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Pittsburg State University
1701 South Broadway
Pittsburg KS 66762
Don Judd
WAC Coordinator
English
Phone: (620) 235-4697
Kathleen De Grave
Assistant WAC Coordinator
English
Phone: (620) 235-4705
Cynthia Woodburn
Assistant WAC Coordinator
Mathematics
Phone: (620) 235-4490
Bruce Shields
WAC Graduate Assistant
English
Phone: (620) 235-4686
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What kinds of writing assignments might I give?
One of the fun parts of teaching a WL course is coming up with unique and useful
writing assignments that will move students forward in their understanding of
course content and the discourse of the discipline. Below you will find
descriptions of different types of typical WL assignments. Shape these
general ideas as necessary to design specific assignments for your class:
Research has shown that students learn course material best when they are
asked to write short, thoughtful responses to course content on a regular basis.
These short writes stimulate critical or creative thinking, require each student
to engage with the ideas in the course, and give students regular feedback from
the teacher, rather than waiting for comments on a test or major paper.
Likewise, the teacher receives feedback from the students by seeing what students
are thinking on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. These short writes can be in-class
or out-of-class. Typically they are informal, with the teacher emphasizing
content more than grammar. Short writes are a good way to wake up a sleepy class
and get class discussion going. Students can exchange their short writes to begin
a dialogue on the subject at hand. You might think of a short write as about half
a page of handwritten response. Two typical types of short write are the timed,
focused fast write (three minutes on a topic that you give --
students do not raise their pen from the page for those three minutes and write
"I'm stuck, I'm stuck"
if they can't think of what to say -- quickly an idea will come to them) and the
post-card definition (written to a family member or other lay person, no jargon,
about 50 words). See
Assignments WL Faculty Give for other examples. Look under
Short Writes for more ideas on this kind of assignment and follow the
links for examples from various disciplines.
Unlike a short write, a formal essay is a well-thought-out piece of writing
that takes its audience into account. It is typed, goes through several revisions,
and meets the standards of academic English, both on the sentence level and overall.
Such an essay would have a thesis and evidence or argument to develop its idea.
Because writing a good formal essay takes time, this assignment should include time
for a rough draft and possible conferences with the teacher or with a tutor in the
Writing Center. If you could work a
"rough draft day"
into your class schedule, students could exchange their drafts and get
suggestions from
their peers for making the essay stronger. Typically, for formal essay topics,
the teacher
comes up with complex questions that involve critical thinking and a deep
understanding of the course material to that point (focused topics, to make
plagiarism
harder to accomplish). Of course, such an essay cannot be written until the student has
learned a good amount of course content. The result of assigning this type of writing
is that students will pull together many concepts that might otherwise not have
coalesced in their minds. If you can
read the rough draft
of a formal essay before reading the final draft and assigning a grade,
both you and the student will benefit. Go to
How Can I Help Students Improve Their Writing
for ideas on coaching the writing process. For specific examples of formal essay
assignments, see
Assignments WL Faculty Give.
Also look under
"Formal Essays" and follow the links for examples from various disciplines.
Research papers are not encouraged in WL courses, because the students
have not yet had the second English Composition course, Introduction to
Research Writing, in which they learn to find sources and document them.
If you want to assign a research paper, you will need to teach your student
the necessary research skills for your discipline. This should include a trip
to the library, with help from the bibliographic instruction faculty.
Also, because each discipline expects a particular kind of documentation
and essay format, you will need to teach this format to your students if
you want them to follow it. The
WAC Center has handbooks
you could look through to consider ordering one for your class. In addition,
it has books on writing research papers in many different disciplines, for your
use. This WAC webpage also has sections created for students on
citation formats,
how to avoid plagiarism, from the students' point of view, and
how to write papers
for any class, with links to research paper formats used at other universities in
various disciplines.
Because a research paper is a kind of formal essay, see above for other
considerations (such as rough draft days) and see
How Can I Help Students
Improve Their Writing for ideas on dividing the work into sections, having
personal conferences, and showing a model.
A WL course is not a composition
course.
A journal is not a diary. Rather it is a notebook of ideas written informally,
often about concepts that arise outside of class. For this reason, some people
call the journal an "idea notebook"
or a "response notebook." Some teachers have students keep a journal of their responses to outside readings. Some have students record their impressions of things that occur outside the classroom, such as a concert for a music appreciation class or group interactions at a football game for a sociology class. A journal (so-called because students write in it often, if not daily) is meant to be a place for students to take risks with their thinking and to be honest about what they are learning. To grade a journal, teachers often given only pass/fail or a range of points based on how thoughtful and complete the journal is. Rarely would formal considerations such as grammar or organization be taken into account for grading this kind of writing. Having your students e-mail their entries to you, or perhaps having students write to an electronic blackboard so all members of the class can read the entries and respond to them are ways to keep students on task. The biggest problem with the journal assignment is that some students put off making the entries until the night before the journal is due, turning what should have been a continuing process of thought, growing throughout the semester into self-inflicted busy work. It is best if you can pick up the journals regularly, and perhaps use them for only a segment of the course. See
Assignments WL Faculty Give for examples. Look under
"Journals"
for more ideas on this kind of assignment and follow the links for examples
from various disciplines.
An important part of producing a good essay is to do some strong pre-writing.
Much pre-writing happens orally, before putting pen to paper. For this reason,
group discussion of course concepts should be a regular part of WL courses.
These group discussions can take many forms.
Simplest is a group of three or four students discussing, in class, a particular
question that applies to your course. You might give the group a specific assignment
that has to be completed within a certain number of minutes. When the groups have
completed their discussions, you would have each group relate to the rest of the
class what it discovered. This can be especially helpful in preparation for an
essay exam or a paper. For instance, in a literature class, each group can come
up with an interpretation of a poem using the skills taught in class. Because of
this group experience, with teacher and peer feedback, it becomes easier for
individual students to write formal poetry interpretations when they are asked to do so.
Group discussions can also work as rough draft reviews for formal essays.
Each student would bring two copies of his or her rough draft to share with the small
group before handing the draft in to you (sometimes students might revise again, using
the group's suggestions before having you look at the draft). See
Use Peer Review for more details on how to have your class share rough drafts.
A more complex way to use small-groups in a WL class is to have a group write a paper
as a group project. An example in an accounting class would be to have students have
assigned roles, as client and accounting firm, dealing with a business case. The
group would write a report, letters of request and of explanation, and a final
assessment of how well the accounting problem was resolved. This sort of group work
might take several weeks, and succeeds only after students have become proficient in
the course content, ready to apply ideas to a new situation. As with all small-group
work, what each group does should be presented to the class so that students see the
connection between their personal experience and the wider point. See
Assignments WL Faculty Give
for other examples of ways faculty use small-group work to enhance writing skills.
Look under
"Small-Group Work."
You can find
Assignments WL Faculty Give
in general by clicking at this link. At that site you can also find assignments by
discipline. Find the discipline that interests you below and click on that link to
find writing assignments PSU faculty in that discipline have used in the past.
[Once this page is completed each of the links below will go directly to those
portions of the assignments page and it will duplicate the list at the beginning of
that page]
Also, in the WAC Center library are several books and journals that have articles
specific to particular disciplines. See
Articles of Interest for discussions of assignments in Art, Music, Math,
Biology, Chemistry and Physics, Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology.
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