There were lots of ideas floating around at the TESOL conference, including one called R.A.F.T. R.A.F.T. stands for Role Audience Format Topic and it offers a slightly oddball formula for designing written work. The product is likely to be a bit off-beat, but used right, the R.A.F.T. approach could help students think productively about voice and purpose in their written work.
"Role" refers to the voice you would like them to adopt in this assignment. It could be anything, from an impassioned abolitionist to Ho Chi Minh to Sigmund Freud.
"Audience" refers to the audience you'd like your student to address. It could be the editor of a newspaper, the Supreme Court or a gathering of Bolsheviks.
"Format" refers to the type of writing you'd like your student to produce: an appeal, an advice column, a love letter or a letter of complaint.
"Topic" refers to the subject you'd like the writer to address: the Second Amendment, the Dred Scott decision, health care reform.
This formula is highly adaptable and can be implemented in a serious or silly way. What caught my attention is that it encompasses a broad spectrum of writing, that it encourages students to think about the voice they are using as writers and that it engages the imagination at the same time it addresses a subject area.
I think the RAFT formula is useful not for assigning a pretend role like 'now pretend to be Sigmund Freud, talking to his dog about the death wish that causes him to chase cars, and help him resolve that neurosis.'
ReplyDeleteRather, get the student to look at a first draft and ask "What is my role here as the writer--am I explaining something to an audience who does not understand it (here's how the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies in subatomic physics), urging an audience to act in a certain way (save the environment, vote for Palin), or presenting my own experience in such a way as to generate some understanding of human nature-- and so on, from role to audience to format to topic. I'd not address them in that order, so I probably wouldn't use the RAFT acronym, but the fundamental essentials of a piece of writing get addressed by this model.
Love,
Uncle Gary
Okay, now that right there is why I love - and have missed so much - Gary Jones!
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