UMass Lowell's First Year Writing Program

The practices listed below are supported by empirical research and widely used at UML.  The first-year writing program encourages all instructors to learn about and experiment with them. If you see something here that’s new to you, talk to your colleagues or check out the research.  If you have tried and disliked any of these, think about how you can adapt the practice to fit with the way you teach your course and with your classroom persona. This list is the tip of an iceberg, not an inflexible template.

This is widely practiced in the field. In his review of the research, however, Rich Haswell finds that peer review “shows some unwelcome outcomes under close observation. When students critique one of their peer’s papers, the actual revisions made may be superficial, only superior students may benefit, weak and minority students may feel stigmatized, group talk may be off task, and exclusivist small-group power structures may emerge”(336).  To avoid these pitfalls, structure your students’ work so that they are really reviewing concepts and ideas, rather than proofreading, and oversee their work to help them develop professional norms for dealing with difference.

There is good evidence from research in education and in composition that tutoring and one-to-one work can produce different (better) results than whole-group instruction. Research evidence suggests that underprepared/developmental students find this particularly beneficial.  On the other hand, it can be tremendously time consuming, and it is not required (particularly of adjunct faculty). Find time when you can by

• snagging students just before or just after class
• conducting a “fishbowl” conference while other students look on
• canceling a class and using that time to meet individually with students
• conferring with individual students while others work in small groups.

As in all classroom activities, consider who is doing the work in your conferences. Is the student sitting and waiting for you to “fix the paper” or just fill the silence? Ask follow-up questions about the student’s goals for the paper, difficulties, or struggles.  Any of the questions posed in a reflective writing assignment are also great for a conference.

It’s also good to think about how much of your conference is focused on writing itself, and how much is focused on the topic or subject of the paper.

Fill-in-the-blank grammar exercises or worksheets are not very effective. “The teaching of traditional school grammar a la Warriner and that ilk does next to nothing to advance better writing and even correctness in writing. This is a finding that holds after three major reviews of research related to written composition over more than 40 years (Braddock, Lloyd-Jones & Schoer, 1963, Graham and Perin, 2007, Hillocks, 1986). ” (Hillocks 2011)

On the other hand, we have pretty strong evidence going back to the 70s that sentence combining and clause embedding do cause positive change in student writing. In these approaches, students learn to identify, create, and combine clauses. Moving them around gives them syntactical control.

In your discussions about these issues,

• separate revision, editing, and proofreading, rather than asking students to do all these various tasks at once
• make sure that students are doing their own editing and proofreading, rather than doing it for them in your marginal comments
• ask students to use the handbook to develop their editing practices.

Using student work provides models for the genres you work with in your classroom, helps students develop their revision practices, and clarifies your evaluation and feedback. Some instructors project a sample student paper (or paragraph) and ask the class to discuss. Others ask individual students to make their papers available electronically, and have students read and comment before a class discussion. Others photocopy sample papers and ask students to read and comment in class. In each case, it is possible to remove names so that students do not feel too exposed. Some instructors use papers from previous semesters or from other sections, to make the discussion more anonymous.

When you are working with student papers, ask the class to connect specifics in the paper to your grading criteria, or to a discussion of a specific writing issue in a textbook. For instance, students can read section C5d,”Coherence,” in A Writer’s Reference, and notice which of the techniques the student writer is using, or where a different technique might be more effective.

Students can read section A1c and A1d in A Writer’s Reference, and talk about the difference between summarizing and analyzing.   Then they can look for those activities in the sample student paper. Where does the writer summarize and where does she analyze? What is a good balance, and has she achieved it?

Then students can look back at their own drafts, evaluating the same issue the class just discussed, and begin revising.

This teacher-discussion-facilitation-instrument (below), allows the instructor to solicit feedback from their students to get a sense of whether or not they believe that class discussions are engaging and if you’ve effectively established the classroom environment for meaningful and productive class discussions.

Our students are analyzing data for their classes, and as writing instructors, we should provide writing exercises and activities to help them practice. In the College Writing I course, instructors should be including at least one writing assignment that asks students to work with quantitative evidence. Here's a sample assignment by Professor Milena Gueorguieva to get you started.