Let’s Write

9 thoughts on “Let’s Write”

1. Pobywajlo and Hedengren articles by Joe H., Kit, and Christine

   The Pobywajlo article addressed that WAC and GE share common goals in order to teach students to “think like an educated person” and that WAC provides a way to assess students’ learning and challenge those students to “stretch intellectually” and prompt different levels of thinking through the use of “creative disequilibrium”. This article relates broadly to the QEP by the mention of a “lack of coherence” and “fragmentation” that tie into SLOs 1 & 2 and relates more specifically to the ENGL 2201 outcomes of citation practices and formulating research questions.

   The Hedengren article discusses and gives specific Writing to Learn activities (using discipline-specific prompts) that students can respond to with a variety of methods such as in-class writing. Those prompts tie into SLO 2 by their inherent discipline-specific nature, which is also reflected in the 2201 outcome of using “writing to achieve a variety of purposes”.

2. Hanstedt and Chanock articles by Joe C., Grace, and Angela

   Paul Hanstedt’s “Reforming General Education: Three Reasons to Make Writing Across the Curriculum Part of the Conversation” enumerates three points for our consideration:
   1) Writing is a complex skill
   • Students need opportunities to practice writing across disciplines
   • We need to help students build on their strengths to help them meet institutional WAC goals
   2) Good writing is defined differently in various fields and disciplines
   • WAC offers opportunities to explore and practice these differences
   • WAC offers opportunities for faculty to teach writing not just assign it
   • WAC can help students prepare for the challenges they’ll face in writing in other fields/disciplines
   3) Writing is critical thinking
   • Provides a way to test ideas
   • Requires faculty to reconsider the type of assignments they devise and implement
   • Requires faculty to design smaller writing assignments to facilitate the complex thinking we want to encourage
   Fit with QEP: The goals of the QEP are broadly about reforming writing at ECU (“Write Where You Belong”); Hanstedt’s article approaches WAC as integral to reforming the GE curriculum.
   Fit with 2201: The goals of 2201 reflect a more intentional awareness of discipline-based writing (see 2 above) as well as the vertical transfer of these skills by offering discipline-themed sections of 2201.

   Kate Chanock’s “ A Framework for Analyzing Varieties of Writing in a Discipline”
   WAC must include writing for particular purposes in particular fields.
   “Thus while writing is at the forefront of academic learning, teaching writing is not.”
   Focus is on analyzing 3 different texts typically associated with the discipline of archeology and with distinguishing features (author, purpose, structure, audience, accommodations to audience, language) among these three texts (scholarly pub., popular pub , stakeholder’s booklet)
   Goal is to have students identify choices/ strategies that focus on audience (beyond the grader/evaluator), on what the audience needs, and what the audience appreciates. Making these connections can occur before students have taken discipline-specific writing courses.
   Fit with QEP’s goals: to facilitate learning transfer and to acquaint students with writing practices in specific disciplines
   Fit with 2201: Suggested assignments include similar goals/objectives as those articulated in the assignment explained above.

3. On Kate Chanock, “A Framework for Analyzing Varieties of Writing in a Discipline,” and Beth Finch Hedengren, “Why (and How) We Teach Writing.”

   Notes by Brian, Pete, and Shaunna.

   A. Chanock.
   Chanock offers an analysis of three texts about archaeological sites, and her purpose is to help students understand how the concepts of genre, audience, and context will inform their writing choices in their professional roles as archaeologists. Three genres within the field are represented: an academic article, a popular article from National Geographic, and a booklet. Each of these genres corresponds to a particular audience, academic specialists, non-specialist National Geographic readers, and non-specialist stakeholders whose ancestors occupied the sites considered in the academic article. Since each text addresses similar topics, Chanock’s comparative account of structure and audience suggests a useful model for discipline-specific ENGL 2201 projects.

   Chanock’s account of language in the texts is equally useful for our purposes and perhaps more innovative. Beginning with student’s intuitive sense of readability and the basic subject/verb distinction, she develops set of tables showing the relative grammatical density and vividness of language in each genre. Interesting upshots of this effort include the conclusion that while the National Geographic article might be the most readable, it presents far more climbing, diving, and driving of dog teams than archaeologists typically do. But more importantly, Chanock’s approach to language provides a very usable model to help students understand the writing choices they will need to make in their professional roles and the reasons for those choices.

   B. Hedengren.
   Hedengren outlines a few basic strategies by which students can write to learn: essentially, by summarizing, identifying key points, and identifying areas of difficulty. Her program implies that students are writing to learn about topics other than writing itself; it seems unlikely that students will be able to do much with rhetorical theory as an object of analysis in itself. On the other hand, her program will be useful for students in 2201 who are trying to learn about writing in their own chosen disciplines. In a section devoted to a single discipline, the instructor could set common texts for the whole class to read; in a section with an undifferentiated student population, it might be better to ask students to find their own texts. Either way, her basic prompts for in-class writing exercises will be useful both in class and in reading journals.

   Although most instructors probably know these moves already, nonetheless it will be a good idea to create preliminary assignments (particularly journals and similar small-but-frequent exercises) that will build those WTL skills into an explicit curriculum. Her “mini-themes” concept might seem silly — in the example she gives, for instance, students write about a chemical reaction from the perspective of a sentient water molecule — but in fact might provide a good way for students to tell a concrete story about an abstract concept; it might be useful, for instance, to give students a series of imaginary scenarios and ask them to explain a concept or controversy in differing rhetorical contexts.

4. HALL and FLATEN articles by Andy, Sean, & Zack

   Like the QEP itself, Hall’s article focuses on envisioning a model of ‘vertical integration,’ specifically what needs to happen at different levels of curricula in a WAC/WID system for both instructors and students. Echoing the QEP, he emphasizes “a clear idea of the writing competencies and outcomes” (6), in terms of BOTH what writing instructors need to do so students can more effectively transfer their writing skills to subsequent classes AND how other disciplines need to articulate specific expectations about writing in their respective fields. Not surprisingly, then, Hall’s review of writing curriculum also parallels the QEP by accenting the areas of “articulating goals,” “assessment,” “curriculum development,” student support, and “professional development” (8). Like the QEP, Hall outlines a “model curriculum” (with a target demographic and overall objectives, as well as more specific “critical thinking,” “reading,” “writing” and research “outcomes) for four separate tiers of student competency. They are: 1) FY,
   2) introductory (effectively what will be our 2201), 3) intermediate, and 4) advanced. Obviously, our group—any group—should easily see how well Hall’s model matches up with ECU’s QEP and instructors involvement at various levels and for, if not in, various disciplines. But we did find his “advanced” writing outcomes, which he sees every other stage as working back from, somewhat vague. There didn’t seem to be much detail about what constitutes “professional,” much less “near-professional” writing, just something that strives for the ideal but is “not yet publishable.” In other words, we weren’t clear on exactly what the writing outcome at the top level was and wondered if revisiting some of the earlier curricular distinctions, e.g., between trade and academic publications, might help clarify things.

   Flaten’s article describes a pro-WAC writing experiment in a history course. His biggest syllabus changes were making writing 60% of the grade and incorporating student journaling as 20% to “reward students for doing what they already should do anyway” (28), that is, essentially: responding to reading/prompts as a WTL effort. Students who kept up with their journaling (homework) tended to do better than those who did not, and the journal writing provided Flaten with better insight into students’ engagement with subject matter than he had received previously. His biggest surprise was those students who opted not to re-apply themselves (learn from their mistakes/his feedback) between the first and second formal essays and, thus, failed to improve. Flaten’s aims and successes are related to the QEP’s emphasis on making better transfer happen for students (vis-à-vis more pronounced emphases on genre and meta-cognition about and through writing at all levels throughout their college careers). Hence Flaten emphasizes the ideal goal of students making connections via “application, assimilation, and contemplation” (33), both within a course and between & across different courses, all of which reflect a vertical integration approach to writing much as the QEP advises. Collectively, our group noted that we already do a lot of what Flaten experimented with in our own classes as a matter of course: drafting/revision, WTL/journaling/note taking for credit, etc. and that the time concerns he raises about reviewing additional writing assignments are a particular logistical issue for FTFs, such as ourselves.

5. Edited version of the Chanock note from Pete, Brian, and Shaunna, below:

   Chanock offers an analysis of three texts about archaeological sites, and her purpose is to help students understand how the concepts of genre, audience, and context will inform their writing choices in their professional roles as archaeologists. Three genres within the field are represented: an academic article, a popular article from National Geographic, and a booklet. Each of these genres corresponds to a particular audience, academic specialists, non-specialist National Geographic readers, and non-specialist stakeholders whose ancestors occupied the sites considered in the academic article. Since each text addresses similar topics, Chanock’s comparative account of structure and audience suggests a useful model for discipline-specific ENGL 2201 projects.
   Chanock’s account of language in the texts is equally useful for our purposes and perhaps more innovative. Beginning with students’ intuitive sense of readability and the basic subject/predicate distinction, she develops a set of tables showing the relative grammatical density and vividness of language in each genre. Interesting upshots of this effort include the conclusion that while the National Geographic article might be the most readable, it presents far more climbing, diving, and driving of dog teams than archaeologists typically do. But more importantly, Chanock’s approach to language provides a very usable model to help students understand the writing choices they will need to make in their professional roles and the reasons for those choices.

6. GROUP: Gera, Lorrie, Monique

   Gera Insights:
   The Key Concepts that surrounds BOTH the Flaten and Pobywaljo essays are actually found toward the end of the Flaten essay:
   Application Assimilation Contemplation
   Application: What is it? How can it be used?
   Assimilation: How it is it useful in my life or how can it enhance my life
   Contemplation/Reflection: How does it relate to my greater understanding of the world or what other connections can be made about the subject to other subjects?
   From the essays we get a WAC (compared to Gen ED) and WID (focused on History) approach, with varying degrees of success on how the concepts I mentioned from Flaten actually work in a class.

   In WAC & WID: these are the main concepts which Pobywaljo and Flaten agree on:
   Pobywaljo: No meaning/No Learning
   Flaten: Thinking on Paper is writing to learn

   Similarly, in terms of 2201: THE GOAL is the same: In the QEP it says that student’s learning about writing does not transfer
   Thus so, Flaten & Pobywaljo’s ideas are based around Writing to Learn.
   They come from this angle because they both experienced friction from students: Gen-ed being a “HOOP” to jump through instead of a serious pursuit of knowledge and History being something not relevant to the “NOW”

   Personal: Flaten’s revelation of APPLICATION ASSIMILATION and CONTEMPLATION—actually parallels the methods I (Gera) use in class:
   My triptych of papers in 1200 are based on CONCEPT ARGUMENT SOLUTION:
   Concept: What is it? How is it used? DEFINE IT.
   Argument: What are the issues/problems surrounding the subject/concept? (A recognition of how it “works” in real life situations and differing attitudes of people toward it)
   Solution: I defined it, I argued an issue about it, now how can I SOLVE it? The hardest paper that requires the most contemplation—

   The WEAKNESS of my method comes in student perception: SOME feel like they are doing the same paper over and over (once they pick a concept they have to STICK with it). This occurs when students don’t understand the different Rhetorical Method being used in each paper.

   Lorrie Insights
   Pobywajlo stresses reform in pedagogy as well as reform in students’ attitudes towards general education courses through the implementation of WAC programs/courses. In short, negative student attitudes about general education are caused by a lack of engagement within the classroom due to large lecture halls, overuse of lecture, “breadth over depth,” and perceived low expectations from instructor. According to Pobywajlo, students associate a challenging class with a valuable class. Most importantly, the author states that many students do not make connections among their general education courses to their majors and this is due to fragmentation in general education curricula.
   However, the article states that WAC and Writing Intensive courses can “address the issues of the transmission model of teaching and student passivity, the lack of challenge in undergraduate courses, and most importantly, the lack of connections and coherence in general education curriculum” (11). Pobywajlo believes that writing facilitates and improves learning by showing students what they know and understand, but also what they do not know and understand. Furthermore, students are given the chance to have something to say versus a lecture that says it all. Students construct rather than memorize answers and can make connections in writing that other teaching methods do not allow. Writing also promotes careful reading. The end result: students are better prepared to participate in class which promotes better writing and thinking and students are made aware that there are high expectations and thus, students value the class more. Even more so, writing provides the instructor with tools for assessment and clarifies institutional expectations.
   My personal reflection: writing to learn activities have increased student involvement and students perceive my classes as being a bit more challenging. Students are required to be active participators in writing activities in and outside of class as well as class discussions. Free writings done before class discussions allow students to organize thoughts and challenge the students to think about readings and freewriting questions on a higher level. These writings and discussion do not ask students to regurgitate, but require application and use of critical thinking skills.
   Flaten’s experience conveys that writing demands active participation, but also allows students to evaluate preconceived notions and to accept the possibility of alternative explanations…to appreciate what others believe and have to say. He also notes that students who had not already achieved proficiency in writing were given the chance to tackle writing issues earlier in the semester rather than later. He notes that thesis sentence writing unmasked individual issues and I have found that this part of writing causes the most concern among students. Therefore, we have thesis writing workshops in and out of class to provide students help with the task, but also to stress to the students that the thesis sentence is a challenge that should not be ignored. Finally, Flaten notes that writing allows for application, assimilation, and contemplation and should be stressed in all disciplines.

   Monique Insights
   Flaten and Poby both detail the challenges of keeping students engaged, Poby from the point of view of GenEd, and Flaten from the point of view of history. Both mention that students often see GenEd courses as “hoops to jump through”.
   • Flaten discusses how he made his history courses more writing intensive. His article is a personal account of his successes (journal entries) and failures (students not applying feedback.)
   • Poby discusses the benefits of WIC in really combatting the negative perception of GenEd courses. She feels as though making those courses more writing intensive will curtail the indifference many students feel towards these courses, because writing to learn exercises increases engagement. She lists additional reasons in bulleted points.

   Key Concepts and Big Takeaway: Both authors champion the importance of application, assimilation, and contemplation for student success. Application, meaning applying the knowledge they learn, assimilation, means making that knowledge routine or if you will “internalizing” that knowledge, and contemplation, meaning seeing how knowledge applies to other projects and their careers or the “real life” beyond school. Metacognitive activities come to play here.
   QEP Connection: Both are championing writing that reflects an awareness of context, purpose, and audience. Also, Flaten advocates the importance of seeing writing as a process, something the QEP emphasizes. He mentions that “slow and steady wins the race”; in other words, student should be diligent about honoring each stage of the writing process.
   Connection to 2201: One goal for 2201 is for students see that the skills they learn are transferable. Both authors emphasize this point. In fact, Flaten says that he wants students to see the assignments as much more than a “single unrelated hurdle in their collegiate career.” He wants students to know that their educational careers are built on a wide range of skills aimed at gradual improvement and they will continue this improvement beyond the class. In short, the learning doesn’t stop here. The skills are transferrable and it’s important to look at the big picture.

7. Hall, Jonathan. “Toward a Unified Writing Curriculum: Integrating WAC/WID with Freshman Composition.” The WAC Journal 17.1 (2006): 5-22. Web. 03 Sept. 2014.

   Team members:
   Timm Hackett, Jason Faulkner, Marc Petersen, & Cheryl Dudasik-Wiggs.

   As a group, we were interested in Hall’s points about WAC curricula—its pedagogical methods and its effects on our understanding of the WAC / QEP—and how we will apply this information to our classes. Most importantly, however, we discussed specific ways WAC/WID will benefit our students as they (and we) learn to embrace the horizontal and vertical breadth of writing instruction.

   “By its nature, a program that depends on Writing in the Disciplines, taught by faculty attached to every academic department in the university, will be somewhat decentralized. It is neither possible nor desirable to impose a rigid, centrally-controlled template on the far-flung diversity of courses offered in so many different subjects in such varied modes by so many idiosyncratic instructors” (pg. 7). This reaffirmed two of our beliefs: (1) Everyone within the University—not just one department or college—has to “buy in” to a WAC program; and (2) not only does a WAC program allow for academic freedom but, as noted by Hall, this fluidity is essential to the success of the program.

   We then discussed another group who must “buy in” to the WAC / QEP program: the students themselves. The emphasis on the instructor to develop more meaningful and content-specific prompts and assignments is now expected, beginning with the implementation of ENGL 2201. Our concern is if a student deems an assignment irrelevant to her/his field, resistance to the assignment—and ultimately, to writing itself–may be strong. That student’s voice may then reverberate to other students, and student buy-in may be lost.

   In the past, we faculty could show relevance to our students by the assignment itself, the process involved, and/or the skills associated with the assignment, we must develop assignments where the students see relevance in all three areas. As we develop our assignments, we must keep these two ideas in mind: We are accomplishing the goals of the QEP/WAC/Course but also the “professional goals/needs” of our students. Many times, we do this naturally; but as we work towards developing course content for each of the sections, we might consider working with leaders of other departments to create “comprehensive relevance.”

   However, according to Hall, the outcomes and basic syllabi of entry-level writing classes must be relatively standardized. The purpose of ENGL 2201 faculty members is “not so much to induct students into a specific disciplinary community as to invite them to become part of a more general academic community” (p. 11). ENGL 2201 specifically connects to the Hall article through the Introductory Level Discipline-specific Writing Course outlined on page 14. Hall argues that many of the students in this course (especially in the multi-disciplinary sections offered) “will only be looking for a one-semester visit to the disciplinary community.” This is important to remember when designing ENGL 2201 as some students may begin with definite ideas of the academic paths they wish to choose, only to reassess and possibly change those paths during or upon completion of the class. Instructors in ENGL 2201 must understand and allow the student to discover those “many roads,” which will lead to the “same destination.”

   Finally, Marc shared with us a personal anecdote in class…

8. For our Week 4 reading, my group chose Downs and Wardle’s “Teaching About Writing, Righting Misconceptions.” This post is not my group’s response; it is my chance to air something that has bugged me about nearly every reading: the shoddiness of the research. Sample sizes are too small, control groups are too simplistic, and results come down to student feedback.

   For instance, Downs and Wardle’s conclusion is based on feedback and two case studies, which turned out to be in-depth looks at, yes, student feedback. While student feedback can be interesting, it should not be used to indicate the success or failure of a teaching plan. The writing assignments are where the evidence lies, but Downs and Wardle (and some of our 1-3 week writers) seem to prefer the testimonials.

   Is the problem funding? Maybe. Greater funding (like our QEP windfall) could enable these researchers to look at larger test groups. More research assistants could also analyze writing with more detail.

   The problem might be the students. Students, being people, are incredibly hard to study. There’s all sorts of restrictions on how you can study them. Also, behavior, including writing, tends to be situational, and how in the heck does one control for the immense variety of situations?

   So I’m sympathetic to Downs and Wardle and others. Trying to draw meaningful conclusions when you have such sketchy data has got to be frustrating. I can also understand why we have not devoted class time to criticizing the methods of the researchers (even though many of our seminarians have shared similar concerns). It’s more constructive to pull useful ideas from the readings than to bash them. Still, I hope that we keep the flaws of our researchers in mind when we are deciding which ideas are useful.

9. Preface: I just learned that the multidisciplinary sections of 2201 will need to make each student familiar with a handful of different citation styles. Doing that and keeping some continuity between assignments will be a challenge. Check out my rough assignment cycle and let me know of any ideas you have.

   The semester will be split into four distinct sections: MLA, APA, Chicago, and reflection at the end.
   Students will have a work of literature—a novel, a nonfiction work, or an anthology (maybe the Pirate Read)—as one of their texts. This work will be the jumping off point for the first three projects. During each project’s run, students will see and analyze examples of the project.
   • Project 1 will have students analyze a short work or some aspect of the longer work, bring in some critical articles, and present their ideas in an MLA-formatted paper.
   • Project 2 will have them identify a natural or social scientific research angle in this literary work, conduct research, and present their findings in an APA genre-appropriate composition. Examples include a psychological case study of a character and others that will have to be unnamed until I learn more about different science genres.
   • Project 3 will have them identify a historical research angle in this literary work conduct research, and present their findings in a Chicago-style composition.
   • Project 4 will have them discuss the different choices they made in their three earlier projects. Also, students will be challenged to understand the reasons why different disciplines value some kinds of information over others, prefer particular citation methods, and have language and structure tendencies.

   So one obvious question—would students have to write about the same work in every project? If an anthology is used, I don’t see any good reason why a student couldn’t use a different literary work for each. The text—whether single work or anthology—would need to be carefully chosen. The work or works must have scientific (natural or social) and historical research possibilities.

   Justification: Many English Department faculty members will be looking for ways to continue to assign papers connected to their main area of interest and expertise. This assignment gives an option for those who believe in the value of literature in the writing classroom.