What Works in WAC/WID Instruction

Wilkes University

September 28, 2006

Greg ColombDepartment of EnglishUniversity of Virginia

Charlottesville VA 22903g-colomb@virginia.edu

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What institutional circumstances had refused our students their

full powers as writers? How was their prior training as writers

effectively a form of censorship, a denial of rights? Teaching

writing this became a political matter, not simply a pedagogical

one, because students’ unfamiliarity and frustration with the

academic forms we required and our unfamiliarity with the

forms they needed were not personal “problems” but a matter of

politics. As a result, the work of composition became inextricably

connected for me to the analysis of how language and language

instruction commonly serve primarily to mystify, domesticate,

and dominate. . . . That my students had been refused the

development of their writing—that they had been denied the

right to a writing consonant with and enabling their ways of

reading—made writing itself the central concern of my courses.James Slevin, Introducing English, p. 10

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Theory of Writing Instructionand Its Binaries

Process vs. Product

Expression vs. Rhetoric

Personal vs. Academic Discourse

Fluency vs. Correctness

Acquisition vs. Direct Instruction

Interpretation vs. Production

Critique vs. Skills

Most binaries are products of scarcity: What should we do in what little time we have?

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WAC/WID Both Attempt to Reduce Scarcity by Sharing Responsibility

All faculty share the responsibility for writing instruction.

Students have a better ratio of practice to instruction.

Students have more than one chance to be ready to learn particular skills.

Students have more than one chance to see the point of doing what we ask of them.

When you think WAC, think Distributed Parallel Teaching/Learning.

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But WAC/WID Raises Other Concerns about Scarcity

Faculty Fears:• “I have no extra time in my class to add new material.”• “I do not have the knowledge/skills to teach writing.”• “I have no extra time in my life to mark up more papers.”

DPT’s Solutions

• Don’t add writing instruction, integrate it.

• You don’t need to do the whole job; learn to do your part.

• Mark to teach (which is quick) not to justify a grade or to show students how wrong they are.

Don’t think of yourself as teaching writing. Teach students. Enable them to become engaged in and to reflect on their writing.

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Engagement and Reflection in Writing Instruction

Writing is a complex, cyclical process that is product/goal directed.

It involves unconscious activities that depend on engagement: thinking, drafting, and other moments of “flow.”

It also involves conscious activities that depend on reflection: planning, reviewing, and moments of breakdown.

This duality applies at all levels: language, rhetoric, genre, and discipline.

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What Helps Students Achieve Engagement and Reflection

Immersion in Cultures and Practices of Writing and Reading

• frequent and routine writing

• in service of larger goals

• directed to readers’ needs

• ultimately productive of response, not correction

• receives editorial, not evaluative correction

Engagement Reflection

Study of Recurrent, Effective, and Controllable Features

• formal descriptions that are accurate and usable

• learned “just in time” in response to need

• directed to readers’ responses

• used not memorized

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How Assignments Help Students Achieve Engagement and Reflection

Questions must be real problems, not exercise problems.

Problems must be answerable with students’ resources.

Students must know or be able to discover the significance of the problem.

Students must know or be able to discover who has the problem.

Students must see (or at least imagine) the response of those who have the problem.

Engagement Reflection

Student must know or learn formal expectations you enforce.

Those expectations must be described in usable form, not as definitions.

Students must know or learn the purposes and practices underlying formal expectations.

Assignments must include moments to consider, reconsider, and even critique those expectations.

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How Class Activities Help Students Achieve Engagement and Reflection

Real questions should be routine class events

Discussions should replicate the processes of answering real questions

Students need to see teacher thinking, not prepared performances of prior thought

Students need low-stakes opportunities to write like a native (and hear the native version)

Engagement Reflection

Study of formal features of disciplinary texts should be a routine class event

Students need low-stakes opportunities to practice new formal features

Students must know or learn any purposes and practices underlying formal expectations

Assignments must include moments to consider and reconsider those expectations

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Colomb’s WACky Theses

1) Students need to write more than teachers need to grade.

2) Everything students write deserves some response.

3) Teachers are not always the most appropriate responders.

4) Evaluation is the least helpful response.

5) We mark up papers to enhance students’ learning, never to justify a grade.

6) Students should always see the point of the kind of writing we assign, but they only have to pretend to care.

7) Students should always see the point of writing the specific text they produce.

8) Writing never has to compete with coverage.

9) Writing enhances understanding and retention.

10) Distributed learning works: no one can do the whole job.