Book Review

South Carolina Education Directory
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Book Review

Those of us blessed with the opportunity to teach "THE RESEARCH PAPER" never think of passion as we read the final results of our students' research and writing. Many of these products seem to be the same as the ones we have read the year before and the years before that. Tom Romano's book offers hope that students who are given both the tools to research and the freedom to write creatively can become passionate about research projects. Drawing on years of high school and college writing instruction, Romano combines his own theories, explanations, and experiences with samples of students' writing. This combination makes the book easy to read and practical.

One of the first premises of the book is that students be encouraged to use story in their writing. His daughter's research project for another teacher had been to write fiction from the details of research. After researching immigration history, she chose to write a powerful story about her grandfather and his family's immigration through Ellis Island. Her research culminated in "The Wooden Pony," a short story, rather than the typical nonfiction paper. Romano maintains that research for such a project becomes real when connected to story. Writers can become passionate about their own stories when the subject has meaning for them and when creativity is encouraged.

Another major thrust of the book is the multi-genre research paper which he taught in a college course. Students were required to read an autobiography or biography and keep a reading log of their research. The written product of the research was a mixture of fact, poetry, and fiction to recount the life of the subject. The student samples included show a wide range of genres and research. While the complete multi-genre paper Romano uses in his college class may seem difficult for many high school students, the concept of assigning creative writing based on research certainly is a possibility for younger writers.

Romano also emphasizes that our students need to read contemporary writers as well as those from the past to inspire them to write their own stories and to try different styles. He encourages teachers to use literature response groups and reading logs to show students how to decode the meaning of a difficult passage by reading aloud and modeling the process.

He urges writers to view every emotion, idea, observation, and experience as potential subject matter, even letting them ripen for years before writing. This section brought to mind Theodore Taylor's story at the SCCTE Spring Conference about a true event from World War II. He told of letting the real event that inspired The Cay stay in the back of his mind for thirty years before writing that young adult novel. Romano calls this a "writing state of mind."

The book also includes tips on teaching dialogue and poetic devices to strengthen writing skills and offers suggestions for meaningful essay exam questions. In one section, Romano encourages student exploration of alternate grammars as a way to create original writing and includes samples of such works. In another, he debates the effectiveness of lengthy written comments on graded papers, preferring himself to confer with students during the process instead of writing long comments after the final draft.

This book provides theory, but, more importantly, practical advice for giving our students opportunities to become passionate writers. The real student writing interspersed with theory shows that the theories can work. Tom Romano issues a challenge to each of us who teach writing: assign meaningful work that engages the emotions and interests of our students. Until we offer students the chance to select topics that they really care about, to explore different styles and grammatical devices, and to combine story with research, our students may continue to write the same lifeless term papers that neither they nor we enjoy working with. Tom Romano's passion about writing is evident on every page and should serve as a guide for all writing teachers.