The Non-Fiction Connection to Persuasion

Peggy Corbett
Nov 17, 2008

The irony is inescapable. Almost all state-mandated writing assessments require students to respond to persuasive prompts, yet we continue to make fiction the cornerstone of our instruction. I am not knocking fiction; I am a dyed-in-the-wool lit teacher from way back. However, the common research says 80% of our instructional reading requirements come from fiction with only 20% coming from non-fiction. Understanding, or acknowledging, that, in terms of minutes, the bulk of reading we do throughout the day is non-fiction,  it is easy to concede that the reverse should be the case. Our students should be reading non-fiction 80% of the time and fiction the other 20%. Test yourself; how many minutes of your day are spent reading fiction? For me, it is roughly 45 minutes or the amount of time it takes me to go to sleep once I pick up my novel when I go to bed at night.

In attempting to prepare students for timed writing prompts, we sometimes fall into a pattern of assigning writing, reading the responses, and then editing the paper for the students, playing the role of the struggling reader. Sadly,our students do not have much experience with being the reader and the writer of their papers and do not understand the game I am attempting to engage them in when I ask "What do you mean here?" In Nancy V. Wood's Perspective on Argument, she suggests that students question other students' thesis statements and subsequent responses in order to help the writer understand what information is needed by the reader. She gives this example:

Student 1: The university should be more student-friendly. (Thesis)

Student 2: Why do you think so? I think it's fine.

Student 1: Because students are its customers, and without us they wouldn't exist.

Student 2: Why wouldn't it?

Student 1: Because we pay money to keep it going.

Student 2: Why do students keep it going? There are other sources of income.

Student 1: Because our tuition is much more than all of the other sources combined (284)

If a teacher starts from this point, he or she might model the process with an article on a contemporary topic that students are familiar with and follow Wood's example using a technique called nutshelling. The speaker(reader) explains to the listener the gist of a piece of writing. For demonstration I might nutshell an article on global warming by saying "The water levels of the Great Lakes are rising as a result of global warming." Based on this nutshell, the students would generate a list of questions they might expect the author to address:

  • Why are water levels rising?

  • Are levels of other water bodies rising?

  • What is the evidence that they are rising?

  • Are water levels the only things changing in the environment?


Then students read the article and decide which questions were answered - or not. The general idea I want students to take away is that readers expect writers to anticipate their questions and to respond to them.

It should be evident that this is as much a reading activity as it is a writing activity. Donna Qualley in Using Reading in the Writing Classroom states "When students experience active reading in conjunction with their own writing, transference from one process to the other is more likely to occur. We can instruct students to consider the needs of their readers when they write, but when their own experience of being readers themselves confirms it, the learning is centered. (114)

Of course, there are huge implications here to other content area classrooms. Everyone benefits when all teachers encourage their students to be questioning readers. Ideally, the practice is so wide spread that when students sit down to a writing prompt, the skills are internalized and not just a test gimmick.