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Parker Disclafani

Malcolm W. Campbell

WRDS 1104

02 November 2021

Are We There Yet? Mandates in Academic Writing.

How do ideas about errors, rules, and other "teacher mandates" impact how people write?

From personal experience, I believe there are a plethora of rules that can affect one's writing. In

the past, others and I have talked about how a teacher's set rules have affected our writing in a

negative way. Can we make writing in school more enjoyable and exceptional by removing or

easing up on these directives? This question has been continuously brought up for decades

around the world wondering how it affects writers; there have been a number of people on both

sides of this debate. Steven O'Brien and Verneda P. Hamm Baugh from Kean University, believe

that minimum word counts can help writers. While John Warner, a seasoned writer, believes that

these thresholds have an adverse effect on writers.

There are thought to be four “clusters” of motivation towards good writing. These

clusters are as follows: the importance of writing, interests in writing, support in writing, and

positive environments for writing. I believe that these four clusters are key to teaching good

writing techniques to anyone who wants to improve their writing. Everyone must be taught why

writing is important. These may be some simple things such as entertainment that wouldn't exist

without writing. Without someone to write the script there would not be any movies, shows, or

games. People may then begin to realize that writing is what holds up the world. Interest in
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writing is what I believe to be most important. No one wants to do something they don't want to

do, especially not one that can consume a large amount of time. Writing is one of the main

reasons children don't look forward to school as it forces them to spend time writing on a topic

that they don't find interesting. Instead, writing should be taught as something to enjoy instead of

something that is required in order to be successful in life. Support is a major factor that leads to

good writings. Many times people write from the heart; having that be repressed can be crushing

to a person. Support can be as light as someone telling you that you did a good job. One single

compliment can impact someone for a lifetime and influence their writing immensely. The last

key to writing is a positive environment. There have been a number of times when I, myself

haven't been able to work to the best of my abilities based on my location. Whether it be in a

noisy room where it's hard to focus, or you feel rushed by time constraints towards completing

an assignment. Environment plays a huge role in the level of one's writing. Now that you know

how to start writing we should talk about requirements.

Ivy Hooks, author of In Writing Good Requirements, an article for “Third INCOSE

Symposium,” addresses the differences between good requirements and bad requirements. He

states that a good requirement is one that is necessary, verifiable, and attainable. A way to see if

it is a good requirement is to ask yourself if removing it will make a difference in the overall

quality of the writing, as well as verify your requirements. If not it is most likely not required.

Finally, a requirement must be one that can easily be used and demonstrated. Hook lists a

number of problems that commonly occur with bad requirements; these include bad assumptions,

using incorrect terms and spelling, or oversimplifying. Bad assumptions occur either because

authors do not have access to sufficient information or the information does not exist. In order to
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stray away from bad assumptions, authors should only list requirements that are critical to the

topic. Spelling is among one of the most common problems and can be fixed quite easily with a

bit of proofreading, spell checking, or googling. Many people don’t take the time to recheck to

verify if this is their absolute best work or if it meets the required criteria set by the assignment

or professor. Another thing you might hear children say is “Why must I learn to write if my

career does entail me to do so?”

In 10 Ways to Ruin a College Paper written by Hyman S. Jeremy and Lynn F. Jacobs.

Hyman claims the thought that writing in college is only used in writing class is false and is one

of the more important skills for an aspiring writer to learn. Hyman begins to list ten different

ways that people ruin their papers while in college and tells how to avoid these. He states the

amount of writing plays a big role in your paper, whether it be too drawn out with the lack of

discipline or the writer only covering the key points. Writers often struggle with what to include,

they could add irrelevant information or miss the key point entirely. Lynn suggests that writers

need to use a thesis statement to set their focus on one question or argument in their writing to

help solidify the point they are trying to reach. This makes us think, have we changed our ways

too much, or do we need to focus on making that change?

That's exactly what Sarah Irwin and Cyndi Knodle talk about in their article Mandates

and the Writing Curriculum: Creating a Place to Dwell.” Sarah Irwin and Cyndi Knodle believe

that the start of problems in writing is that teachers have strayed from their original process of

teaching good decision-making, which leads to children becoming better writers. This has been

changed to a grading easy format for teachers where they have a standard 4-6 steps that they can

grade as they go. This is putting pressure on the children to focus more on organization and
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procedure than forming their ideas, questions, and connections. Studies have shown that these

formats lead to students trying to take the easy approach and choose a straightforward topic

instead of one that they enjoy or challenges the mind. Irwin states that it is evident that the

students will follow in the steps of their teachers and start to mimic their ways of easy grading.

Knodle states that while these types of teaching may be acceptable at the beginning of a student's

growth, they shouldn't be continued to be taught as it can hurt writers in the long run.

After my research, I have concluded that in order to improve writing we must start with a

change. It is clear to me now that I as well as others believe that something must change. Maybe

considering to drop mandates or pushing for the four clusters to be taught. I believe this will be

beneficial to children Cyndi Knodle suggests that one of our first steps is to make writing

exciting for children. I think this is a must in order to get children interested in writing. As

technology plays a bigger role in society as days go on, the teachings must change too. Children

are beginning to have a lower work ethic, shorter attention span, and disregard for the

importance of writing.
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Hooks, Ivy. “Writing Good Requirements.” Third INCOSE Symposium and Published in the

Proceedings of the Third International Symposium of the INCOSE. 1993,

https://reqexperts.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/writing_good_requirements.htm.

Accessed 20 Oct. 2021.

Hyman S. Jeremy and Lynn F. Jacobs. “10 Ways to Ruin a College Paper” U.S.News. Aug 25,

2010,,https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2010/08/25/10-ways-to

-ruin-a-college-paper. Accessed 20 Oct. 2021.

Irwin, Sarah, and Knodle, Cyndi. “Mandates and the Writing Curriculum: Creating a Place to

Dwell” The English Journal. May 2008, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30046882. Accessed

20 Oct. 2021.