What Types of First Year Writing Assignments Facilitate Science Majors’
Initiation into their Discipline?
Abstract
As writing programs establish discipline-specific first-year writing courses,
assignments need to reflect that change. This presentation discusses findings of
a survey of upper-division students (N=84) in the sciences at Michigan State
University regarding the usefulness of reading, writing, and research
assignments from their first-year composition courses for writing assignments in
their disciplinary courses. Possible implications of survey results for approaches
to teaching first-year college writing courses for science majors will also be
presented.
Proposal
First-year writing courses geared toward specific subject areas such as
the sciences or engineering are becoming more prevalent, and writing teachers
are scrambling to keep up with the new demands of such courses. Although
many of us may have a special interest in the subject area of our first year writing
courses, our educational background may have little to do with those disciplines.
Consequently, although we know that any first-year college writing course needs
to prepare students to write in a variety of circumstances by facilitating their
ability to evaluate the rhetorical situation, we may be unsure of how to best
prepare them for the types of reading, writing, and research they may encounter
in their disciplinary courses.
To gain a better perspective on this problem, I surveyed upper-division
science students (N=84) at Michigan State University (MSU) on their perceptions
of the effectiveness of various assignments from their first-year writing courses in
preparing them for the reading and writing they encountered in their majors. The
survey also solicited information on the types of writing assignments they had in
their upper-division courses.
The most predicable result overwhelmingly indicates that learning to write
college-level research papers in the first-year writing course was most
constructive in preparing students for the types of reading, writing, and research
they are assigned in their disciplinary courses. Assignments typically associated
with research writing, including research strategies, note-taking, bibliographies,
and citations, also proved useful. Other writing assignments that were highly
rated include abstracts/summaries, reports, and persuasive essays.
One of the most surprising results is the amount of multimedia
assignments that students do in their upper-level science courses. This result
reinforces other studies of undergraduate writing which indicate that writing
teachers must “stretch[] the boundaries of what we traditionally call ‘writing.’”
(Harris). MSU students report that learning to create digital slide presentations
and websites in their first year writing courses helps prepare them for the
multimedia writing tasks they face in their disciplinary courses.
This presentation will review the findings of this survey and discuss
implications it may have for approaches to teaching first-year college writing
courses for science majors.
Works Cited
Harris, Peggy. “What do College Students Think about Writing?” The Council
Chrionicle 15 March 2005. 5 Sept. 2005. NCTE.
http://www.ncte.org/pubs/chron/highlights/120007.htm.