Essay - Students Should Never Use First-Person in Academic Writing

Bad Ideas About Teaching Writing: Students Should Never Use First-Person in Academic Writing During my freshman year of college, my history professor announced to the class, “I know they tell you not to in high school, but you can use I in this paper if you like,” Shocked and confused, my mind raced; I began to question everything I had ever known about writing. All of my previous teachers had never allowed the use of I, and I had always believed it was a rule of writing to never use first-person pronouns in an academic paper. A dynamic debate exists within the academic community about whether or not students should be taught to use first-person in their academic writing. Many students, myself included, are taught in middle and high school to never use the words I, we, or my in their essays. The teachers who enforce this rule usually claim that using first-person pronouns makes an essay weaker because students become less objective toward their argument or claims. Rather than teach students when and how to appropriately use first-person to strengthen their essays, many teachers choose to avoid the problem altogether by teaching their students to always use third person. Fast forward to college, and these same students are now being asked to use first-person effectively in their writing, but many soon realize they do not know how. As a college student myself who had never used I in an academic essay until recently, I can say that it has been challenging to learn how to incorporate first-person into my writing after years of not doing so. The incorporation of first-person pronouns into academic writing can often benefit student essays in various ways but can also harm them if used incorrectly. Therefore, beginning writers should be taught how to use first-person effectively in their academic writing. When used correctly, first-person pronouns can be beneficial in academic essays in multiple ways. First-person pronoun perspective can enhance an author’s message and the impact it has on readers. One of the most important things a writer must consider when constructing an academic essay is what message they want to give their audience and how they are going to convey it. Word and style choices can greatly influence how a message is received by the audience and what kind of connection the author is able to make with the reader. Prominent British linguist Ken Hyland says, “The linguistic choices writers make not only affect the conceptual or ideational meaning that they convey but can also influence the impression they make on their readers. The decision to adopt an impersonal rhetorical style or to represent oneself explicitly would seem to have significant consequences for how one’s message is received” (211). Therefore, in some types of essays using first-person may be essential for a writer to make a certain point and deliver their message properly. At times, it also might be easier or necessary for a student to use first-person in order to avoid having passive sentences in their essay. For example, the writing center at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill claims that using the first-person pronoun I can improve your writing by adding assertiveness, clarity, and allowing you to position yourself in your essay (“Should I Use ‘I’?”). Positioning yourself in the essay is essentially the same thing as incorporating ethos, and the skill of including proper ethos in an essay is heavily stressed in secondary school and college writing. Using first-person pronouns can often make this task easier and the author’s credibility more effective. The proof that first-person pronouns can be beneficial to academic writing can be seen through their use in professional academic research papers. In Hyland’s study, two hundred and forty professional research articles across eight different disciplines were analyzed, and he discovered that every article contained “at least one first person reference” (212). If every professional researcher in this study used first-person in their paper, then there must be benefits in doing so because these professionals spend months and years performing research and finding the best ways to display this research to their audiences. The main goal when teaching writing is to give students all the skills necessary to be able to write like professionals one day. Therefore, if first-person is something that is widely used by academic professionals, students should also learn to use and practice this skill. Although the benefits of using first-person are abundant, whether or not students have the confidence or ability to fully take advantage of these benefits is another story. Additionally, if students use first-person pronouns incorrectly, there is a chance they may actually harm their essay. Early on in secondary school writing, the benefits and risks may not be as clear. One study conducted by teacher and literary coach Margaret Troyer found “no evidence that sixth-grade students’ choices about whether and how to use the first person in argumentative writing bear any relationship to the overall quality of their writing” (30). Students of this age, who likely do not yet understand much about stylistic choices in writing, are not significantly benefitting or harming their essay by using first-person. However, as students age the expectations for the quality of writing they produce increase, and the impact of using or not using first-person becomes clearer. A 2016 study examining student essays written in a college literature class found that “nearly one-half” of the papers contained at least one first-person reference (Beerits 554). On the surface, these findings seem normal and suggest that college students are fairly confident using first-person in their writing. However, Beerits also examines specifically how the students use first-person claims in addition to how often. She claims, “The taxonomy I provide reveals that despite frequent first-person pronoun use, these students rarely wrote about anything personal. Instead, students in this group frequently made General Claims that begin with I or my as a stylistic rather than a semantic choice” (559). These findings suggest that students may actually lack confidence or understanding in using first-person pronouns in their writing because even though they use them, they often do not use them in a way that adds anything of value to their writing. Teresa Thonney, a professor of English at Columbia Basin College, further supports the idea that students lack the confidence and knowledge of how to effectively use first-person in their essays through her study on the use of first-person pronouns in academic novices’ writing. She found that while 64% of students used I in their papers, 40% of these occurrences appear in “low-risk” situations, such as in introductions or conclusions (7). Additionally, she found that the third most common use of I was to express “uncertainty or doubt,” which often caused the student authors to limit their own credibility and “reveal their novice status” (7). As we previously discussed, one of the main functions of using first-person is to establish the author’s credibility and position within the essay. If the students’ attempts to include first-person in order to make a connection with their audience actually hurts their credibility, this is possibly even more concerning than students not using first-person pronouns at all and gives another reason that students should be taught how to properly use first-person in the classroom. Allowing students to use first-person in the classroom can also foster more positive attitudes toward writing. Many students have negative attitudes toward writing that stem from past experiences or a lack of understanding and do not enjoy it. These attitudes can also result from the fact that students are often conditioned to be distant and disconnected from their writing in order to remain objective. However, the idea that students must always be completely objective in their writing is limiting because it goes against the very nature of learning which requires a level of engagement with the topic or material. In addition to the rhetorical benefits that can come from inserting a first-person perspective into the essay, if students are taught and required to use I effectively in the classroom it forces a personal interaction with the subject and their writing. Pamela Davies discusses this personal connection in her article, “’Me’, ’Me’, ‘Me’: The Use of the First Person in Academic Writing and Some Reflections on Subjective Analyses of Personal Experiences,” which describes a case study she did on herself where she used her expert opinions on her personal experiences. She concludes, “Writing as ‘I’ has forced comparisons between a personal and impersonal analysis of social interaction” (745). In other words, using first-person pronouns can allow students to think about a subject objectively and from their own personal point of view at the same time which allows them to develop a deeper connection and understanding with the topic. The better the connection to the subject, the more thoughtful and all around better the writing will be. The skill of using first-person effectively in writing can also be translated from one genre or type of writing to another. Susan Friedman, a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Florida, says, “I have found through my own teaching experience that incorporating autobiographical texts and self-writing into my pedagogical practices can foster a classroom environment that pays attention to subjectivity to promote mindful, ethical behavior in both teacher and student, and teach empathy for the other” (2). Oftentimes, personal writing is seen as separate from academic writing, but the two can go hand in hand. Friedman is discussing the benefits that self-writing can bring into the classroom environment, but additional learning benefits can also be achieved through personal writing as well. Many of the skills in personal and academic writing are the same. Autobiographical writing can teach students the skills needed to form effective personal anecdotes in their academic writing. It can also allow them to practice using ethos, another essential element in most academic writing. Incorporating personal writing may even foster more positive attitudes toward academic writing because students often find it more enjoyable to write about themselves. In order to be a well-rounded writer, one must know when and how to effectively utilize first-person in their academic writing. Hyland says, “I have argued that first person pronouns and self-citation are not just stylistic optional extras but significant ingredients for promoting a competent scholarly identity and gaining accreditation for research claims” (223). Students, just like professionals, deserve the opportunity to give credit to themselves in their writing when they have done extensive research and worked hard on a paper. They just need to be shown in the classroom how to do use first-person in the proper way so that they effectively build their ethos and add to their paper as a whole rather than take away from it. Thus, using first-person can offer many benefits to students’ writing when used properly. However, it more often adds nothing of value or hurts the essay because students use first-person improperly. This improper usage suggests that most students are not learning how to properly incorporate the first-person style into their writing at an early age which causes a lack of confidence when using this skill later on. To avoid these issues and better prepare students for the writing expectations of college classes, the skill of using first-person style in academic writing needs to be taught and practiced in middle and high school classrooms. Perhaps by teaching students the skill of using first-person in academic writing early on, the rude awakening that I and many other students experienced at the start of college will cease to exist in the future.