In this section, Professor Emily Richmond Pollock shares her views about teaching writing in musicology, including her expectation that students cite musical evidence and develop arguments in their writing. She also shares a method for providing students with feedback on their final papers.
Teaching Precision and Focus
21M.260 Stravinsky to the Present satisfies the Music degree Communication Intensive in the Major (CI-M) requirement, which entails 5,000 words of formal writing, and incorporates oral presentation, revision, abstract-writing, and citation practice. Even though CI-M classes are among the final writing courses students take at MIT, many students may not yet understand paper-writing conventions specific to the humanities, such as how to format footnotes and cite texts and secondary sources.
"I ask them to cite musical details with bar numbers or track timings so that I know they have not just generalized an observation, but that they’ve found specific musical evidence for their claims."
When students write about musical texts, I ask that they be as precise as they’re capable of being. In particular, I ask them to cite musical details with bar numbers or track timings so that I know they have not just generalized an observation, but that they’ve found specific musical evidence for their claims. That’s one aspect of the papers that I’m adamant about in my assessment; I’ll give a student a lower grade if they haven’t been able to cite specific evidence, even if their interpretation is interesting.
I also expect that students will make an argument in their papers, and because the task of creating an argument in the humanities is unfamiliar, I share with them a detailed process to help them. It involves making many observations, making lists, being as specific as possible from the beginning, taking as many notes as they can, and then using these “data” to formulate a thesis. The challenge, and the most critical part, is then to strategically select which observations should be left out of the paper and which should be included in support of their arguments. In a five-page paper, there just isn’t space to include every piece of evidence and observation. They learn to filter and make decisions about what details are most relevant to their arguments.
Providing Feedback via Summary Emails
I generally provide feedback to students about their writing by making comments directly on their papers, but for the final papers, I write them emails in which I summarize what I liked about their writing and what I thought they could have done better. I also share my rationale for the final grade they earn. I do this because the final papers are at the end of the term, and I won’t necessarily see them again. The emails provide a way for them to hear from me and get some closure on the course as a whole. Sometimes, they’ll write back, letting me know that they’ll try something different the next time they approach writing or clarifying what they were hoping to accomplish in the paper. I think they appreciate the feedback.
