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Breaking Free from Formulas: The Impact of Structured Writing on Creativity and Expression

November 2022

Introduction

The way words flow in the author's mind while writing should be like how music flows, forming a symphony of sound with delicate notes of meaning that transmit a wide range of ideas and feelings. Although many students experience these emotions while writing, they usually hesitate to put their thoughts and feelings into words because they are expected to fit all their ideas in a specific mold presented by their teachers. The goal of the "formula" created by the teachers for the students is to reduce the amount of work required to write by removing the problematic portion, like coming up with meaning and shifting the emphasis to developing a formal structure. Consequently, the writing process shifts from shaping a mass of play dough into an original shape to fitting the play dough into preestablished, shaped cutters.

What is a Writing Formula?

The formulas the educators create for students differ in levels according to their ages and advance in school years. Speaking as a student myself, these formulas are a great way to quickly get done with my essay after briefly brainstorming on the main idea for my essay since the professors already complete everything other than that through the formulas they give us. For example, the prompt "Is there any use in studying the past if we are destined to repeat the mistakes of the present?" is asked as an exam question, and the students have their formula that they studied for the past 3 weeks in class. They can either say yes and justify it with three reasons, or they can say no and explain it with three other ones. No matter what original ideas they decide to include in the formula, they will undoubtedly obtain a solid mark on their exam. In fact, students may not even believe or care about what they write in that agree/disagree situation, instead coming up with three reasons that seem acceptable but that they do not really support. As soon as the students have mastered the formula, they will find that they can apply it to almost any writing. This is the school's actual purpose: to help students get those excellent scores without overthinking or spending excessive time. Nevertheless, having this formula in mind prevents students from creating something from scratch. In this writing, I will discuss whether giving specific rules and limitations to students improves their writing skills.

Learning to Write in English in Turkey

During the first week of my 5th grade English class, I was introduced to this then-nonsense word that would soon change my whole perspective on writing: RAGE.

R stands for "repeat the question," A for "answer the question," G for "give an example," and E for "explain the example." For the entire three months, we detailed this acronym. I remember spending our classes studying each letter. We would write so many sentences "repeating the prompt," and the next week, we would spend all of our classes learning how to do the second step, "answering the question." After going through each step and doing a lot of practice, we became professionals in fitting our ideas into this 4-lettered formula. It was easy, the only thing we had to think about was picking an answer for a given question, and then we could fill in the blanks. When I was a 6th grader, RAGE became RACES; the following year, it became RAGEGE, CBECW, and CBECBECW. As a Turkish student whose second language is English, I learned writing in English through templates.

CBECW Explanation from a lecture slide for 9th graders

Formulas vs. Creativity

I cannot claim that it wasn't easier to write essays using the formulas because I clearly understood my limits, what was required of me, and what I wasn't meant to do. We lost points if we integrated the formula incorrectly and didn't follow the structure. Yet, as years passed, this convenience was eventually replaced with the sensation of being limited and confined. I struggled to structure my ideas according to the given formula. When I tried to force my thoughts into the predetermined structure, I found that they didn't fit right. Sometimes I wished I could reorder the paragraph to convey my ideas better, but the formula would stop me from stepping out of the lines. Over the course of middle school and high school, I used these templates for every essay I wrote. The teachers required me to repeatedly write the same kind of essay in the same format. My classmates were also writing their essays using the same formula as me. It was a bunch of students filling in the blanks of a formula to produce essays that were similar in every aspect, and yet ironically, "originality" was still a part of the rubric.

In his book Mindset (2006), Carol Dweck states, "I've seen so many people with this one consuming goal or proving themselves -in the classroom, their careers, and their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser?" This fear of not being successful, failing in class, and not writing a good essay prevents students from being creative and writing freely as they try to make their essays fit in a predetermined mold, which may result in them preferring to use the formulas. However, with the templates, they cannot push themselves. Throughout their academic careers, these formulas impede students from acquiring a growth mindset. Dweck also adds that throughout history, people had distinct ways of thinking, different ways of doing something, and diverse outcomes compared to one another. “It was guaranteed that someone would ask the question of why people differed-why some people are smarter or more moral--and whether there was something that made them permanently different." Although her expression is more on a philosophical level, it supports the idea that people are different and that it is normal to be different. So, why try to make their thoughts and ideas fit in a particular structure and limit their abilities?

What do UC Berkeley students think about formulated writings?

I conducted interviews with three students at UC Berkeley, Doga, Ray and Kayle, to obtain insight into other students' perspectives on the process of learning to write using templates. Doga, a first-year student in the EECS program, completed elementary, middle, and high school in Izmir, Turkey. In sixth grade, she was "exposed to a paragraph structure termed TEALS (topic, example, analysis, link back to the thesis, summary), and [she] produced all of the assigned essays using this framework." Her anxiety was evident when she said, "If I didn't apply the framework, I would lose points. I had the feeling that I was being held back, and the way I expressed myself in my writings was not what I had wished for. The way my writings were structured prevented them from having a natural flow. When I was working on my essay, I recall having a lot of difficulties getting it to flow smoothly." While interviewing Doga, I related to her experience since we have similar Turkish educational backgrounds.

On the other hand, Ray had a different opinion than Doga and me on the formulated writing method. Ray, a junior majoring in Economics, is from the States, and his school didn't follow a curriculum that used formulas for English writing. He believes that "the structure [he] used while writing paragraphs during middle school was not based on abbreviations, and [he] was not required to format his paragraphs. [His] class was just asked to include all the elements the formula includes but was not forced to follow the same order. This caused [him] to have difficulty determining how to style his paragraphs and essays, which led to [him] being anxious about whether or not he had included everything in his paragraphs. [He] wishes that he had been provided with a method for the writings."

The next student I interviewed, Kayle, is an international student from South Korea. During his time in middle school and high school, he studied English as his second language. He attended two different schools, and at one of them, he "was given a formula similar to RACES" and was "strictly asked to adhere to the given formula.” He transferred to another school during his sophomore year in high school. The students in his English course at his new school were expected to organize their paragraphs independently, but they were given certain criteria and attributes that they were required to include in their writings. This enabled him to experience writing English in two different academic environments with two different strategies. He believes “using formulas while just getting into writing was beneficial and easier because [he] initially had no experience and having certain rules to follow made it easier to fill a blank page”. However, he was happy that his new school enabled their students to freely structure their paragraphs and he indicated that he “felt very comfortable and free to express himself however he wanted to.”

A Backup Alternative

I agree that templates are effective and should not be rejected. However, they should not be criteria for good writing, and students should not be forced to use these formulas for all of their school years. The templates should serve as a backup alternative, an escape route if the writing process becomes too overwhelming due to an abundance of data and disorganized ideas.

Conclusion

My personal experience with structured writing, and the opinions of three students at UC Berkeley on the formulas led me to conclude that the templates are an effective way to quickly put ideas into a paragraph. They enable the writers to focus more on the content rather than trying to figure out the structure. However, people are forced to attempt to fit their thoughts into a pre-molded form, and the templates operate as a barrier to freedom while considerably restricting the creative process. It inhibits the writer's ability to come up with original ideas, makes it harder to produce a seamless flow of ideas, and stresses them out rather than making the process easier.

When writing an essay, we combine all literary components so that the finished product has all the required elements, like the thesis, the examples, and the conclusion. When we are writing with a template, we add the components strictly as stated in the formula, regardless of whether or not this causes the plot to deteriorate. Although templates are intended to make the writing process go faster, sticking to them too strictly might have the opposite of the desired effect and reduce the essay's overall quality. Therefore, templates and other writing guidelines run the danger of being highly restrictive, which may stomp on originality and the display of uniqueness and creativity, both of which are essential components of genuinely outstanding writing. Each essay is original in a way, and using the same templates for every situation would run the danger of making writers turn into "a writer of habit," lose track of the precise audience they are referring to, and block the uniqueness that is necessary to establish a great connection with their readers.

References

Aeonmag. (2022, November 18). Writing essays by Formula teaches students how to not think: Aeon Essays. Aeon. Retrieved November 18, 2022, from https://aeon.co/essays/writing-essays-by-formula-teaches-students-how-to-not-think

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.

Sackstein, S. (2016, May 1). Formulaic freedom: Get students to abandon writing formulas (opinion). Education Week. Retrieved November 18, 2022, from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-formulaic-freedom-get-students-to-abandon-writing-formulas/2016/05