Putting Writing at the Centre

Putting Writing at the Centre
By Dr Jenny Moon - University of Exeter

Jenny Moon works in educational development at University of Exeter. Her interests (shown in five books and various articles) are in reflective and experiential learning, learning journals, effective workshops, short courses and programme structures.
In the USA and often in Europe, it is usual to have Writing Centres in higher education to support the writing of students and to support staff in their work with students. Sometimes these are linked with provision of writing support for non-native language speakers. With some exceptions in the United Kingdom, we have not pursued this pattern. We have tended to link writing with study skills or with education and staff development units and writing tends to be looked at as a subject of deficit, rather than an ability that can and should be nurtured and developed. In this article, I want to make the case for initiatives that focus on the development of writing skills either as dedicated ‘centres’ or as more modest provision of the same nature.
I first want to consider why we should be more concerned about the teaching of writing and I then want to argue the case for provision (e.g. ‘a centre’) that is dedicated to writing.
Writing is of central importance in most degrees. Students use writing as a means of taking notes, as a tool for thinking and learning and as a means of representing their learning in assessed work and they go on using some form of writing in most workplaces. If we see writing as a tool for learning and for assessment, it seems logical to suggest that the more comfortable is a learner about her writing, the more easily she can use writing as a medium for learning and for representing learning in assessment tasks. ‘Comfort’ means adequacy of spelling and grammar as well as ease in expression - making words say what the writer intends them to say. This is a matter not only of clarity but also of being able to express meaning at an adequate level of sophistication within the context of the disciplinary ‘style’.
In recent years more and more students come into higher education with little or no recent experience of sustained writing, or of using the written word as a means of demonstrating their knowledge to another as in assessment processes. They may get some support within modules or in some study skill initiatives but this may not go far beyond the mechanical aspects of referencing, and general essay structuring. Given the significance of writing, this is often a haphazard approach delivered at the wrong time. For a reason that I suspect lurks around fear of plagiarism and possibly around fear of putting the self on the line as a demonstration of excellence, we seem reluctant to show students examples of what we want from them. Why do we not show them excellent essays with annotation that explains the quality? In the same way, nor do we show them poor essays and explain their inadequacies. Another reason for not showing examples can be that staff might not be so sure of their ground on the judgement of the quality of writing. I come back to this later
It is evident, in particular in the work of Theresa Lillis (2001) that some of the difficulties that students encounter start before they write the first word. They just do not understand the nature of the tasks that they are expected to undertake, essay titles may use academic vocabulary into which students have not been initiated. The title may consist of several parts and this confuses the student who has just about got the hang of the introduction, middle and conclusion structure for an essay. In addition, it is not infrequent for students to be studying modules from different disciplines at the same time. Who is there to tell the student that the structure of an essay in English is different from one in a historical or sociological module and that she will be expected to adapt writing style according to the discipline? Which teachers have studied English and History and understand the difference?
Generally speaking, the ability to write is treated as a ‘given’ that enters higher education with the student, regardless of her background. With the exception of the odd study skill lecture or workshop in the first few weeks of term, most (positive) development of writing skill is by way of the very varied quality of feedback on pieces of writing that have been submitted for assessment. The other form of support is usually directed towards ‘problems’ or difficulties and is thus a deficit approach. Many students with problems in their writing are either not aware that they could improve, or are unwilling to admit a difficulty to the extent of seeking help.
So who is it who should help students to learn the skills of writing? We have suggested that subject staff may do some work with students in the context of modules, but do they really know how to teach learners how to write? ‘Knowing’ that an essay is worth 70% in your discipline is very different from knowing how to respond to a learner who asks how to write an essay in order to get 70%. What opportunities do subject teachers have to learn how to teach writing skills? I hesitate to extend this issue onto this sensitive ground, but the writing of some higher education staff themselves (e.g. on PGCHE programmes) could be usefully subjected to remedial support.
It is not just a matter of teachers knowing how to support the writing of an essay or report. There are new genres of writing in higher education. In the last few years students and their teachers have been asked to develop skills of reflective writing for personal and professional development and within their disciplines. Why should subject teachers know any more about reflective writing than their students? Previously few of them would have been required to write reflectively. What do they say to a student who says ‘Would you show me what you mean by reflective writing?’ Defining the nature of good reflective writing is a research and development matter, the outcomes of which need to be transmitted to the teacher and to the student. These matters are just as relevant to the new technologies. The techniques of e-learning require learners to express themselves in new ways. We are far from the development of a clear understanding as to how the learning that arises through interaction with a screen should be supported - clearly, however, the skill of writing is again at the centre of it.
Writing is not only a means of communication of what is being or has been learnt. We talk about developing critical thinking and critical analysis as student abilities - these are usually represented in written language. The language that represents critical thinking is not simply a matter of putting down strings of words. Planning processes are intermixed with the assembly of evidence. There are trial constructive phases, critique and redrafting phases and so on. The written word provides the medium for the recording of thought, the trying out and the mulling over of ideas. The ability to revise material more easily in word processing facilitates the processes – but do we teach students to revise and redraft and to ‘think on paper’? We could encourage more diverse practice in classroom work. For example, the writing that students do is normally confined to lecture notes, reports and the essay. The word length of an essay often allows a certain ‘flaying around’ in making meaning, a certain ‘resting on quotation of references’ that makes for woolly approaches in which thinking is not necessarily challenged. However, the requirement to respond on a half sheet of A4 to a ‘why’ question about something beyond material that has been discussed in a recent lectures is a good way of promoting thinking skills through writing. Short answer questions can facilitate ‘thinking on paper’ far more than the essay.
A next question about the support for writing in undergraduate programmes might relate to the timing of support. One obvious response is that some teaching of writing is appropriate when students first come into higher education but, if that is all, are we then suggesting that level 1 / level C writing is all there is to be learnt in writing? Writing a dissertation at level 3 / level H is a very different matter and requires sophisticated abilities that we could not teach at level 1. Indeed, surely the demands on the student writing skills increase progressively. An input at the beginning of a programme alone is hardly likely to be adequate. There need to be multiple inputs that relate to the demands of the material with which students are working at the time.
There is also plenty of need for support in writing at levels above the first degree. There are postgraduates who need help with the writing of theses; there are staff who need to write research papers or to find critical friends who will read through material. Even outside the functions of academic staff there are other demands of writing that may, on occasions need support or coaching.
The paragraphs above show plenty of justification for more teaching of writing. We return to the question of who might be responsible for teaching writing when there are difficulties in this for subject teachers and for those who work outside disciplines, because writing requirements are different in different subject areas. Writing is a subject in itself and requires an expert to teach it, but equally the approach needs to be customised. A model that could work here is a partnership between subject experts (teaching staff) and writing experts and so we come to the Writing Centre as a solution. A Writing Centre can comprise staff with expertise in writing. They would work directly with some students but also with staff, helping staff to work effectively with their own students. A Centre can promote the teaching of writing at every stage of student programmes, recognising the different challenges that confront students. It is a centre for research and development, working on different aspects of writing pedagogy – for example, seeking ways of supporting writing in technological approaches, coaching in the writing of PhD theses, developing assessment criteria for reflective writing, seeking new ways of providing challenges to student thinking. These initiatives should be responsive to the needs of teaching staff and students, but also should be exploratory. Research on writing in relation to learning situations is a respectable area of academic research.
When they first encounter the idea of a Writing Centre, people often say that it is rather a narrow approach. However there is little that students do in terms of their study in higher education that it is not logically possible to subsume under the topic of writing, because writing is the form of representation for most higher education learning. If we take reading, for example, students read normally in order to construct a piece of writing. Presentations also come back to a written form – and a Writing Centre can stray slightly beyond the principle concern to deal with the oral element and a few other areas not immediately related to writing. In addition we can argue that all students need to be able to write for future employment purposes. Writing Centres can have some additional remits such as providing support for dyslexic students or those with physical disabilities that affect writing. They can work on the prevention of plagiarism – a serious educational issue that, in different ways frightens students and staff and curtails creativity in assessment activity. A Writing Centre can also house creative writing courses for professional development or leisure. On the continent Centres often provide a service for overseas students who are new to study in the English language. In all of these respects there is an important difference from the way in which writing is mostly viewed at present. The teaching of writing should be seen principally as developmental and not as a remedial process.
Another advantage of a Writing Centre is that it can provide a new constructive approach to educational development that is more active and positive than the ‘sticking plaster’ approaches of many other forms of provision. Those other forms are often insecure in respect of where they should locate themselves in a higher education institution – are they academic or a non-academic support service? The Writing Centre approach treats student study as a serious academic topic that is worthy of research and development and which fosters working relationships with all relevant parties at all levels in the institution. The improvement of student writing and staff ability to help students with their written work can probably facilitate more gain in academic achievement among students than any other single initiative.
References
Lea, M and Street, B (2000) ‘Student writing and staff feedback in higher education: an academic literacies approach in M Lea and B Stierer (2000) Student Writing in Higher Education. Buckingham, SRHE and OUP
Lillis, T (2001) Student Writing – access, regulation, desire. London, Routledge