Teaching the Writing Conventions of a Discipline "Effective writing assignments aim to immerse students in the discourse of a discipline and help them think as its members do."
-Bedford Guide to Teaching Writing in the Disciplines 8
Teaching the writing conventions of a discipline may simply mean identifying those that are most important to a particular course and subject, bringing them to shaper focus for students, and giving students opportunities to try them on. Writing in the disciplines programs believe that a student's degree of "participation" (which writing fosters) " in the intellectual activities" of a discipline has important consequences for whether or not he or she can gain awareness of, acquire, and use the knowledge a discipline seeks to impart (Bedford 8).
When WIP assignments teach disciplinary conventions, they aim "to make the language and culture of a discipline explicit" (Bedford 9). This can be a boost to students who plan to enter a disciplinary culture as a professional, as well as to all students who learn, by studying writing conventions of a discipline, that thinking conventions are embedded in them. Below are some suggestions for teaching the inseparable enterprises that disciplinary writing conventions foreground: the language of a discipline (vocabulary and style); the ways it formulates and answers questions (epistemology), and the way it which a discipline communicates ideas (rhetoric) (9). As Neil Postman argues, learning in any field entails learning its worldview: that is, understanding its "definitions, questions, and metaphors" ("World Weavers"135). These starting points for teaching disciplinary discourse are adapted from The New St. Martin's Handbook (622-29) and discussions with writing intensive instructors:
Disciplinary language
• Require students to keep a concept log of unfamiliar words, defining the terms both formally and informally in context.Disciplinary styles• Require students to keep a log of the main metaphors that come up in their reading or in journal articles.
• Point students to the authoritative dictionaries or handbooks of terms in your discipline, for instance, A Dictionary of the Social Sciences , The Dictionary of the AmericanPsychological Association, or the new online Oxford English Dictionary.
• Ask students to keep a log of how people in a field talk to each other, the technical words or jargon that comes up in discussion or reading.
• Give students opportunities to practice discipline-specific terminology in their writing without penalties for misusing it before requiring them to use it appropriately. This is a form of sequencing -- giving students "low stakes" assignments before involving them in "high stakes" assignments (Peter Elbow, "High Stakes and Low Stakes in Assigning and Responding to Writing" 5).
Show students models of effective writing in your field, and point out features that make the writing both effective and distinctly discipline-specific. Few lab reports, we imagine, ever begin with an epigraph featuring lines from a poem; few close readings of poetry proceed with the subheads of a lab report. Disciplinary styles are, of course, related to disciplinary formats. To teach them, provide students with models, and/or send them to find pieces of writing to analyze according to cues like these, which WIP instructors may adapt and add to:
1) Describe the tone of the writing (very formal, somewhat formal, informal), and give an example of why you describe it this way:After analyzing a few pieces or working in groups, students may be asked to generalize about the writing in a field and, guided in their generalizations, to outline a profile of writing in a field or for an audience in a main journal.2) Envision and describe a typical reader and the context in which he or she is reading the information:
3) Does the writing aim at a distanced, objective stance or a more clearly personal view:
4) Look at the paragraphs: Do the paragraphs use clear topic sentences, and if so where are they placed in the paragraph:
5) How long are the paragraphs (# of sentences):
6) In general, how long are the sentences:
7) Are the verbs generally active or passive:
8) Does the writing use first person or terms such as "one" or "the researcher":
9) Does the writing use subheads:
10) Does the writing use visual elements (graphics, charts, tables, maps):
11) What citation format is used (MLA, APA, CBE, Chicago, or none):
12) Where does the writing state its main point:
13) What organizing strategy does the paper use:
Disciplinary evidence and argument
Some questions you may want to answer for your students or guide them to discover so they can best go about making the best case in a particular assignment in a particular field:
1) What kinds of evidence have most authority in a field (or for a particular assignment) and how is that authority determined:Disciplinary formats2) How does your discipline use primary and secondary sources:
3) How does your discipline use quantitative and/or qualitative data:
4) How are statistics used and presented; are graphs, tables, and charts expected:
5) Specifically, what kinds of textual evidence are cited ( journal articles, books, Web sites, electronic databases, for example):
6) How is cited material treated or integrated in a paper: is it set up with a signal phrase, quoted directly, summarized, paraphrased; does the text use quoted material:
7) How much evidence does it take to "make" a major point: A smaller one:
Some WIP instructors report that one of the challenges of their courses is teaching students to use the disciplinary formats, for example, how to write a formal diplomacy memorandum in a political science course, how to set up a lab report in microbiology or a case study in sociology. Again, the kinds of information you can provide for your students or send them to find should help them learn the formats and organizing principles that can serve as prompts for their writing and make it more credible. Some suggestions:Tell students what types of writing (reports, journal articles, Web documents) are common in a field. Even undergraduates should be reading the kind of writing that they'll be doing. Show students the preferred models for organizing and preferred formats for types of writing. Explain the meaning of and reasons for the parts of a format for a report such as a lab report or other document. Also part of disciplinary style: explain disciplinary expectations about placement of topic sentences, use of transitions, and special types of paragraphs. Made format guides clear and available for students' own work. This may mean offering handouts with organization or format prompts. WIP Home WIP Faculty Guide Home WIP TA Guide Home Franklin College Department of English Michelle Ballif