In theory, students who pass ENG101 and 102 (or their equivalents) have the foundation to make it through their remaining writing intensive courses. But in practice, many students hit writing assignments in the GenEd and their major and discover that what worked in English 101 and 102 doesn’t fly. They swear they did what the professor asked and yet they earned a D. What’s the deal?
As one of the people at WSU whose job it is to help faculty teach writing in the major, I spend a good deal of my time trying to keep this from happening. What I’ve discovered is that the problem often occurs when writers mistranslate WAC (that’s Writing Across the Curriculum) into WID (Writing in the Disciplines).
I just got back from the International WAC Conference in Austin, Texas where, along with three other WSU faculty members, I presented a panel on the challenges of translating WAC to WID. This panel grew out of work that began in Fall 2007 with Sarah Twill in the Department of Social Work and reviewing its key points here might help you understand what I mean by the need to translate WAC into WID.
When I first met with Sarah, she was feeling frustrated by her students’ writing. She felt her instructions were clear but she simply wasn’t getting what she asked for. Essentially, Sarah wanted students to describe a visit to a social work agency and respond to what they observed, comparing their practical experience to the textbooks’ treatment of similar situations. And her instructions were quite clear for someone familiar with the discipline. For the description, she wanted an objective report of what happened – details of the observation that could stand up in court as straight, clear fact. No judgments. No personal opinion. No extraneous detail. For the response, she wanted some evidence that the students were making connections between what they read, what they witnessed, and what that meant for them as a social worker.
The trouble lay in the language used. In discussing the assignment with students, Sarah asked for narrative and reflection, terms familiar to many students from their first year writing courses. But in first year composition classes, narrative typically means writing a story. Students are encouraged to include detail and dialogue to convey emotions and attitude. Reflection assignments in first year writing often ask students for a very personal response, one that doesn’t include outside sources. That’s not quite the narratives or reflections Sarah imagined.
The disconnect occurred because students were (understandably) focused on duplicating the ASSIGNMENTS they’d had in 101 and 102 rather than duplicating the THINKING they’d done in 101 and 102. Despite a difference in style, Sarah’s request for narrative and reflection still asked students to think in the same ways that 101 and 102 instructors ask their students to think. Her use of these terms wasn’t wrong. They were discipline-specific to social work, just as the use of them in 101 and 102 is discipline-specific to English composition.
So what’s a student to do? How can anyone possibly know every discipline’s specific meanings? The key is to focus less on remembering particular first year writing assignments and more on remembering the thinking you did to fulfill those assignments.
A good resource for helping you do this is Rich Bullock’s The Norton Field Guide to Writing, a common text in first year writing at WSU. It lists the most common genres in academic writing. Each genre chapter includes a section on key features – the elements expected when writing in this genre, regardless of the assignment. When Sarah and I reviewed the chapters on narrative and reflection, we saw that she wanted these same features in her students’ writing. But because of the difference in discipline, she needed students to express the information differently than they would in an English class. By pointing this out to her students and providing some examples of what she was expecting, she saw instant improvement in student performance.
For example, both my ENG101 literacy narrative assignment and Sarah’s request for narrative ask for ‘vivid detail.’ We both want students to include clear and specific detail to help readers picture who, what, where, when and how. But how we define ‘vivid’ is a little different. In my world, it means to add emotion and color; in Sarah’s it’s about painting a clear picture of the facts.
So if you’ve got a paper to revise by the end of this quarter and are feeling confused about why what worked before isn’t working this time, it might be useful to stop thinking about 101 and 102 as courses that helped you learn writing across the curriculum and consider them in terms of thinking across the curriculum. Take the WAC foundation in thinking gained in 101 and 102 and apply it to your WID. How are writing assignments in different disciplines beyond 101 and 102 asking for those same types of thinking even though the final product may be expressed differently?
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Have you WAC-ed your WID today?
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3 comments:
I already feel guilty writing this, but I'm the one at a loss. I'm pretty sure Peggy Lindsey still gets paid. I am a former student of this blogger (Peggy Lindsey). I think the topic is one that really hits home!! I am someone that is twenty years old, and really want to get a college education. I have a husband and a two year old son, who to say the least have my HEART.Let me also say that I've been in college for two years and have about 90 credits. Aside from one D I got my first quarter in a 300 level Geo. course I've had all A's and B's at a current 3.6 GPA.Among those Eng 101, 102, and Great Books. I have to say that Professor Lindsey class is the hardest I've ever taken!!! Maybe English has not prepared me for this 200 level gen ed course, or maybe as Professor, she made the class extremely difficult. You cannot expect perfection cramed among a crazy schedle. If you want good writing provide a calm environment and choose one paper that can be worked on and revised throughout the quarter. When I got a 68 D on my first WI paper it killed my confidence. I am hurt and feel stupid and very defeated!! I'm not a very confident person and I usually do not sing my praises, but I am someone who has worked, had a child and gone to school full time for two years.Aside from breaking my spirit and pushing even further away from English I really want to stress that teachers need to have compassion for their students. My goal is not to insult Peggy Lindsey, she has obviously worked hard. I just want to offer the pespective of someone who feels misunderstood as the student who was given a negative blow vs. intellectual growth and inspiration.
I can certainly sympathize and, to a degree, empathize with what anonymous is saying: performing poorly on an assignment despite a great deal of effort can temporarily feel like a soul-crushing experience. However, there are some other realities that anonymous ignores in her post.
First, it appears that the writer performed quite well in Professor Lindsey's class -- the very class with the high standards. That fact supports the theory that higher standards, not lower, tend to produce better learning and performance.
Second, the writer claims, "You cannot expect perfection cramed (sic) among a crazy schedule." While as a student and employee, I wish other people took my busy schedule into consideration more often, that simply isn't going to happen, primarily because my schedule is not a criteria by which my performance will be judged. The writer must understand that perfection is not the goal, but that the criteria of the assignment must be met, and that, sadly, one's schedule is irrelevant to a teacher's or boss's expectation of you fulfilling the requirements of an assignment. That might sound harsh, but it is the reality -- a reality that does not stem from a lack of compassion, but the demands of life. Would you suggest that your child when he was a baby not wake you up at 3:00 a.m. for a feeding because of your busy schedule? No. True, you might wish he didn't need to be fed that early, but that was the reality and you rose to the occasion.
Working on one paper for the length of a quarter is not going to prepare you for writing in your career. In fact, it won't prepare you for much at all. Ultimately, the goal of writing instruction is to enable you to condense, not extend, the writing process. In the business world, writing -- long or short -- is often required to be accomplished in short order.
Finally, I'm concerned that a single poor performance has "killed [your] confidence" and "[broken your] spirit." That D is only a temporary setback and should be treated as such. Don't let a single instance of poor performance -- something that happens to all writers from time to time -- shake your confidence. Rather, view it as a challenge to improve.
If you disagree with everything else I've written here, believe this: success is built upon failure. Moreover, learning is built upon failure more than success. This is not to suggest that you should try to fail. However, you should recognize that failure will happen, sometimes in the face of your most vigorous efforts, and this is the time and place to attempt the hard things boldly, without fear of failure.
If you succeed in school -- or anything, for that matter -- without effort or initial failure, then you have likely either been lucky or you're not learning anything because you already knew it. To grow, to extend your knowledge, abilities, and yourself, you must struggle; you must attempt that which is hard and new and throw yourself out of your comfort zone.
It is also true that the majority of instructors of first year writing don't have a clue what business or other university disciplines expect for writing.
One would assume WSU's first year writing instructors have 1) degrees in English literature, 2) little to no experience outside their own discipline or in industry.
With the declining enrollment in English as a major, colleges use their composition programs to attract graduate literature students student employment. Additionally, their adjuncts are typically literature majors looking for work.
Peggy Lindsey is at least tuned in the importance of WAC/WID, but one must wonder if there is sufficient instruction within the master's level curriculum to prepare most writing instructors with the tools to train students to write for their major discipline - which is typically not English.
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