UMass Lowell's First Year Writing Program

Because the students placed into College Writing Studio often have gaps in their writing and reading experience, with attendant anxiety, it is important for classroom practices to provide structure and support for academic success. Instructors should provide all six experiences, using the strategies below or any others that achieve the same effects.

In every studio course, students will experience

1.Accountability and support for participation

Give students something to write (homework, prewriting, or in-class writing) before you ask for comments, so that they have a chance to formulate an answer before you start opening up the discussion. If you have a very shy class, you can mix up the papers and ask them to present each other’s ideas, so they are not so exposed.
Grade class participation with a rubric. Use a search engine to find one of these, or see the First-Year Writing Program website.

• Include participation in attendance and report to students at midterm.
• Have students log others’ ideas and questions. Assign one student to each class session where there is discussion. The student of the day takes notes, including comments or questions from classmates, and begins the next class session with a summary.

When you put students in groups, assign roles to each student (presenter, recorder, finder-of-good-examples-in-the-book, questioner). That keeps more vocal/extroverted students from doing all the work.

2.Accountability and support for reading

Report on difficulties. Begin each discussion of any reading by asking students to identify difficulties presented by the text. They should be specific, including page numbers and passages. As the semester goes on, you can relate these difficulties to the reading strategies students are developing.
Begin each discussion of any reading by asking each student to comment on some aspect of the reading before you say anything about it at all. All responses are acceptable, as long as they include specifics from the reading. Students can

• Explain a difficulty they ran into
• Make a connection to something the class has discussed earlier in the semester
• Ask a question about the reading
• Respond to something another student has said (but a response goes beyond “I agree” or “I disagree” or “good point.”)

Reading logs. Use a version of the chart below (which Ann McGill adapted from Hjortshoj). Each time you assign a reading, have students log what they do, as well as write about what they understand. They should note the time and where they are, which of the activities below they think they will use, and which they actually use.

The above material adapted from Chapter 3, The Transition to College Writing by Keith Hjortshoj.

1.Practice with Reflection/Metacognition

• Process logs. Ask students to describe the reading, writing, and revision they engage in each week. They can keep a section of a notebook (or some other medium), showing where and when they work, who is around, and what they are doing (reading for the first time, rereading, drafting, thinking, rereading, revising, outlining, whatever). Students can go back to these late in the semester and include evidence from these logs in a reflective piece of writing.
• Revision plans. After students peer review and get comments from you on their drafts, they write a revision plan. They should quote from their paper, from specific comments they have received on this draft and on previous papers, and from the class outcomes or grading criteria. They should explain what they plan to do as they revise the paper, and why.
• Reflective writing assignments. See the separate document “Yancey notes” for many examples of such assignments.

2.Reflective Rhetorical Grammar.

Teach students to identify, use, and combine phrases and clauses. Ask them to take examples from their own writing rather than books of exercises, and emphasize pattern and emphasis rather than error. Emphasize the key roles that qualification and dependent clauses play in academic writing.

• Syntax logs. As students learn syntactical elements, have them look back through their own prewriting, drafts, and papers, to see whether and how they use each particular element. Have them log how often a particular syntactical elements occurs (strings of prepositional phrases, dependent clauses beginning with “that,” compound sentences, or whatever you are studying). Students should use the logs to identify patterns and characterize their styles.
• Reflective writing on style. Students can write about their style. Do they like it? Does their writing sound like them? Does it sound academic? Does it sound authoritative? They can do the same sort of analysis of the course readings.
• Students should perform syntactical analysis of their own writing. Once a student has noticed a pattern in her own writing, she should intentionally break it to see what effect that has on her writing processes and ideas.

3.Frequent feedback.

Students should have a clear sense of how they are doing in the class.

• In-class writing linked to outcomes/grading criteria. When a student writes or says something that’s a great example of analysis, or incorporating details from a text, or connecting evidence with a concept, point it out and explicitly say “this is the kind of sentence/paragraph that you see in an A paper because ________.” Then ask everyone in the class to look at the prewriting or draft they have on their desk that day, and find a similar sentence. Walk around and look at the ones they find, to see whether they understand the kind of thing you are looking for. “If you have one, great job. Now write another one, because an A paper has sentences like this in every paragraph. If you don’t have any, then you will need to write some before you hand in this paper for a grade.”
• Reports on attendance/participation. Use Starfish to report on students’ academic habits. Email students as well. If students are present but passive, give them a grade on their participation early in the semester.
• Use Blackboard to give quick responses on homework/prewriting. Do not give such detailed feedback that you drown. Set up criteria for homework, and give “no credit” early in the semester to pieces that don’t meet it.

Sample criteria:

• Responding to the prompt/assignment
• Including specific details from reading
• Using standard edited English

Talk about these, with examples, in class, so students know what you are looking for, and then you don’t have to write lengthy comments on each one.

4. Assignments that require critical reading.