Addressing the Problem of the Problem-Solution Essay
What someone else should do
I’ve recently (perpetually) been revising my freshman composition courses to address various weaknesses I’m finding each new year in their skill sets. One year there might be a preponderance of a lack of awareness of how to use thesis statements and topic sentences, and the next an entire class might demonstrate a misunderstanding of how to write titles, distinguish between facts and opinions, attribute content from other writers, use title case, or open and start a new document in Microsoft Word. Some years, all 100 students in a given semester might demonstrate entirely different sets of skills from one another.
My latest iteration of the class, however, is going to focus on solving the problem of the problem-solution essay.
It’s sneaky of me to say the new iteration will focus on the solution to the problem of the problem-solution essay, however, because within that broad concept there are many others, like focusing on the needs of an intended audience, narrowing a topic to an appropriate scope, and writing concisely using the most specific and relevant evidence available. Why would I care about these things, specifically? Because when students care about a topic, when there’s something at stake and the writing gets real, they become much, much better writers.
The Problem of the Problem-solution Essay
The problem with the problem-solution essay is that students too often write about something that doesn’t need to be argued; there’s nothing at stake, the problem doesn’t actually exist, or the problem is already being addressed on a massive scale. In other words, they pick broad topics from some list they find online that are “easy” in lieu of topics that matter to them, and that means they don’t have to invest anything of themselves. They don’t have to care, and it shows in the writing.
To complicate matters, students too often believe any argumentative essay’s thesis has to include the word “should” and has to explain how “someone else” “should” do a thing, so sometimes students submit essays with thesis statements along the lines of “People should recycle.”
“People should recycle.” The rest of the essay is then a broad overview of the benefits of recycling with one weird, irrelevant paragraph about why people should NOT recycle and maybe a random statistic from a far-off place about recycling thrown into the conclusion because they have to use a source.
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The students are absent from their own discussion entirely. They distance themselves by virtue of writing in the third person and not defining an intended audience. When I ask them to narrow their topic, they simply state “People should recycle plastics.” When I ask them to define their intended audience, they say “People who care about recycling.” It never occurs to them to write to people who don’t already recycle, or to (even better) address the lack of recycling bins in the residence halls or classrooms of their own college. To see the looks on their faces when I suggest they correspond with the college facilities manager about bins would suggest I’ve asked them to circumnavigate the globe on roller skates. It has never occurred to them that writing is real and has real stakes.
Focusing on the Needs of an Intended Audience
I have always asked students to determine an intended audience before outlining an essay or speech. I give them a lot of latitude and help them focus their details to appeal to that specific audience. In my new iteration, however, I want them to choose an intended audience they know or can access: a group to which they belong, including family, their city or county leaders, college administrators, or even fellow students with whom they have something in common. In this way they may be better able to generate evidence that appeals directly to that group since they know a little more about them than the vague and ever popular “many people.” Even more, they are one of the stakeholders. The implication is that any problem they address affects them personally, and any solution they propose includes them as an active participant in the solution. They will have to give a little of themselves in order to write the essay. They will have to “engage” with their topic.
Narrowing a Topic to an Appropriate Scope
In a 1987 episode of The Golden Girls, Rose writes to Mikhail Gorbachev to ask him to end his nuclear standoff with the United States because of how terribly frightening it is. He sends a representative to invite her to Russia. The catch? He thinks she’s a child. Rose sets out to do something real, and as far-fetched as it may be (even by the standards of 1980’s television), something real happens. I would argue that the problem is not that Rose wants to make real change by writing about her feelings. Furthermore, The problem is not that she writes to Mikhail Gorbachev, a very specific intended audience. The problem is that the scope of the problem (nuclear annihilation) is bigger than a letter about her fears can solve.
Students often want to write about topics with a huge scope, like nuclear disarmament, climate change, the death penalty, or the legalization of marijuana. These are problems with an expansive scope, problems bigger than an essay for a freshman composition class can encompass. They want to write about solutions that they cannot manage.
The new assignment guidelines will ask them to write to an intended audience they can relate to personally, as I’ve stated, but I also want them to write about topics that can fit within the scope of the assignment. I want them to write about problems that affect them, that they know at least a little something about already. More than that, I want them to write about a solution to a problem their intended audience can realistically manage. For example, when they propose “climate change,” I might ask them to focus on an aspect of climate change they themselves can help mitigate. How might they shrink their carbon footprint, encourage their families to increase the biodiversity of their landscapes, or help their communities prepare for worsening storms?
Writing Concisely Using the Most Specific and Relevant Evidence Available
In an article entitled “Using Environmental Issues to Trigger the Students’ Critical Thinking in Essay Writing Class” published in Journal of English Language, Literature, and Teaching in 2019, writing faculty explain the results of their study of the effects of a shift from “learning to write” to “writing to learn.” Students were tasked with writing about environmental topics to make them more aware of what’s happening in the world (53). Although most students were able to generate some sort of thesis and topic sentences, most were not able to offer examples and specific details within their body paragraphs (57).
Not only must students plan their essays around a specific intended audience to whom they can personally relate, and around a narrowed topic with a scope they can manage within the confines of the essay, they must plan by reading, and subsequently researching, the topic. Of course I want to help them narrow their topics, but it would, of course, be best if they could learn to narrow their topics on their own. That requires reading about the topic — reading enough of the right things the right way.
For the past several years I have helped students plan the evidence in their essays by reviewing and offering feedback on their outlines and annotated bibliographies. The most obvious issue in every document I review is that the students do not read enough of the best source content available before writing their papers. They do not think of writing as a learning experience, so they fudge learning about their topics. They do “just enough” to write the paper. By changing the requirements of their intended audiences and narrowed topics I do hope to encourage them to engage to the extent that they want to “write to learn,” but I will also be increasing the number of required sources on the annotated bibliography.
With slight changes to the problem-solution essay assignment for my freshman composition classes, I hope to solve the problem of the problem-solution essay. I hope to increase the students’ willingness to insert some of themselves into the writing, raising the stakes, and reminding them that writing can induce real changes in their worlds.
Works Cited
Setyowati, Lestari et. al. “Using Environmental Issues to Trigger the Students’ Critical Thinking in Essay Writing Class.” Journal of English Language, Literature, and Teaching. Vol. 3, No. 2, 2019, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17977/um046v3i2p17-26
