WRITING TO LEARN

A Short Course Given in Spring, 2004

By Barbara Bretcko

Professor of English

CAITL Fellow

 INTRODUCTION: WAC and WTL

 

      Writing to Learn is a related to Writing Across the Curriculum. While WAC focused on using essay tests, research projects and other forms of writing to evaluate student learning, Writing to Learn—as the title states—focuses on writing as a tool to acquire knowledge and skills. The evaluated writing generally associated with WAC is what I’m referring to when I talk about High Stakes Writing. The “Stakes” are the grades, judgments, and criticisms that student writers are focused on when they take a test or write a paper.

          When we have students do Writing to Learn tasks, our goal is to focus them away from grading and toward some aspect of learning. The tasks are Low Stakes because they are never “corrected” and are not graded. Students may be asked to put into words some of the ideas they read about to prepare for class, to ask a question they were too shy to ask during class, to try to explain any confusion they are experiencing, to define an important term, give their opinion, contrast their view with a classmate’s or teacher’s view, respond to a piece of writing. . . . They can be asked to do whatever task you think will provoke thought, lead to ideas, or reinforce a skill you want them to learn.

          WTL is not supposed to make your professional life a nightmare of reading and grading. In fact, its advocates—of which I am one—contend that frequent Low Stakes writing leads to better performance on High Stakes tasks. Low Stakes writing tasks help students to do better on tests (including objective tests), to write clearer lab reports, to take better notes and to improve their performance on other on-the-spot kinds of writing that we require in our courses. (It can also lead to better research papers, but that’s a topic all its own that will be dealt with in Part Two.)

          What follows is an expanded outline of three workshops I gave in Spring, 2004 as part of a CAITL fellowship project to reanimate Writing Across the Curriculum at RVCC. Summarized below are two main topics. Part One focuses on using writing to improve students’ performance on tests; Part Two focuses on the research paper. Each workshop was organized by a series of questions. On this site, those questions are links to the answers—just click.

          If you have questions or comments on Writing to Learn, on this web site or on Writing Across the Curriculum, you can reach me at  bbretcko@raritanval.edu.

 

PART 1: Low Stakes Writing to Produce Better Performance on Tests

PART 2:  Low Stakes Writing to Produce Better Research Papers