Post 356: How do you improve writing in college courses?

How do you improve writing in college courses?

Research Questions: Should the teaching of writing be solely the responsibility of the English Department? Should Content-Area teachers who complain about their students having poor writing skills also teach writing skills in their classes?

Within the English department, who teaches writing? new hires? graduate students? Shouldn't the English department focus on teaching literature instead?

As English writing teachers, are you tired of other departments complaining about their students poor writing skills on the English department?

Online Teacher Forum on Teaching Writing

Online Teacher 1: You English teachers are not doing your job! My Psychology students can't write a coherent sentence!"

Online Teacher 2:  Don't you people in the English department have a remedial class or something, I am tired of reading rambling essays that say nothing! I want to focus on teaching my engineering class! The lab reports I get are nonsense! Students don't know how to explain a simple procedure or state a simple conclusion! I have no idea what they are talking about!"

Online Teacher 1: Well, here in the English Department, we have many writing classes. Why don't you tell us your writing needs so we can better teach writing?"

I have heard these kinds of complaints in both Online Teacher Forums and I have heard these issues discussed in face to face faculty meetings like the one below:

Here is a hypothetical meeting in an English department:

Everyone is assembled in the faculty meeting room. All English teachers, Literature teachers, Writing teachers, everyone from the department of English/Literature are waiting for the Dean to speak.

Dean sits down with a serious face and says, "We have been getting complaints from other departments that their students do not have good writing skills. The History Department for instance have history professors claiming their students stay on one main idea in a history essay so that professor cannot understand what the student is trying to say.  Other departments are having much the same complaint. Others complain "their students do not have good paragraph structure, essay structure and make many grammar mistakes".  So, I ask all of you, what can we do to improve our writing classes?" The Dean looks expectantly at all his colleagues.

Writing Teacher 1: Why is it always on us to improve writing? Why can't those other departments also teach writing or have their own writing classes?  I think it is called Writing Across the Disciplines. In this program, all the different content area teachers integrate writing skills in their content area classes.

Writing Teacher 2: Well, we can develop a class for teaching writing history papers to placate the history department?

Dean says, "It is not just the history department who is complaining, I have a list engineering, social sciences, math, all are complaining."

Writing Teacher 3 scratches head, "I heard at another school they instituted a Freshman Composition class where they teach students how to write papers for different majors. They call it Writing in the Disciplines class. Students are taught how to write a business proposal, a position paper, a legal memo and a science lab report all in one class."

Dean listens to all these suggestions and then says, "Why don't we do both? Why don't we reach out to other departments and teach their teachers how to teach writing AND we can teach a course in teaching students how to write in the different majors!"

Older tired writing teacher says, "Isn't that a bit ambitious? And who has the time? And besides aren't all those beginning writing classes done by the new hires anyway? Who wants to be bogged down in grading more junior writing papers anyway?"

Dean says, "We make the time.  We have to make writing our central priority. Our English department is not just about teaching Literature. We need to change our attitude towards the importance of writing. From now on, all of you no matter how senior you are will be teaching writing and finding ways to make these complaints go away."

Older tired writing teacher says, "Sure, but how do we get those content area teachers to teach writing when they don't know how to teach writing? And those teachers will say we are not doing our job by dumping writing skills on them, and they will say they don't have time to teach writing and teach their content too!"

Dean says, "We teach them that's how! We give them writing workshops on how to teach writing as a process. Anybody want in?"

Younger ambitious adjunct 1 says, "I am in. I'll design the Writing Workshop.

Younger ambitious adjunct 2 says, "I'll design the Writing In the Disciplines class."

Younger ambitious adjunct 1 says, "I'll give those Writing Workshops with you, Dean."

Dean says, "Yes, if we all work together and reach out to other departments, we can get the whole university to teach wriitng."

Older cynical teacher says, "How are you going to get Admin to buy into this?"

Dean says, "We will prove our approach works. That's how."

After the meeting, the Dean circulates this memo email to the entire department:

How do we improve student writing?

1. Make writing an essential part of our curriculum.

2. Create workshops to teach professors of different departments how to teach writing and how to integrate writing into their curriculum without taking time away from teaching content area.

3. Teach Content area teachers to smoothly teach writing skills to complement content area learning.

4. Create a separate Freshman Composition Writing class that focuses on teaching incoming Freshman how to write papers in different majors.

5. I will be meeting with  each Department Head in future weeks to discuss their writing needs. Anyone want to volunteer for this committee?


6. Volunteers also needed to help design the new writing class!

So our approach is two-pronged, establish a Writing Across The Curriculum Program and design a Writing In the Disciplines class!

End of Email from Hypothetical Dean

The book by Art Young and Toby Fulwiler, Writing Across The Disciplines discusses how  the Michigan Technical University tackles this very problem. I will discuss this book in my next blog post.

How does your English Department handle complaints from other departments about student writing skills? Do you have a Writing Across the Curriculum Program or do you have a Writing In The Disciplines class or both?  Or does each department have their own research methods class?