Writing Across the Curriculum

Writing Across the Curriculum at Bowling Green State University

Writing-for-Teaching Idea Sheet #1
Low-Stress Ways to Stress Writing in Large Classes
by: Richard Gebhardt
Rhetoric & Writing PhD Program
Bowling Green State University

Overview

When we’re readying articles for submission, “writing” means communicating, and so it makes considerable demands for logic, organization, apt use of evidence, accuracy in the use of conventions, readability by the intended audience. But as early notes and drafts of our articles show, “writing” also is a way to discover what to communicate--a means of clarifying ideas, organizing data, honing broad concept into effective thesis, adjusting assertions in light of new information or disconfirming evidence.

Key Ideas

The fact that writing is both discovery and communication is a cornerstone of writing across the curriculum; as two scholars put it in WAC for the New Millennium, most experienced WAC leaders see writing to learn and writing to communicate as “complementary, even synergistic, approaches . . . that can be integrated in individual classrooms as well as in entire programs” (5). This synergy works over time--which is why we send journal editors advanced drafts, not our earliest fumbling pages. And another cornerstone of WAC is that there are benefits, for teachers and students, of assignments that emphasize writing as discovery or learning rather than writing to communicate to a teacher-grader.

The larger the class, the more obvious it is that extensive response and evaluation of formal papers (“writing to communicate“) is a lot of work, maybe too much to be reasonable. Stressing “writing to learn” can be a reasonable response--one that keeps you from getting buried in paper grading while letting students use writing to explore course material (and, if you structure it this way, to build toward better papers later).

Here are a few suggestions for taking a low-stress writing-to-learn approach in your classes. As you modify these approaches--and invent others--I’d very much like to hear about your ideas. Please email me at richgeb@bgnet.bgsu.edu.

Some Low Stress Ways to Stress Writing in Large Classes

1. Recognize that ungraded writing is a tool for teaching. Here are some strategies from a GradSTEP workshop I give about using ungraded writing as a teaching strategy.:

Rapid writing. Have students write quickly (for 2 to 4 minutes) on an assigned topic, with no stops or self-censorship--the goal is catching ideas on paper, not deciding if the ideas are any good.
Open class with rapid writing to summarize ideas from the previous class or to give what they consider most important in the night's assignment. You could read a couple anonymously, expand on them, correct as needed.
Form transitions with rapid writing. When you finish a key part of a class session, have students summarize key point. Or have students write questions, which you can answer to clear up confusions before moving on.
Writing pairs. After students write (in c, for instance), have them trade with a person sitting nearby, look in the partners' rapid writing for a possible idea, and then write about that idea for a couple minutes.
Writing chain. After students write briefly (in b, for instance), put up a slide of related material or direct attention to a passage in the textbook. Have students read and jot down a key point. Then have them put away the original rapid writings and write again on the subject.
Predictions. As class starters, transitions between lecture points, or transitions between course units, have students predict what will be coming next--and explain, based on what has gone before

2. Consider using “One-Minute Papers” in your classes. This is an ungraded-writing strategy that uses occasional half-page assignments. http://www.etsu.edu/writing/materials/teachmat.htm

3. Invent individual writing assignments that promote learning. Think of ways assignments can stress discovery (phrasing key points in their own language, identifying and illustrating connections between assignments, responding to readings, etc.) rather than student-to-grader communication. A variety of assignments, some by BGSU faculty, show in this page from a WAC guide developed in Rhetoric & Writing Program graduate course http://personal.bgsu.edu/~richgeb/section2.html.

4. Let several short discovery assignments build toward a later paper. If you plan to assign a formal academic paper, you can get students thinking and drafting toward it with several sharply-focused discovery assignments. This “Microthemes” approach is an example http://www.indiana.edu/~cwp/assgn/microseq.html.

5. Let your grading fit the assignment. If you stressed discovery (#3), you don’t have to spend much effort on sentence-level matters. Rather, you can focus on ideas and on whether students are working seriously on what the assignment asked them to do. If the assignment is one students can build on later (#4), you don’t need to grade as if it were the final project. Rather, you can grade differently at different stages in the life of a writing project: http://www.umuc.edu/ewp/assessment.html.

Writing-for-Teaching Idea Sheet #1
Low-Stress Ways to Stress Writing in Large Classes
Copyright 2002 Richard C. Gebhardt