You are welcome to toss out my response for it does not come from a college
teacher (although I used to teach at Dartmouth College) but have taught and
headed the English Department at an independent girls' college preparatory
day school in Boston for twenty-five years. Because I have just asked my
department comparable, though not as extensive, questions in order for us
to evaluate our departmental expectations about the kind and amount of
writing across our English curriculum, I decided to respond-on the basis of
my courses in Twentieth-Century English Literature (10th-12th grade
elective), Many Voices: Literature of Africa, Latin America, India, Japan
(10th-12th grade elective), and Children in Literature (a tenth-grade fall
elective), and 9th grade English.
>
>*******************************************************************************
> Writing Survey
>
>Directions: Please take a few minutes to read and complete the following
>questionnaire. Your answers, along with those of your colleagues from around
>the country, will be aggregated to develop a composite picture of
>professors' views on the importance of writing in the curriculum.
>
>Section I: Basic Writing Information
>
>1. On average, how many writing assignments do you require of your
> students per semester/quarter?
> _Nine-two major essays, two
>in-class essays (full period), three to four short essays (five paragraph,
>one to two nights), one creative (a style imitation of Annie Dillard
>(Children in Lit.) of Okot p'Bitek (Many Voices), of Woolf in Mrs.
>Dalloway (20c English), and three Journal submissions including analyses
>of reading, precis of articles with responses to them, and "free writes"
>(personal essays. In the Children course students turn in between 45-60
>pages in these three Journal submissions (they write every night in the
>journal except when a paper is due)._____________________________
>
>2. How heavily are writing assignments weighted in determining final
> grades?
> __x___ More heavily weighted than exams.
> _____ Equally heavily weighted with exams.
> _____ Less heavily weighted than exams.
> _____ Writing assignments are the sole means of determining final
>grades.
> __x__ Other (please specify)__Quality of class participation
>comprises a quarter to a third of the final
>grade._________________________
>
>3. The exams you give are (approximately):
> __x___ all essay (a mixture of long and short essays-the short
>ones focusing on significance of passages or items; the longer ones on
>synthesizing the works read on the basis of themes (occ. on basis of
>structural issues)
> _____ half essay; half objective
> _____ a third essay; two-thirds objective
> _____ two-thirds essay; one third objective
> _____ some exams are mostly essay; others are mostly objective
> _____ other (please specify)___________________________
>
>Section II: About Your Writing Assignments
>
>1. Please check all the following categories of writing assignments that
> are typical of what you generally require:
> ___x__ Term/Research papers (in our required Expository Writing
>course)
> __x___ Reports (oral in Children and in Many Voices on an
>independently read book selected from a fairly extensive list; students
>will "teach" assigned sections of *The Remains of the Day* as a final
>project in 20c English Lit.)
> _____ Summary Essays _____ Journalistic writing
> _____ Response Essays _____ Public Relations writing
> _____ Synthesis Essays _____ Speeches
> _____ Rhetoric/Argumentation _____ Journal entries
> _____ Essays employing an original _____ Creative writing,
> argument using sources fiction, short stories,
> _____ Expository writing about poetry
> literature
> __x___ Other (please specify)_One of the above probably covers the
>category of literary analysis, the structure I most frequently ask
>students to use-it requires skills in synthesizing, focusing,and
>developing/supporting an argument but also demands interpretative skills
>and must, to be successful, pay close attention to the language of the
>work which it addresses. We have a Creative Writing elective (which I
>sometimes teach) and a Reading and Writing Poetry elective-students write
>short stories or poetry, depending on the course. We also offer an
>Autobiograhical Writing course for second semester seniors. Students love
>to write "personal essays"-straightforwardly autobiographical ones, or
>ones that begin with a metaphor then move to their own experience
>(creative non-fiction), or ones that launch off into the personal from a
>textual passage. I try to provide one opportunity in each course for such
>an essay. I worry that some colleagues encourage students do this kind of
>writing in place of the harder analytic thinking. Balance is key!
> ________________ ____________
>
> 2. Please rate the following errors that students make when writing
> academic papers, specifically evaluating each error on how likely
> it is to influence you to reduce the student's grade. Please rate
> each error on the following scale: #1 being an extremely serious error
> students make, and #7 being a less serious error.
> a. __1___ poor organization
> b. __1__ failure to adequately support theses
> c. __1___ little evidence of adequate research (ie. specific
>supporting detail)
> d. __1*___ little evidence of understanding the topic
>(*assuming that the topic "works" for the majority; sometimes I have
>created topics that bomb, less frequently as I became more experienced
.> e. __2___ inadequate citation of sources (once they have
taken the required Expository Writing in one semester of 11th grade. Until
then, inadequate citation of sources is not penalized.)
> f. _1-8____ sentence fragments (depends on whether they are
>stylistic ones or grammar errors)
> g. __1___ run-on sentences
> h. __1-2___ comma splices (These are problems for some 9th
>graders but not for older students unless they have a language
>disability.)
> i. ___2__ complex/confusing sentence structure
> j. ___2__ short, choppy sentences, paragraphs
> k. __2___ poor or nonexistent transitions (I teach 10th
>graders this skill and then expect it)
> l. ___2__ misplaced and dangling clauses, phrases (once 10th
>graders have covered this topic in their grammar
>drill, it hurts. Ditto juniors and seniors)
> m. __2___ nonagreement of subject and verb
> n. ___2__ verb tense changes
> o. ___2__ overuse of passive voice (I teach 9th graders how
>to avoid and reteach my 10th graders and root this weak construction
>out-except for where it is deliberately chosen!)
> p. ___2__ lack of parallelism (second semester 10th graders,
>all 11th and 12th graders)
> q. ___3__ vague or unclear pronoun reference (the MOST common
>error, along with punctuation ones, and one that I have never figured out
>how to eliminate.)
> r. ___4__ overuse of empty, meaningless modifiers
> (e.g. very, really)
> s. ___3__ incorrect word usage (e.g. affect vs. effect) (Very
>often signals some kind of learning disability. Ditto misuse of
>prepositions). I work students hard on developing vocabulary. For example,
>I give them twelve words a week from *A Room with A View* such as
>supercilious, surreptitious, cad, prig, etc. which they must define and
>use. Each weekly quiz is cumulative (I recycle words). Girls often will
>try to use their new vocabulary in wrong contexts, not a problem of
>language processing but of unfamiliarity.)(We also have a vocabulary drill
>in the 11th grade which meets once a week and a grammar drill in the 10th
>grade. We review this grammar in the 11th grade drill.)
> t. ___2__ overuse of cliches
> u. _____ overuse of jargon (not usually a high-school age problem)
> v. _____ use of non-inclusive and/or sexist language (as an
>all-girls' school committed to
diversity with emphasis on anti-racisim, we work hard on language
being inclusive and on paying attention to language which is not. It is not
a problem I see in my students' writing.)
> w. __2___ wordiness
> x. ___6__ misspellings (use spell checkers)
> y. ___3__ typos and sloppiness (appearance matters except in
>in-class essays or examinations where I pay little attention to spelling
>or general sloppiness).
> z. ___?__ failure to follow a particular academic writing
>style (? flights into non-standard English???)
> aa. ___2__ poor punctuation (matters increasingly as they
>learn and review rules for punctuating clauses and phrases of all kinds by
>mid-tenth grade).
> bb. _____ improper capitalization (Not an error I often see)
> cc. __3__ poor vocabulary (Poor vocabulary and a poor
>styntactical range have an impact on the general sense of the essay.
>Students who are still very literal in the tenth grade tend to have
>impoverished vocabulary/sentence structure ranges. I try to see what a
>student can do and work with her from there. We meet each student in
>"conference" every other week for twenty to forty minutes: these
>conferences are wonderful opportunities to teach writing skills that are
>appropriate for the individual student.
-> dd. __1___ paper is too short (usually because ideas are
under or undeveloped, a major problem. A short yet pithy essay is a
delight)
> ee. _____ paper is too long (the only time length is a problem
>occurs in Expository Writing where students are not allowed to write
>essays longer than eight pages. I was delighted in an intersession (12
>day) course on Children in War to receive a thirty-five page story from a
>girl who wrote in the voice of a thirteen-year-old Belfast boy or a
>fifteen-page story from a girl who wrote in the voice of a
>seventeen-year-old Vietnamese boy during the Vietnam War.
> ff. _____ Other (please specify__Topic sentences which focus
>on a plot detail and not on a "point" which can be supported and developed
>in the paragraph. Usually a problem with the early
>tenth-graders.____________________________
> _____ Other (please specify__Awkward integration of short
>quotations or quoted phrases. I always need to teach this skill in the
>early part of the tenth-grade. I work on it with my
>ninth-graders.___________________________
> _____ Other (please specify)_____________________________
> _____ Other (please specify)_____________________________
>
>3. From the list of errors in question 2, please provide the five most
> frequent errors your students make in their writing assignments:
> Most commmon___aa_______(supply letter)
> Second-most common____q______________(supply letter)
> Third-most common_____o_____________(supetter)
> Fourth-most common___cc_______________(supply letter)
> Fifth-most common_____p_____________(supply letter)
>
>4. If applicable, please indicate the formula you use to determine a
> student's grade on an individual paper (e.g. content -- 50%,
> style -- 50%):
> Ideas (did these come from discussions or are they
>a product of the student's own work with the text? are they
>sound?_______________ -- __50____%
> Organization, focus, developement, logic (thesis,
>topic sentence, transitions, supporting detail, explanations, coherency of
>argument)_______________ -- ___30___%
> Grammar, mechanics, word
>choice_____________________ -- _20_____%
> ______________________ -- ______%
>
>5. _1____ Please indicate on a scale of 1 to 7 (where 1 is extremely
> important and 7 is not important), how important you believe
> writing skills are for **academic** success.
>
>6. _____ Please indicate on a scale of 1 to 7 (where 1 is extremely
> important and 7 is not important), how important you believe
> writing skills are for **career** success. IT DEPENDS ON
>THE CAREER. I'd like to think that writing skills are crucial for any
>career, but even within my own school I see Physical Education teachers
>and Art teachers who are marvellous teachers but who cannot write
>coherently, so I know that in the "real" world, and not the rarified world
>I fantasize, these skills may not be the be-all and end-all. I do believe,
>however, that no person will truly rise to the top of any white-collar
>profession without good thinking and writing skills.
>
>7. If you could offer students who are preparing to complete a writing
> assignment one piece of advice, that advice would be:
> Select a topic which engages you intellectually and
>emotionally and come to understand it fully before you begin to write.
>Then your writing will be clear and may even engage the
>reader!__________________________________
> ___________________________________________________________
> ___________________________________________________________
>
>8. Do you have any additional comments concerning student writing?
> ___________________________________________________________
> ___________________________________________________________
> ___________________________________________________________
>
>
>Section III: Demographic information
>
>1. Number of years you've been teaching:__30_________years
>
>2. Subjects/courses you currently teach:
> _9th Grade English (The Odyssey, Their Eyes Are Watching
>God, Macbeth, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and a poetry unit),
>Twentieth-Century English Lit (Forster, TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ishiguro
>and a selection of twentieth-century poets), Many Voices (Achebe, Okot,
>Garcia-Marquez, Cortezar and other Latin American story writers, Anita
>Desai, Ishiguro, Murakami, and Yoshimoto and other Japanese story
>writers). __________________________________________________________
>
>3. Your rank:__Department Head, English
>Department_________________________________
>
>4. Your college/university is:
> _____ public/state
> _____ private/independent
>
>5. Your college/university enrolls approximately __________ students.
>
>6. You have an average of ____14_____ students in each class.
>
>
>
> ************Thank you for your time and thoughtfulness!************
>
>Dr. Randall S. Hansen
>Department of Marketing
>School of Business
>Stetson University
>DeLand, FL 32720
>(904) 734-1747
>E-mail: [log in to unmask]
|
