Writing Proficiency in the Major and Writing Across the Curriculum
Goucher students are taught to write, and their writing skills are assessed, in two stages during their progress toward graduation. The first stage, usually completed during freshman year, takes place in the freshman composition sequence and ends with evaluation of their writing abilities according to the College Writing Proficiency criteria. However, because professional writing skills require instruction in discipline-specific types of writing (lab reports, literary analysis, etc.), the faculty voted to institute the Writing Proficiency in the Major as a second level of instruction and assessment. This also recognized the limited progress students could be expected to make in their first two semesters of college, in comparison with the demands upon their writing skills which they would encounter in advanced study within their majors.
Departments which successfully have implemented Writing Proficiency in the Major requirements typically experience the same problems and arrive at similar methods to solve them. Here are some warning signs that your department's majors may need more direct guidance about writing for your discipline and further, discipline-specific instruction:
If your department finds itself in this position, the Writing Program can offer several kinds of assistance to help develop sound Writing Proficiency in the Major procedures and to help faculty reach consensus about what matters most for writing quality in your discipline. The most important step in developing WPM policies is to review the department's stand on Writing Across the Curriculum. The "WAC" doctrine was developed in the 1970s and '80s based on research that showed students learn important lessons about writing process in the context of courses in their majors, where their interests and motivations are highest. These lessons could be negative as well as positive, depending upon the attitude toward writing teachers transmitted to students, both by example and by instruction. In brief, WAC research shows us that students will learn to take writing seriously when time is devoted to discussing how to write in a course, but they also will learn to dismiss writing as an afterthought if writing only is mentioned rarely and usually as a last-minute list of grammatical and spelling issues. Click here for a brief summary of basic WAC principles which may help you structure writing in your courses as a functionally integrated part of how students learn your subject. Specially designated WAC courses also typically are used to meet the College Writing Proficiency requirement for transfer students and strong writers whose performance in English 105 did not meet the criteria in freshman year. Click here for a sample WAC course contract which outlines instructors' and students' responsibilities, and which can be used to regulate the number and skill-level of students attempting to achieve College Writing Proficiency in such a course. Note, however, that the principles of Writing Across the Curriculum embrace writing in all courses, not just those designated as a way for students to meet the most basic levels of proficient writing for college.
After members of your department have discussed their responses to the Writing Across the Curriculum principles, they should dedicate a meeting to discussion of how the curriculum can implement plans to insure majors are taught writing in the discipline on a regular basis, from declaration of the major to graduation. Assessment strategies should be developed to track your majors' writing skills in every semester. This will prevent surprises in upper-division seminars, especially if passing certain assessed skill levels is a prerequisite for registration for those courses. To help you develop a coherent and positive departmental approach to Writing Proficiency in the Major, you may want to involve the Writing Program in your meeting. Click here for a sample agenda that has been developed with the assistance of the Education, Economics and Management, and Communications Departments, all of whom have undertaken this process.
In addition to increasing faculty involvement in teaching writing on WAC principles, and holding a meeting to assess your majors' needs and the department's capacity to respond to them, you also should consider ways to use the Writing Center to assist your majors' development of writing skills specific to your discipline. In addition to one-on-one peer tutoring, Writing Center tutors can be attached to individual writing-intensive courses to provide dedicated writing assistance under the instructor's supervision. However, we must make sure we have enough tutors to make this possible, and trained tutors who are majors in your discipline can be especially valuable. Every year, in early spring, the Writing Program solicits nominations for excellent writers to take English 221, the course which trains Writing Center tutors. Though college-wide rates of nomination usually are high, some disciplines appear reluctant to nominate their majors to take the course because those three credit hours are considered essential to progress in the major. This attitude will prevent us from training students in those majors to be Writing Center tutors, which eventually hurts all students in that major. Please consider making it a departmental priority to nominate at least some qualified students to take English 221, and encourage them to take the course when you advise them for registration. Click here to see the English 221 web site, where you can see the syllabus and examples of the students' research interests.