supporting scholarly exchange about communication across the curriculum
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What kinds of writing can I include? What is writing in the disciplines? Do I have to be an expert in grammar? Do writing and peer review take up too much class time? How can I avoid getting lousy student papers? What makes a good writing assignment? How can I get the most out of peer-review? Why consider collaborative writing assignments? What writing resources are available for my students? What teaching resources are available?
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An Introduction to WAC Think of yourself first as a readerSome teachers think that basing 20-30% of the grade on grammatical and stylistic matters is unfair unless they mark all the flaws. We approach this issue from the perspective of readers. If I review a textbook and find editing mistakes, I don't label each one and send the text back to the publisher. No, I just stop reading and don't adopt the textbook. Readers who are not teachers just don't keep reading is a text is too confusing or if errors are too distracting. Readers who are teachers are perfectly justified in simply noting with an X in the margin where a sentence gets too confusing or where mistaken punctuation leads the reader astray. Students are resourceful (they can get help from our on-campus Writing Center or our Writing Center Web site) and will figure out the problem once a reader points out where the text stumbles. That's really all it takes. |
