TEACHING WRITING ONLINE: THE WAY THINGS REALLY
AREMichael BurkeKanda University of International Studies
When the 2020 pandemic first struck, I was busy writing a philosophy chapter for my PhD. In
that chapter, I grappled with arguably the most consequential debate in the social sciences andhumanities right now: Whether knowledge of the social world—the way things really are—canbe approached through the application of reason, or whether it can only be understood
subjectively, as told in the narratives of its inhabitants; their lived experiences, in other words.
According to this ideology, the social world is only what we make of it according to whateverstory we tell. For example, in any classroom—online or otherwise—there may always be aseries of complementary, contrasting and even conflicting narratives—that may very well beirreconcilable. On the above, Foucault (1988) famously argued “All my analyses are against theidea of universal necessities in human existence"(p. 11). Upon which Rorty (1989) would laterclarify:
The difficulty faced by a philosopher who, like myself, is sympathetic to thissuggestion [e.g., Foucault’s]—one who thinks of himself as auxiliary to the poetrather than to the physicist—is to avoid hinting that this suggestion gets
something right, that my sort of philosophy corresponds to the way things reallyare. For this talk of correspondence brings back just the idea my sort ofphilosopher wants to get rid of, the idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic
nature. (p. 7-8)
Drawing on my experiences—my narrative—of teaching academic writing online during thefirst semester of the 2020-2021 Japanese academic year, I will describe the anguish I felt for
believing that the aims of my online lessons were utterly irreconcilable with the reality that mystudents' were facing. I will then show why I became skeptical of this narrative I had woven formyself; how, contrary to what Foucault (1988) and Rorty (1989) argue is possible, I discovered
an external reality—the way things really are—that was the opposite of my pessimism. I explain
how I came to that conclusion and what it means for me.
At the best of times, I find academic writing extremely difficult to teach; perhaps because it isone of the most difficult skills, I think, my students have to learn. There are two key reasons forthis. Firstly, most Japanese students have little or no exposure to the process of writing essays
in English at high school (Mulvey, 2016). In my experience then, as a consequence of having
little, if any, experience of writing essays, few, if any, students are good at it. As a consequenceof not being good at writing essays, few, if any, students claim to like academic writing; many
students have told me that the class is widely considered the least popular of all thecompulsory courses. Similarly, many teachers have told me that academic writing is their least
favourite course to teach.
16.	  Teaching	  Writing	  Online:	  The	  Way	  Things	  Really	  Are.	  Michael	  Burke.	  Pages	  66-­‐68.	  Literacies	  &	  Language	  Education:	  Research	  &	  Practice,	  2020	  Special	  Section:	  Teaching	  During	  a	  Pandemic.	  English	  Language	  Institute,	  KUIS.

A second reason teaching academic writing is difficult is because of its focus, which is to teachstudents how to structure an essay in their first semester and how to assemble a muchlengthier research paper in their second. The focus on structure in teaching—in place of
meaningful content, for example—has the tendency to make classes a little dry; meaning that
more energy and innovation is required to make them feel interesting and worthwhile; tobreathe life into them, in other words. As a consequence of the above two factors then,teaching academic writing well has been by far my greatest professional challenge at thisinstitution; little did I know it was about to get even more challenging.
At the start of the 2020 spring semester the pandemic began, the world went into panic,
economies locked down and universities across Japan went online. Teaching online was now
the new normal, but, to me, it felt like riding a motorcycle at full speed down a narrow, winding
and mountainous road whilst blindfolded; I had no idea what I was doing and was terrified of
the consequences of my inevitable mistakes. But how would I even know if I made any? All theusual social cues were either extremely difficult or impossible to read. For example, whenteaching in a physical classroom, I constantly survey the room, checking for comprehension
and reading the mood, if I sense students do not understand me, I can shift the explanation
onto another, perhaps clearer example; if the students seem bored, I can make a joke in order
to lift the atmosphere. However, everything changed at the beginning of this semester. Mysenses were gone, I felt like I was teaching into an empty void, worse, with students' cameras
often off, I could not really be sure if anyone was staring back at me. I panicked, as I felt myheart beating faster at the surge of adrenaline in my system, I knew my voice was speeding up,I knew students would struggle to understand me, I tried my best to slow down. I desperately
tried to make things simple, I wrote down everything in clear instructions on Google Classroom
so as to ensure that even those with spotty internet connections could manage to get somesemblance of content. Particularly for academic writing—with all its precise focus on essay
structure—, I was, in spite of my best efforts, bordering on certain, that few, if any, of mystudents would grasp the content of my lessons.
This negativity I describe above meant that each class left me drained, each class also gave menausea, each class made me feel like I was back at square one: I was terrible at my job. Morethan anything, this last part haunted me. Despite my best efforts, I was letting the students
down, I did not have it in me to do better; try as I might. This was the reality I had woven formyself; my narrative about teaching online, in other words.
Scheduling one on one sessions for the asynchronous part of the academic writing course—
asynchronous for most students most of the time but synchronous for me, as I made my way
through the class—I determined that I could go over students’ essays and teach them what
they had inevitably gotten wrong as a consequence of my lack of online teaching skills; giving
students feedback in real time, would, in my view be superior to writing it. Having
procrastinated somewhat, because I was so sure their work would be so substandard, I had
forgone looking at it before I spoke to them in person. With a sinking feeling in my chestthen—sure in the knowledge that what I was about to discover would be grim and not knowinghow I would correct it—I opened up the Zoom client and started my first meeting with my firststudent.
Their essay was wonderful, somehow—unbelievably—they had managed to understand andreplicate all of the key points I had explained online; but, look, there is always going to be one
or two who get it, right? Well, the second was number two, the third number three, the fourth
number four and so on until around seven or eight, even when students had failed to write
anything at all, a sternly-worded email corrected that and their essays, too, showed that they
had understood exactly what I had tried to explain in class. This stood in stark—but welcome—contravention to the narrative I had created for myself. I discovered that the punishment I had
put myself through did not match the reality unfolding before me. The students had, by far,exceeded my expectations of what I thought they were capable. Suddenly, I felt the blood
return to my veins, everything was going to be okay! Just like that, the clouds parted, I began
to enjoy my job once more and, because of this, the whole world around me changed
profoundly for the better. My narrative now corresponded to the reality made knowable bywhat the students showed me they could produce; the way things really are.
CONCLUSION
To conclude this piece, I propose that the following is worth considering: if you find yourself ina position wherein you have woven yourself a negative narrative concerning your lack ofabilities as a teacher, challenge that narrative; things—the way things really are—are notalways nearly as bad as they might seem. In my case, discovering what my students were able
to accomplish, in spite of the extra difficulties they faced, makes me doubt whether Foucault(1988) and Rorty (1989) were correct in their observations about the world and our place in it,
at least insofar as how it pertains to classroom practice online. There is an external reality and
it is better than I imagined it could be.

REFERENCES
Foucault, M. (1988).Truth, power, self: An interview with Michel Foucault [1982]. In L. H.
Martin, H. Gutman, and P. H. Hutton, (Eds.), Technologies of the Self. University ofMassachusetts Press.
Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge University Press.
Mulvey, B. (2016). Writing instruction: What is being taught in Japanese high schools, why andwhy it matters. The Language Teacher, 40(3), 3-8.