Chapter 2 - 3

03 Office Hours

Listen to a conversation between a student and a professor. Fill in the diagram with the information that you hear.

M: Professor Johnson, can I talk to you for a minute?

W: Of course, Sam. What can I do for you?

M: Well I just finished reading your newest book, about how to write about the natural world, and I thought it was great.

W: I’m glad you liked it.

M: You know, before I picked up your book, I never thought of nature writing as specific genre.

W: Not many people do. But really, learning how to describe the natural world is important to all forms of writing.

In my book, I stress that nature writing almost exclusively depends on using your five senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. The whole purpose of nature writing, after all, is to paint a picture of the world around you.

If you think about it, Creative Writing professors teach their students the same things concerning imagery.

M: That may be true, but most of my friends in Creative Writing say that one of their big problems is that they don’t use enough descriptions in their works.

W: That’s not surprising. Many writing students have trouble because it’s hard to put the description of the world around you into words.

M: I always had trouble with using imagery in my writing until I read your book. After doing some of the exercises you suggested, I feel like my writing has improved some.

W: That’s wonderful. I think that if writing students practiced writing about the natural world around them, they’d find it much easier to put images into writing.

M: That’s one of the reasons I thought I’d talk to you. Since I know this is the time when you professors have to start planning what classes you want to teach next term, I wanted you to consider forming a class on nature writing. We could use the book you wrote as the class textbook.

M: I’m flattered that you think my book would be good enough to form a class around.

M: And it would be great to get writing students to appreciate the natural world. I mean, we’re usually zooming through our lives so quickly that we don’t have time to actually stop and look at the world around us.

W: You have a point there, but do you really think there would be an interest?

M: Absolutely. I think it would be popular even with students who aren’t studying writing. No other class at the university teaches about nature writing. It would be a hit.

W: I’m glad you think so. Unfortunately, the department here doesn’t. I suggested teaching a class on nature writing over two semesters ago, but the department head didn’t believe it would be popular with students.

M: Are you kidding? I know tons of people who would want to sign up for it.

W: I’ll tell you what. If you think you could get thirty people to send letters to the department head expressing support for a nature writing course, it might convince him to approve one.

M: OK. I’ll make an announcement about the course in my Creative Writing class and try to get students to write those letters.

1) what is a problem that creative writers have, according to the student?

2) Why hasn’t the professor been able to teach in nature-writing class?

3) What does the professor suggest the student do to have the class offered?