Using the Everyday Writer Across the Curriculum
Composition and transferability
How can the expertise students gain in their sequence of Composition courses be more effectively transferred to the writing they do in other courses? In 2000-2001, the Writing Across the Curriculum committee took on this question, with all of its complexities. Much research in the field of Composition and Rhetoric shows that the conventions of written knowledge differ substantially between University disciplines, and that students, when they move into new discourse environments (from English to Biology to Theater, etc.) often struggle to negotiate those conventions. After all, acquiring new knowledge means acquiring new language. Language is not a tool that can be applied to the knowledge to make it orderly and presentable. Because language is content, students in new academic environments, challenged by new material, are frequently struggle to maintain their grasp of such "fundamentals" as usage, mechanics, and punctuation.
The Writing Handbook as Process Guide
The WAC committee decided to carry out an initiative to increase the use of the standard Composition handbook, The Everyday Writer, in writing classes throughout the Viterbo community. During English 103 and 104, students learn to use the handbook in a variety of ways, and we postulated that continued use of that same text might help students carry some of their more productive writing behaviors--such as free-writing, planning, researching, revising, and editing--forward into their new learning environments.
The Everyday Writer website
The publishers of The Everyday Writer provide a useful website, with exercises, a guide to research, explanations of "the twenty most common errors" in college writing, and other features. Check it out at http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/lunsford/everyday_writer/
Suggestions for Classroom Use of The Everyday Writer
After obtaining desk copies of The Everyday Writer for all faculty, the committee presented the material below during in-service week for fall 2002. These "Suggestions for Use of The Everyday Writer" were drawn from a survey of Composition instructors, which revealed the many ways students learn to use the handbook in their English 103 and 104 classes. We hope that use of the handbook in writing courses outside of English will help students retain the writing processes they develop in their composition courses.
Possible uses of the handbook to help prepare your class for an assignment:
n Spend ten minutes of class time reviewing the handbook’s table of contents. Some students may be unfamiliar with the text, and others may not have used it for a semester or two.
n Use chapter 4, “Considering Rhetorical Situations,” as a way of highlighting the specific conventions of your writing assignment (about 50% of English 103/104 students have been assigned this chapter).
n Use chapter 5, “Exploring Ideas,” to remind students of strategies for getting started on an assignment (about 50% of English 103/104 students have been assigned this chapter).
n Remind students that writing is a process, involving drafting, revising, and editing, by reviewing chapters 6 (“Drafting”) and 8 (“Revising and Editing”). If thesis statements are important to your assignment, especially consider chapter 6a, “Establish a working thesis” (about 70% of English 103/104 students have been assigned these chapters).
n If your assignment is a piece of argumentative writing, review chapter 9, “Constructing and Analyzing Arguments” (about 70% of English 103/104 students have been assigned this chapter). Discuss the specific conventions of argumentation that are relevant to your assignment (chapters 32 and 33 also contain useful material on assumptions, evidence, authority, and style, though fewer students read these chapters in English 103 and 104).
n If your assignment is a research paper, remind students of the handbook chapters that will help them through the process of finding, evaluating, incorporating, and correctly citing sources—chapters 10-13 and 48-55. Almost all students have used the handbook for MLA citations, while a few have also been trained in APA style.
n To help students think about organizing their writing, review chapter 7, “Constructing Paragraphs” (about 25% of 103/104 students will have been assigned this chapter).
n Examine the information available in the “Writer’s Almanac,” pages 520-534, which includes general information on the United States, lists of musical symbols, names of foreign currencies, geometry formulas, temperature conversion formulas, etc. If this information will be useful to your students, remind them that it can be found in the handbook.
n Use chapter 57 to remind students about how to prepare for an oral presentation. Few students will be familiar with this chapter.
Many English 103/104 students will have read particular chapters concerning issues of mechanics and punctuation with which they have particular difficulty. By briefly reviewing these chapters, or simply reminding students of their existence, you may help students transfer their mechanical abilities from their composition courses to your course.
n Suggest that students who are deeply uncertain about sentence mechanics review chapter 24 (“Basic Grammar”—this chapter is not often assigned to whole classes, but is listed by 103 instructors as a chapter to which students are frequently referred).
n Review or assign chapter 23, “Sentence Variety,” as a way of encouraging students to think about editing for style on the sentence level (frequent referral chapter).
n Remind students of individual chapters on verbs (25-26), comma splices (30), sentence fragments (31), commas (38), semicolons (39), and other specific mechanics or punctuation issues with which developing writers frequently struggle. Ask students to recall the particular difficulties that plague their writing on the sentence-level, and remind them to use their handbook as a resource.
n Remind multi-lingual writers that chapters 60-63 have been designed to help them with their particular needs.
n Remind students that the Learning Center offers one-on-one sessions to help students at any point in the writing process.
n Particularly early in the semester, when students still have a chance to improve their writing within your class, make a point of referring them to handbook chapters that might help them improve their writing performance.
n If you see widespread misunderstandings or errors in a group of student papers, assign the appropriate handbook chapter—from “Considering Rhetorical Situations” to “Constructing and Analyzing Arguments” to “Modifier Placement”—which might help the group avoid that trouble in their future work. Again, this strategy is only effective if used early in the semester so that students have a chance to improve.