Freshmen estimate that they write about 25 hours each week, and most believe that they arrived on their campus with college-level writing skills fully formed.
The findings, which suggest that students’ notions about writing may not match professors’ expectations, emerged from a series of conversations between students and faculty members in composition and writing on several campuses. The conversations were organized by the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the Two-Year College English Association, and the Council of Writing Program Administrators, all professional organizations for teachers of college writing.
The effort produced what its organizers called an “impressionistic” picture of incoming college students’ expectations of and experiences with writing. The results, based on students’ self-reported behavior and mediated through their professors, are not thought to be scientifically valid. But the information, collected in the fall by 63 professors teaching 2,200 students, still provides food for thought, the organizers said. The findings also clarify many students’ assumptions about writing, which faculty members may want to shift as they adapt how they teach the subject.
“What we found really interesting is that students reported that they spent a lot of time writing,” said Linda Adler-Kassner, a professor of writing at the University of California at Santa Barbara and an author of draft recommendations based on the findings.
“They wrote in lots of places and for lots of purposes,” said Ms. Adler-Kassner, who also directs the writing program at Santa Barbara. “They’re doing more than texting. They’re really writing, and that’s great.”
Most of the faculty members said their students had told them that they spent less than half of those 25 hours writing for informal purposes. And about 20 percent of students reported that they wrote for the purposes of political or social change, including letters to policy makers, opinion pieces, scripts for videos with a social message, and online commentary.
Eighty percent of faculty members said “some,” “most,” or “all” of their students described feeling well prepared for writing in college. That result echoes recent findings from the annual Freshman Survey, produced by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, which is part of the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. Only about 15 percent of freshmen in that survey anticipated that they would need to be tutored in writing. In contrast, about half rated their writing skills above average.
Writing as Process
The writing instructors’ survey also revealed key differences between what students assume about writing and what faculty members expect, which have implications for teaching.
Three years ago, many of the same professional organizations involved in the survey staked out a scholarly consensus on the skills and intellectual attributes that students need to succeed as writers. The “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” did not prescribe a set of practices. Instead, it described the habits of mind and experiences that students should have if they are to thrive academically. They include attributes like curiosity and flexibility, habits like persistence and metacognition, and knowledge of how to write for various audiences using different conventions.
“Writing processes are not linear,” the authors of the “Framework” wrote. “Successful writers use different processes that vary over time and depend on the particular task.”
The emphasis on writing as process was not shared by students.
“We get the very strong impression from the responses that writing is basically a performance,” Ms. Adler-Kassner and her co-authors wrote in the draft recommendations. “It is as if they believe that they are expected to know everything about writing already, not to learn writing.”
Professors tend to blame the focus on standardized tests during the elementary and secondary grades for many of the frustrations they feel in their classrooms. The differing attitudes about writing are another example. Some students told their professors that writing in high school was often framed as preparation for tests. Time to develop ideas or revise prose was often seen as a luxury, the students said.
Professors of writing should encourage risk taking and failure, said Dominic F. DelliCarpini, a professor of English at York University of Pennsylvania and an author of the draft recommendations.
“It’s an almost infinitely perfectible art, and you’re always dissatisfied with it,” he said. “When students talk about being ready for college, they don’t realize they’ll continuously be learning to write.”
Changing Norms
Emphasizing the revision and continuous improvement of one’s writing reflects a change in instructional approach for many professors, the authors acknowledged.
“What we call writing really is changing in our minds as faculty,” Mr. DelliCarpini said. Writing is increasingly seen as an act that should not be limited to formal exercises like term papers, essays, or research reports.
Faculty members say the craft is practiced often in various forms, like social media and other informal contexts. They also know that writing in social media carries benefits and risks, which has been discussed for years.
In contrast, he said, “what students call writing hasn’t changed that much.”
Students also don’t see formal academic and informal personal writing as connected. Less than 20 percent of students in the survey felt that writing on social networks and other informal contexts could help them become better writers.
Faculty members have themselves to blame, said Mr. DelliCarpini. “The firewall they’ve placed between social media and academic writing has been reinforced by what we’ve said. They hear Twitter and Facebook are ruining how they write.”
Instead, he added, faculty members should talk about how the rhetorical mechanisms are similar and different.
Professors can also take steps in class to bridge their students’ informal and formal writing. They can require students to write on class blogs or wikis, use Twitter and Facebook for academic purposes, and make public presentations of their academic writing.
Writing in informal ways provides an opportunity to practice the craft, the scholars said, even if it means students are using nonacademic conventions.
“For any writer to be successful they have to learn the expectations,” said Ms. Adler-Kassner, of Santa Barbara. “No type of writing is perfect for all contexts and audiences.”
