Guidelines for Writing Instruction Courses
This document proposes guidelines for all courses designated as fulfilling the Writing
Instruction requirements for students: these courses are INT 101, INT 201, GBK 101,
GBK 202, GBK 203, and those sections of disciplinary courses with R-Designated credit
(formerly WRT 120) attached.
Because of the great diversity in Mercer’s writing instruction courses, encompassing both
disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches and writing in multiple domains, these
guidelines are necessary to provide commonality and ensure that students receive focused
practice and consistent guidance in writing. That diversity can be a great benefit for our
students, broadening and deepening their exposure to and practice in writing within and
across disciplines, and thus increasing their ability to write effectively and think critically
over the long term.
No one course is imagined as carrying the full burden of writing instruction or producing
proficient writers on its own, but each course must make a concrete, intentional contribution
to this process and demonstrate how the course works to meet these parameters. Such
commonality is vital if we expect students who have completed any three of these courses
to have had analogous training and practice, and to have achieved proficiency in writing.
The document contains multiple sections:
• the seven required parameters
• the rationale underlying each parameter
• definitions and examples of scaffolding, informal and formal writing assignments
Parameters for Writing Instruction courses
1) Courses should require at least four formal papers, totaling 20–25 pages. Instructors
should supplement the formal assignments with extensive informal writing.
2) At least three of the four formal papers should require students to go through several
stages of development.
3) Interdisciplinary writing courses should assign informal and formal writing in multiple
genres representing several domains (humanities, natural sciences, social sciences,
and arts). Disciplinary courses should assign writing in multiple genres appropriate to
a specific discipline. All writing instruction courses should provide training and
practice in relevant documentation formats (these formats may include MLA, APA,
CSE, Turabian, and Chicago styles).
4) Courses should demonstrate that writing instruction is fully integrated with course
content.
5) A student’s final course grade in a writing instruction course should come
predominantly from evaluation of the form and content of writing assignments.
6) Careful consideration should be given to the length of reading assignments in order to
ensure sufficient time for work in and out of class on writing.
7) Instructors should hold individual conferences with each student in the course at least
once to discuss the student’s writing and to supplement in-class instruction.
Guidelines for Writing Instruction Courses
Rationale for parameters
1) Courses should require at least four formal papers, totaling 20–25 pages. Instructors
should supplement the formal assignments with extensive informal writing.
Students learn to write by writing and benefit from extensive opportunities to write,
particularly when instructors provide timely and focused feedback on that writing. In
Writing Instruction courses a number of short essays are much more beneficial to
students than one or two long papers. Numerous writing assignments give students
multiple opportunities to practice and demonstrate writing proficiency. Informal writing
is a particularly useful method to encourage writing practice and promote student
learning through writing. When each essay which a student writes receives
assessment comments and suggestions from the instructor prior to the student’s next
attempt, that student can respond to that feedback either to revise the paper or to
practice the suggested writing strategies and techniques in a new essay. Short writing
assignments provide low stakes opportunities for students to experiment and take
intellectual risks in writing, and therefore students are more likely to stretch their
abilities and develop as writers. A single 20-page writing assignment, on the other
hand, presents a lone high stakes challenge to demonstrate writing proficiency on a
single occasion and with little or no feedback; as a result, this sort of assignment
provides the opportunity to write but not writing instruction.
2) At least three of the four formal papers should require students to go through several
stages of development.
Students should be given numerous opportunities to participate in a combination of
stages drawn from the writing process: examples of such stages include but are not
limited to prewriting, collaborative brainstorming, group writing, researching, drafting,
revising, peer reviewing, reorganizing the text, editing, and proofreading for writing
conventions. Revising a previously evaluated paper can help students learn from and
incorporate the instructor’s comments. Students can also gain critical perspectives by
composing reflective essays about their own writing and revision processes. Attention
to the recursive process of writing rather than solely the finished product marks an
important distinction between a writing instruction course and a writing intensive
course.
3) Interdisciplinary writing courses should assign informal and formal writing in multiple
genres and rhetorical situations representing several domains (humanities, natural
sciences, social sciences,and arts). Disciplinary courses should assign writing in multiple
genres appropriate to a specific discipline. All writing instruction courses should provide
training and practice in relevant documentation formats (these formats may include MLA,
APA, CSE, Turabian, and Chicago styles).
Proficient writers analyze and adapt their writing for different audiences, purposes and
contexts; these three factors comprise what the discipline of composition studies
calls the rhetorical situation. Texts written for common rhetorical situations share
conventions of format, style and presentation, and may be thought of as distinct genres.
Students become more proficient writers as they encounter, learn to recognize, and practice
writing in multiple genres which should include but should not be confined to the
traditional, analytic academic essay. Genres from specific disciplines and domains are
particularly beneficial to suggest the range of rhetorical situations and writing
strategies, and help students transfer skills writing in these genres to future situations
and genres they will encounter.
A student who has internalized the process of identifying a rhetorical situation, recognizing
the types of writing appropriate for that situation, finding a model of such writing, and then
analyzing and emulating the particular format, style and presentation of that model, has
gained a set of skills highly useful for a lifetime of communication as a working, sharing
citizen in our society. We should foster the development of this set of skills in these Writing
Instruction courses.
4) Courses should demonstrate that writing instruction is fully integrated with course
content.
Writing in these courses must not be treated as an incidental addition to the course
content, but as an integrated method of furthering inquiry and understanding of the
content. Learning to write at a level proficient for college work can further the
students’ engagement with and deepen their understanding of new content material
and ideas if the assignments promote inquiry, exploration and research. This mutually
beneficial relationship between course content and writing, furthermore, forms the
basis for and best means of evaluating the achievement of specific critical thinking
outcomes required in the new General Education curriculum. In their writing students
can best practice and demonstrate these skills of evaluating, analyzing, integrating,
supporting, reflecting, judging and solving. In a fully integrated Writing Instruction
course the writing and content material do not compete with but complement each
other, and in doing so foster these critical thinking skills.
The Writing Committee suggests that fully integrated Writing instruction courses
should spend about half of their classroom time on work directly or indirectly related
to writing. Examples of such work might include: defining rhetorical situations;
analyzing and using rhetorical appeals (ethos, pathos and logos); analyzing original
articles or scientific reports for content, use of evidence, and writing conventions;
thesis workshops; sharing student reflections on writing in smaller groups; peer
review workshops of drafts, etc. Persistent discussion of how writers communicate
their content, both in the course texts and student work, contributes to students
learning to write.
5) A student’s final course grade in a writing instruction course should come
predominantly from evaluation of the form and content of writing assignments.
Under the new General Education curriculum, students demonstrate proficiency in
writing by successful completion of three Writing Instruction courses. Therefore
writing must supply a large enough proportion of the final grade for these courses so
that the final grade becomes a meaningful indicator of proficiency. The Writing
Committee recognizes that the two different categories of these courses may have
different needs, and may require to a different extent assignments that do not
evaluate student writing (such as oral presentations, visual media projects, multiple
choice tests, etc.). In the interdisciplinary writing instruction courses—INT 101, INT
201, GBK 101, GBK 202 and GBK 203—at least 80% of that final grade should
consist of formal and informal writing assignments. In the discipline-specific writing
instruction courses, which may tend to a greater extent to test students on course
content in ways that might not be evaluated in terms of student writing, at least 60%
of the final grade should come from evaluated written work. Student writing is, of
course, an excellent method of assessing student understanding of course content
material but not the only method.
6) Careful consideration should be given to the length of reading assignments in order to
ensure sufficient time for work in and out of class on writing.
Careful consideration should be given to the length of reading assignments in order to
ensure sufficient time for work in and out of class on writing. Course readings and
writing instruction should complement one another, with writing assignments
engaging students in critical thinking about course materials and reading assignments
providing models of writing in particular genres or disciplines. In addition to providing
subject matter for oral and written discussion, course texts might exemplify models of
good writing for students to emulate in their own writing, or models of a particular
genre in which students will be writing, or models of various kinds of writing in a
discipline. Examining these features of the readings with a class takes time, as does
writing about the course material; therefore, instructors may wish to limit reading
assignments to ensure sufficient time for student writers to explore, engage with, and
reflect on the content.
7) Instructors should hold individual conferences with each student in the course at least
once to discuss the student’s writing and to supplement in-class instruction.
Individual conferences with instructors provide an important supplement to in-class writing
instruction. In these meetings students can get much more immediate feedback on
their writing, and instructors can better gauge the students’ comprehension of the
suggestions and examples. These conferences can be beneficial at various points in
the course, and the instructor should choose the most appropriate point for a
particular group of students. For example, some instructors may wish to schedule the
meetings after the first formal paper is returned, in order to give more focused
evaluations and comments, while others might plan to have conferences before a
previous paper undergoes revision, or while students are gathering and evaluating
sources for a research project.
Definitions and examples of scaffolding, informal and formal writing
assignments
Students new to college and to a particular discipline often struggle with writing because
they are also trying to overcome other issues: a lack of knowledge about an academic
field, about the conventions and unstated assumptions and proscriptions of academic
discourse, and about what is considered appropriate evidence and diction. As beginning
students struggle with applying higher levels of critical thinking such as analysis and
integration to unfamiliar material in unfamiliar formats, their syntax, punctuation and
clarity often suffers. A vital role of writing instruction courses is to help students acquire
proficiency in these critical thinking and writing skills.
Both informal and formal writing might be designed as scaffolding to provide skills, raw
material, deeper understanding, and support for more complex or longer later assignments.
The term “scaffolding” implies a temporary framework for learning how to write or to develop
a particular writing skill or technique, or a way of constructing component parts of a larger
and more sophisticated ultimate project. The terms “informal” and “formal” refer to the form
and content of the paper as much as to the formality or elevation of the diction, and the two
types of assignments have different functions, often characterized as “writing to learn” and
“writing to communicate.”
Scaffolding provides a way of bridging the gap between what beginning students can do
and what we want them to be able to do. Rather than ask students to produce a
polished, complex document, an instructor may break it down into more manageable
components that increase in size and cognitive complexity and lead to that final product.
For example, a final research paper might be scaffolded by prior assignments due
throughout the semester:
• initial informal writing describing the topic, listing known information about it, and
formulating questions about what is currently unknown
• initial research on the topic, scaffolded by a research journal, synopses of the sources
or an annotated bibliography; analysis and evaluation of the sources, with
comparisons and contrasts of the views expressed and analysis of the values, issues
and conventions of discourse in the field
• development of a thesis, supported by models of thesis statements or informal writing
on the question to be answered or problem to be solved, and why that question or
problem is important, and a project proposal explaining the scope, thesis and plan for
their research paper
• development of support, through listing of reasons supporting a claim and evidence
supporting the reasons
• practice in handling the appropriate documentation format, through workshops on the
bibliographic apparatus used in the discipline, and development of bibliography or
works cited pages using the selected sources
• development of overall coherence for the paper, through a cover letter accompanying
drafts of the final work, discussing and reflecting on their process of research, writing
and revision
Scaffolding requires close attention by the instructor to what students know and what
they need to know, what they can already do and what they need to learn to do to
compose a successful final product. Creative and purposeful scaffolding can train
students in the forms and expectation of writing in your discipline, increase students’
success in academic writing, and decrease the likelihood of intentional plagiarism on the
final product.
Informal writing gives students the opportunity to understand and learn course material
and to practice writing and critical thinking skills in a low stakes environment. Informal
writing may or may not be graded, but it is usually appropriate for the instructor to give
feedback on it. Examples of informal writing include dailies or weeklies, blogs or journals,
in class or lab responses, field or lab research notes, reactions to a speaker or film, and
free writing. Informal writing may be produced in or out of class.
Formal writing employs the format, language, rules and practices (i.e. the conventions) of
academic, scholarly or professional writing. “Formal” typically implies writing that has
gone through an extensive process of revision to achieve accuracy and clarity. The final
product is evaluated as a demonstration of a student’s understanding and
communication of the material and handling of appropriate writing conventions.
Examples of formal writing include academic research essays, critiques and analytical
essays, research reports, literature reviews, critical reviews, laboratory or field study
reports, poster session presentations, policy or project proposals, feasibility reports, etc.