Embracing Writing

ISBN-13: 9781118582916 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 320 str.

Gary R. Hafer

Opis

A guided approach to using college writing for everyone's learning Faculty in every discipline are increasingly pressured to include major writing components as part of their courses. Unfortunately, as author and English professor Gary R. Hafer explains, college and university educators often have little training in the use of writing in the classroom. Embracing Writing elucidates the principles of academic writing and shows instructors how to integrate writing with course content, blending them to enhance and deepen the higher education learning process. Scholarly writing is a central part of the academic experience and, when used effectively, can be an outstanding pedagogical tool. The creative approach in Embracing Writing will have you looking at writing in a whole new way. Not only will your students appreciate the honest, nurturing, and fun writing assignments, but your own writing will improve as well. This is not a rulebook for writers, but a guided approach to viewing writing and content as one indivisible whole. Embracing Writing will help you:

• Engage students in writing assignments that actually help them develop their writing ability
• Understand what makes good collegiate writing and how it can aid in content discovery
• Discover new pathways for your own writing so writing for publication and the classroom is enjoyable again
• Develop a writing pedagogy that doesn't detract from core course content delivery

There often is a disconnect between administrative demands for in-course writing and the inadequate training resources available to faculty members. Because most of us aren't trained as writers, we need a meaningful way to connect writing to our areas of expertise. Embracing Writing provides that connection.

Spis treści

Foreword vii

Preface xi

Acknowledgments xix

About the Author xxi

1. Write from the Beginning 1

2. Plan with the Syllabus 21

3. Open That First Class with Writing 45

4. Daily Writing: Practice Before Polish 65

5. Make Long Assignments Manageable for Everyone 81

6. Prepare for Rewriting 105

7. Offer Feedback for Classwork 133

8. Giving Feedback During Short Conferences 157

9. The Finals: Portfolio and Conference 183

10. Offer But Two Cheers for Grading Writing 205

References 229

Appendix 235

Index 289

O autorze

GARY R. HAFER is the John P. Graham Teaching Professor at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where he teaches writing to students from all disciplines. He also serves on the Writing–Across–the–Curriculum Committee for the college. Hafer s articles and essays on writing instruction have appeared in The Journal of Developmental Education, The Teaching Professor, College English, and Computers and Composition.

Blurb

Embracing Writing is a book that offers fresh versions of various ideas. Free writing isn t a new idea but how Gary recommends you use it in class and in your own writing is. He doesn t preach or hype about how well it and the other strategies he recommends work. He doesn t tell you to try them, but when you do, you discover he s right and you learn new things about approaches you thought you understood. I so appreciate books that get beyond rehashing the ideas of others, books that build new structures out of familiar ideas, and books that challenge conventional thinking about the way things are or the way we think they have to be.

Embracing Writing is about teaching students who don t like to write and don t do it well that s the book s main focus. It proposes a variety of interesting ways teachers can improve student writing and their attitudes about it ways that involve the role of writing in the classroom, approaches to rewriting (not revising Gary makes important distinctions between the two), ways of providing feedback and a whole different orientation to grading. This isn t the way writing is usually taught, in composition courses or any other courses, for that matter. But it s an approach that makes sense and one that offers options to teachers who are regularly or occasionally frustrated by their attempts to teach writing. They are options they may not have considered or perhaps should reconsider.

The content of this book rings with authenticity. It is a well–written story of one teacher s 20–year journey to a new and quite remarkable way of teaching, a way that does encourage reluctant writers to embrace writing???. It is a book you ll enjoy reading, a book that will make you think and it could very well be one that will change how you teach and write.
From the foreword by Maryellen Weimer, editor of The Teaching Professor newsletter