Three forms of activity easily integrate into witing-intensive courses. First are those activities which focus only in the CONTENT, such as for example lectures and discussions of texts. Second are activities related solely to WRITING as separate from the content concerns for the course. Grammar drills or sentence exercises that are combining into this category, but so would lecturing on writing in general or examining types of good writing without reference to the information. Third are activities which teach BOTH WRITING AND CONTENT. Peer critiquing, journal writing, and group brainstorming teach both writing and content as does examining model essays which are chosen for the quality associated with the writing and the value of the content. The following suggestions are designed to show how writing may be taught not merely as a mechanical skill (through sentence and paragraph modeling), nor merely given that display of information (by concentrating solely on content), but as a generative intellectual activity in its own right. They are according to three premises:
that students can learn a great deal about themselves as writers by getting more careful readers;
that astute readers deal with the dwelling for the text and find that analyzing the writer’s choices at specific junctures provides them with a surer, more grasp that is detailed of;
That students can give their writing more direction and focus by thinking about details as elements of a whole, whether that whole be a sentence, paragraph, or chapter.
Thus, attention to a discipline’s language, methodology, formal conventions, and ways of creating context–as these are illustrated in texts, lectures, and student papers–is an effective means of teaching writing.
Summary and Analysis Exercises
A) Have students write a 500-word summary of about 2000 words of text; then a 50-word summary; then a sentence summary that is single. Compare results for inclusivity, accuracy, emphasis, and nuance.
B) Analyze a text section or chapter. How can it be constructed? What has got the author done to make the right parts add up to an argument?
C) Analyze a paragraph that is particularly complex a text. How is it come up with? What gives it unity? What role does it play in the entire chapter or element of text?
Organizational Pattern Work
A) Scramble a paragraph and get students: 1) to put it together; 2) to comment on the processes that are mental within the restoration, the decisions about continuity they had in order to make based on their feeling of the author’s thinking.
B) Have students find several types of sentences in a text, and explain exactly, into the terms and spirit for the text, what these sentences are designed to do: juxtapose, equate, polarize, rank, distinguish, make exceptions, concede, contrast. Often, of course, sentences can do two or more of these plain things at the same time.
C) Have students examine an author’s punctuation and explain, again in regards to the argument, why, say, a semicolon was used.
D) Have students outline as a way of analyzing structure and discuss the choices a writer makes and just how these choices contribute to achieving the writer’s purpose.
Formulation of Questions and Acceptability of Evidence
A) exactly what do be treated as known? What is acceptable process of ruling cases in or out?
B) Discuss how evidence is tested against an hypothesis, and just how hypotheses are modified. (How models are created and placed on data; how observations develop into claims, etc.)
C) Examine cause and effect; condition and result; argumentative strategies, such as for example comparison-contrast, and agency (especially the employment of verbs), as basic building blocks in definition and explanation.
Peer critiquing and discussion of student writing can be handled in a number of different ways. The goal of such activities is always to have students read one another’s writing and develop their very own critical faculties, with them to help the other person boost their writing. Peer critiquing and discussion help students know the way their own writing compares with this of the peers and helps them discover the characteristics that distinguish writing that is successful. It is important to remember that a teacher criticizing a text for a class is not peer critiquing; with this will not give the students practice in exercising their particular critical skills. Here are a few different types of various ways this is handled, and we also encourage you to modify these to suit your purposes that are own.
A) The Small Groups Model–The class is divided into three sets of five students each. Each the student submits six copies of his or her paper, one for the instructor and one for each member of her group week. One hour per is devoted to group meetings in which some or all of the papers in the group are discussed week. Before this group meeting, students must read all the papers from their group and must write comments to be distributed to one other writers. Thus, weekly writing, reading and critiquing are a part of this course, and students develop skills through repeated practice that they will be struggling to develop if only asked to critique on three to four occasions. Because the teacher is present with every group, they are able to lead the discussion to assist students improve these skills that are critical.
B) The Pairs Model–Students can be paired off to read and touch upon one another’s writing so that each student will receive written comments in one other student plus the teacher. The teacher can, needless to say, go over the critical comments along with the paper to greatly help students develop both writing and critical skills. This process requires no special copying and need take very little classroom time. The teacher may decide to allow some right time for the pairs to talk about each other’s work, or this might be done outside the class. The disadvantage with this method is the fact that teacher cannot guide the discussions and students are restricted to comments from only one of these peers.
C) Small Groups within Class–Many teachers break their classes into small groups (from 3 to 7 students) and allow class time for the groups to critique. The teacher can circulate among groups or sit in on an session that is entire one group.
D) Critiques and Revision–Many teachers combine peer critiquing with required revisions to show students just how to improve not only their mechanical skills, but also their thinking skills. Students may have comments that are critical their-teachers as well as from their peers to do business with. Some teachers like to have students revise a first draft with only comments from their peers and then revise a second time on the basis of the teacher’s comments.
E) Student Critiques–Students must certanly be taught how exactly to critique each other’s work. Although some teachers may leave the character of this response up to the students, most try to give their students some direction.
1) Standard Critique Form–This is a couple of questions or guidelines general adequate to be applicable to any writing a student might do. In English classes, the questions pay attention to such staples of rhetoric as audience, voice and purpose; in philosophy, they may guide the student to examine the logic or structure of an argument.
2) Assignment Critique Form–This is a collection of questions designed designed for a writing task that is particular. Such a questionnaire has got the benefit of making students focus on the special aspects peculiar towards the given task. If students use them repeatedly, however, they might become dependent in it, never asking their particular critical questions associated with the texts they critique.
3) Descriptive Outline–Instead of providing questions to direct students, some teachers would rather teach their students to publish a “descriptive outline.” The student reads the paper and stops to write after each section or paragraph, recording what he or she thought the section said along with his or her responses or questions concerning it. The student writes his or her “summary comments” describing his or her reaction to the piece as a whole, raising questions about the writing, and perhaps making suggestions for further writing at the end.
Since writing by itself is of value, teachers need not grade all writing assignments–for instance journals, exploratory writing, and early drafts of more formal pieces. Teachers could make many comments on such writing to help students further their thinking but may wait for a far more finished, formal product before assigning grades.