Writing with Purpose

In our workshop this week, we discussed the use of rubrics.  Some teachers hate them because we tend to be harder on our students when we use them and they lack a proper nuance that accounts for aspects of writing that are less quantifiable.  However, a rubric can also help the teacher formulate their assignment more clearly for the students.  If we pay close attention to the purpose of the assignment and communicate that clearly to our students, we may get more readable results.

Putting aside grammar issues, students come to us with a broad variety of educational and life experiences.  Some colleges attract the most academically prepared students while others serve a population that has had far less rigorous preparation.  Let's face it, just because they are in college doesn't mean that they understand how to learn...but they want to.  The QEP mission is to enhance learning through writing and technology, and part of that mission involves helping our participating faculty design clear and meaningful assignments to enhance learning.  To do that effectively, we may have to set aside our preconceived understanding of what our students have brought to the table.

Those with a strong academic background have internalized the unwritten/unspoken expectations that usually come with a college writing assignment.  There may be no specific audience mentioned and only general guidelines as to what should be included, but these students understand how the assignment works because their brains have been through this exercise before.  Think of it as muscle memory.  They've done it before, and now they can stretch it to the college level.

Students who come from a "looser" academic tradition (for lack of a better phrase) may have the ideas, but they have no real concept of how to express them or even what aspects of the issue are appropriate for the assignment.  They have no understanding of structure because they have never been asked to work that way.  Though we hate to admit it, some have managed a "seat of your pants" education prompted by the pressures of NCLB and its manic "teach to the test" mentality or simply by poorly run or ill-equipped schools.  They may have learned how to take the test, but have they learned? The reality is, these are our students too.

If the assignment asks a student to "discuss" a topic, does the student really understand how to do that? In some cases, no.  They might have a basic sense of what "compare and contrast" means or know what it is to summarize, but the more subtle modes of exploring a topic may not be in their toolkit.  As higher level educators we may take this for granted at times.  So while our assignment parameters are perfectly clear to us, our students might need a little more explanation to help them succeed.   

Practice, structure, and conversation.  We can set our expectations high and we absolutely should or we are doing a disservice to our students. Those with less rigorous academic experience need to learn the structures, practice them, and talk about all of it with peers and professionals.  It is a process, not a punctuation mark.  By giving these students more opportunities to develop their learning skills as well as their writing skills, we prepare them not only for academia, but  for the world after college.