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Seobon Kim
Professor Michael Lasley
ENGL 1A
5 October 2016
Robillard Bizup BEAM Analysis
Many people grow up hearing a lot of different stories. Stories about magic, dinosaurs,
and even stories about magical dinosaurs. One of the best stories to tell, however, are the
personal ones that come from experience. In Robillards essay, Its Time for Class: Toward a
More Complex Pedagogy of Narrative, the author brings up the value of the otherwise rarely
used personal narrative writing style within scholarly essays. In her essay, the author brings to
light not only the value of scholarly essays, but she also focuses on other factors and ideas. One
of these other ideas is the differences between different socioeconomic classes. The author
focuses on the idea of time and how time is not as universally accepted and understood. Finally,
another big idea that permeates throughout her essay is that there is inherently a different way of
looking at the world depending on where someone comes from in life. These factors may include
where one was born, socioeconomic class, and education level among many others. The value of
personal narratives in higher level institutions of learning has been undermined and should be
adopted more heavily in order to pursue an all-encompassing and enlightening experience.
Joseph Bizup came up with a clever way of analyzing essays. This method, BEAM,
focuses on how to most effectively learn what a written work is trying to teach. In B, also known

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as background, the ideas or concepts that are held as factual within the essay and do not need
separate definitions of set the base unto which the author explains her ideas. In Robillards essay,
a couple of these background ideas are easily recognizable. Robillard does not go into detail
about who exactly is considered a student. She assumes that students are all very similar people.
Usually middle class and are very similar to other students. Another thing that is held as true in
this essay is that all acceptable research papers are generally known to look a certain way. Her
focus on why personal narratives are not accepted in modern day writing is not a concept she
discusses. It is held to be understood as a fact. Another big idea she mentions is that time is
conceived differently by people and that there is a fundamental difference between people of
different socioeconomic classes. By using these ideas as her base, Robillard is able to discuss in
detail the need to change the idea of what the accepted research paper looks like and thus, by
utilizing personal narratives, offer a broader range of topics for students to learn to accept in an
attempt at offering a lens through which people can look at the world. A way to understand and
make sense of the world that is not what the average student is capable of understanding under
the constraints of typical research structure. In short, she sets her backgrounds to offer a broad
range of topics to highlight the importance of personal narratives.
In E, exhibits, Bizup details that exhibits are generally ...materials a writer analyzes or
interprets (Bizup 72). To expand on this definition, the easiest form of an exhibit is an example
to highlight the important parts of the essay. In Robillard's essay, this is done in various ways.
The author uses two main ways to highlight her analysis and interpretation. One of her ways of
doing so includes her personal narratives. As she talks about the importance of personal
narratives, she highlights this idea by including personal narratives in her essay as well. By using
her personal narratives of her working class family, primarily that of her mother, and by utilizing

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her past experiences, she is able to show some topics that may been confusing without such
information. For example, in explaining the idea that time is fundamentally different for different
people, she uses her mother as an example. Her mother is so fully engrossed in time and
maintaining order in her life vias time that she fails to view her future. She lives life as it comes
and fails to look towards where she may be at a later time. In that way, the author shows that
working class people tend to view time as something always existing in the present. Working
class people are addicted to the idea of the now. However, people of higher classes, Robillard
explains, tend to view time as something to look forward to. People who are in higher
socioeconomic classes tend to look towards the future as opposed to the present. They think in
ways to change their futures as opposed to doing what they can to focus on the now. In such a
way, the author makes use of her personal narratives to showcase her ideas. Another way the
author showcases and exhibits her ideas is through works written by other people - Articles of
others. She uses these ideas to question her experience and to try and find either a common
ground or to find a point of argument in which she offers her own ideas. Robillard is able to
highlight what she views as important, the truth that personal narratives are useful in essays, and
to show that to her readers as well using real life examples. By using both her own personal
narrative and by using other articles and works of others, Robillard is able to accomplish what
she is trying to prove, that personal narratives allow for a broader understanding of the world and
thus need to be accepted in writings of the research level.
In A, Bizup explains that the arguments are materials whose claims a writer affirms,
disputes, refines, or extends in some way (Bizup 75). In this way, the author is able to bring up
other world life examples to showcase his or her understanding and try to relay that information
as valid by using the works of others. Robillard uses a wide range of different articles and written

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works of others however, the one she focuses the most useful information on is are the articles by
Joseph Harris and E.P. Thompson. E.P. Thompson explains that class is a relationship. Harris
then interprets that to mean that class is found through relationships and experiences. This
inclusion in her essay may seem somewhat minor. However, the ideas that are proposed are
heavily tied to the importance of personal narratives. Robillard does use many other authors and
their articles to highlight her own work and in this way, she uses the arguments of others to
formulate and solidify her own ideas.
Methods, or M, as it is known in the BEAM sequence, are materials from which a
writer derives a governing concept or a manner of working (76). In Robillards essay, she uses
mainly her personal experiences to explain her method. She highlights how her usage of personal
narrative has made it possible for others to view it in a way that can be understood by different
social classes despite concerning the efforts and pains of the working class. By utilizing this
method, she is able to offer a concrete example using her essay as the test subject to showcase
the results of her ideas. This inclusion only went to show the importance and the possibilities that
open up when personal narrative is established into a stereotypical research essay.
Given traditional, high school methods of analysis, there may be a couple ways to tackle
the content of Robillards essay. One could focus on syntax or word choice to highlight what the
author may have meant. In Robillards, essay, focusing on the type of writing and the structure of
the writing is a logically sound way to analyze the essay. Throughout the essay, Robillard
incorporate her own personal narrative in between her own analysis of others works to make a
very specific point. This point concerns the ability and the results of using a personal narrative in
a research essay. Upon reading her essay, readers can see how the author used her personal

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narratives to tackle confusing topics in an effective manner. By using her own personal
narratives, the idea of time and how time is fundamentally different for different people is able to
be made clear. The author also validates that as middle class inhabitants, scholars tend to miss a
lot of the lifestyles and experiences necessary to fully understand the working class problems.
However, by utilizing the personal narrative, more information needed to understand problems
within different socioeconomic scales is available to be understood by most classes. This is
highlighted very extensively in her essay and is used to showcase her argument that personal
narrative is a necessary component in research essays and thus should not be looked down upon.
BEAM analysis of Robillards essay highlights the most important ideas concerned with
what the author is trying to portray. By utilizing the BEAM method, one is able to understand on
a deeper level the contents and the history behind the topic. The Background, Exhibits,
Arguments, and Methods in Robillards essay all come together to highlight that fact that
personal narratives offer an opportunity for readers to obtain a deeper understanding of the text.
This shows that personal narratives are not terrible fallacies but rather, personal narratives are
things which should be encouraged in higher levels of education.