From Learning-To-Write to Writing-To-Learn: An Approach to Writing Instruction for Postgraduates
文 / 江介維 (本中心教師)
In most writing courses in Taiwan, students come to the classroom to learn how to write in a grammatically correct, semantically clear, and structurally solid manner; in response to students’ learning expectations, most teachers prepare their materials and design their courses accordingly: a bundle of grammar rules, vocabulary notes, and recurrent emphases on the merits of a well-structured piece of writing. To be sure, these elements are the fundamental skills for all writing learners, especially second language (L2) learners, to get acquainted with. However, writing courses are not meant to cease there, serving merely as a tool for language acquisition or idea communication.
Instead, the writing courses held by the Academic Writing Education Center (AWEC) at National Taiwan University (NTU) seek to offer a more holistic and thought-provoking curriculum for a rapidly increasing number of graduate students with rising needs to write and publish in an academic context. More specifically, writing in this postgraduate context is supposed to be approached with a higher-order thinking and a more comprehensive way of deliberation. Graduate students are expected to treat their writing with a higher degree of caution and motivation. To achieve this, we have to reexamine and redefine our long-standing assumption about the role and operation of writing courses—that is, the conventional pattern of learning-to-write shall be modified and recognized as writing-to-learn.
The concept of writing-to-learn may appear unfamiliar to some writing learners in Taiwan. Actually, the idea is not as new as it may sound. Several L2 researchers (Tynjala, Mason, & Lonka, 2001; Indrisano & Paratore, 2005; Bean, 2011; Manchón, 2011) have studied the strategies of treating and utilizing writing as a potential medium for facilitating students’ bridging to content-area learning. The application of writing-to-learn could be understood as “writing in the content areas” or “writing across the curriculum,” as Armbruster, McCarthey, and Cummings (2005, p. 71) put it in their clarification of this somewhat indefinite term. They contend and endeavor to justify that writing is no longer just a tool for language acquisition but a catalyst that renders disciplinary knowledge more reflexible and accessible. Quite a few researchers begin to tap into the potential of utilizing writing as an explorative means. For example, Alan Hirvela (2011) elaborates on the pedagogical application of writing as “a mode of discovery or negotiation to acquire greater knowledge of content, culture, or language” (p. 37). All the remarks above seem to present a promising picture of how much writing, reinforced with proper instruction, can do to help learners advance to a higher order of thinking and a broader horizon of learning.
However, the focal shift from learning-to-write to writing-to-learn entails not only pedagogical awareness but also subject matter knowledge. Joan Sedita (2015), for instance, foregrounds a pedagogical challenge to be aware of:
Writing to learn skills in particular are best taught by content teachers because they understand how to show examples of subject-specific writing teach students how to write about subject-specific text, and provide feedback to students about content-based writing assignments. (p. 97)
That is to say, the promotion of writing-to-learn in class is particularly suitable and effective when class instructors are content-area teachers capable of assigning and assessing subject-specific assignments. The premise here, if not a prerequisite to some extent, poses a challenge to those non-subject-specialized language teachers in charge of writing across the curriculum. While Sedita’ s case study focuses particularly on secondary-school writing instruction, it also applies to the context of postgraduate writing curriculum. Moreover, how to practice writing-to-learn pedagogy in a postgraduate writing context is even more challenging and, as will be proven, more rewarding. John Bean (2011) approaches this issue neatly in the context of postgraduate writing, in an effort to provide useful suggestions and practical guidelines for combining and enhancing “subject matter knowledge and critical thinking” (p. 5) through the medium of writing as a learning catalyst. His target audience is aimed at university teaching faculty, especially those who instruct writing across the curriculum (WAC).
This WAC circumstance applies exactly to the context of teachers at writing centers. Irene Clark (2008) emphasizes the notable mission for writing centers to instruct and inspire students to not only enhance their grasp of writing as an explorative means but also develop a new perspective on the overall writing process. Robert Barnett and Jacob Blummer (1999) have co-edited a book, a collection of scholarly essays, to describe the role of writing centers as an emergent agent in facilitating writing across the curriculum and incubating writing-oriented programs and pedagogies. In this regard, the courses along with the driving pedagogy behind, offered and fueled by AWEC of NTU, could serve as an example for illustration.
We have courses designed to engage students in utilizing writing as a thinking and production mode. That is, we assume that our graduate students have already been equipped with a decent degree of English writing proficiency. Thus, instead of focusing on the technical part of writing solely, we endeavor more to delve into the structural, logical, and cognitive aspects of writing. More precisely, students in our class are not as much bothered about how to produce a neat piece of writing (as most of them can do that well on their own), as constantly confronted with how to manage an intricate piece of writing in a particular setting or field. In this respect, their concerns go beyond mere semantic expression and consideration to a more comprehensive vantage point of viewing and evaluating all the subtle steps involved in writing and forming knowledge. As is often the case, different fields develop their own patterns of written discourse; students from varied disciplines are spurred to reflex on the rationale behind their writing community and invited to defend or even challenge the established practice. Moreover, we often have students write down their initial thoughts toward a certain issue after a brief brainstorming. These still rough thoughts often serve as the freshest material for representing the depth and width of a student’ s present cognition state. Through it, we become familiar with the linguistic and cognitive benchmark of students at this stage. Subsequently, we pose questions, rather than solutions, to identify students’ blind spots in their writing samples, whereby they can simultaneously revise their own work and review peers’ work. During this process of constant discussion and revision, students would begin to understand that their writing per se acts as the most crucial medium to get their thoughts across in an academic context. Seen in this way, writing turns from a barren land of grammar and sentences into a fertile soil on which they can not only deepen their thoughts and synthesize ideas from others, but also extend its possibilities into discovery learning and critical thinking.
The preliminary picture above is meant to give a glimpse of writing-to-learn practice in class. Hopefully, it helps illustrate the concept and practice of writing-to-learn on the rise: a potential and practical way of teaching that elevates the role of writing in intellectual exploration and academic discourse.
References
- Armbruster, B. B., McCarthey, S. J., & Cummings, S. (2005). Writing to learn in elementary classrooms. In R. Indrisano, & J. R. Paratore (Eds.), Learning to write, writing to learn: Theory and research in practice. (pp. 71-96). Boston, Massachusetts: International Reading Association.
- Barnett, R., & Blummer, J. (Eds.). (1999). Writing centers and writing across the curriculum programs: Building interdisciplinary partnerships. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press
- Bean, J. C. (2011). Engaging ideas: The professor’ s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom (2nd ed.). San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.
- Clark, I. (Ed.). (2008). Writing in the center: Teaching in a writing center setting. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt.
- Hirvela, A. (2011). Writing to learn in content areas: Research insights. In R. M. Manchón (Ed.), Learning-to-write and writing-to-learn in an additional language. (pp. 37-59). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Indrisano, R., & Paratore, J. R. (2005). Learning to write, writing to learn: Theory and research in practice. Boston, Massachusetts: International Reading Association.
- Manchón, R. M. (Ed.). (2011). Learning-to-write and writing-to-learn in an additional language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Sedita, J. (2015). Learning to write and writing to learn. In M. C. Hougen (Ed.), Fundamentals of literacy instruction and assessment, 6-12. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
- Tynjala, P., Mason L., & Lonka, K. (Eds.). (2001). Writing as a learning tool. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.
臺大寫作教學中心電子報No. 011