Three Prongs to the Writing Intensive Course

I. Learning to Write

This is the common goal of all writing-intensive courses. Students first learn basic composition skill necessary for success in academic writing. The primary means of achieving this goal is in the first-year writing sequence (EH111, 121, and/or 131). Students learn in these courses the conventions and rules of usage associated with standard written English, and they learn the basic modes of writing necessary for success in academic settings. These skills are reinforced and extended throughout the curriculum.

Research strongly indicates that memorization and recitation of grammar and punctuation rules do not succeed in improving student writing. Instead, the “holistic” approach – that is, writing and revising, feedback and suggestions – become the “active learning” techniques that improve a student’s skills in grammar, punctuation and spelling.

II. Writing to Learn

Students learn writing skills designed for engaging and reinforcing new ideas and clarifying and organizing their thinking. This goal could easily be called “writing in order to discover”; it is based on evidence that students can write their way into understanding and organizing content and concepts. For this reason such pedagogical assignments as journals, class notes rewritten and expanded, and informal, short writing activities can be productive for the student. This goal can be met with such activities as free writing (e.g. five minutes of writing on a topic in class), journal keeping (which encourages personal and creative writing), or short writing assignments encouraging personal reactions. Generally, these writing activities are not graded for usage and mechanics. Instead of marking errors in a journal, for example, an instructor may assign grades for doing the critical thinking the journal typically fosters. To keep students on track, the instructor should collect journals several times during the semester, perhaps even weekly if they are used as a preparation for discussion.

III. Writing with Confidence

If we succeed in meeting our goals, our students will have confidence in a variety of situations with which they may be confronted before and after graduation. This goal can be met by emphasizing the first three goals throughout the curriculum. Instructors should emphasize that writing is not simply a product but a process. Confidence in one’s ability to write is a long-term goal which can be pedagogically encouraged and reinforced.

The Theory

A writing intensive course functions by exploring and exploiting the way the mind works and turning that methodology to writing. When students write, they simultaneously perform several distinct tasks: ordering information, finding words to express their intended meaning, expressing relationships between ideas with words and transitional structures, exploring potential sentence constructions and selecting the one they feel is the best, and so on. Writing fully engages the thinking process, and as people write, their minds are active and alert to the interplay between concept and expression.

A writing intensive course is one that consciously manipulates that activity into productive directions: a brief summary of an article, for instance, requires students to read, comprehend, restate, and ultimately concisely write several sentences to convey a desired meaning. If we assign several brief summaries, we allow students the chance to refine that skill set.

Because writers constantly practice their skills, there will be times when no response from a reader is needed. Even as we ask our students to perform multiple small and large writing tasks, grading or otherwise assessing each of those tasks would be counterproductive: writing well is a skill and a craft, parts of which must be practiced in isolation.

But when students are demonstrating those skills to us, they require us to provide some sort of feedback; indeed, as teachers, we are responsible for their development. Some assignments, for example a five to six page essay, must undergo workshop or conference consultation before the student can fully reach the goals the professor has set; therefore, in the WI course, the more important assignments enjoy the sustained and formative attention of both instructor and student.

Given the proper number of written pages, the careful construction of writing assignments, the timing of feedback and response, and the forefronting of writing's importance, the writing intensive course provides students with a place to write to learn.