MAE 210 – Process Writing Across Curriculum

Course Description: Writing across the curriculum provides learners with the opportunity
to investigate their own thinking as they go beyond the surface level of text or subject
matter to arrive at meaningful connections and insights. Students investigate creative
approaches to introduce current research journals into portfolios and audience
assessment. Working independently and in cooperative learning groups, participants
immerse themselves in the reading/writing/ thinking process, create their own portfolios,
design mini-lessons, conduct research, and share their learning and thinking.

CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION

LESSON 1. Defining the Course: “Writing to Learn” And “Learning to Write”

Writing Across Curriculum or WAC does involve writing in all disciplines, but it certainly does not mean simply
assigning a term paper in every class. Nor does it mean (as some faculty in the disciplines fear) teaching
grammar across the curriculum. WAC programs are not additive, but transformative—they aim not at adding
more papers and tests of writing ability, but at changing the way both teachers and students use writing in the
curriculum.

To understand the aims of this course, it is useful to look at its theoretical bases. There are two approaches
to WAC, approaches that are not mutually exclusive but complementary. We might think of them as being
along a continuum in terms of the kinds of writing they advocate: in James Britton's terms, expressive (to
the self as audience) to transactional (to another audience, usually the teacher, for a grade).

❖ The first approach, sometimes referred to as cognitive, involves using writing to learn. This approach
assumes that writing is not only a way of showing what one has learned but is itself a mode of
learning—that writing can be used as a tool for, as well as a test of, learning. The work of James Britton
and of Janet Emig undergird this approach, which is based on constructivist theories of education. Knowledge
is not passively received, the theory goes, but is actively constructed by each individual learner; these
constructions change as our knowledge changes and grows. One of the most powerful ways of helping
students build and change their knowledge structures is to have them write for themselves as audience—to
explain things to themselves before they have to explain them to someone else.

In the curriculum, this approach advocates write-to-learn assignments such as journals and other ungraded
writing assignments aimed at helping students think on paper.

It is important in discussing writing-to-learn assignments as faculty/instructors that we clarify what we mean

by learning. One of the first questions a WAC instructor hears from colleagues is this: “What empirical evidence
do you have that writing aids learning?” If one defines learning as simple recall of facts, the answer to that
question is that we have little such evidence (Ackerman).

In fact, if we are interested in having students only remember information, we would be better off instituting
other kinds of assignments—memorization of mnemonic devices to aid recall, for example. But most of those
involved in WAC efforts use the term learning as synonymous with discovery, as a way of objectifying thought,
of helping separate the knower from the known; as a little girl once put it, “How can I know what I think until I
see what I say?”. Hence, Writing-to-Learn is based on the observation that students’ thought and
understanding can grow and clarify through the process of writing. We might think of writing-to-learn as a
“knowledge-transforming” rather than a “knowledge-telling” task.
❖ The second approach to WAC, sometimes termed rhetorical, involves learning to write in particular
disciplines, or in what researchers have begun to think of as discourse communities. Although this approach
does not exclude writing-to-learn assignments, it emphasizes more formal assignments, teaching writing
as a form of social behavior in the academic community. The work of theorists on the social construction
of knowledge, underlies this approach. Knowledge in a discipline is seen not as discovered, but as agreed
upon—as socially justified belief, created through the ongoing “conversation” (written as well as oral) of those
in the field (Maimon et al.).

The task of instructors in WAC is to help introduce students to the conventions of academic discourse in
general and to the discourse conventions of particular disciplines—much as we would try to introduce
newcomers into an ongoing conversation. (An example may clarify the notion of discourse communities. In
writing about literature, we can use the present tense when quoting literary figures from the past—
"Shakespeare says"—because for us the poet's words are not of an age but for all time. In writing about history,
however one uses the past tense: “Gibbon said.” The words of those who write history are not taken by
historians to be ageless, but must be considered in the context of the time in which they wrote.)

Since this approach to WAC sees the discourse community as central to the process of writing as well as to
the form of the finished product, it emphasizes collaborative learning and group work—attempting to model in
the classroom the collaborative nature of the creation of knowledge.

In the curriculum, this approach manifests itself in two ways: the freshman writing course that aims at
introducing students to the general features of academic discourse and the writing-in-the-major (or writing
intensive) course that emphasizes the lines of reasoning and methods of proof for a particular discourse
community.

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) may be defined, then, as a comprehensive program that
transforms the curriculum, encouraging writing to learn and learning to write in all disciplines. Before
discussing the possible components of such programs, it is worth reemphasizing the basic assumptions of
WAC:

(a)that writing and thinking are closely allied,

(b)that learning to write well involves learning particular discourse conventions, and that, therefore,
(c)writing belongs in the entire curriculum, not just in a course offered by the English department.

There is also an implicit assumption that WAC is :

(a)a faculty-driven phenomenon, involving changes in teaching methods;

(b)WAC assumes that students learn better in an active rather than a passive (lecture) mode,
(c)that learning is not only solitary but also a collaborative social phenomenon,
(d)that writing improves when critiqued by peers and then rewritten.

A WAC program needs strong administrative support, but it also has to be a bottom-up phenomenon, usually
starting with a few committed faculty members/teachers and growing as others see how successful these
faculty have been. Profound curricular and pedagogical change can come about as a result of a WAC program,
but such change will not take place unless it comes from the faculty themselves.
(SELF-READING TASK)

A Closer Look at the Origin and Development of WAC

Literacy and Schooling

The practices and development of writing and reading have been intimately tied to the histories of schooling.
Indeed, literacy education has been the primary motivation for developing most educational institutions
throughout history—that is, places of organized instruction apart from the daily flow and interaction of life
practices. People in daily life are constantly learning from the people around them and the tasks they face, but
institutions of schooling set up activities that are to some degree separated from the activities of daily life.

Reading and writing take one out of the flow of events and immediate activities, requiring some retreat to
attend to words that somehow extend beyond the current moment. Reading and writing are not easily taught
in passing, but require extended concentration away from other concerns, particularly in relation to the more
complex and contemplative functions of literacy we have developed.

Reading and Writing Activities in Schooling

As social needs for literacy increased, so did schooling. Further, the reading and writing activities in school
were often closely tied to the specific social functions that created the need for advanced literacy. Scriptural
religions created the need for high degrees of literacy in the priestly castes and in some cases placed a literacy
obligation on all believers. In schools associated with all the major religions, the primary reading matter and
writing practices were associated with the scriptures and other religious obligations.

Insofar as literacy was driven by the needs of bureaucracies or commerce, these also then provided the matter
and motive for literacy education. Even whether handwriting was taught and which style of script was practiced
depended on the role students would take on in the economy. In America writing was first associated with
commerce and handwriting particularly associated with business and administrative activities (Thornton,
1996). Women were taught to read, but since they did not engage in commerce, they were not taught
handwriting, but instead needlepoint (Monaghan, 1989.

Academic Literacy

Academic Literacy is a term that combines reading and writing. This is appropriate in that reading and writing
never occur separately, but are always part of a shared field of activity. In the academic disciplines
professionals students read and they write. They write about and use what they read (see definition of
“intertextuality” below). And their writing forms the reading of their teachers, colleagues, and students.

The term academic literacy is most widely used in reference to the lower and middle grades of schooling, to
distinguish the kinds of reading and writing students are expected to do in school from the kinds of reading
and writing children might do in their daily life outside of school.

Sometimes, most narrowly, the term (or its close relation Academic English) is used to refer to conventions of
language correctness that students are expected to adhere to in school. This narrowing of the term is
unfortunate. While children in school are often monitored for adherence to formal language conventions,
academic literacy embodies a much wider range of practices, skills, and interactions that bring students into
intellectual engagement with knowledge, thought, and the work of professions.

Literacy and Curriculum

The assignment of reading and writing, though a necessary vehicle for the study of the various subjects,
remained in the background as practices, receiving little instruction outside English and language arts
classrooms. If students were unable to complete the reading and writing, or were otherwise found wanting the
instructors often separated subject matter knowledge and competence from the language competence—thus
marking the history part of the essay or intuiting what the student meant to say rather than holding them
accountable for their precise articulation of the subject matter in writing. Failures in reading or writing in the
subject matter might be penalized or might be gotten around through alternative instructional strategies, but
they were not seen as matters for instruction within the context of the subject area.

These separations of literacy from content knowledge, here drawn with wide brush-strokes, set the stage for
a re-engagement between literacy education and the particular subject matters, but only after the teaching of
writing gained some degree of independence from the literary curriculum. This happened in the 1970s as the
field of composition began to gather some professional authority and was able to assert some of its educational
objectives apart from the literary curriculum.

As literacy started to be understood more fully as distinct from literary education and the tacit reading and
writing components of the school and university curriculum became recognized more explicitly, several related
pedagogical movements arose.

First-Year Writing (or Composition)

Insofar as writing was explicitly taught within the research university it was typically taught in a first year course
meant to prepare students for the writing demands of the university. This course often had a remedial or
transitional character, so that students who were not writing well enough to meet the requirements of their
other courses would be given developmental writing experiences. First year courses were frequently
supplemented by even more basic writing courses, with placement determined by an examination at the time
of entry into the university.

Writing Across the Curriculum

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) refers specifically to the pedagogical and curricular attention to writing
occurring in university subject matter classes other than those offered by composition or writing programs
(most often housed in the English Department). The movement provided systematic encouragement,
institutional support, and educational knowledge to increase the amount and quality of writing occurring in such
courses as history, science, mathematics and sociology.

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