If Not to Narrow, Then How to Focus: Two Techniques for Focusing

Abstract

Good writing is almost always, in one sense or another, focused writing. In the standard textbook procedure for writing a paper, the second step-after finding (or being assigned) a topic-is to limit or and focus. In most composition courses, this is the only technique taught for focusing a piece of writing. If we may judge by their writings, however, it is not the only-or even the most widespread-technique used by good writers in the real world. Although the and focus technique is important, it has its limitations. There is also another technique, which can be derived from problem-solving or from dialectic, for focusing a piece of writing. This technique seems to approximate the behavior of many good writers on those occasions when they choose broad topics. Let me suggest that each technique has its uses and is appropriate for certain types of writing. Moreover, both can sometimes be used together on a single writing task. Writing students should learn both. Because I am here concerned to convince instructors that it is not enough to teach just the familiar narrow-and-focus technique, however, I shall in this article emphasize the limitations of that technique and the advantages of the other. To narrow and focus, as the phrase suggests, actually involves two related but distinct operations. Narrowing limits a writer to a part of the original topic. It is equivalent to what a photographer does by zooming in with a zoom lens (or switching to a long lens). frame of the photograph becomes smaller; the outer boundaries of the topic are reduced. Thus World becomes Peace in Afganistan. The Literacy becomes The Literacy 'Crisis' in New York City's High Schools. For writers, the partition is usually determined by a real division in the subject matter: Afganistan is a