Teaching Strategies (con't)
ENHANCING WRITTEN COMMUNICATION
Lindemann (1986) suggests the following questions be asked when designing writing assignments:
What do I want the students to do? Is it worth doing? Why? What will the assignment tell me about what they've learned? How does it fit my objectives at this point in the course? Does the assignment assess what students can do or what they know? Am I relating their work to the real world (including academic settings) or only to my class or the text? Doesthe assignment require specialized knowledge? Does it appeal to the interests and experiences of my students?
How do I want them to do the assignment? Are students working alone or together? In what ways will they practice prewriting, writing, and rewriting? Are writing, reading, speaking, and listening reinforcing each other? Have I given students enough information to make effective choices about the subject, purpose, form, and mode?
For whom are the students writing? Who is the audience? Do students have enoughinformation to assume a role with respect to the audience?
When will the students do the assignment? How does the assignment relate to what comes before and after it in the course? Is the assignment sequenced to give enough time for prewriting, writing, and rewriting? How much time in and outside of class will students need for each stage? To what extent will I guide the students' work? What deadlines do I want to set for collecting the students' papers (or various stages of the project)?
What will I do with the assignment? How will I evaluate the work? What constitutes a "successful" response to the assignment? Will other students or the writer have a say in evaluating the paper?
There are many types and occasions for writing. Connolloy and Vilardi (1989) have outlined a few for informal writing. They are:
Freewriting at the beginning of a class, to become present and centered, eliminating the distractions brought to class.
Focused freewriting to cast a net of inquiry, initiating exploration of a term, issue, question, or problem.
Attitudinal writing to discover attitudes that affect aptitudes for learning. What expectation or experience do you bring to this reading? What difficulties did you have with the last assignment? What is most difficult for you at this point in the course? What do we need to do differently?
Reflective, probative writing to initiate or to conclude a class discussion or, mid-class, to refocus a discussion that is confused or lacks energy.
"Metacognitive" process writing to observe how one reads, takes an exam, works on a problem, writes a paper, thinks about an issue. Writing that records one's own learning behavior, allowing one to become more autonomous and less reliant on the information and authority of teachers or texts.
Explaining errors on a test or homework -- a particular type of "process writing" that helps students and teachers recognize where things went wrong and why.
Questioning while doing homework or at the end of class (yet another type of "process writing"), enabling students and teachers to recognize doubts, reservations, confusions, and uncertainties.
Summarizing what was said in a class or reading.
Defining -- substituting personal definitions, however imprecise, for memorization of textbook terms.
Creating problems -- defining problems and issues of one's own, as an alternative to answering others' questions.
Writing to read -- through double-entry notebooks, reporting what an author says and, in a facing column, responding to it. Such dialectical notebooks integrate attitudinal writing, questioning, summarizing, and process writing.
Learning logs, microthemes, paired problem solving, and so forth.
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