How, in addition to essays and exams, do you use writing in your class?
Rick Kern (French Department)
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 Berkeleywww.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.
Sharon Jones (Technical Communication Program, College of Engineering)
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.
Jabari Mahiri (School of Education)
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.
Originally Published: Volume 2 – Number 1 (Spring 2001)