Archive for the 'Writing Across the Curriculum' Category

The Deadly Grip of Tradition

Published
by
Mikhail
on October 15, 2008
in Pedagogy, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 6 Comments

Over the last two or so decades, research in composition and rhetoric has challenged a number of traditional, “common sense” ideas about writing pedagogy. The emphasis on process over product is one example. Another, quite familiar one is the shift away from the tired old structure of the academic expository essay with its requisite introduction (which contains the thesis statement), body and conclusion. The thinking here is that this form with its three rigidly defined constituent parts is 1) not necessarily conducive to original, critical thinking and is therefore counterproductive to effective arguing, and 2) scarcely found anywhere else other than introductory writing courses.

Some folks find this idea to be radical and exciting enough to claim a bit of what Michel Foucault termed the “speakers’ benefit” in advocating that we move away from the traditional intro, body, conclusion structure. If, for example, we approach the traditional essay structure in terms of how it adversely affects students’ ability to treat their subjects critically and keeps them locked into old, tired ways of thinking, then we can conceive of ourselves as writing pedagogy iconoclasts, liberating our students’ thought from the shackles of outdated, rigid and repressive structures.

Well, we’re not that radical or iconoclastic: To wit, Robert W. Neal, writing in 1912 in The English Journal:

The Deadly Grip of Tradition

Perhaps our pupils are still taught a fixed form for compositions — introduction, body, and conclusion-because, unsuspecting old Aristotle tried to illustrate what he had in mind about dramatic composition by employing the terms that we translate “beginning,” “middle,” and “end.” Or perhaps this mechanical makeshift for analysis is still given them because formal rhetoric in modern guise came to us largely from clerical teachers, used to the cut-and-dry methods of sermon composition as practiced almost universally until outside influences reacted on the pulpit and forced a more vital presentation of thought.

In either case, we have textbooks in use and teachers in service in which and by whom pupils are taught with fatal insistence that a composition- which should mean any piece of writing intended to serve a worth-while purpose-consists of “an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.”
For ease of teaching I wish it were true. But it is not. It falls so far short of being the truth that it often is an indefensible untruth. Modern writing outside of academic walls has largely dropped the introduction. It has dropped the introduction because it does not need it. For the same reason, it has largely dropped the conclusion.

Our generation is a generation of skilled writers. But it is not a generation addicted to introductions and conclusions. The teacher who hammers away on the introduction-body-conclusion method shows that he is not familiar with the writings of his own day, or else that he is not capable of learning new things. He is like the farmers, who, in this era of scientific cultivation, farm as grandpap farmed. Some of grandpap’s methods have not been improved upon yet, and some of them ruined the soil they were used on.

A study of the effective writing of our own day will show how largely the introduction-conclusion plan of structure has passed away. From news report to editorial article, from descriptive or expository article to argument, from short story to essay, modern writing-which is probably the most effective the world has known-shuns the formalities of structure except, when it needs them. And when it needs them, they are no longer formal divisions, but essential parts of the thought itself.
When it needs them: for like every other element of successful writing, they exist to serve an extremely definite purpose, and for nothing else. Often indeed they have no function in a particular piece of writing, and therefore, so far as that piece of writing is concerned, no excuse for being. Especially is this so of the introduction; and the conclusion more often than not is already present merely in the logical close of the article itself.

My protest therefore is not directed against introductions and conclusions in themselves, but to the teaching that makes them appear as necessary parts of every piece of writing. Every editor knows that he can waste-basket from one sheet to three sheets at the beginning of the “stuff” the tyro turns in, and lose nothing. Every instructor of college Freshmen knows the paper that consists of a long introduction and little else-the necessary number of words having been written, with a line or two of “body” and a formal “conclusion” tacked on. No small part of Freshman teaching consists in demonstrating to the students that they have not in the least outlined a paper when they have set down “Introduction-Body-Conclusion.” Thought is not to be analyzed in any such mechanical way, and we do pupils a wrong in making them think that it can be.

I’d put a conclusion here, but, well, you know . . .

Teaching Writing Intensively (and Often)

Published
by
James
on September 19, 2008
in Higher Education, Literacy, Low-Stakes Writing, Oral Communication, Pedagogy, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 7 Comments

“Has the creation and promotion of writing and communication intensive classes actually done as much harm as good?”

Click to continue reading “Teaching Writing Intensively (and Often)”

Read All About It!!

Published
by
Mikhail
on September 15, 2008
in Baruch College, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs) and Writing Across the Curriculum
. 0 Comments

This week, the Schwartz Institute was profiled in Baruch’s campus newspaper, The Ticker. Here’s a juicy tidbit:

The significance of being proficient in language, both written and spoken, is emphasized throughout a student’s academic career at Baruch. From Freshmen Seminar to Business Policy 5100, students are exposed to the various forms of communication and the countless reasons pertaining to why proficiency is relevant. Courses designated as Communication Intensive Courses or CICs are designed and implemented by faculty members, with the help from the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute to help students become more effective writers and speakers.

Read the whole article here.

Knowing about Business in a Business School

Published
by
Olga
on March 21, 2008
in Baruch College, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs) and Writing Across the Curriculum
. 2 Comments

We often hear instructors complain about Baruch students’ narrow orientation toward business. I think a couple of years ago it became a requirement for all Baruch students to take a certain number of liberal arts courses. And of course on different occasions we all have given students explanations of these courses’ immense significance in their education. Personally, for quite a while I used be terrified every time students tried to relate business concepts to their readings or writing topics; my mind would go blank when I heard of such concepts as “equity loans” or “mortgage backed securities.” Hardly anyone can ignore current economic troubles, and I found myself in the alien world of the business discourse this week, as I was trying to establish some connection between contemporary world and classical literature. I saw every one of my nine students make immediate eye contact with me rather than with their computer screens. The energy level in the class boosted and the discussion got lively. I’m never again throwing out the Business section of NYT.

Effective written communication workshops

Published
by
Yukiko
on March 18, 2008
in Communication Intensive Courses (CICs) and Writing Across the Curriculum
. 2 Comments

This semester, I will run workshops for Professor Cherny’s ACCT 5400 (Principles of Auditing) in preparation for the students’ final paper project, a ‘lessons-learned’ assessment of an audit failure. It is different from my last semester’s work on oral presentations for ACCT4100 (Advanced Accounting) in the sense that the assignment focuses on writing (and not speaking), but the two do share a common goal: the coursework is designed to help the students develop as a more effective business communicator. My workshops will review principles of writing (the writing process, organizing the paper, how to do citations etc.) and move on to a (hopefully) in-depth look on the essence of an effective business paper. Even though this assignment may appear to be somewhat ‘old-school’ to some of the students, I hope that they will realize that writing is still an important part of business communication (just as much as the oral communication they practiced in ACCT4100) and they will learn a lot through this assignment. I am looking forward to meeting them at a workshop and hear what they have to say about their coursework. I will report back on the workshop in one of my next posts.

Writing In/Across Disciplines

Published
by
Olga
on October 26, 2007
in Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 0 Comments

Last week I attended a workshop on writing within disciplines led by Peter Gray and Mark McBeth at our CUNY WAC meeting. Together we thought about the forms of writing in various discourse communities and their differences when it comes to the issues of composition, organization, research/ register/voice/conventions, and formatting. Figuring out to what discipline a particular writing model belonged created no difficulty for the audience of academic professionals, but all of us agreed that it would not be an equally easy task for the beginning academic writers. What can writing instructors and fellows do to help this community of learners find meaning in the intimidating world of academic discourse(s)? Which aspects of writing are indeed discipline specific and which can be easily carried over from one discipline to another? As was emphasized in the workshop, instructors can show and explain models of a particular writing form they expect their students to produce and help students in the process of writing by giving them a list of guidelines or grading rubric for the assignment.
This workshop made me think about a couple of conversations we’ve had in our Great Works team about the possibility of running workshops for a group of students working in different fields. Writing Center’s workshops are organized precisely in this way, and, as Jody mentioned, it would be great to get together and think about effective strategies. I also thought about my own experience teaching a graduate seminar/workshop called Effective Academic Writing, which at first was really as daunting as it sounds, but as we began looking at writing models from different fields, it became clear that very similar criteria are used when we evaluate papers from such unlike disciplines as biochemistry and art history. This is not to say that we should not carefully study and introduce students to conventions specific to their fields of study. However, it is often the case that major paper components, e.g., thesis and evidence, are present in papers across disciplines only in different forms. It can be indeed enriching for students from these different fields to get together and receive feedback from each other; this way they can learn about original and unthought-of in their fields ways to present or articulate a piece of material.

Both as an instructor in that class and a graduate student/writer, I found one valuable article that pinpoints a few very specific Dos and Don’ts for academic writers. They really make sense regardless of the discourse community we are writing for: Gerald Graff, “Scholars and Sound Bites: The Myth of Academic Difficulty” PMLA. Vol. 115, No. 5. (Oct., 2000), pp. 1041-1052. It can be easily found on JSTOR.
Let me just quote my favorite “DO”:  “Be bilingual. It is not necessary to avoid academese—you sometimes need the stuff. But whenever you have to say something in academese, try to say it in the vernacular as well. You’ll be surprised to find that when you restate an academic point in your nonacademic voice, the point is enriched (or else you see how vacuous it is), and you’re led to new perceptions.”

Outsourcing grading and written feedback

Published
by
Kate
on August 24, 2007
in Assessment, Feedback, Grading, Pedagogy, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 0 Comments

I was surprised today to find an ad on InsideHigherEd to a company called EduMetry, which offers various outsourcing services to colleges and professors, among them, a 24/7 virtual writing center, and “Virtual TA.”

Virtual TA is a program where the grading of papers, and the writing of “Rich Feedback” is outsourced.

According to “The Case for Rich Feedback,” on the EduMentry site,

One area crying out for attention is the extent of feedback students receive on their ongoing written assignments. Almost universally, assignments come back with a score or letter-grade and a few scrawls that are too brief, general, vague and or otherwise too minimal to make a difference. The student is left with little guidance on what to do differently.

The same page attributes this lack of rich feedback being given to students to a a lack of support that faculty members receive from the university.

But the solutions to that problem are smaller and fewer classes, and faculty learning how to give useful feedback, and students learning how to use that feedback.

I realize this kind of service would best appeal to those running the kinds of huge lecture classes in which “non-virtual” TAs currently do the grading and feedback writing for professors.

But the name “Virtual TA” is kind of a misnomer. They’re not virtual TAs; they’re real TAs you can’t see or visit with, who have no connection with the culture of the college or its student body.

Leaving aside the large lecture course, which I think is not a good idea pedagogically except in certain fields, I fear that this Virtual TA system might be employed in more standard college courses. And if it were, I can’t imagine it being a good idea for the professor, who won’t be reading the papers, and who won’t be learning all s/he can about the students, who themselves won’t be benefitting from the professor’s own feedback.

In response to that concern, EduMetry says (on their FAQ):

Wouldn’t you be interfering in the instructor-student relationship?

We have no direct contact with students. We are at the service of the institution and its faculty members. We provide instructors with a student-ID-scrambling utility that ensures a double-blind grading process. As former academics ourselves, we do everything possible to keep the professor in the loop (and not in the dark, as delegating grading might appear at first blush). In addition to having access to all the individual-student feedback, professors receive a summary report for the class that points out the highlights from the grading of that assignment. This report further ensures that faculty members are aware of how students did, adjust their teaching (content, pace, style, design of assignments) based on the summary feedback.

Truly rich feedback can be provided only by those who know both the subject, the students, and their work, as intimately as is possible given the circumstances.

It’s not the interference between teacher and student, mentioned by EduMentry above, that I fear.
Instead, it’s the gap between teacher and student that this creates.

I guess you might say I “mind the gap.”

WAC/WID Terminology, Parts II & III

Published
by
Mikhail
on August 8, 2007
in CUNY, Faculty Development, Pedagogy, Resources, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 0 Comments

As promised, here’s the rest of that useful WAC/WID glossary from the CUNY WAC/WID Handbook. Again, please feel free to comment on any of these definitions.

High-Stakes Writing
High-stakes writing assignments are expected to be completed according to formal academic and disciplinary conventions and usually count for a significant part of a student’s grade; examples include essay exams, research papers, lab reports, and critical response papers. This term is generally paired with the term “low-stakes writing” (see below), and distinguished from informal writing that is often exploratory and non-graded. In Britton’s framework, the function of high-stakes writing would be “transactional,” that is, to get the business of college done.

Journal
Generally informal, journals can be a productive place for students to record their thoughts, experiences, questions, and informal writings throughout college, in all disciplines, as well as in their daily lives. A variation on the journal is a “double-entry journal.” Students write in two columns: the first column contains quotations from a reading; the second column contains their reactions or responses to those quotations. Many variations are possible. Students might be asked, for example, to use paraphrases or summaries in the first column instead of quotations. Triple-entry journals, in which the third column might be used for peer responses, research questions, etc., are also commonly used.

Language
To talk about writing is to talk about the uses and functions of language, as well as to talk about politics, history, and culture. All converge at CUNY, which is an extraordinary crossroads of languages: our students speak (and may write in) 131 first languages other than English.

Literacy
The term literacy refers to the ability to use language—to read, write, listen and speak. In recent years, educators and administrators have added “numeracy,” “multimedia literacy,” “information literacy,” and “quantitative literacy” to the literacies expected of college students. Of course, what it means to “use language” successfully is a cultural and political question.

Low-Stakes Writing
Low-stakes writing activities provide students with an opportunity to experiment with ideas, form, and style without the pressure associated with correctness. The term “low-stakes” represents the level of expectation that a student and instructor bring to a particular assignment, meaning that low-stakes writing should count very little (if at all) toward the student’s final grade, while high-stakes writing is presumably graded. Examples of low-stakes writing include: journals, reflective responses, and freewriting. Some argue that the more frequently students engage in low-stakes writing, the more confidence and expertise they will apply to formal, high-stakes assignments. In Britton’s framework, low-stakes writing would be “expressive.”

Minimal Marking
The principle behind minimal marking is that correcting each technical mistake is not the most useful way to respond to students’ work; minimal marking encourages a focus on the larger ideas the student is trying to communicate, and emphasizes responding to those. Faculty may choose to point out one or two recurring technical errors, but should focus their responses on the work as a whole. Many faculty are concerned that they spend a great deal of time marking and correcting grammatical and other technical errors, and proponents of minimal marking argue that this practice reduces the amount of time spent correcting, and therefore allows for a greater number of writing assignments. Moreover, some research has shown that students can be overwhelmed by too many comments, and have difficulty prioritizing and addressing them in effective ways.

Paper
Common college short-hand for a formal, graded assignment of a specific length. “Paper” covers a lot of ground, from “essay” to “report,” and is also often modified by adjectives like “research,” or “compare/contrast.” Some argue that WAC/WID provides a space for educators to reflect on the many assumptions that cohere around vague terms such as “paper” or “write” or “composition.”

Peer Review
Practice of having students read and provide comments and suggestions for each other’s writing. This is generally done in class in pairs or small groups. Also referred to as peer editing, peer review is often guided through the use of handouts or worksheets that assist students in reading others’ writing through various critical lenses.

Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of speaking or writing effectively, using the principles and rules of composition drawn from classical traditions, typically tied to the art of persuasion. Classical rhetoricians were interested in dividing rhetoric into its component parts. For example, Roman rhetorician Cicero identified five rhetorical components: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciato. Early scholars and teachers of composition tended to discuss and teach rhetorical modes: persuasion, description, argument, compare-contrast, etc. More recently, WAC practitioners have focused on the rhetorical nature of all language, emphasizing the rhetorical dimensions and methods of the various disciplines. (For a set of definitions of rhetoric offered by rhetoricians both ancient and contemporary, visit this site.) All these approaches share the fundamental belief that a speaker or writer will use any given language more effectively if s/he is consciously aware of its rhetorical dimensions.

Scaffolding
Scaffolding is a term drawn, primarily, from the work of Russian cognitive psychologist Lev Vygotsky, to represent the centrality of social interaction in the development of cognition. The term has come to be used within education to refer to the ways in which complex projects can be broken down into manageable pieces, with the instructor/expert guiding the students/novices through the entire process, and encouraging students to move to higher levels of expertise. Faculty can monitor how students are developing their ideas throughout, and provide assistance if students encounter obstacles.

SWE (Standard Written English)
There exist many language communities within the larger rubric of the English language. SWE refers to that form of written English that is agreed upon by most publishers, colleges, and standardized tests to be the most “correct” and thus most understandable by all speakers and users of English regardless of differences in dialect or usage. This variant is sometimes called “Standard American English” (SAE), as well. The debate about how to teach what students need to know to gain fluency in Standard Written English (see below) is an important, current cultural, political, and historical debate throughout the English-speaking world.

WAC/WID Terminology (Part I)

Published
by
Mikhail
on August 7, 2007
in CUNY, Faculty Development, Pedagogy, Resources, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 2 Comments

Here’s more from the CUNY WAC/WID handbook. Useful stuff I hope. Please feel free to comment on any of these definitions. Parts II and III are forthcoming.

Common WAC/WID Terminology (Part I)

Audience
This term is used to define those for whom a piece of writing is intended. The identity of the audience shapes the writing, as writers adapt their tone and content to the situation. It is especially important to keep in mind the difference in audiences implied by discipline (the audience for a lab report, for example, is different than that for a performance review).

Essay
In the classical sense, an essay is a text in which the first-person singular comments upon—questioning, debating, arguing about—a subject. Although “essay” is often used interchangeably with “paper,” the term properly refers to a type of writing that blended the personal with the academic. As a verb, “essay” means an initial, and sometimes tentative, attempt—a “try.”

Expressive, Transactional, Poetic Uses of Language
Britton and his team developed a framework for classifying school writing, based on sociolinguistic theories of the functions of language (drawn primarily from the work of linguist Roman Jacobson). They were concerned that most school writing was written to the “teacher-as-examiner” and that students were not encouraged to try out the whole linguistic keyboard. The three categories of language function, according to Britton in Development of Writing Abilities, are:

    1) expressive—writing that is “close to the self,” representing the “ebb and flow” of a writer’s thoughts and feelings.
    2) transactional—“language to ‘get things done’ or participate in the world’s affairs . . . to inform, persuade, or instruct.”
    3) poetic—“writing as a verbal construct, a patterned verbalization [poem, story, song, etc.] of the writer’s feelings and ideas.”

Error
Error is closely connected to the study of grammar, basic writing, and ESL. Error analysis is a technique for identifying possible underlying causes of mistakes in sentence structure, verb form, etc. The identification of recurring “patterns of error” in a writer’s text is a widely used pedagogical tool to reduce a seemingly large number of errors to a handful of teachable categories of error (subject-verb agreement, possessives, etc.).

Freewriting
Freewriting is an informal writing activity in which students write “freely” without concern for grammar, punctuation, and other constraints. Freewriting is often considered a staple in composition pedagogy: typically, students are directed to write in class without stopping for a set period of time (usually just a few minutes). An instructor may specify a topic or leave it entirely up to the students. What is done with the writing varies widely: the texts may be read out in class to prompt discussion, or used as a source of ideas for another writing assignment, or not used directly by the instructor at all.

Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics
Grammar is the study of how words and their component parts combine to form sentences; the system of rules inherent in any language (from the American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd Ed). Grammar is structure, form, syntax; by the time children are four or five, they’ve “got” the structure of the language they hear all around them. Grammar needs to be distinguished from usage and mechanics. Usage refers to the way in which language is conventionally applied within the culture and reflects an awareness of one’s audience. Voice and word choice, for instance, will depend upon the formality/ informality of the writing situation and may derive from disciplinary standards as prescribed by particular style guides as MLA, APA, or the Chicago Manual of Style. Mechanics include the technical aspects of writing, such as spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

From the CUNY WAC/WID Handbook

Published
by
Mikhail
on August 1, 2007
in CUNY, Pedagogy, Resources, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 0 Comments

Here’s something useful and informative from the brand new CUNY Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines Handbook:

Summary of Key WAC/WID Concepts

The original groundbreaking idea for writing across the curriculum came out of England in the late 1960s, and was focused on the relationships between writing and learning in the schools. In 1975 James Britton and his colleagues published a report of their foundational research in The Development of Writing Abilities (11-18). In the United States a number of composition scholars, building in part on their British predecessors, provided an institutional shape to writing across the curriculum initiatives.

What follows is a quick overview of issues and debates that mark the development of this movement.

WAC, WID, WIP:

Some academics and administrators use the following terms and acronyms interchangeably: Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), Writing in the Disciplines (WID), and Writing in the Professions (WIP). For others, the terms are pedagogically, historically, and politically loaded.

Broadly speaking, the central premise behind WAC is that students need to write, informally and formally, in all of their courses (not just in English and composition classes), in order to develop expertise as academic writers. WAC is often considered a pedagogical movement, working to change modes of learning and teaching, particularly the reliance on multiple choice and short answer modes of assessment. Participants argue that WAC not only makes students stronger writers, but also provides more opportunities for students to integrate their learning across the disciplines. They also claim that there are writing experiences and exercises that cut across the disciplines.

Proponents of WID, on the other hand, have argued that the WAC programs that developed in the United States should be more focused on writing within disciplinary frameworks rather than writing as a “process” that is often decontextualized, too focused on expressive writing, and overly personal. WID, therefore, privileges disciplinary contexts and representational forms and styles, recognizing the particular modes and conventions within specific academic discourses. As an extension of WID, Writing in the Professions (WIP) focuses on writing within specific professions, rather than disciplinary bodies of knowledge.

WAC/WID at CUNY encourages the colleges to develop programs that situate writing across and within all academic departments and programs, spanning the disciplines and professions.

I’ll be posting a few choice items from the handbook in the next few days. Next up: Part 1 of the WAC/WID Glossary. Many thanks to CUNY’s 2007-2008 WAC/WID Planning Committee for putting the handbook together. Very useful stuff for us WAC/WID types.