How, in addition to essays and exams, do you use writing in your class?
Rick Kern
In
French Department language courses, we use writing for a number of purposes
other than essays and exams. At the most basic level, of course, we use
written grammar and vocabulary exercises to help students master the basic
forms of the language. More creative activities include writing cinquain
poems (where students are given a schematic structure, but fill it in
with words of their choice), scripting skits that students perform in
class, keeping personal journals, and writing quick in-class responses
to a text they have just read. We have also used writing in a variety
of computer-based activities. For example, we've had students design web
sites (e.g., Découvrir Berkeley www.itp.berkeley.edu/french).
In certain classes we have students correspond with native speaking peers
via e-mail on subjects such as family histories, music, films, social
issues. And we have used MOOs (multi-user domains-object oriented) for
online chat sessions that take place in virtual 'rooms' that allow students
to 'look' at verbal descriptions of one another, and that can incorporate
narrated gestures (e.g., "Nancy scratches her head quizzically"). We have
found this environment particularly good for language play (students are
always trying to outwit one another) and for role-plays, in which students
'become' a character in a story they have read and interact with other
characters. This is often more effective in a written, rather than in
a face-to-face, context because in relying exclusively on the written
word, students can truly hide their 'real-life' identity, and they must
closely analyze the kind of language their character uses.
In
a technical communication course I teach in the College of Engineering,
each student turns in a logbook on a weekly basis. This practice, familiar
to many of the students from their research and lab classes, helps them
(and me) keep track of their progress as technical writers. The students
use the logbook to accumulate technical and academic expressions and experiment
with them. These are expressions that they may recognize in their reading
but don't yet use in their own writing. Keeping the logbook raises their
awareness of these expressions so that they eventually show up in the
technical papers they write for the course. Students also use the logbook
to comment on material from the class that they think is valuable or question
what they don't understand. Sometimes they report on successes-I love
it when a student tells me that she's used our proofreading strategies
on her mechanical engineering report or that he's gone from a C to an
A in his Art History class because he applied the organizational principles
we'd explored in class. In fact, we use the logbook to communicate about
whatever the students or I come up with pertaining to the business of
communication-it changes all the time. This semester we're experimenting
with submitting the logs electronically, which opens up possibilities
including students more easily sharing their expressions, commentary,
and progress with one another.
During
the summer of 2001, I taught a graduate education course in our MA/Credential
program in Multicultural Urban Secondary English (MUSE). Since the class
addressed issues of race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class
(and class privilege), etc. as they intersect with teaching and learning
in urban settings, the readings and discussions were often very intense
for the students who were predominately white. I found that writing was
a very useful way to facilitate the students reflecting on their own personal/social
identities as a part of developing a perspective on teaching as a lifelong
journey of transformation. Students were asked to reflect and write on
specific situations in which they had benefited from unearned privilege,
as well as specific situations in which they had been disadvantaged as
a result of some aspect of their personal/social identities. They were
allowed to decide if they wanted to share any of these writings with other
students in small groups. I hoped such discussions would deepen their
understanding of these critical issues by making the ways they play out
in life and learning more visible. We found that these sharings were often
cathartic—students made personal connections with these tough issues
and also received support and illumination from the writings and discussions
of their peers. These small group discussions quickly spilled over into
discussions out of class, and they also motivated additional writing/discussions
in the "Virtual Chat" and "Discussion Board" on our
class website: