Is writing about literature a WAC concern?
Here is discussion from WCENTER,
the national Writing Center Listserv, relevant to grading academic literary
essays:
One list member observed:
I have some instructors of 200-level literature survey courses
that are coming to me dismayed by the writing of their students. The
instructors assign essays, and when they get them, they find many, many
problems, from not adhering to MLA style guidelines to simply writing a clear
essay. It's not appropriate to run these surveys like a freshman comp class,
and yet, one cannot assume that the students have mastered the skills of
freshman English.
Another list member wrote:
My response here would be that writing instruction and an
emphasis on process can be maintained in 200-level surveys and beyond if an
instructor is willing to build (and carefully choreograph) peer-editing
sessions into the course schedule. In
this way, an instructor can both maintain that fine (and saving) balance
between giving writers access to critical readers before the "high
risk" stage, on the one hand, and relieving herself of the immense (and
artificial) burden of being the only "one who knows" how to recognize
and/or promote proficient writing.
Providing careful guidance via peer-review questions and the like, an
instructor is forced--in positive ways--both to sound her own depths about how
proficient writing might be achieved and to declare implicitly her own
evaluative criteria. This kind of
reflection and disclosure can be more enabling for student writers than simply
commenting on their rough drafts. This practice is one of those too-rare
win-wins: it is better both better pedagogy and a more merciful procedure for
the well-meaning teacher who, just the same, needs to hold off burnout.
A third member wrote:
I agree completely.
While a literature survey has to spend a certain amount of time actually
discussing the literature, there is no reason why one cannot spend two class
periods discussing "the nature of the academic literary essay," which
means talking about things like topics, organization, evidence, citing, and
style, another session talking about how to do peer evaluation (which also lets
you remind them of what you said earlier about the essay genre), and then two
or three more on peer editing. Yes,
that means "losing" five or six class hours out of the forty or so
you get for each class, but one can space these hours out over the course. If students end up learning more and writing
better, then maybe getting only five days instead of six to talk about Hamlet
or Bleak House or Lyrical Ballads is not such a bad thing.
Questions: