Five minute fixes: Compare and contrast outlines

Here’s a post about how I teach comparison and contrast in the classroom, as well as an application I’ve started using to help my students organize their ideas.

OK, dogmetistas tell me what you think of this situation. My students have an exam coming up in which they’ll need to explain the similarities and differences of two concepts. I know when this will take place and I know the rhetorical conventions of this type of writing. My students are also aware of when the exam takes place and the possible topics that they may have to write about. So…

-Do I go ahead and teach them about the conventions of compare / contrast?

-Do I wait for this to emerge in the classroom?

The answer, as far as I’m concerned, is both. The subject of the ‘exam’ has come up in class, and I’ve taken the opportunity to get them to think about the kind of questions they’ll be faced with. Here’s an extract of the curriculum document that I use (both I and my students have this document and we use it in class frequently to help us focus on what we are doing). I encourage them to regularly think about what we’re doing and the aims and objectives we’re working on. In the case of the exam, I’ve ask them to look at the information in the extract you can see and identify which topics might ‘lend themselves’ to some kind of comparison. This has led to the emergence of classroom activities based on how to structure such writing and the language specific to performing the task. OK, OK, this isn’t dogme as such, but it is an effective way of getting students to reflect on what they might need to perform a certain action in English. It also empowered them as they felt they’d guided the classroom learning towards a direction that would be of use in their academic lives.

Here’s what I know (for a fact). Throughout their academic career, my students will be asked to write papers or answer exam questions in which they compare and contrast two or more things: these might be two texts, two theories, two historical figures or two eras in history. We’ve researched this in our department, so we know that this is a frequent form of question prompt.

In what I’ll refer to as ‘normal’ compare / contrast writing, a student will probably place equal emphasis on X and Y. Here X and Y are probably about two related things that have fundamental differences (air travel by helicopter or plane, for instance) or two similar things that have crucial differences, yet turn out to have surprising commonalities (two political systems with ostensibly different world views who have surprisingly similar perspectives on a certain issue).

One problem that my students regularly encounter is how to construct a piece of writing that isn’t merely an automated exercise in which they first state all the features that X and Y have in common, and then state all the ways in which X and Y are different. This is a valid way of doing it but it can make for a boring piece of work. One of the great aspects of this type of writing is that it allows for an incredible degree of rhetorical flexibility, even for lower level students. Writing a good essay will make the most of this flexibility by taking the raw data and manipulating it into a coherent and meaningful argument. That’s where we come in.
How can we help our students to write something great? One important thing to focus on is the organizational scheme. This is why comparison writing offers such rhetorical flexibility: there are three basic ways to organize the body paragraphs of any such paper.

WARNING: If you are well versed in the art of compare and contrast, skip forward to the video clip because this part of the post won’t be particularly enlightening. Just letting you know…

Text-by-text

Using this format you discuss all of the things you want to say about X, then all of the things you want to say about Y. You have to be careful with this one, because it’s almost too simple to be true. In my experience, this gets students into all kinds of trouble. If you think that Y extends X, you might encourage students to use a text-by-text model. Here’s an example of how this can go wrong.

Recently my students had to compare aspects of the lives of the Native American Hopi and Lakota tribes. One way that they could do this was through examples of how they practiced religion and spirituality. While on the face of it, the two tribes seemed to have similar belief systems, specific examples showed that they were in fact quite different. By following the text-by-text model, they ended up with a list of examples for one tribe, followed by a list of examples for the other. They found it difficult to make connections between the texts and even more difficult to show the differences in a coherent way.

Similarities – differences

In this format you discuss all of the things that are similar about X and Y, then all of the things that are different about X and Y. This format is great for getting students to synthesize ideas from more than one source and it allows for the effective use of language items such as ‘in contrast’ and ‘similar to’. This approach can also go drastically wrong if the students can’t find a balance between similarities and differences. Consider this.

In their comparison of the various aspects of the lives of the Native American Hopi and Lakota tribes, some students chose to focus on gender roles within the two tribes. The students did a really good job of finding examples, but struggled to write coherently using this format. The trouble was that the similarities were far outweighed by the differences. In trying to form their ideas into two paragraphs, the essay became extremely lopsided.

Point-by-point

In this format you interchange points about X with somewhat comparable points about Y. This is good for maintaining the focus of a particular paragraph, although the point-by-point method can become the essay equivalent of a game of tennis. Students can avoid by grouping more than one point together, thereby cutting down on the number of times you alternate from X to Y.

Consider my previous point: some students chose to focus on gender roles within the two tribes. Because the similarities – and differences – covered many different areas, such as roles in the house, roles in gathering food, roles in religious ceremonies, the point-by-point method could have worked nicely. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get them to accept this, as they felt the overwhelming urge to keep the main body of their essay to two paragraphs. That’s something for me to think about, I guess.

You probably need a break from reading this blog post, so here’s a video clip of a nice little application that helps you and your students to plan the organization of their essays.

Other things to consider

This is getting an awfully long way from being student centred, isn’t it? Well, they’re having an exam, for better or worse, and they quite rightly expect me to get them ready for it. So, in addition to getting their ideas organized, here are a few other things I like to do to get my kids ready to write.

Focus on the ‘frame of reference’

What’s the umbrella term a student can use to write about the topic? For apples and bananas, you might wish to physical appearance as an umbrella for talking about color and shape, for instance.

Describe the basis for comparison

Why apples and bananas? Is there something limiting your choice to these two fruits? Are they the only fruits available in a particular context?

Link X and Y in a meaningful way

Do all of your points link back to the thesis of your writing? It’s easy to just start listing facts about one thing and not show its relationship to the other. Believe me, I’ve seen it.

Rounding off

As I said, comparison writing offers a wonderful degree of rhetorical flexibility, but that doesn’t mean that all styles are appropriate to each situation. I’m lucky that I have the chance to work with my students on a one-to-one basis to coax them into telling me which format is appropriate for them in that particular piece of writing. I’m now encouraging them to use the tool that I showed you in the video clip, as it is simple to use and it offers the three main organizational patterns, so that they get the chance to contemplate the benefits and drawbacks of each.