I’ve set up a new section of this website to share scripts and macros that I use in my research and teaching. Some I’ve written, some I’ve adapted from others, and some I’ve prompted AI to generate.
Category Archives: pedagogy
Tables of Contents as Full-Sentence Outlines
Writers of legal or policy briefs often need to summarize their arguments in a single page in order to reach busy, powerful readers. Tables of contents composed of claims are particularly effective ways to achieve this, since readers intrigued by any claim can turn to the section which develops it more fully.
Even if historians do not format their final writings in this way, they may benefit from writing their outlines as a series of claims, reminding themselves of what they need to achieve in each section. (For more on outlining, see The Princeton Guide to Historical Research, chapter 13.)
Here are two examples of such tables of contents—one from law, the other from public policy.
Continue readingA Thesis Statement Worthy of Fireworks
Earlier this month I realized that our nation’s founders declared independence by presenting two explanations of their choice, and showing one to fit the evidence better than the other. That’s a thesis statement.
Continue readingThe Princeton Guide to Historical Research is here!
The Princeton Guide to Historical Research is now on sale! It is priced at only $24.95 in paperback, and through August 31, 2021, use the code ZS30 to get a 30 percent discount. Ebook and audiobook versions are also available.
Watch this site for additional thoughts on the craft of researching and writing history.
It Takes Two: Combining English and History to Team Teach Narrative Writing
My Mason colleague Scott W. Berg and I have an essay in this month’s Journal of American History about our experience planning and co-teaching a course on narrative history writing. “By teaching skills and approaches neglected in other courses, we wanted to empower students to tell those important stories in rewarding new ways.”
Oxford University Press graciously allows me to post a free-access link to a personal website. Just click on the title below.
Scott W. Berg and Zachary M. Schrag, “It Takes Two: Combining English and History to Team Teach Narrative Writing,” Journal of American History 107, no. 4 (March 2021): 968–73.
The Anatomy of a Paragraph
In fall 2020, students in my undergraduate course, Technology and Identity, asked a series of excellent questions about how to structure claims, quotations, and other evidence into a formal paragraph, and how to use transitional words and phrases to link paragraphs together into a longer analysis. In response, I developed several iterations of a handout, dissecting a passage from one of the assigned readings for that course. I post it here in the hopes that it will help others as well.
Schafer’s Topic Sentence Poem
In my advice on Topic Sentences, I’ve long advised students, both as readers and writers, to understand how a series of topic sentences often form a summary of a longer story or argument:
The first thing to notice is that strung together, the topic sentences summarize the passage as a whole. If the whole article is written in this way, then a reader can zip through the piece by reading only the first sentence of each paragraph, choosing to read full paragraphs only when she wants to know more about the claim made in the topic sentence. Few if any books an articles are written entirely in this manner, but in most cases, one can get the gist of a paragraph by reading the first two sentences, or the first and last sentence. Aim for the same kind of summary.
In fall 2019, a student introduced me to a lovely term for this device: the “topic-sentence poem,” which she had learned from her teacher, Dr. Cynthia Schafer of the Walker School of Marietta, Georgia. Henceforth, I’ll be teaching this as “Schafer’s Topic Sentence Poem.”
Student evaluations are bunk
In September, the American Sociological Association issued a statement, endorsed by the American Historical Association and other scholarly associations, noting that “a large body of research has demonstrated that student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are weakly related to student learning and are often biased against women and people of color. ” I encourage all university students to read this statement before completing their course evaluations.
How to write in your books (and other texts), part 2.
This morning’s Washington Post devotes an entire page to a marked-up transcript of a recorded conversation featuring Bob Woodward, President Trump, and Kellyanne Conway. Reporter Aaron Blake models critical reading: noting key passages and comparing them both to each other and other information he knows.
![Conway: I said you tried talking to everybody? What about when you interviewed, like, other people? They all said yes? That they’d try? BW: Yeah, well, about six or seven people. I tried. And I couldn’t have — you and I spent a whole lunch on it, Kellyanne. And I said, I want to cover the substantive issues in foreign policy and domestic policy. And you said you would get back to me. Nothing. Conway: Yeah. So, I did. I presented it to the people here who make those decisions, but . .. BW: Who are the people? Conway: But anyway, I’ll give you back to the president. And I’m glad to hear that you tried through seven or eight different people. That’s good. You should tell him all the names. [Laughs] Thank you. Trump: But you never called for me. It would’ve been nice, Bob, if you called for me, in my office. I mean, I have a secretary. I have two, three secretaries. If you would’ve called directly — a lot of people are afraid . . . Raj, I hardly have . . . I don’t speak to Raj."](https://historyprofessor.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/2018-09-05-trump-transcript-1.jpg)
In a particularly good section, Blake examines both internal tensions (Conway’s refusal to answer who denied Woodward’s request for an interview with Trump) and external tensions (Raj Shah’s position as principal deputy press secretary vs. Trump’s statement that “I don’t speak to Raj.”).
Note how Blake chooses a verb that signals the significance of Trump’s statement: “Trump admits Shah is doing that without talking to him.”
Also note how earlier in the transcript, Conway shifts to the passive voice to obscure responsibility: “I put in the request. But you know, they — it was rejected.” Woodward asks, “Who are the people?” in a failed effort to pierce the fog.
[Aaron Blake, “Transcript: Phone Call between President Trump and Journalist Bob Woodward,” Washington Post, September 5, 2018.]
Meanwhile, on Twitter, Bill Hayes has posted several photographs of books annotated by the late Oliver Sacks. Sacks not only flagged key passages; he also recorded his own reactions, turning his reading into an active conversation with the author.
See also, How to write in your books.
Selingo: Employers want college graduates who can write
Jeffrey J. Selingo, “Why Can’t College Graduates Write Coherent Prose?,” Washington Post: Grade Point, August 11, 2017:
Extensive writing is rarely assigned in many college courses because it’s labor-intensive, raising the workload for students and professors. Students don’t understand why they need to write five-page papers, let alone 20 pages, given that many of them won’t write much more than PowerPoint slides, emails, or one-page memos once in the workplace.
But training for any activity in life requires a level of practice that usually exceeds the tasks we will need to handle later on. This time spent on a task is sometimes called the 10,000 hours theory — that it takes roughly that amount of practice to achieve mastery in any field. Not every college graduate needs to be a novelist, but if college students become competent writers who draft clear prose, then they’ll also be able to compose anything on the job, from PowerPoint slides to reports.
