Krista Sarraf: Hello i'm Dr Krista Speicher Sarraf, and today i'll be talking to you about helping students to develop their writing this presentation was developed by SpeakWrite which is an initiative of the Eberly college of arts and sciences at West Virginia university.
Krista Sarraf: So we're going to talk about a couple of different common scenarios where students might be struggling to develop their writing some techniques that you can use to help students develop their writing and then some resources as well.
Krista Sarraf: I also wanted to share that whenever your students are having trouble developing their writing you might consider sending them to the writing studio.
Krista Sarraf: So the writing studio has both virtual and in person appointments. The tutors are from a range of different backgrounds across the university, and they're trained to tutor students in writing.
Krista Sarraf: And we've got on the screen here the hours, as well as instructions for students about how to make appointments.
Krista Sarraf: Okay, so scenario number one: the blank page. So you've probably experienced this before, where a student has received a new writing assignment and doesn't know what to write so they're staring down the blank page.
Krista Sarraf: Another common scenario is counting every word. So in this scenario, a student has received a new writing assignment and is struggling to come up with ideas.
Krista Sarraf: The paper needs about 350 words but currently the student has only 75 words, there are a lot of main points there, but no examples to support the main point. As an instructor trying to help your students with writing What do you do?
Krista Sarraf: Well let's look at some of the causes for underdeveloped writing. One cause is writing anxiety. In this situation students might be anxious about the writing.
Krista Sarraf: If they're really confused about what to write encourage them to come talk to you, you know just have a
Krista Sarraf: policy where you're willing to answer questions about your assignments because, even if you think you're being clear sometimes students just
Krista Sarraf: They just need to talk out what you're looking for you can also refer your students to the writing studio research has demonstrated that writing Center visits reduce student stress so that might be something to consider if you have a student who's really kind of anxious about writing.
Krista Sarraf: Some students might be experiencing anxiety because they're distracted. In this case, you might suggest to students just in class with a you know, an discussion about writing anxiety say that it might help to disable the Internet
Krista Sarraf: On their computer, setting a timer to force themselves to write, taking a break if they're stressed, and asking for help.
Krista Sarraf: And then, also a lot of times students are under the impression that, if they make a single mistake, like a misplaced comma
Krista Sarraf: or something like that that they'll have get points off, and we in SpeakWrite recommend that you use a more holistic way of grading, and we're happy to talk to you about how to approach grading from an equitable standpoint.
Krista Sarraf: But you might communicate to students that when they're drafting they're writing don't worry about making mistakes; they can always check them later and correct them.
Krista Sarraf: So I want you to go ahead and you can pause the video or just think to yourself that whenever students get stuck getting started -- again, you might have experienced this when a student comes to office hours and they just don't know how to start writing.
Krista Sarraf: or they turn in a really underdeveloped paper, what do you typically do to help students get unstuck? So think about some of the strategies that you currently use.
Krista Sarraf: So i'm going to share a couple of different techniques, one would be helping students understand the assignment, the other is coming up with ideas )(what we call invention), outlining, question based idea development, and paragraphing
Krista Sarraf: So the pact acronym is really useful packed is an acronym that was developed through the SpeakWrite program and it stands for purpose audience conventions and trouble.
Krista Sarraf: And what you might do is put this this logo on your different assignment sheets and then have a section that explains each so.
Krista Sarraf: Tell students what you want to have happen with their writing so, for example, if they're writing a letter to the editor.
Krista Sarraf: Maybe it's to get some change made on campus who's the audience who's going to read the text, what are the Conventions? So tell students
Krista Sarraf: The page length and what type of citation style you want them to use and then have students think of any trouble spots areas that could cause problems or get in the way of their goals.
Krista Sarraf: You can first include this on your assignment sheets, but then also if students have questions about an assignment, or when you introduce an assignment in class
Krista Sarraf: have students in small groups think through these questions so look at the assignment sheet you gave them and come up with answers to these questions, have students come up with those answers to make sure that they really understand the assignment.
Krista Sarraf: So here's an example of an assignment and we're not going to read through it.
Krista Sarraf: I'm just going to kind of walk you through it and you're welcome to pause the screen at any time, pause the video to look more closely.
Krista Sarraf: But this is a history assignment and the Professor wants an essay comparing India's participation in World War one in World War Two and the Professor has listed several different questions that people, students can answer in their writing.
Krista Sarraf: So I would ask students in your class to annotate the assignment so have them underline and highlight key words so, for example, we've highlighted compare, which is the purpose of the essay is comparison.
Krista Sarraf: And then we've underlined, some of these questions, because this gives students content.
Krista Sarraf: So students might answer the PACT questions by saying that the purpose is to make an argument about how World War one and World War Two affected India.
Krista Sarraf: The audience is the professor and others history scholars. Conventions: the Professor said to write an essay so students might have a sense of what essays look like; they have paragraphs, and you know paragraphs, made up of multiple sentences, and they usually have evidence and support.
Krista Sarraf: And then trouble so have students come up with some questions and things that they're concerned about and then work through those with students.
Krista Sarraf: You might then show students a brainstorming table like this, so in this table we've just taken the main questions that the Professor wants students to answer.
Krista Sarraf: And we've constructed kind of a table where they can generate ideas about both World War one and World War Two and then notice the order.
Krista Sarraf: I recommend that you tell students to just start with the question that they think is easiest to them because it's going to give them confidence to start writing if they start with kind of the low hanging fruit.
Krista Sarraf: Then you might ask students to brainstorm using free writing. So free writing involves forcing yourself to write openly and continuously for five to 10 minutes.
Krista Sarraf: Even if the ideas don't work for the paper, free writing is like a warm up; it stimulates the part of the brain that does the work of writing, so you might encourage students to free right if they're having trouble coming with ideas.
Krista Sarraf: Then you might encourage them to move from free writing to an outline so here, you can see that this is the free write that the student came up with, and again pause if you'd like to look at it more closely.
Krista Sarraf: And then they're going to just move their ideas into the table so now they have some notion of what their argument is how they're comparing the two wars and the effect on Indian on India.
Krista Sarraf: And then they just take it turn into an outline, so this is where we said earlier, sometimes students have a bunch of ideas, but they don't have paragraphs, with support.
Krista Sarraf: So let's say here we've got in the third row down how to nationalist attitudes different why and we've got these claims about it, but the student
Krista Sarraf: really just has a main point so far; they don't have topics sentences, a body, or a conclusion, so you might ask students to create an outline to show students that having a main point doesn't mean they have a paragraph; yet they need to fill out those paragraphs.
Krista Sarraf: On this screen, we have a bunch of different ideas of different ways that you can encourage students to develop their body paragraphs.
Krista Sarraf: So I would teach students that they can use examples and illustrations, they could define key terms compare and contrast,
Krista Sarraf: analyze the topic, offer a chronology of events. i'm not reading through all of these, but essentially you have on the screen, the topic sentence
Krista Sarraf: And then students can kind of pick what makes most sense in terms of how to fill up their body paragraphs and then you transition to the next paragraph.
Krista Sarraf: So what we've done is just looked at some of the causes for writing anxiety some ways that students can develop their ideas using free writing, a graphic organizer, and an outline.
Krista Sarraf: As well as using PACT to analyze the assignment.
Krista Sarraf: Here we have some different resources that you can point your students to So if you go to the SpeakWrite website you'll see lots of different resources that you can share with your students.
Krista Sarraf: Again, the writing studio, if your students come into the physical studio they can find different handouts on the resource wall.
Krista Sarraf: If you also have your students work with a peer tutor at the writing studio the tutor can fill out a visit log so that you have evidence that the student visited if you want to give out extra credit.
Krista Sarraf: And then also we've linked to the OWL Purdue which has just various handouts on things like tackling writing anxiety and developing paragraphs.
Krista Sarraf: So I hope this has been helpful here again is information to point your students to the writing studio and if you have any questions, please, please let us know. Thank you so much.