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Writing to Learn: Learning to Write
Roger Graves, Professor, English and Film Studies Director, Writing Across the Curriculum
WAC @
Roger Graves
http://www.ualberta.ca/~graves1/index.html
Writing Across the Curriculum
http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/WAC/
Centre for Writers
http://www.c4w.arts.ualberta.ca/
Rule # 1: No heroes Don’t try to do teach students all
they need to know about writing by yourself
If you try to teach everything there is to know about writing to every student in every course you teach, you will burn out
Identify what you can do, and identify for students (and reinforce for them) the resources they can use
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gradin/168875652/
Resources The instructor: syllabus, assignment handouts,
online postings, email communications, Twitter feeds, Facebook postings
Textbooks: Little Penguin Handbook, The Brief Penguin Handbook, The Garrulous Penguin Handbook
The RDC Writing Skills Centre
The library
RDC: Writing Skills Centre
http://www.rdc.ab.ca/future_students/high_school_students/student_services/ counselling_centre/writing_skills/Pages/default.aspx
Rule # 2: Assign some writing 1. Identify ways you can incorporate graded and
non-graded writing into what you are teaching (WAC)
2. Create writing assignments that support your course learning goals
3. Provide scoring guides (rubrics) to students so that they know what you value
Today we’ll start with 1, do 2, and then work on 3
What is Writing Across the Curriculum?
• Writing-to-learn activities are short, impromptu or otherwise informal writing tasks that help students think through key concepts or ideas presented in a course • Based on learning to write research in 1960s-1970s in US/UK • First programs emerged in 1980s
The WAC Clearinghouse, http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/
WAC Philosophy that writing is the responsibility of the entire
academic community,
that writing must be integrated across departmental boundaries,
that writing instruction must be continuous during all four years of undergraduate education,
that writing promotes learning, and
that only by practicing the conventions of an academic discipline will students begin to communicate effectively within that discipline.
Writing and Learning writing plays an indispensible role in developing
critical thinking skills, learning discipline-specific content, and understanding and building competence in the modes of inquiry and dissemination specific to various disciplines and professions
Georgia State WAC Program, http://wac.gsu.edu/content/introduction/what_is_wac.shtml
NSSE and Writing To what extent had your experience at RDC
contributed to: Writing Clearly and effectively?
To what extent had your experience at RDC contributed to: Speaking clearly and effectively?
WAC and Student Engagement student engagement with the subject matter
being taught increases significantly when they are more frequently asked to write about that subject, particularly in courses in their junior and senior years.
Richard J. Light. "Writing and Students' Engagement " Peer Review 6.1 (Fall 2003): 28-31.
Strategies for Improving Student Writing WAC: Short, brief writing in class (unmarked or
minimally graded)
Assignments: Clear, well-structured assignments
Rubrics: Clear statements of evaluation criteria
Writer Skills Centre: Facilitate Peer Response in writing groups and one-to-one tutoring
Good Writing Assignments Tie the writing task to specific pedagogical goals.
Note rhetorical aspects of the task, i.e., audience, purpose, writing situation.
Make all elements of the task clear.
Include grading criteria on the assignment sheet.
Break down the task into manageable steps.
Choose your verbs carefully (p. 17, LPH).
http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop10a.cfm
Sample Writing to Learn Assignments The reading journal
Generic and focused summaries
Annotations
Response papers
Synthesis papers
The discussion starter
Focusing a discussion
The learning log
Analyzing the process
Problem statement
Solving real problems
Pre-test warm-ups
Using Cases
Letters
What counts as a fact?
Believing and doubting game
Analysis of events
Project notebooks
The writing journal WAC Clearinghouse http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/pop5.cfm
WAC Strategies
http://www.upei.ca/uwc/wac/strategies/basic_tools.html
Write a prompt Write a prompt to get students writing in one of
your classes. You may or may not decide to collect these.
For our purposes today, I would like you to share them with others sitting around you and perhaps the entire group.
What is Writing in the Disciplines? Writing in the disciplines focuses on instructing
students in the language conventions of a discipline as well as with specific formats typical of a given discipline
Writing Intensive courses at Simon Fraser A writing-intensive course is one in which
writing is used as a tool for learning and developing understanding of subject matter and is taught as a means of communication in discipline-specific ways. Students are shown, rather than simply told, how to write in the genres most valued in the discipline and are given opportunities to use skilled feedback in the revision and rewriting of major papers.
http://www.lidc.sfu.ca/teaching/writing/resources/W-CourseCriteria.php
Writing Intensive courses WI courses incorporate revised assignments,
sequenced assignments, peer review, and student assistance from a writing consultant. [Georgia State]
Question: Is this a format that fits with the realities of RDC and Alberta higher education funding?
Assignments as instructions
Creating good writing assignments
Roger Graves Director, Writing Across the Curriculum University of Alberta
http://www.humanities.ualberta.ca/WAC/
Orienting Your Readers
Define your terms
Write a brief overview or rationale of the entire assignment
Provide a list or concepts that the student needs to know to complete the assignment successfully
Orient your readers Purpose
This essay should demonstrate that you can identify the audience, ethos, and purpose of a written text (Chapter 1). You should also demonstrate the ability to apply the concepts from Chapter 2—visual and verbal explanations, organization, point of view, focus and frame, and interest in texts. Your essay should explain
the purpose of the news article,
the ways in which the visual interacts with the verbal to accomplish this purpose,
how the language of the article contributes to this purpose and communicates with the audience
how the context of this article (it appeared in a student newspaper at a university) affected the way it was written, the selection of the topic, and the framing of the topic
Break Instructions into Steps Use numbered lists for steps that must occur in
chronological order
Use bulleted list for items that do not have to appear in sequence
Limit each sub-procedure to 7-10 steps
Each step should describe one action
Packing more than one action into a step invites errors
Keep Steps Discrete Invention/Drafting/Research strategies
1. Identify a scientific topic that you are already familiar with or that you want to learn more about.
2. In the research class on Oct. 31 in UC 2, find 5-10 sources that you might be able to use in the research essay (Assignment 4)
3. Email pdfs or full-text copies of these to yourself.
4. Write short (50-100 word) summaries of these articles describing what they add to your knowledge of the topic.
5. Write the introduction to your proposal in which you make the argument that researching this topic benefits you in some way or improves your scientific knowledge and background—why do you want to study this topic?
Use imperative sentences Use the imperative (command) sentence order:
“Verb + Object” [This sentence is itself an example of this principle]
If conditions apply to the action, include them in a dependent phrase or clause before the imperative. [This sentence is itself an example of this principle]
Strategies for Effective Instructions – A Summary Overview
Group into chunks
Step-by-step
Clarify key points
Include alternatives or substitutions
Tips, warnings, cautions
Troubleshooting
Adapt to reader’s level
Use imperative
Define terms
Use logical order
Maintain uniform tone
Guidelines for writing instructions
Topic/description
Purpose
Audience
Invention/drafting/research strategies
Length
Drafts/workshopping deadlines
Revision policy
Drafting
Criteria/rubric/grading Glenn, Cheryl, Melissa Goldthwaite, and Robert Connors. The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing
Discussion Did you need all these categories?
Do your students need other kinds of information?
Conflicts?
Observations?
How students read assignments Questions we ask—“why” and “how”—need to
be elaborated to make obvious the implied argument we want to read
Directives (“discuss,” “consider”) need to be elaborated to identify the argument from sources you want to read (see p. 17 of LPH)
Open-ended assignments: turn them into questions
O’Brien, Emily, Jane Rosenweig, and Nancy Sommers, “Making the most of College Writing.”
More advice to students Analyze: find connections
Compare and contrast
Define: make a claim about how something should be defined
Describe: observe and select details
Evaluate: argue according to criteria that something is good, bad, best
Propose: identify a problem and argue for a solution
The Little Penguin Handbook, p. 17, Canadian ed.
Instructors as audiences
Students should aim:
To please
To entertain
To engage
O’Brien, Emily, Jane Rosenweig, and Nancy Sommers, “Making the most of College Writing.”
Question
How would you characterize yourself as an academic audience?
Writing for other audiences
Non-academic Audience For the article review, your initial audience for this assignment is your instructor; readers of Occupational Therapy Now form the primary audience.
NSSE, Outcomes, and you Assessment tools, like NSSE (National Survey of
Student Engagement) and other “benchmarking” or outcomes statements, increasingly rely on explicit statements describing levels of student achievement
Scoring guides (rubrics) are useful ways to control this process because they allow you to self-define the learning outcomes for your course
The cumulative effect of these scoring guides is to control the assessment of your institution
References Glenn, Cheryl, Melissa Goldthwaite, and Robert Connors. The
St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing. New York: St. Martin’s, 2003.
Faigley, Lester, Roger Graves, and Heather Graves. The Brief Penguin Handbook. Toronto: Pearson, 2008.
Graves, Heather, and Roger Graves. A Strategic Guide to Technical Communication. Peterborough: Broadview, 2007.
O’Brien, Emily, Jane Rosenweig, and Nancy Sommers, “Making the most of College Writing.” Harvard Expository Writing Program, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Eexpos/EWP_guide.web.pdf
Evaluating Writing: Designing scoring guides (rubrics) that work
Roger Graves Director, Writing Across the Curriculum
Key = Assignment Sheets Assignment sheet, peer response sheets, and
grading rubrics all communicate the evaluation criteria
They all must be consistent with each other
They should change with the genre being evaluated
They can be tailored to fit the topic
Peer Response: Generic response criteria Introduction (LPH 6c)
Thesis (LPH 4b)
Organization (LPH 5a)
Sources (LPH 10, 11, 12)
Standard Edited English (LPH Part 5 and 6)
Rhetorical issues criteria Audience (LPH 1a,b)
Purpose (LPH 1d)
Argument
Style (LPH Part 4)
Tone (LPH 22)
Argument structure
Claim
Stated reason
Grounds/evidence
Unstated assumptions
Evidence supporting unstated assumption
Rebuttal
Qualifiers
evidence you found that perhaps qualifies or suggests the alternative readings are of limited value or useful in only certain circumstances
Criteria-specific assignment Include phrases and criteria that were stated in
your assignment
Phrase them as questions
Ask them the kinds of questions you ask yourself when reading student assignments: Where is the reference to that quote? (LPH 13d)
Where is the other part of the comparison? (LPH 6b)
Criteria for editing Connections between sentences (LPH 6d, 21b)
Wordiness (LPH 20b)
Active verbs vrs. “to be” verbs (LPH 19a)
Attitude: adjectives and adverbs (LPH 28)
Specific language (LPH 22d)
Inclusive language (LPH 22e)
RUBRICS DEFINED
Rubrics describe your criteria for evaluating student performances
KINDS OF RUBRICS
Holistic Descriptions of overall achievement and effect Faster to use
Analytic Separate scores for each criterion Precise
or
General description - General criteria applicable to all assignments
Primary trait scoring - Criteria specific to an assignment
TYPE A: HOLISTIC SCALES
TYPE A: HOLISTIC SCALE Holistic Grading Rubric for Writing Assessment
“A” DEMONSTRATES HIGH PROFICIENCY Excellent command of the language: Addressed the topic; appropriate to the writing prompt (also in format, e.g. a letter requires greeting and conclusion); all expected elements are included; text flows; comprehensible; writing is appropriate to current level; length is appropriate
Word choice is appropriate and varied; sentence structure shows variety if possible on this level of writing (e.g. sub- and coordinating sentences, not only S-V-O structure; use of transitions);
Some errors which do not interfere with comprehension (i.e. word order is correct most of the time; subject-verb agreement is accurate most of the time, minor slips; spelling and punctuation are mostly accurate); learner demonstrated control of the forms focused on in this exam with very few mistakes
TYPE B: ANALYTIC SCALES
SAMPLE RUBRICS The original is holistic
The revised one is analytic
WEIGHTING THE RUBRIC • Which categories are more important to the overall grade?
• This is another way of asking what are the most important • factors for you when you evaluate a student’s assignment.
• Not all categories have to be or should be evenly weighted.
• Rubrics should be different from first year to fourth year as • expectations change.