Characteristics of Writing Intensive Core Courses

Instructional Time

Giving “some instructional time” to writing certainly doesn’t require providing extended lectures.  (In fact, that would be less effective than other strategies.)  One of the purposes of the Core Writing Intensive faculty development seminars is to provide some minimal strategies that nonetheless can be very useful to students.

Consider several possible teaching practices

• Whenever Professor Wallace gives a writing assignment, she takes 10-15 minutes of class time to talk about the assignment.  She asks students to brainstorm ideas, she contributes some ideas of her own, and she discusses evaluation criteria for the papers, perhaps sharing a grading rubric.

• For each assignment, Professor Kalter has students bring a draft to one class.  He divides into small groups and has them furnish some peer response to one another, following a review sheet he has provided.

• After each assignment, Professor Mencia selects two or three of the strongest papers and reproduces them for the entire class, then takes several minutes of class time to point out their strengths. 

• Professor Jones discusses her writing process on an article she’s writing, including sharing drafts with the students.  Occasionally, she invites a colleague or advanced student to do the same.

• Three or four times a quarter, Professor Roen invites professional staff from the Writing Center to guest teach in the class, for about 45-minutes each time.  These topics range from helping students generate ideas to helping them revise to helping them document sources effectively.

• Once a week, Professor Anukye leads a 15-minute discussion about a piece of writing from her field.  She invites the students to “read like writers,” that is, to point out the features of a text and to speculate how its writer got from blank screen to finished product.

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