Teachers
who want to assess students' understanding of course content forego
worksheets and multiple-choice exams in favor of writing assignments.
One sure sign a writer has understood content is the ability
to explain the content to others. You can't explain what you
don't understand.
When the content is complex or unfamiliar to readers, good communicators
look for analogies to take the
mystery out of unfamiliar concepts.
Many students will not think of developing analogies without
prompting. Asking students to develop an analogy as part of
an essay forces them to engage in a higher level of thinking
than they might otherwise do.
Unfortunately for us writing teachers, crafting writing prompts
that give students analogy practice is not easy. It requires that
we know our content and our students. In other words, we have
to know the same things we expect of our students in order to
teach them. Whew! No wonder teachers get the big bucks.
Let me give you some suggestions on how to go about building
authentic analogy practice into your curriculum.
Use analogies yourself
Analogies, like anecdotes, help students understand concepts
by putting the concepts into a familiar context. They compare
something unfamiliar to something familiar.
When you teach, use analogies to explain new concepts whenever
you can. I use analogies to explain such things as transition
sentences and the structure of an introduction.
Point out analogies in students' texts
Analogies are common in nonfiction
material. You will find them in students' history and science
texts. You may need to use those texts for teaching the reading
comprehension activities that afford opportunities to point
out analogies.
English courses that emphasize literature are more likely to
discuss similes and metaphors than analogies. If your access to
nonfiction texts is limited, you may need to teach the analogy
initially in terms of how it is like a simile or metaphor.
Require analogies in essays
Once students have been introduced to the concept of the analogy,
give them practice creating analogies as a means of developing
an expository paragraph.
To build in the analogy practice, you will need to specify in
your writing prompt how and why students must create an analogy.
I suggest you have younger students develop a "paragraph
essay" using an analogy.
Here's a paragraph essay writing prompt that calls for an
analogy:
A topic sentence and a thesis sentence have a great deal in
common. Write a paragraph in which you use an analogy to explain
at least two aspects of the relationship between a topic sentence
and a thesis statement.
Stop right now and think about how you'd answer the question.
(Sidebar: Testing your writing prompts is essential.)
The logical process students must use to come up with an analogy
is not terribly different from what they would use to come up
with the answer to a bubble-test analogy question like
cat is to kitten as dog is to _____
Although the writing prompt may look harder than a bubble test
question, students see it as more relevant to their experience
than standardized test questions. They know that people are
asked to explain stuff every day, but nobody takes bubble
tests outside of school.
As students mature, you can ask them to develop one paragraph
of an essay through analogy and use other strategies for other
body paragraphs. To learn more about paragraph development options,
click here.
Before I move on, what analogy did you come up with? I said the
relationship between a topic sentence and a thesis sentences is
analogous to the relationship of a room to a whole house.
