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Questions and Answers About Writing in WI Courses and Writing Across the Curriculum — Page 6

Is it wise to label and correct every effort a student makes?
The rationale behind labeling and correcting errors, especially on final drafts, is that this labor-intensive work is an effective pedagogical tool. We expect students to recognize the labels, learn from our corrections, and transfer this learning to subsequent writing assignments. When we put this theory into practice, however, we find that students are baffled and befuddled by many of our abbreviations, symbols, labels, and terms; awed by our ability to hunt down and correct errors of which they were totally unaware; relieved by our willingness to appropriate a job that is rightfully theirs; and unsure whether they should learn anything from the experience, except perhaps that there is usually a correlation between the amount of teacher editing and the paper grade: The greater the number of corrections, the lower the grade.

Research indicates that the comments and corrections on final drafts have a negligible influence on students’ subsequent writing performance and are only minimally useful as a tool for learning (Gee, Schroeder, Dudenhyer, Hausner, Harris, Thompson, Ziv). In order to be effective, we need to intervene earlier and respond to work-in-progress. At the final-draft stage, it is useful to circle spelling, usage, and punctuation errors for the purpose of having students correct them and resubmit the paper. But it is futile to rewrite sentences, correct, edit, or proofread student work.

Cris Madigan provides useful guidelines for responding to student papers in an article entitled “Writing as a Means, Not and End” in the Journal of College Science Teaching (Feb. 1987:245-249):

Respond rather than grade
Sometimes good advice is more important than self-justification for a grade. You are more useful to the student before the final draft.

Select what to respond to
The amount of writing students do should be far more than a teacher can evaluate. Fifty percent of a student’s grade can be based on good-faith participation. You can give checks or full credit to everyone who completes an assignment. Or you can read some assignments without telling students which ones.

Respond selectively
Let the assignment’s purpose determine your response. If the aim is to test, then grade. If it’s to promote discovery, praise discovery or ask questions to keep students looking.

Spread the Burden
Don’t do all the responding yourself. Use peer response groups, peer pairs, and self-assessment.

How can I handle paper load in courses with large enrollments?
You can integrate significant amounts of writing into courses in large-lecture format without overburdening yourself. One approach is to assign and collect a number of assignments but select only a few to respond to or grade. Make clear to students that writing is a skill that requires continuous workout, a great deal of output, and constant practice. Not all of their production need be or can be monitored by the teacher.

Throughout the semester you might assign ten one-page papers or microthemes, give checks or full-credit to students who complete the assignments, and select three microthemes for evaluation. If you wish, let the students select the papers they consider their best efforts.
Another labor-saving technique is to respond selectively, keeping in mind the purpose of the assignment. For example, if the objective is for students to learn how to use various types of supports for a thesis, evaluate only the quality of the thesis supports in their papers. This strategy could be streamlined further if you use an analytic scale like the one presented earlier in this section.

Another way to reduce your paper load while expanding your students’ roles as writers is to assign course journals or learning logs, collect them from time to time, and evaluate them on a pass/fail or credit/no credit basis as part of the broad course requirements. You need not read every journal entry. Instead, skim read the journal and comment briefly on selected pieces.
The course journal serves many functions. It can be a repository for frequent, regularly-scheduled in-class writing. You can ask students to write in their journals for a few minutes at various points in the period:

• at the beginning of class to reflect on the day’s topic or to generate ideas for discussion;
• during class to engage themselves meaningfully with the content area under study; or
• at the end of class to draw conclusions, reformulate, or reach closure on the material just discussed.

You can also use journal entries as homework assignments. Each week, require students to do at least three entries responding to the course readings and textbook. Give them prompts which will move beyond mere summary to interpretation, analysis, synthesis, and hypothesis. Any time you wish, you can collect particular journal entries to check if students have completed and understood the assigned reading.

In addition to having students write on specified topics, you can require weekly self-sponsored entries. If you wish to avoid receiving entries that are too personal or intimate for a course journal, impose some restrictions on their form or content or distribute journal guidelines.

How do I give students “instructions in writing techniques specific to the discipline and clarification of requirements and methods of preparation for assignments”?
To help students write like competent members of your discipline, you need to expose them to the various rhetorical forms the discipline uses and give them practice in the types of writing required for communicating information.

Psychologists, for example, need to teach students how the discipline of psychology creates and transmits knowledge and how the conventions of the discipline shape psychological texts. If they require students to write psychological reports that adhere to the Guidelines of the American Psychological Association, they should devote class time to discussing the style and organization of these reports and to showing students how to conform to the expectations held by journals in the field.

A useful way to determine if you are conveying expectations about writing in your field is to check that your assignments contain answers to the following questions:

"Nomenclature:
• What do professionals in your field call this type of writing?
• What are the parts of this type of writing?
• What do you call them?

Purpose:
• What are the most important goals of the writer?

Audience:
• Who are the readers?
• Are they experts?
• How much can the writer assume they know about the subject?
• Are they general readers?
• How much more does the author have to make explicit for an audience of non-experts?

Stylistic Features:
• What do readers expect in terms of stance, format, style?
• What is the average length for this type of writing?
• What conventions about titles are observed?
• Are sub-headings appropriate?
• Are charts, graphs, illustrations usually provided?
• Are passive constructions permissible?
• Are complete sentences always required?
• What type of documentation is used?
• What is the preferred style sheet?

Contexts:
• What are the reasons for the features above?
• How do the nature of the discipline and the behavior of those within it influence choices about format, style, and documentation?" (Dick 179).
Most important, give students clear-cut guidelines. Take, for example, the guidelines provided by Richard Marius, Professor of History and former Director of Harvard’s Writing Program.