the products of writing (as a noun), or of both. Obviously the variety of discourses at a variety of levels means the focus will vary, but the issue points to larger issues of the philosophy of writing teaching itself, and to external factors, such as transferable skills and vocational rationales.

C demands economically written prose (‘a general introduction and a separate paragraph for each poem’) and states that this represents a ‘test of process and intention’. Perhaps ‘product’ is measured against the intention. Most tutors believe there is a relationship between the two, of course, but disagree as to the balance between them. A states that, in the final analysis, the supplementary discourse is ‘about assessing the process which builds the product, which is then also assessed, and which is primary’. Others confirm this careful formulation. B states that he is ‘primarily assessing product’, which remains ‘“supreme”. But the process is monitored’, which means that it might be un- and less assessed.

E had experimented with un-assessed ‘journals’, but students discontinued the practice, suggesting the importance of assessment, but he also considered another kind of process, the process of workshop discussion. There should be a way to record and ‘reward on-going course inputs’ with

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some analogous device to a reading log. But ultimately his faith is in the end result, in that the ‘product represents’ or incorporates ‘process’. This raises a question of how visible this ‘process’ might be if it is not commented on. (The existence of rough drafts and notes is of course equally important here.)

Others see the distinction between process and product in terms of level. ‘The process is primary in the first year (which emphasises the notebook as a self-generated piece of work which is given a pass/fail,’ comments A. D takes a longer view and sees all undergraduate work as concerned with process, whereas as MA and PhD writers are professionalized and therefore concerned primarily with product. There needs to be some distinction, she says, between these ‘levels’, particularly as the MA at a centre such as UEA, has become the ‘Rolls Royce of courses, like the MFA in the United States’. It is not clear what is the terminal level for the subject.

Supplementary Discourses as Primary or Secondary

Indeed, it is at the postgraduate level that the possibility of the ‘supplementary’ part becoming complementary or primary, and D relates this to the distinction between the PhD and the MA. The ‘critical’ part of a PhD could be primary in that it could be thought of as separately publishable in the same way as chapters of English literature PhDs. B encourages students to not ‘comment’ on their creative work, but to produce an independent work of literary scholarship or piece that researches for content: archival background for a historical novel, for example. This separates out research fro content and research for context. It is clear talking about postgraduate levels that the distinctions are not certain. This is negative in determining any sense of what supplementary discourses might entail, but it can lead to experimentation, a dialogue between the two not necessarily dependent parts, a complementary relationship. B referred to one commentary as ‘an artwork in its own right’.

At undergraduate level there are instances of ‘complementary’ work such as essays, but most tutors are happy with the supplementary nature of the discourse.

The Various Modes of Supplementary Discourses

All tutors agree that, allowing for hybrids, the following four categories, allowing for hybrids, cover the modes of supplementary discourses with which they have come in contact:

1. Text accompanying writing or reflecting on courseswhich refers directly to the works produced;

2. Journals and notebookswhich are usually undirected, unassessed and student-centred;

3. Reading as a Writerwhich involves learning from other writers (which could include other students’ work, of course);

4. Poetics

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which is a term to describe a speculative discourse on writing in general that can be found occasionally in the other three.

D does not insist on any of these modes, but allows the student to determine which discourse encourages ‘a student-centred responsiveness’, but a response from their positioning as a writer (not as a version of English Literature). C is clear that journals should be ‘owned’ by the students, and would contain working notes and thought-experiments. Direct text accompanying texts is only confined to level one at his centre, ‘to warm them up’.

Both A’s and C’s students are encouraged to debate poetics (in the public questioning of visiting writers), but not to produce it. There may be questions of level here. B sees what she calls the ‘manifesto’ as being relevant to MAs and PhDs alone. (but remember the filter down effect in cw)

E’s caveat about the assessment of workshop process is perhaps not generally considered as a type. Even the suggestion that students might critique one another’s work in a supplementary discourse (a Workshop Report or in peer-review schemes) did not quite reward the ‘participation, response and on-going constructive process’.

Innovation in Supplementary Discourses

The final point above indicates one area of development for the discourse. Another suggests a resistance to the traditional workshop and its inherent danger of ‘committee group decisions’. Could supplementary discourses not be used more to get students to listen to ‘their inner voice’ as A puts it? Could commentaries also not be delivered as short presentations, so students share the benefits of supplementary discourses more. B wants to develop the discourses as a ‘learning contract’, as a dialogue between tutors and undergraduate students, by focussing them on what the students want the tutor to comment on, and also be demanding of the student that staple question of poetics: ‘What kind of writer do you want to be?’

Rather than poetics, C sees the ‘rebirth of rhetoric’ as a possibility, as a complementary discourse. In combining creative writing not with its traditional partner English but with business, science and IT (where creativity is valued in research and development), it might bring to the fore the question that ‘all forms of writing and knowledge are creative’. This envisages a melding of writing in an interdisciplinary practice in which supplementary discourses could be absorbed in a manner quite distinct from the manner of the hybrid PhD described above.

D favours this hybrid development, so that eventually the subject will be ‘robust enough not to need supplementary discourses’. There would be no split between the ‘critical and creative sides’ but an emergent ‘Derridean’ discourse which replaces it. He sees this as part of a developing confidence in the subject and in tutors’ expertise that would allow the creative writing community to ‘resist being dictated to by publishers. We are experts too’.

Both of these possibilities see the transformation or strategic withering away of the discourse in a confident future for creative writing. The previous responses see developments that might be made sooner, and locally, in the manner of course development and revalidation.

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Miscellaneous Remarks

In the course of discussions with the project supervisor other matters were raised which do not fit the categories listed above. This was part of the intention of the face-to-face meeting. These points are listed below, along with those elicited at the end of each interview, when the interviewee was given the opportunity to raise any issues he or she felt were not raised.

C pointed out that supplementary discourses (as well as creative writing) are produced at his centre under exam conditions, where students have to answer questions on praxis. I have not come upon this arrangement elsewhere.

D pointed out that in internal moderating Literature staff might be asked to mark creative writing. Although the criteria for English are not used ‘writer-academics’ have different criteria, although this was unspecified.

E pointed to the uses of a reflective discourse, which might depend for its efficicacy on what investment a whole syllabus/programme, has made in ‘reflection’. Being introduced at Level 3 it is difficult to support and develop it. Perhaps the spread of Personal Development Plans through higher education will aid this; either way, it is clear that supplementary discourses need to be taught.

D thinks that a danger to supplementary discourses lies in the institutional desire for writing to develop (perhaps as a cash-cow saviour of English departments) and for publishing opportunities to be seen as primary. A thriller will be valued above a piece of experimental writing with an excellent supplementary discourse by the institution.

The Views of Creative Writing Students on the Practice and Function of Supplementary Discourses

General Introduction on the Data Collection Process

It was thought important to collect the views of students upon the supplementary discourses they are asked to produce. Experience shows that students often have very different notions from tutors as to what is required of them in academic work, and it was thought that this area might be open to those misinterpretations and misunderstandings. The responses can be compared to those in 2.32 of the report, where tutors express their sense of the function of the discourse for students. It was also thought necessary to examine student responses by level to see whether an increased sophistication was observed.

It was decided that rather than conduct the research across a number of institutions it was more cogent to focus upon one centre, where the types of supplementary discourse for each level could be described. The questionnaires were distributed and collected during Semester One. This

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means that certain module or year supplementary discourses had yet to be experienced.

The students at undergraduate level are studying on a modular degree, with the Writing programme forming either a joint or minor of their degree. It is not compulsorily jointed with English, although this remains a popular combination.

The students were asked the same, simple, but open questions, at all levels:

1. What do you write about in these kinds of writing?

2. Why are you asked to produce it as part of your studies?

3. What is its use to you as a writer?

Students at Level One

Students at level one are asked to produce a Self Assessment and an Annotated Bibliography with each piece of creative writing. They are penalised for not producing it, but it is not separately assessed. No wordage is stipulated. They will also be introduced to the practice of reading as a writer (but had not at the time of questioning). They will also produce an overall reflection at the end of the year but students in the sample were probably not thinking of this, although they were reminded of the kinds of discourse asked of them.

Questioned about what the students produce, one respondent writes evaluatively, ‘Self-Assessment is “my own feedback”’, a term which usefully sees the intra-textual nature of the exercise. Unanimity is shown on this point. Students write about their approaches to tackling the task set, and about their processes and choices. They express their opinions on their relative success or not (most balanced weakness against strengths). (Only one thinks it is her duty to point out what she has enjoyed doing.) Most see the self-assessment as being a chance to speculate on future work; a number saw it as a forum to ask for specific ‘feedback’ from, dialogue with, the tutor.

Students tend to comment on the annotated bibliography separately and see its function as revealing the textual ‘inspiration’ of the creative work; a few see it as a chance to compare their own work to that of published authors.

Most see this as a discourse produced for their own benefit, although about half realise it has a function for the examiner.

‘We can teach ourselves,’ states one first year; ‘ … can see what we have done wrong before it is handed in,’ which also admits such work has a function alongside the creative and could contribute to changing the creative writing before assessment. Another sees it as part of the machinery of being able to see work ‘objectively’. The respondent who says a self-assessment ‘gives the work a more substantial feel’ may be suspecting that the discourse is open to abuse or manipulation, but the replies were mainly innocent of the power of the tutor or of the discourse’s persuasive power over the tutor.

Writing self-assessments is seen also as a conduit of communication with the tutor, a means of explaining the students’ development. The student

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may express opinions on strengths and weaknesses but this process allows the tutor to help the student.

This group of first year students is very clear that the process assists them in the writing of pieces of work submitted and in the general assessment of their progress through their new course. Some are clear that the process of writing a self-assessment could be useful after a first draft (i.e., not as a retrospective on a finished piece), or even that the process might be cumulative by looking at a number of evaluations over time.

Students at Level Two

Students at level two (and also at level three) are asked to produce a Self Assessment and an Annotated Bibliography with each piece of creative writing. They are penalised for not producing it, but it is not separately assessed. No wordage is stipulated. They will have an exercise in reading as a writer. They will also produce an overall reflection at the end of each module or year.

Second year students use more terms to describe their work in supplementary discourses than the first years. The achievement and the process are described, along with problems, but elements such as technique, the genesis or stimulus of the writing, and also its development, are charted. One student writes of tracing the development through successive stages of re-drafting. A holistic sense of reflection upon more general skills acquired during the module, not just in the piece of work being discussed, emerges in a couple of responses.

One clearly sees that supplementary discourses have a function for markers and examiners and that he could influence them, by outlining ‘what ideals and ideas that I include in my writing that I may feel need explaining or defending for the purposes of marking’. Another comments: ‘It’s a good opportunity to indulge myself in ego’, seeing the discourse as a chance to either praise unreservedly or to commit acts of mea culpa self-criticism. But as a whole, the students are less concerned with a simple identification of success or failure in a piece of work.

Annotated bibliographies are seen in terms of tracing ‘influences’ from reading, including books on craft. One criticises the ‘annotations’ to the bibliography, another questioned the necessity of a bibliography. Two think the bibliography is irrelevant, because ideas for literature do not derive from reading. They clearly have yet to encounter intertextuality.

Some students are clear that the exercise of Reading as a Writer is about a personal response and examining the making of a piece of writing; others confess to finding it difficult to keep off the style of literary criticism, but recognise the existence of a difference. Reading as a writer is only singled out once, not for the obvious reason that reading affects writing, but conversely because being a writer can offer one ‘different perspectives’ as a reader.

Students at level two write of the need to ‘demonstrate’ and ‘show’ through their supplementary discourses, indicating that it is for the tutor’s eyes, but very few mention assessment as a factor. It merely helps the tutor follow the development or even – as one put it- allows the student to explain

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unfamiliar styles and techniques to enable a tutor to discern the student’s intentions.

Most, however, see the necessity of the discourse as deriving from its function for the students, to allow them to become more aware of progress and redrafting skills, and of choices made.

One student talks of learning to use this self-knowledge ‘to our creative advantage’. Another writes of learning from this demand to ‘understand (her) role as a writer’. Only one thinks it has any direct bearing on forcing students to read more.

This group is absolutely clear that this mode of ‘self-analysis’ (which one called ‘invaluable’) is a tool for reflective problem solving. What comes over very strongly is the value of consciously understanding processes, progress and strengths and weaknesses. One speaks of a ‘clarity of thought’ created by ‘verbalising abstract concepts’, as he puts it. Almost as strongly recognised is the role of the exercises in allowing writers to ‘expand’, ‘stretch your technique’, try things out, and ‘experiment’. It is clearly seen as an explorative developmental tool for writing itself.

Students at Level Three

As they had in earlier years, third year students write of their ‘approaches’, influences, successes, and achievements. They chart changes made, their problems and progress. But there is more talk here of development as a possibility. They will discuss sources of texts. They use a variety of terms to discuss the process of writing in their discussions of self assessments. They write of methods, and terms like ‘construction’ and ‘structure’ are used with assurance. ‘Research’ is mentioned but remains undefined and one writes of recording how techniques can be introduced and adapted to the students’ own purposes. Another writes of discussing alternatives or ‘rejected ideas’. These may involve drafting, of course, but decisions about drafting are not in abundance. At this level questions of the effect of a piece of writing are raised. One sees the discourse in terms of explanation, as an ‘opportunity to clarify what it is that I have created, and hopefully clearly answering the question why?’

Reading as a writer is addressed briefly, and the problem of differentiating it from literary criticism arises again. The end of year Reflection is seen as a large scale Self Assessment (perhaps missing the chance it offers to reflect generally on the skills the individual has developed).

Questioned on the function of the discourse, many sounded tentative, but, in fact, these students assign a larger function of the discourse to tutors, and are clear about what they perceive the discourse to be doing for themselves.

Most regard the discourses’ function in terms of self-development and reflection, as they had at earlier levels, but there was a greater sense of generality. Progress is something to ‘chart’, processes are definitely in the plural. Even though they are near the end of their university course, their sense of future development is strong, and the reflection is a guide to later revision. One writes even of gaining an ability to ‘give a mature, writerly opinion on mine and others’’ writing.

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There is a clear sense that students are justifying their work, or explaining intentions, and they are, at this level, aware of to whom they must explain. These students realise that offering a guide to their writing is important for a tutor, who may wish to match performance against intention, or against certain taught techniques which the work is attempting to demonstrate.

Annotated bibliographies are not much discussed, but remain unpopular, and are dismissed in some cases as merely having a policing role to make sure students do some reading, but in one case is seen as a guard against plagiarism. (This reluctance perhaps reflects that these students were not required to produce these in their first year.)

This group seems very clear that the act of producing various kinds of supplementary discourse involves a Janus-headed process of retrospection and speculation. Reflection matches a sense of experiment (though less so than the second years). There is the sense that the process of doing the self assessment crystallises ideas that are otherwise implicit and that this results in ‘heightened awareness’, consciously to state what is clearly learned and intended. There is an acknowledgement of the importance, but also of the difficulty, of writing supplementary discourses (not recorded elsewhere). Some feel such reflection gets in the way, since it is demanded after the writing process, but one realises the role of the self assessment in making ‘last minute changes’. One refusenik interestingly pointed out: ‘I feel we should only be marked on our creative writing. The interpretation of our writing by ourselves is of little use to the student. I feel it is a gimmick and superfluous.’ No other student thought ‘interpretation’ was the name of the game, but one saw that she was producing a persuasive rhetorical document that had a clear audience and a clear, but limited, function: It ‘helps me “sell” my work to the tutors – I can’t tell them how to read it but I can guide their appreciation of it.’

Students at M Level

The students will be knowledgeable to different degrees as to the discourse of poetics, as a speculative discourse upon work produced and upon work in progress. Assignments may be creative, critical or a mixture of the two. The students questioned were just beginning to think about their final dissertation, which comprises of creative work plus a ‘commentary or work of poetics’ (to quote their handbook).

While some MA Writing students see their poetics in terms familiar from levels 1-3 (achievement, success, approaches) there are some additional perspectives from this group (who had not necessarily experienced levels 1-3 of formal writing tuition at the same (or at any) institution). Interestingly, notions of objectivity and alterity surface in the opportunity given to take (and be forced to take) an academic/outside view of one’s work. Another sees the exercise as a discussion with oneself. Several, as the course would suggest, see the relation of creative work to theory as being important. Reading as a writer as a notion is not particularly prevalent. One wrote passionately of connecting writing with ideas ‘out there’, and of using the process of modelling to ‘meld’ his writing with ideas.

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A number wrote of discussing future work. These students all see the production of poetics as connected to them

as Writers and as helping them identify themselves as writers. There is a clear sense that they are being asked to explicate overtly what might be only personal, unexamined or implicit. A couple write of being forced to consider why one writes at all, and where one is positioned as a writer. The academic (or theoretical) side (while sometimes being thought of as separate) teaches them to ask whether their own work is ‘postmodernist’, for example, to position themselves in the field of literary production. ‘Reflection is part of creation,’ one asserts. Another said it ‘changes ‘me’ – particularly it opens up the rooms in the literary mansion that I’m prepared to enter’.

Less schooled as a group in the processes of supplementary discoursing than undergraduates, one student at least found the process of reflection initially ‘false’, only discovering value in it later. Another realises that all ‘good’ writers indulge in poetics. Another summarised many when he said, ‘Self –analysis leads to self-improvement.’ Retrospection moves towards projection. One questions whether the process of writing or the product is important. (Both were, she decides.) Also on a longer course, over two years, the discourse can be useful to ‘get back into’ a piece of writing. There are, however, some individual remarks which are interesting. ‘I think the poetics can come closer to what it is you are looking for in your writing rather than the piece of writing itself’. Even stranger: ‘It enables me to take off the mask labelled “writer” that I used to see as being central,’ to become more adventurous in writing. But there were warnings from two students who were also both emphatic that supplementary discourses help one approach ‘objectivity’. They feel it can prevent creative or instinctual writing by foregrounding self-consciousness. PhD Level

There is some variety, in this understandably smaller grouping, between those hoping to present a piece of creative writing and a commentary, through to those who intend to research some aspect of contemporary writing alongside their own developing work, through to one candidate who intends to contextualise his own published and performed work and to present it as part of an historical movement.

There are, as one might expect of ‘blue sky’ research, the most individualised responses (six in all). The research projects vary and so what is demanded varies. They felt they were writing:

A commentary on one’s poetics; and a study of a genre;

an essay on Genesis: how ideas and practice merge in a process to reach the finished piece of work;

a Self-examination and reflection ‘leading to differing critical thinking’;

a study of the relationship between practice and the poetics of published contemporary writers;

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To question and clarify assumptions that underlie the creative work.’ To write something that comes from the same territory as the poems, on the border between the creative and the theoretical.’

More enigmatically one states: ‘a doing + a thing done’, matching process and product.

This group is clear that the supplementary discourse is related to the requirements of a research degree. So one muses that it will ‘prove’ that enough work and thought has gone into the literary production for it to ‘deserve’ a PhD. Others ventriloquise the regulations and write of ensuring that the work is an ‘original contribution’ to scholarship or an ‘innovative’ piece that adds to the understanding of current literary practice. One wrote of its enabling ‘control’ over one’s work, but the sense of the discourse is directed outside of the institution and its supervisors to the awarding body.

At this level there is a tendency for poetics to be speculative or to even be an object of study, though reflection upon, or interrogation of, practice is still primary. So that students write of a permission to experiment, but this is in tandem with a study of the poetics of other writers or of the writing they are involved with (i.e., looking at poetics as a discourse). There is an evident straining towards making ‘changes in habitual, extant practice’ in several. One saw it quite consciously as a bridge between creativity and critical thinking.

Conclusions

General Introduction

It has been decided to present the conclusions in four parts, three of them pertaining to parts 2, 3 and 4 of the report, respectively, and the final part suggesting some brief areas of comparison and contrast between them. The three parts of the project pertain to the three stages of the project, and since the second stage is largely premised upon the conclusions to the interim report (i.e., the early draft of part two), it seems wise to separate them in this way. As part four wholly concerns student perceptions, these might make interesting separate reading.

As already stated, the initial sample of the questionnaires, which informs part two, is quite small; the follow up interviews, focussing on five respondents, is narrower still (although these individuals ‘represent’ the range of institutions at which creative writing is currently taught). Part four, for purposes of level comparison, only focussed upon students in one institution.

While these ‘snapshots’ arguably display a good range of practices and attitudes, they cannot claim to be totally representative. This must be borne in mind when reading the conclusions.

Conclusions to Part Two of the Report

The sample is drawn from comparatively veteran centres, the overwhelming majority of which require students to produce supplementary discourses for

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which they have many names. They ask students to reflect both on individual pieces of work and on complete(d) modules or courses.

Despite some scepticism, all of the centres are committed to some degree to the discourse, and have clearly thought about its function. The discourse is still emerging, and its practice (like much in undergraduate writing teaching) is filtering down from M Level to undergraduate levels. Such filtering down requires readjustment. (The question about how a PhD fits this pattern is attended to in 5.3 below.)

Supplementary discourses are not always separately assessed (or assessed at all), or supported by formal criteria, which suggests an unsystematic approach to its production, function and assessment. It could, of course, demonstrate the encouragement of developmental, non-assessed journal or notebook work. The wordage demanded varies. Some centres allow the absence of supplementary discourses to go unpenalised. Put more positively, it is not universally compulsory. Other centres regard it as equally weighted with creative work (or in some cases theoretically more). There is a sense that the quality – but not the function - of the discourse will vary according to level, the complexity of reflection increasing by level, but formal level descriptors are not referred to so it is impossible to assess this.

While these local variations reflect differing practices, the tendency to assess ‘on package’ as one tutor puts it, to not assess supplementary discourses separately and award it a separate mark, might not make the process and its function transparent to students. Its presence is a useful weapon against plagiarism.

There seem to be three interest groups using the discourse for different purposes, the first two of which has been the main object of attention.

1. Reader/tutors-assessors2. Writer/students3. Internal and External Moderators and Assessors

Supplementary discourses play a valid part of moderation, charting processes that the absent examiner did not perceive in the workshop or seminar. Additionally it is clear that the presence of supplementary discourses (their academic rigour, their demand for skills of student reflexivity) has helped in the validation of writing courses. Supplementary discourses are not, however, seen as an academic ‘bolt on’ to justify the ways of writing to unsympathetic validation panels. Indeed, what comes over very clearly is the development of a self-conscious and reflective profession of creative writing teaching professionals who are capable of establishing the agendas, on supplementary discourses (as on other matters).

For tutors, the importance of supplementary discourses for assessment – even if not separately graded – is clear. There is evidence that the supplementary discourses are regarded as a statement of the writers’ intentions for a tutor’s judgement as to appropriateness as to market, publication, genre – as well to match performance in terms of success and failure against stated aesthetic intentions. This, at its most positive and enabling, allows students to establish and state their own benchmarks for the piece.

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Supplementary discourses are often seen as ‘safety nets’ in terms of the assessment procedures, so that intention can be rewarded if execution is inadequate. This immediately throws up the question of whether process and/or product is being tracked and rewarded. Centres clearly have differing views on this. Some stress the recording of process to dispel residual illusions of inspirational theories of composition, but still favour assessing the account of product, for example. Depending on the nature of the supplementary discourses, students are able to track larger processes over a course or module, and to speculate about future work and the writing processes’ connection to larger social and aesthetic forces and to theoretical concerns.

The supplementary discourse – even if unassessed or not separately assessed – clearly influences the awarding the final grade to a piece of work, since it reflects upon that work. No tutor can un-read it, although some claim not to be influenced by it. Clearly if process (which might be visible partially through the drafting process) is assessed then the supplementary discourse will be important. Again, it might make the process transparent to the assessing tutor as well as to the assessed student.

Tutors see the function of the discourse for students in a reciprocal way. They stress the function of students explaining and evaluating retrospectively, but they also see a speculative function for the discourse, in that it might be part of the students’ own developmental progress.

There is clearly some fear that the discourse is used by students to unduly influence tutors. Some tutors feel able to resist.

Many – but not all – writing courses are taught in relationship to, or as part of, English literature as an academic discipline. Every writing tutor stresses the relationship of the activity of reading to the practice of writing, but this is not to say that studying English literature and practising writing share the same symbiotic relationship. One assumption made about the nature of the supplementary discourse, that its production consists of the exercise of the same critical skills employed by literary critics, the same skills taught by teachers of literature. There is still perhaps a residual sense that the function of writing on English programmes is to teach literary appreciation by other means. While this may be true, or at least possible (if not universally accepted as desirable), this does not mean supplementary discourses use the skills of literary analysis in the same way (or, in the view of some, at all). In short, there may not be a developed concept of ‘reading as a writer’ (a term now used quite widely) whose skills would not be identical to those of a critic. Student writers are sometimes expected to read their own work as though they were reading the work from the outside, or they were ordinary readers rather than its unique originator. It is arguable that it is unhealthy (or impossible) for writers to achieve this. It is one thing to chart the process of composition or the philosophy of composition, but another to interpret one’s own particular text for a reader. It is not clear what use there is to a developing writer in this exercise.

It is not clear whether all writing students are asked to write on other works (either of published writers or of there peers), or how we might expect that to be different from an English Literature students’ work, particularly on courses taught within English degrees. Discussions of craft, facture and intention are not favoured in literary discussion, while they are common in

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writing discussions. This kind of writing might not be thought to be ‘supplementary’ at all, as some tutors have suggested, but ‘complementary’.

It is clear that the discourse, along with any other assessed practice, should be taught and that it might have specific needs as a form of reflection and speculation upon literary production. The danger of literary critical materials in analysing one’s own work has been raised. Other art discourses and critical theory are also sometimes used, but they apparently feed into literary production or into discussions of the literary field of production. These theoretical perspectives are being used to teach the nature of writing, textuality, literariness, more generally.

It is a surprise to find some tutors stating that supplementary discourses might be (or become) primary. Common sense dictates that they are secondary. But they could be said to be primary in one important sense: that the writing to which they refer is not yet in existence, that their purpose is to help to bring the work to fruition. There is another sense of primary, of course: that the commentary on process and product might be more important than the creative work; as an essay on creativity it might be a valuable exercise, particularly if writing is taught within an English degree. The degree of autonomy of the discourses increases by level, particularly at postgraduate level.

There seem to be 4 modes in which the discourse appears (along with mixed modes between them) as described in 3.7: text accompanying writing or reflecting on courses; journals and notebooks; reading as a writer; and poetics.

It is clear that these written forms are supplemented by seminar and workshop discussion (some of which may be assessed and rewarded), of which there are two main types: the tutor led series of workshops with exercises and the Philip Hobsbawm style tabling work and discussion. While this is the same for any classroom based academic discipline, it is clear that the two types of workshop, particularly the second, are important parts of the production and reflection of student writing. This report acknowledges variations of these and some modes of recording and extending workshop discussion. Supplementary discourses may not merely be supplementary to the product and process of writing but to the mechanisms of the syllabus and curriculum.

There is little sense that a supplementary discourse might be produced before the creative work is produced; a journal might be a discourse produced alongside creative work, for example.

Innovations proposed include developing aspects of recording process and tightening up procedures, rewards and penalties. There is attention paid to level, and evidence of the filtering down practices from longer running MAs to undergraduate programmes.

Conclusions to Part Three of the Report

The standardisation of the provision and assessment criteria for supplementary discourses is not approved of; there is, however, a trust in the formal and informal exchanges within the subject community to develop standards.

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In fact, there was some agreement as to the function of the discourse, suggesting that much of this exchange has already been effected. The rules of the language game of describing and assessing the discourse are well established, although there is local variation in practice. One suggestion was that the discourse should be concise and brief.

One negative function observed in student work is the uncritical elevation of students’ work by themselves. The opposite could also be a possibility.

There is some debate concerning the kinds of skill required to produce such a discourse. In institutions where there is a connection with the teaching of English Literature there are often assumptions about the courses sharing analytic skills. However, although there exists a shared vocabulary, the kinds of reflection on the students’ own work, or the kinds of reading as a writer (of published or of peer assessed work), relies on different skills. It is not clear how these are taught – in the main they are - particularly where there is little time to teach this skill on a programme where writing is only an element.

A general question remains concerning the nature of this reflection sufficiently distinct from the kinds of reflection students are asked to undertake elsewhere on their courses. I am thinking of the introduction of Personal Development Profiles (as well as even aspects such as course evaluation). While the developments of PDPs may be of assistance to the cause of reflection in general, they have the potential to confuse. If there are no other kinds of reflection available to the student, if the institution or department is not committed to forms of student reflection, it is difficult to see how such habits of projective introspection as reflection or poetics may be inculcated successfully, without specific tuition.

A specific question concerns whether students are reflecting upon the process of writing or the written product. The answer to this question seems to be one of level, since there seems to be a passage from the description of process to the consideration of a finished project between level one and M level; there seems to be a similar development in terms of whether the supplementary discourse can ever be conceived as primary. It can be seen that the supplementary discourses become more autonomous at each level, rising to complete autonomy (or even elision with creative work) at PhD level. Likewise poetics as a speculative discourse upon the philosophy of writing, or even as a manifesto is found in its most developed forms at the higher levels.

However, it is also clear that the issue of what determines a PhD supplementary discourse is as yet unresolved, and is perhaps not clearly differentiated from that of an MA. This is a matter for university regulations, and validations of programmes, but it also depends on what level is regarded as the terminal one for writing as a subject.

The question of whether supplementary discourses – perhaps of specific kinds of assignments like logs or peer-appraisals – can fully reward the processes of workshopping is worthy of further research and development. The role of assessed reading logs and un-assessed journals and notebooks is being evaluated, in their relationships to, or integration into, supplementary discourses.

The question of whether the discourse can deal with the perceived negative consensual nature of the workshop experience is another unresolved issue.

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Suggested innovations are of two types, the specific and the far reaching. Specific innovations include attempts to make the supplementary discourses more of a dialogue between tutor and student. The far reaching includes an investigation of the interdisciplinary uses of writing, beyond the traditionally creative and beyond the realms of English Literature.

It is interesting to note the complete absence in the interviews of any sense that supplementary discourses exist to ‘justify’ creative writing as an ‘academic’ subject. As the subject becomes more confident in its procedures and judgements and in its resistance to institutional and commercial pressures, it might develop discourses that combine the so-called creative and so-called critical.

Conclusions to Part Four of the Report

These results should be encouraging for centres committed to supplementary discourses at undergraduate level. The students are clear about the reflective functions of the practice of writing about their own work for their own continuing practice. They see that it is part of an ongoing process of reflection, and not simply a retrospective valorisation of their work. It has a role in determining what Ezra Pound called ‘the next job’. Some even see that it can influence the piece that is being produced, that they can make last minute changes. This raises the question of whether the practice of self-commentary might not be made less retrospective to enable the process of drafting, rather than simply being an account of the process of drafting and of the products of writing.

The vocabulary used to describe the discourse (and presumably the vocabulary in the discourse) increases in sophistication with level. One surprising element is that only a minority at realise that the exercise is a rhetorical exercise. For students who often are trained to think about the audience of writing, they show little awareness that the discourse might influence the mark they receive by persuading a reader about the creative work, although this awareness decreases by level. However, the positive effect is that there is little sense that the discourse is designed to ‘puff’ inadequate work. There is little evidence of the lack of ‘dissatisfaction’ that one of the interviewees of part two observed when he was an external examiner

There were very few mentions of the journals the students are required to keep, and this alerts one to the discussions about tying journals in with supplementary discourses more (it is the view of this study that it is one already).

The students were happier with commenting on their own work than with exercises that involve reading.

The concerns about the reading as a writer exercises in terms of students having difficulties with the influence of ‘Eng Lit’ training is surprising, given the course is not necessarily tied to English (but the students could be referring to past experience of the subject). This confirms an uncertainty or anxiety in the profession about the role the formal study of literature has with regards to these students.

Annotated bibliographies are unpopular. Students resent the ‘policing’ of reading described by some tutors. They are defending their lack of reading

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in various ways. This is where a lack of ‘dissatisfaction’ is clearly demonstrated as they do not realise, or do not wish to accept, that a writer is a reader who writes.

MA students oddly show a lack of understanding about the rhetorical role of the discourse, and see it as student-centred. But they are happier to explore issues of poetics, a term this group of students is expected to use extensively, to examine issues of text and technique and text and context.

PhD candidates mirror some of the perceptions of the writer-academics who run these fast developing programmes nationally. They are more extrinsically motivated than other groups, aware that regulations should inform them of their responsibilities and the divisions between the ‘creative’ and ‘critical’ parts. Some see the discourse as being a tracing of writing process (which gives it problems as ‘original research’). Some see the relationship between the two in terms of a writerly poetics. None sees it as autonomously publishable or as absorbed into the creative work, as has been suggested by academics interviewed.

General Conclusion

It has to be noted that while one would expect broad agreement between the conclusions to part two and part three (the contributors to the latter were, after all, drawn from the former) it is pleasing to see a broad agreement as to the function of supplementary discourses between the wide range of tutors and the more narrowly selected (but more numerous) group of students. The students were, however, less aware of the rhetorical nature of the discourses with relation to assessment. They tended to emphasise the function for their own self-development. In a world obsessed with measurement (which proposes that you can fatten a pig by measuring it) this is reassuring.

Recommendations

These recommendations are addressed to the creative writing teaching community in higher education for further consideration. It is clear that there is already much debate about the nature of the practice of supplementary discourses and these recommendations are intended merely to open areas of debate. I am not suggesting that none of the suggestions below is happening. Indeed, this list may be of particular benefit to new centres. Only my first recommendation is intended to be dogmatic.

It is recommended:

1 That the term ‘supplementary discourses’ is not used to name the various practices. The rich list in 2.2 and in footnote 1 suggests how well nomenclature reflects the nuanced tasks different centres set.

2 That questions of level be considered with relation to the discourses. The development of specific level descriptors might be advised. (See Appendix Three for the present author’s initial attempt to schematise this).

3 That the nature, scope and amount of the discourses at postgraduate levels (and between its three levels) be defined. At PhD level the increased

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autonomy of learning suggests that the accompanying discourse may be autonomously publishable.

4 That centres consider adopting formal criteria and the separate awarding of a clearly defined mark to substantial supplementary discourses, so students will be more aware of their function in assessment processes. This should not damage its speculative functions for students.

5 That centres are clear about whether process or product (or both) is the object of self-reflexive forms of supplementary discourse, and whether (or how) this differs by level (i.e., whether there is more focus on process at level one).

6 That tutors consider ways to diminish the uncritical elevation (or condemnation) of students’ work by themselves, perhaps by closely defining the tasks set to avoid this possibility. This may be one area in which delimited brevity and concision in the production of the discourse may help.

7 That the question of the relationship of supplementary discourses to the discourses of English Literature be clarified. This may appear to be settled structurally, in that writing may be an integrated part of a given degree, but it is clear that, although there might be a shared vocabulary, the skills needed and the analytical tools used are different. Questions of intention, success and reflection need to be considered. Students might have to unlearn certain processes. However, certain kinds of critical discourse or theory seem well-placed to teach the nature of writing, textuality and literariness. (The kinds of inter-departmental struggles between ‘theorists’ and ‘writers’ experienced on US campuses are to be deplored. Useful avenues of combining and contrasting distinct approaches should be encouraged, perhaps by developing supplementary discourses of a new kind.)

8 That the wisdom and usefulness of asking students to ‘explain’ or analyse their own work as though it is produced by another (although justifiable as parts of larger possible strategies) needs careful attention.

9 That tutors consider the spread of the practice of ‘reading as a writer’ (both of published and peer work), in order to encourage reading as an integral and assessed part of writing teaching.

10 That tutors across the discipline share both the practice of developing supplementary discourses and of ways of teaching it as a specific discourse with demands of its own.

11 That specific forms of supplementary discourses are developed to encourage further ‘dialogue’ between tutors and students.

12 That tutors consider further ways of rewarding participation in workshop discussion as a development of the scope of supplementary discourses. Workshops are a major mode of teaching and learning. Supplementary

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discourses could be used to strengthen individuals against the negative ‘consensual’ effects of some workshop situations. 13 That tutors consider the development of supplementary discourses that can be more speculative in terms of either existing before creative work is completed as theoretical prospectuses, or by developing a poetics for future works.

14 That tutors consider the development of supplementary discourses that will serve as practical devices for changing the work in the process of drafting, not just as a record of that drafting. Perhaps the development of journals or logs as a variety of supplementary discourse might help, despite the fact they are difficult to assess or monitor.

15 That as ‘reflection’ becomes more demanded of undergraduates more generally, centres and tutors clearly define the role of reflection within their courses with respect to institutional demands for Personal Development Plans and other schemes. Reflection on the processes and/or products of writing and reflection on general scholarly progress might be best separated or integrated, depending on the quality of institutional practices.

16 That interested parties be encouraged to develop ways of combining critical and creative exercises in a hybrid discourse of its own, or of the investigation of the relationship of creative writing with disciplines other than English literature. Either might finally render the term ‘supplementary discourses’ irrelevant.

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Appendices Appendix One: the questionnaire

SUPPLEMENTARY DISCOURSES IN CREATIVE WRITING TEACHINGI.Basic information on Creative Writing teaching in your institution.

1.At what levels is Creative Writing taught at your institution?

Level I □Level II □Level III □MA □Ph.D □

2.By what modes of delivery is Creative Writing taught in your institution?

Module □Pathway □Single Hons □Joint/Combined Hons □MA □Ph.D □

3.How long has Creative Writing (at any level) been taught in your institution?

□ years

II. Information about Supplementary Discourses

By supplementary discourses we mean pieces of written work submitted, either as items of coursework in their own right, or directly accompanying creative work, for assessment purposes. We would argue that a primary function of this discourse is to encourage students to reflect on their creative work in a variety of ways. Some of the most common terms for these discourses we have come across are: reflection, self-assessment, critique, commentary, journal, poetics.

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4.a) Do you ask your students to produce supplementary discourses (in whatever form) to accompany their creative work?

Yes □ No □

b) If not, why not?

5.a) Do you give your students opportunities reflect on their work in other ways, such as by peer assessment or through workshop activities?

Yes □ No □

b) If so, please specify:

6.At what levels do you ask your students to produce supplementary discourses?

Level I □Level II □Level III □MA □Ph.D □

7.

What do you call these supplementary discourses?

Reflection □

Self-assessment □

Critique □

Commentary □

Journal □

Poetics □

Others (please specify):

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8.

In supplementary discourses do you ask students to reflect on

Individual pieces of writing?

Yes □ No □

Their progress over a module, programme or year?

Yes □ No □

9.

a) Do you provide any tuition for the writing of supplementary discourses?

Yes □ No □

b) If so, please specify any materials or activities you use:

10.

a) Do you see any link between supplementary discourses and literary-critical and/or theoretical discourses?

Yes □ No □

b) If so, which literary-critical/theoretical discourses?

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11.a) Are there formally validated criteria/academic rationales for supplementary discourses expressed in course documentation?

Yes □ No □

b) If so, where are these criteria held? (e.g. validation documents, module handbooks?)

IF YOU WISH TO MAKE RELEVANT EXTRACTS AVAILABLE TO US PLEASE PASTE INTO AN ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT AND SEND TO XXXX@edgehill.ac.uk

12.a) Are these supplementary discourses always assessed?

Yes □ No □

b) Are they always given a separate grade?

Yes □ No □

c) Are they assessed but not given a separate grade?

Yes □ No □

d) If they are not always assessed, what has influenced the department’s

decisions about which pieces of work to assess or not to assess (please

include details about level etc)?

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13.

a) Is there a penalty for not submitting supplementary discourses?

Yes □ No □

b) If there is a penalty, how is this expressed?

14.

If supplementary discourses are assessed, what is the proportion, in terms of assessment weighting, of supplementary discourses to creative work as a percentage of an overall course/module grade? (e.g. 20% supplementary discourse to 80% creative work).

% Supplementary discourse

% Creativework

Level ILevel IILevel IIIMAPh.D

5.

What is the wordage of supplementary discourses in relation to creative work (if applicable)?

Please express answers in wordage and as percentages:

Supplementary discoursewordage

Creative workWordage

%Supplementary discourse

% Creative work

Level ILevel IILevel IIIMAPh.D

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III: Issues about Supplementary Discourses

In this section we want to find out your views about the functions of supplementary discourses in Creative Writing teaching, and issues around its relationship to assessment and to creative practice.

16. SUPPLEMENTARY DISCOURSES AND STUDENTS

a) Please could you indicate the extent to which you agree/disagree with the following statements:

Supplementary discourses allow students:

i) To describe and explain their creative products and processes

Stronglyagree

Agree No view Disagree Stronglydisagree

ii) To evaluate and analyse critically their creative products and processes

Stronglyagree

Agree No view Disagree Stronglydisagree

iii) To speculate on their future practice as writers

Stronglyagree

Agree No view Disagree Stronglydisagree

iv) To learn about literature through writing

Stronglyagree

Agree No view Disagree Stronglydisagree

b) Do you think that i-iv vary according to levels? (e.g. strongly agree with ‘i’ at Level I but not at Ph.D)

Yes□ No□

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c) If they vary, how do they vary?

d) Are there any other functions of supplementary discourses for students not included here?

17. SUPPLEMENTARY DISCOURSES AND TUTORS

a) Please could you indicate the extent to which you agree with the following statements:

Supplementary discourses allow tutors:

i) To assess students’ creative products and processes

Stronglyagree

Agree No view Disagree Stronglydisagree

ii) To facilitate discussion with students about their creative products and processes

Stronglyagree

Agree No view Disagree Stronglydisagree

iii) To monitor the originality of students’ work and combat plagiarism

Stronglyagree

Agree No view Disagree Stronglydisagree

b) Do you think that i-iii vary according to levels?

Yes□ No□

c) If they vary, how do they vary?

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d) Are there any other functions of supplementary discourses for students not included here?

18.

a) Does your assessment of supplementary discourses influence your assessment of creative work it accompanies?

Yes □ No □

b) How? For example: can a supplementary discourse validate work positively (e.g. explain techniques not immediately clear to a reader) or negatively (e.g. puff up mediocre work by references to published writers, schools, theories)?

19.

Do some students produce high quality supplementary discourses and bad quality creative work? Or vice versa? What implications does this have for assessment?

20.

a) Are you concerned that some students do not see any point in producing supplementary discourses and don’t take ownership and responsibility for the discourses they produce?

Yes □ No □

b) If so, can you suggest ways to change this?

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21.

How would you characterise the relationship between supplementary discourses and creative work?

22.

Do you think supplementary discourses are always inherently secondary; or can they, in some cases, be a primary element of student progression?

23.

What role do supplementary discourses have in internal moderation and in presenting your teaching and learning to external scrutiny (externals, QAA etc)?

24.

a) Are you planning to make any changes to the way in which you use supplementary discourses in teaching and assessment?

Yes □ No □

b) If so, could you tell us about the changes you are planning?

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Appendix Two

Notes for the interviews

Prelude

1 The three stages of the project outlined

2 anonymity

3 The interview will move from structured to open

4 I hope you will respond to not only to what you do, but to what you see around you, and what you’ve seen in part one of the questionnaire. I am interested in qualitative notions; your attitudes, feeling, intuitions, hopes, fears, hunches and plans. I want to move out from my conclusions.

1. On the standardising of assessment nationally. Do you think this a good idea? I wrote in the conclusion of the interim report:

Supplementary discourses are not always separately assessed (or assessed at all), or supported by formal criteria, which suggests an unsystematic approach to its production, function and assessment. It could, of course, demonstrate the encouragement of developmental, non-assessed journal or notebook work. The wordage demanded varies. Some centres allow the absence of supplementary discourse to go unpenalised. Other centres regard it as equally weighted with creative work (or in some cases theoretically more). There is a sense that the quality – but not the function - of the discourse will vary according to level, the complexity of reflection increasing by level, but formal level descriptors are not referred to so it is impossible to assess this. Or is this formalisation only there to validate the subject?

2. What do you think the function of the supplementary discourses are in terms of assessment, for tutors. Are there hidden functions (such as those to do with plagiarism?) I have concluded:

The importance of the supplementary discourse for assessment – even if not separately graded – is clear. There is evidence that the supplementary discourse are regarded as a statement of the writers’ intentions for a tutor’s judgement as to appropriateness as to market, publication, genre – as well to match performance in terms of success and failure against stated aesthetic intentions. This, at its most positive, allows students to establish and state their own benchmarks for the piece. This is highly enabling for the student, but it may be philosophically dubious from any respondent’s point of view. Is fulfilling intentionality the sole guarantee of a writer’s worth? Such a view is long invalidated in literary theory and this issue is worth visiting in the evaluative part two of the research. The profession may be teaching creative writing, but is it practising creative reading?

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What do you think?

3. There are clearly questions about the relationship of the supplementary discourses we ask students to submit and other discourses (theoretical, eg.) and skills and other educational courses and contexts. I wrote:

There were some assumptions made about the nature of the supplementary discourse, that its production consists of the exercise of the same critical skills employed by literary critics, the same skills taught by teachers of literature. There may not be a concept of reading as a writer, whose skills would not be identical to that of a critic. Student writers are sometimes expected to read their own work as though they were reading the work from the outside. It’s not clear how much Writing students are asked to write on other works, and how we might expect that to be different from an English Literature students’ work, particularly on courses taught within English degrees. This kind of writing might not be thought to be ‘supplementary’ at all.

Is this a unique discourse with rules of its own, a hybrid one? Are we supporting other analytical skills directly?

4. Are we examining Process and/or Product through supplementary discourses? Is the resultant discourse primary or secondary? Does this change at PhD level?

There was little sense that the supplementary discourse might be produced before the creative work is produced. The insistence that the journal might be a discourse to be produced alongside creative work is worth examining in part two of the research.

It was a surprise to find some people stating that supplementary discourses might be (or become) primary. Common sense dictates that they are secondary. But it could be said to be primary in one important sense only: that the writing to which it refers is not yet in existence, that its purpose is to help to bring the work to fruition. There is another sense of primary, of course: that the commentary on process and product might be more important than the creative work; as an essay on creativity it might be a valuable exercise, particularly if Writing is taught within an English degree.

5. There seem to be 4 modes in which the discourse appears (there are mixed modes between them of course):

5. Text accompanying writing or reflecting on courseswhich refers directly to the works produced;

6. Journals and notebookswhich are usually undirected, unassessed and student-centred;

7. Reading as a Writer

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which involves learning from other writers (which could include other students’ work, of course);

8. Poetics which is a term to describe a speculative discourse on writing in general that can be found occasionally in the other three.

Do these categories suggest anything to you? Do you want to comment upon them?

6. Do you have a sense of innovation in the discourse? How might it develop to become more efficient or solid. Less of a bolt on? What pedagogic materials or strategies need developing?

Centres are saying things like: ‘I want to analyse what we aim to assess by supplementary discourses, and then change the supplementary discourses to be a good instrument for such measurement. This would also involve integrating supplementary discourses much more into coursework.’

‘I want to put much more emphasis on the use of critique for the student looking to their future practice as writers. This element has been crucial in MA work & hitherto not so essential to BA work – I now think it is essential to all learning.’

‘We’re looking at increasing the importance of commentaries of undergraduates’

‘I have refined my list of reflective essay titles from an open “reflective commentary” to a mixed “critical/reflective” emphasis.

‘We are foregrounding the notebook in our first year classes in order to inculcate independent writing skills’

7. Are there other burning issues? Things that have remained unsaid. Things that have occurred to you whilst marking after responding to our questionnaire or reading the interim report?

Appendix Three

Discriminating Levels of Discourse Accompanying Creative Writing Assignments (creative critique, reflection, self-evaluation, commentary, poetics, etc...)

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The following are some suggestions for discriminating between levels and attempts at defining modal attainment. The principle of level description is that higher levels of attainment must be more autonomous and will move from mere description, through stages of analysis to a work of poetics or other discourse upon the art practised. They cannot simply be longer versions of the same thing.

I have made use of two important guidelines to generic level descriptors, those of the South East England Consortium for Credit Accumulation and Transfer (1996) and those of the Northern Ireland Credit and Accumulation and Transfer System (1998). So relevant are they that I have taken the “Self-appraisal, Reflection on Practice” from the SEEC document intact, and reproduced them below, and the “Autonomy” descriptors from the NICATS descriptors for Accountability.

While levels 1-3 (I shall convert NICATS’ 7 levels) are definitely apprentice levels of creative writing (whatever the quality of the writing), at M level and higher, the work is of a higher, even professional, level. At these levels one might expect a greater level of generality and autonomy. While apprentice writers might benefit from attempts to analyse their own work, a professional writer should never be in this position. There is, in any case, a certain impossibility about this, since the writer can never be a reader, for reasons I have explained elsewhere.

Level One

SEEC: The writer ‘is largely dependent on criteria set by others but begins to recognise own strengths and weaknesses.

NICATS: The writer will operate ‘under general guidance’.

At level 1 the student will be able to describe processes of composition and the various skills employed to achieve this, to evaluate success and failure in relation to task descriptions and assessment criteria or other external criteria.

The accompanying discourse should contain descriptions of writerly process, and may relate to received notions of appropriateness and literary value, which will have arisen out of the learning process.

In relation to creative work this discourse will be largely descriptive and therefore secondary.

Level Two

SEEC: The writer ‘is able to evaluate own strengths and weaknesses: can challenge received opinion and begins to develop own criteria and judgement’.

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NICATS: ‘The ability to ... take personal responsibility for planning and delivery is required’.

At level 2 the student will be able to evaluate own strengths and weaknesses in relation to both tasks and assessments and will begin to use tutor feedback to develop their own criteria for judgement of aesthetic value and artistic success. The accompanying discourse should contain descriptions of process, and evaluations of strengths and weaknesses in both process and product. It will begin to formulate judgments of a general literary nature.

In relation to creative work this discourse will be evaluative of processes used and work produced to achieve or attempt success.

Level Three

SEEC: The writer ‘is confident in application of own criteria of judgement and in challenge of received opinion in action and can reflect on action’.

NICATS: The writer will accept ‘full responsibility and accountability for all aspects of work and learning’.

At level 3 the student will be able to develop and apply own criteria and a poetics of writing (or philosophy of composition) that reflects on the value and success of the processes undertaken and the work produced. The criteria will also evaluate and challenge received notions of literary value.

The accompanying discourse should contain criteria and poetics are both specific to tasks undertaken and general to genre, or literary value judgements generally. It will not necessarily itemise process. Form may begin to reflect the emergent poetics.

In relation to creative work this discourse will be analytical at a specific level, and speculative at a general level, but will not particularly deal with processes, unless relevant to larger issues. The writer may profess ownership of the document and its ideas and ideals.

M Level

SEEC: The writer ‘engages with a critical community; reflecting habitually on own and others’ practice in order to improve own/others’ actions.

NICATS: ‘Accountability is usually to peers rather than to superiors. The learner is responsible for initiating supervisory and peer support contacts.’

At M level the student will be able to reflect on own work and that of others, with a speculative discourse upon writing, that is related as much to future work and to criteria that have emerged from the writerly community (both local and outside the course of study).

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The accompanying discourse should contain poetics that is analytical and speculative, that situates the writing achieved (and writing projected) in terms of the field of literary production, both locally and outside the course). Form of such writing may reflect the developed poetics. The writer will own the document and its ideas and ideals.

In relation to creative work this discourse will be able to move from the specific to the general, situating the writing in the literary field. It will offer intellectual arguments, but will be permissive of further experimentation.

PhD: not a level, but pure research

At PhD level the student will be able to produce a discrete document out of the experience of the process of writing the creative work. While it might refer to the creative work, it won’t operate as a commentary or reflection upon it, even less constitute a critical reading of it, but a freestanding essay in genre, or a document of poetics, for example. It will refer to the practise of others.

The accompanying discourse should contain an intellectual argument that is germane to the issues of the creative work, and amount to a developed poetics of writing, for work and genre, placing it in national (and international) literary, social, intellectual contexts. It will potentially challenge the field of literary production, or even construct a fresh literary context for the work. At this level it is difficult, indeed wrong, to prescribe content. Its form is permitted to reflect the poetics it embodies.

In relation to creative work this discourse will be an autonomous piece of work, dealing with issues raised by the creative work, or providing its intellectual and other contexts. It will not be secondary to the creative work, but is speculative, permissive of further experimentation, and in no way be regulatory or prescriptive of the creative work. It will be of publishable standard. Its audience will be therefore peers.

Robert Sheppard

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