Sanford and Valerio 1

Project Proposal
Ali and I are both sincerely interested in writing and writing-related studies. I am an English
Literature major with a Writing and Rhetoric minor, while Ali is a Writing and Rhetoric major
with an English Literature minor. Ali is also a tutor at the University Writing Center. Each of us
have had separate experiences with writing education that have led to similar concerns and
thoughts about writing. From her time in UCFs First-Year Composition Program as well as
tutoring current freshman in the program, Ali has noticed that many of these students struggle to
transition from high school to college-level writing. She has noticed that students dont
understand why their background in writing and their current understanding of it isnt sufficient
for the university. These students inability to be successful in their English Composition courses
is due to their previous education, and the negative attitudes toward writing that resulted from
their experience is an issue Ali finds important to address.
As part of my own experience with writing education, I have personally dealt with a lack of
instruction on how to continually develop better writing skills as I advance in college to higher
level courses. I always thought that I had skill as a writer, but I felt as if at some point I was
turning in the same quality of writing semester after semester. I attributed my stagnant state to
the lack of attention by my professors to furthering their students knowledge and ability in
writing. An indicator that other students were experiencing the same issue was my experience in
a 3000 level Writing and Rhetoric course last spring, where my fellow students were at a loss for
how to write their papers at the standard that was expected of them. It was clear that these
students did not already have the skills that our professor expected of us before entering into the
course.

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Taking our personal and observed experiences into consideration, we realized we were both
concerned about how prepared college students are to write at the standard expected of them
based on their previous writing education. Plainly stated, the civic issue we will be exploring is
possible deficiencies in writing education, both in high school and college, which inhibit
students writing ability as they advance to higher level courses and higher standards. To focus
how we will approach this issue in our project, we have decided to ask the question: What are
students educational experiences with writing and how do they affect their perceived
preparedness to write as they advance through college?
Ali and I are choosing to focus our project from the students perspective of their own writing
education and how it has prepared them, so we have decided that the best method for research
into this issue will be interviewing students. We have decided to narrow the interviewing pool to
students in discourses that are writing-focused, so only Writing and Rhetoric, English, and
Journalism students will take part in our study. Overall, we are seeking to interview a few
students from three different categories: freshmen, students whose course load includes 2000 and
3000 level courses (mainly sophomores and juniors), and students whose course load includes
3000 and 4000 level courses (mainly juniors and seniors).
Ali and I are using a divide and conquer method with these interviews: Ali will interview
students who are either currently taking First-Year Composition, or who are in their more
advanced courses but did take First-Year Composition. I will interview students at the varying
levels mentioned but only those who have not taken First-Year Composition. The main reason
we divided the interviews up based off of the First-Year Composition program is due to the fact
that Ali has taken the course and I have not. Whether or not taking this course affects a students
preparedness for higher level writing courses remains to be seen based off of our research. To

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receive an accurate understanding of the issue, Ali and I will both interview 8-10 students
overall, with 3-4 students for each category. We chose the method of interviewing because we
want to give our interviewees a chance to expound, giving us a better and deeper understanding
than a simple survey would. Our focus question is specifically geared towards student experience
and perception, which is what we intend to understand further from these interviews. Our
interview questions will address several points:

What did students know about writing before entering college?

What did students learn in First-Year Composition/their first college writing classes?
How did high school writing prepare/not prepare students for their First-Year

Composition/college writing classes?

How do students feel about their overall writing abilities?
If students dont feel prepared for college writing now, where do they think they

should have been prepared? Where were the deficiencies?

Were the necessary writing skills presented to students but they struggled to take in
the information, or were they not taught at all?

These points are merely an outline of the main concepts we want to address in the interviews. We
will most likely add questions to the list before starting the interviewing process and also foresee
the opportunity to ask impromptu follow-up questions during the interviews, should we feel the
need to.
Interviewing students will enable us to acquire information to directly address our focus
question. However, beyond these interviews, Ali and I also plan to research what scholars and
critics are already saying about this issue. We wish to understand how the issue is being
communicated about now so that we can decide how best to rhetorically address the issue
ourselves.

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As for an eventual solution to this issue, we believe that a reasonable goal for this semester
would be to create awareness among educators of students experiences with writing education
and preparedness for writing. We hypothesize that students largely feel unprepared and unable to
write at the standards to which they are expected due to lack of instruction at some point, or
possibly lack of understanding of instruction. However, we understand that our eventual solution
may need to change based on the actual information of student experiences that we receive,
which may or may not vary from our hypothesis. That information will ultimately decide what
we are making instructors aware of.
Considering that educators are our audience, Ali and I have discussed the most effective
mode of rhetoric by which we could address this issue. Our project will ultimately be a report on
student experience made by students, meaning Ali and I. We took this into account and we also
took into account that the most common method for reporting research results and intellectual
conclusions about that research is by writing a scholarly article. The article itself is also an
exceedingly trendy rhetorical device in our culture right now. Ali and I have the thought that we
could compose our findings into a type of Open Letter to Our Teachers article. The tone of the
article would have the informality of students honestly communicating with their educators but
also the formality of an article based in hard-work, research, and scholarship. We think this form
of rhetoric could be effective because our purpose is to raise awareness among educators of how
students are struggling with writing studies and this type of article will convey the clear-cut
information of those struggles but also the sincerity of the feelings surrounding those struggles.
We think these simultaneous qualities could result in both a logical and concerned response from
educators, who we know care about the success of their students.

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This proposal is specifically in reference to what Ali and I have the ability to accomplish this
semester. However, we have discussed how the project could be expanded, if we had more time,
to gain more widespread information and possibly better results. For now, we are only interested
in hearing from students in specific disciplines about their experiences with writing in order to
provide educators with a full understanding of the struggles their students are facing. Educators
are our specific audience and students our subject, but we recognize that in the future, it may be
valuable to learn about the instructor perspective on the issue as well. This may advance the goal
of the project from simply spreading awareness of the civic issue. Ali and I understand that
issues in writing education are complex and that educators have a valuable perspective for
solving them. If professors give their input on the situation, then they may be more ready to
make real changes in response to the problem. Were not sure what those changes would be yet,
but we know that interviewing professors along with students would provide more of a wellrounded data set and contribute to the projects potential success. However, with the time and
resources allotted to us, Ali and I will do our best to fully answer our research question and
hopefully gain some success in rhetorically addressing the issue of deficiencies in writing
education.