Student Choice in Writing

The best part about writing in college is the freedom to pick (almost) any topic. While some professors structure papers more than others, I have found that I generally have a lot more choice in the topics that I choose to write about than I did in high school.

I find this interesting since a lot of my preparation has been about letting students choose what they write about. I had some choice in high school, but usually it was to pick one of three prompts and write a paper answering that prompt.

Oftentimes, I resented this format.

The books I am using to help research the words
that Shakespeare coined throughout
his career.

Still, in college, I often find myself resenting papers that are so structured I have no room for creativity. While I don’t think that in a high school classroom I can just tell students to write about whatever aspect of such-and-such book that they want, I still think that more choice needs to be given within the prompts that are provided to students.

When students have a choice in what they are writing, they’re automatically more invested in their writing because if they chose a topic, it is often because of an interest they have.

Personally, I know that I have some go to topics that I will write about whenever given the opportunity. One of these topics is Shakespeare.

For my final paper in linguistics, I was given the choice to write about anything, so long as I can somehow connect it to linguistics. As a result, I chose to write about Shakespeare and the words that he created in his plays.

While the morphology of Shakespeare’s words don’t excite everyone as much as they excite me, I am looking forward to doing the research for this paper, as well as writing it, because it’s a topic that I’m invested in.