teaching writing: teaching academic writing

Academic writing

1. Teaching Writing
Teaching Academic Writing
Kathleen Dudden Rowlands Ph.D.
California State University, Northridge
[email protected]
February 2008

2. 2
“The Neglected ‘R’: The Need for a Writing
Revolution.”
“Writing today is not a frill
for the few, but an essential
skill for the many.”
-The National Commission on Writing
for America’s Families, Schools and
Colleges.

3. 3
Teaching Writing:
Write a draft!
Revise your draft!
Edit!
Telling, not teaching!

4. 4
Teaching Writing
Process
Instant Version

5. 5
Teaching Writing: Help Teachers Understand…
PROCESSES!
Composing is
recursive—and
messy!!

6. 6
Academic (Rhetorical) Writing
Assignment Template p2

7. 7
Teaching Writing: Composition Instruction Is Also a
Recursive Process…and Messy!
Fluency
Form
Correctness

8. 8
Assessing Student Writing
Handout in 4B-Curricular Materials: Academic
Writing
Describes student writing
Identifies potential cause of problem
Provides list of possible interventions

9. 9
Teaching Writing: Fluency
Expressive writing
Writing to think and
learn
Especially powerful
for content teachers

10. 10
Teaching Writing Forms
Form follows function
–5 paragraph essay
–11 sentence paragraph
Hillocks article: “The Focus on Form vs. Content in Teaching Writing”

11. 11
George Hillocks: The “Focus on Form vs.
Content in Teaching Writing”
“For many years the teaching of writing has
focused almost exclusively and to the point of
obsession on teaching the forms of writing…”
(238)

12. 12
George Hillocks: The “Focus on Form vs.
Content in Teaching Writing”
“…writers…decide to write about specific subject
matter” (238).
…knowledge of form does not translate into the
strategies and skills necessary to wrest from the
subject matter the ideas that make up a piece of
writing” (238).

13. 13
George Hillocks: Where the Instructional Focus
Should Be
Meta-analysis of nearly 500 quasi-experimental
studies of writing instruction
“The treatments with the largest gains were
[treatments that] focus on teaching procedural
knowledge, knowledge of how to do things”
(242).

14. 14
George Hillocks: Where the Instructional Focus
Should Be
Inquiry “gives students the
power to work with ideas,
far more important than
encouraging them to toss
random thoughts into a
foreordained framework
such as the 5P” 243).

15. 15
Teaching Form
Organizational patterns
Most authentic (i.e. non-
school) writing weaves
many organizational
patterns together to
develop the whole piece.
–Narrative (chronological)
–Description (spatial)
–Exposition (enumeration,
analytical: part/example,
cause and effect,
comparison/contrast,
etc.)

16. 16
Teaching Form
Introductions: use models
–How does the author engage readers?
–What are the conventions in this discipline?
–Where does the thesis/ claim statement/ umbrella
idea appear?

17. 17
Teaching Form
Conclusions
–Provide a sense of
closure
–Do more than
summarize
–Provide new ideas or
questions for readers to
consider

18. 18
Teaching Writing
Assignment Design: Writing Prompts
–William Strong: from Write for Insight:
Empowering Content Area Learning, Grades 6-
12. Chapter in Portfolio: “Designing Assignments
and Rubrics”.
–Ten Design Principles (pp. 98-99)

19. 19
Teaching Writing
Assignment Design: Writing Prompts (pp.99-
101).
–CRAFT
Context
Role
Audience
Format
Topic

20. 20
Teach the Academic Language of Writing
Prompts: Key words
Trace
Analyze
Evaluate
Describe
Formulate
Explain
Summarize
Compare
Contrast
Predict
Assignment Template Appendix!!!

21. 21
Teaching Writing: Teach Timed Writing
Strategies
Parse the prompt
Take planning time
Form: beginning, middle, end
Leave large margins, double space
5 minutes to review and “revise”

22. 22
From Teaching Writing
to
Teaching Academic Writing

23. 23
Advice to Entering Freshmen
“Writing successfully in college
will require you to add new skills
to the foundation you built in high
school. For example, you may be
accustomed to writing essays in
which you describe or summarize
ideas put forth by others, but you
will now be asked to explore such
ideas in greater depth and use
them as a launching pad to
develop your own insights” (5).
Making the Most of College Writing: A Guide for
Freshmen (Harvard).

24. 24
Additional Advice
“…the five paragraph essay…you’ve relied on in
the past will not be flexible enough to meet the
more complex demands of college writing….The
real challenge of composing college papers is
that no single structure will serve all of your
purposes. There are no substitute formulas—in
fact, structuring an essay is not about formulas at
all” (6).

25. 25
Additional Advice con’t.
“The categories you use to organize your ideas
should be determined not by pre-established
pattern but rather by the argument you are putting
forth—what and how much you have to say” (7).

26. 26
Remember This?

27. 27
Academic Writing
Argument; making a
claim and marshalling
evidence
They Say, I Say: the
Moves That Matter in
Academic Writing
Key move: Learning to
summarize

28. 28
2008 Literacy Symposium at CSUN
www.csun.edu/08litsymposium

29. 29
Questions?
I wonder…
I agree, but…
I think that…
I like the part where…
I was confused by…
This reminds me of…