Tips and Techniques for Teachers Who Assign Writing

       This page may initially seem to contain information of importance primarily to teachers in the Writing Program.   However, remember the fundamental Writing Across the Curriculum principle that every teacher who assigns writing is teaching students to write.  Writers live in a community of readers, all of whom set the writers' expectations for what is "good enough."  Teachers who spend little or no time on that teaching, trusting that someone else has finished the job, tend to teach students that writing is not terribly important because it demands no specific dedicated instructional time inside or outside class.  That further implies to students that it requires no major investigation of the teacher's needs as an audience for that writing or of the writer's discipline-specific needs for styles of argument, sources of scholarly information, and documentation style.  In the end, we usually get what we teach students we want.    Please let me know if you want advice on any particular way to help students write better. 

An Annotated Bibliography of Scholarship on Writing Across the Curriculum Teaching Methods (U. Indiana)

Writing Across the Curriculum Principles--Using Writing to Teach

Some Thoughts on Writing Conference Strategies

Practical Necessities for All Goucher College Syllabi

Solving Syllabus Problems: Using Reading Assignments to Teach Writing

Solving Syllabus Problems: Avoiding the Perils of Rhetorical Formulas and Modes

Solving Syllabus Problems: Teaching Research as a Part of Scholarly Life vs. Teaching "the Research Paper"

Information Literacy Resources

Strategies for Guiding Students to Successful, Freely Chosen Topics

Sample Syllabi for Goucher College Writing Courses

L. Kip Wilson's Online Tutorial for Sentence Diagraming