When I first began teaching philosophy, I had a standard comment on assignments for students whose writing was unclear:
While you understand the content, you are having trouble getting down on paper what you know. Note the areas that I marked as
In my experience, most students have difficulty translating their ideas to acceptable prose. It’s my belief that it’s the responsibility of every professor—including mathematics professors—to try to enhance the writing abilities of their students. Writing is a fundamental skill, one common to all disciplines. Many
How many of us teachers have had this experience? You spend an afternoon reading student work and providing detailed feedback. You return the work convinced that your notes will help students deepen their learning and meet the course objectives. Then you see students glancing at
The main assignment is a traditional research paper, in this case one for a psychology research methods course. Drafts of each of the paper’s four main sections are due separately and returned with teacher feedback. The final version of the paper is submitted with a
“Good job”
“Vague”
“Grammar”
Do they look familiar? Students are used to getting the bulk of their feedback as these sorts of “margin comments” running down the side of their papers. Unfortunately, such comments are of almost no value to the student, because he or
When final paper time looms, students become increasingly anxious about the grammatical errors they believe lurk in their writing. That belief is so strong it can undermine their drafts. Even worse, students have come to expect that their professors will point out errors—and make corrections—that
I mainly teach undergraduate writing and research methods classes and wanted to share my experiences with mind mapping, also referred to as concept mapping. I’ve found that using it can significantly improve student papers. It’s an excellent innovation that requires student writers to visualize how
Thanks to the Writing-Across-the-Curriculum movement we are having our students write more and we’re using a wider range of writing assignments. Right?
If that’s what you’re doing, it’s consistent with the actions of faculty teaching undergraduate sociology courses; as documented by an analysis of 405
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