Three forms of activity easily integrate into witing-intensive courses. First are those activities which focus only from the CONTENT, such as for instance lectures and discussions of texts. Second are activities related solely to WRITING as separate through the content concerns for the course. Grammar drills or sentence combining exercises fall into this category, but so would lecturing on writing in general or examining types of good writing without reference to this content. 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 that are chosen for the quality of this writing therefore the worth of the information. The following suggestions are intended to show how writing can be taught not simply as a skill that is mechanicalthrough sentence and paragraph modeling), nor merely whilst the display of information (by concentrating solely on content), but as a generative intellectual activity in its own right. They are predicated on three premises:
that students can learn a deal that is great themselves as writers by getting more careful readers;
that astute readers attend to the dwelling associated with the text and discover that analyzing the author’s choices at specific junctures provides them with a surer, more grasp that is detailed of;
that students will give their writing more focus and direction by thinking about details as elements of a whole, whether that whole be a sentence, paragraph, or chapter.
Thus, awareness of 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 really make the right parts add up to a quarrel?
C) Analyze a paragraph that is particularly complex a text. How is it put together? What gives it unity? What role does it play when you look at the entire chapter or part of text?
Organizational Pattern Work
A) Scramble a paragraph and get students: 1) to put it together; 2) to touch upon the mental processes involved within the restoration, the decisions about continuity they had which will make centered on their feeling of the author’s thinking.
B) Have students find several types of sentences in a text, and explain exactly, within the terms and spirit of the text, what these sentences are meant to do: juxtapose, equate, polarize, rank, distinguish, make exceptions, concede, contrast. Often, of course, sentences is going to do a couple of of the things at once.
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 means of analyzing structure and discuss the choices a writer makes and exactly how these choices donate to attaining the writer’s purpose.
Formulation of Questions and Acceptability of Evidence
A) What can be treated as known? What exactly is acceptable means of ruling cases in or out?
B) Discuss how evidence is tested against an hypothesis, and how hypotheses are modified. (How models are built and placed on data; how observations turn into claims, etc.)
C) Examine cause and effect; condition and result; argumentative strategies, such as for example comparison-contrast, and agency (especially the utilization do my homework of verbs), as basic building blocks in definition and explanation.
Peer critiquing and discussion of student writing could be handled in a true number of various ways. The purpose of such activities is always to have students read one another’s writing and develop their particular critical faculties, with them to assist one another boost their writing. Peer critiquing and discussion help students know the way their own writing compares with that of their peers and helps them find the characteristics that distinguish successful writing. You should keep in mind that an instructor criticizing a text for a course is not peer critiquing; with this will not provide the students practice in exercising their very own skills that are critical. Below are a few types of other ways this can be handled, so we encourage you to modify these to fit your purposes that are own.
A) The Small Groups Model–The class is split into three categories of five students each. Each week the student submits six copies of his or her paper, one when it comes to instructor and another for every person in her group. 1 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 the other writers. Thus, weekly writing, reading and critiquing are part of this course, and students develop skills through repeated practice which they will be not able to develop if only asked to critique on 3 or 4 occasions. Considering that the teacher is present with each group, he or she can lead the discussion to assist students improve these skills that are critical.
B) The Pairs Model–Students can be paired off to see and touch upon each other’s writing such that each learning student will receive written comments from a single other student plus the teacher. The teacher can, needless to say, look over the critical comments along with the paper to aid students develop both writing and critical skills. This method requires no special copying and need take very classroom time that is little. The teacher may wish to allow some right time for the pairs to talk about one another’s work, or this may be done outside of the class. The disadvantage with this method is the fact that the teacher cannot guide the discussions and students are restricted to comments from only one of the peers.
C) Small Groups within Class–Many teachers break their classes into small groups (from 3 to 7 students) and invite class time when it comes to combined groups to critique. The teacher can circulate among groups or sit in on an entire session with one group.
D) Critiques and Revision–Many teachers combine peer critiquing with required revisions to show students how to improve not just their mechanical skills, but in addition their thinking skills. Students could have comments that are critical their-teachers as well as from their peers to work well with. Some teachers would like to have students revise a draft that is first only comments from their peers and then revise an additional time on the basis of the teacher’s comments.
E) Student Critiques–Students should be taught just how to critique each other’s work. Some direction while some teachers may leave the nature of the response up to the students, most try to give their students.
1) Standard Critique Form–This is a set of questions or guidelines general adequate to be applicable to any writing a learning student might do. In English classes, the questions focus on such staples of rhetoric as audience, voice and purpose; in philosophy, they might guide the student to examine the logic or structure of a quarrel.
2) Assignment Critique Form–This is a collection of questions designed especially for a writing task that is particular. Such a form gets the advantageous asset of making students focus on the aspects that are special towards the given task. If students use them repeatedly, however, they might become dependent to them, never asking their very own critical questions of 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 every section or paragraph, recording what he or she thought the section said and his or her responses or questions concerning it. At the conclusion, the student writes his or her “summary comments” describing his or her reaction to the piece as a whole, raising questions regarding the writing, and perhaps making recommendations for further writing.
Since writing in itself is of value, teachers need not grade all writing assignments–for instance journals, exploratory writing, and early drafts of more formal pieces. Teachers can 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.