Definition: Student Writers
Chitra Divakaruni
Every definition essay, I think, has an agenda behind it and I like my students to realize what their agenda is or what, when they're reading a definition essay, what is the agenda behind it? And at the end I ask, "Well, what was the point—why is it so important for this word to be defined in this essay?" And so we get to the agenda or the intent behind the definition and I think for me it's important that the students learn what that agenda is because that's how it connects to their lives and that's how they can pull examples out of their own experience to further that definition.

Mike Rose
Defining, I think most folks think in terms of a dictionary like defining meaning—oh we'll look something up and see what the definition is. As though the meaning is fixed and it's written down someplace and all we gotta do is look it up and then we know what X or Y means. But in fact, if you think about it, so much of our lives, both our personal, as well as our professional, as well as our intellectual, as well as our work lives, are structured around the ways that society, other folks, institutions have already created definitions for us. And one of the powerful things, I think, that can happen in a writing course is when we get students to the place where they realize that they can challenge definitions. That they can think about definitions. That they even in fact can try to create alternative definitions.

Santi Buscemi
An extended definition really covers an entire essay. It's a long definition and it includes a lot of different kinds of writing. The writers will use illustration; they use cause and effect, may use narration, description…you name it…to extend the reader's understanding of that term. To make that term more concrete. So I want my students to use a variety of methods. I want my students to be versatile.

Teresa Redd
One property of a good definition is that it's going to include language that is at the appropriate level for the target audience and it's not going to repeat terms or related forms of the term that's being defined. Concrete examples make a definition clear.

Marty Wallace
There's sort of a classic, very, very, very, complex idea called kinetics and we model it with this really simple curve. One little line. And students can see that, and they can understand that, and the analogy is something rolling downhill. And so that's a good definition for students, a good mental model for students to have. Although, it's much more complex than that, but it makes a pretty good model, a pretty good analogy.