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INTRODUCTION
These sample assignments reflect the discussions on theory and practice conducted by the Committee for Communications Across the Curriculum over the course of the past year. Our intent is to provide a flexible sourcebook of ideas for faculty who might wish to integrate more writing and speaking into their classrooms. Of course, only part of the material in the packet will appeal to any given instructor. Teaching methods, after all, depend largely on individual style and professional choice.
The “writing to learn” exercises that form the first half of the packet distill some of the suggestions most common to numerous writing textbooks and web pages. We've chosen to include them here because they offer the advantage of easy adaptability to courses in any discipline. Each exercise serves as an occasion for reading, thinking, speaking, and writing. However, most of the activities create little or no paperwork or grading load.
The main idea is to harness the considerable synergy of focus and synthesis that students experience during the act of writing without necessitating the labor of editing by the instructor. Although proofreading for grammar and mechanics is an extremely important aspect of writing instruction–the freshman composition curriculum devotes quite a bit of time to it– published composition research demonstrates that the most immediately useful response to student writing centers on thought, content, and logic. In his widely-accepted book on the subject, Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (1996), John C. Bean remarks that one of the most common misconceptions about integrating writing outside the English class arises when instructors feel that the only way to improve student papers is to edit them for errors in grammar and mechanics: “the more teachers struggle to revise their own writing, the more they can serve as role models for students. In short, you should discover that your own experience as an academic writer and reader, combined with your experience in how scholars in your field inquire and argue, should be all the background you need to help your students with their writing” (11). Bean devotes an entire chapter to the problem of “editing vs. responding,” summarizes the landmark studies on error in student writing, and offers a number of encouraging suggestions for faculty who are rightly concerned about the prevalence of grammatical and mechanical error in undergraduate papers.
Part Two of this packet comprises several actual assignments used by members of the CAC committee in their own courses. Many of these assignments are variations on the writing to learn themes from Part One; they show how creative adaptation can provide students with writing prompts suitable to any discipline. It is our hope that you will find at least some of the materials we offer useful in your own classrooms.
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