Writer’s Journals

Introduction

College students typically struggle with several aspects in their writing.  They often have difficulty spawning original ideas and describing them in the form of an argument; they frequently fail to use evidence effectively; they tend to summarize sources instead of synthesizing main points.  To help students overcome these difficulties in their writing and to help them prepare more thoroughly for class discussions, I require students to complete short writing assignments called Writer’s Journal sheets. 

Assignment

In preparation for nearly each day of class, students write informally for 20–30 minutes, responding to prompts I provide on the course website.  The prompts consistently ask students for the same three intellectual moves all semester long, although the content varies from prompt to prompt.  For each Writer’s Journal, prompts ask students:  1) to understand the content of the assigned text, 2) to infer meaning that is not explicit in that text, and 3) to synthesize multiple sources.  Students evaluate themselves after each class meeting for their own level of preparation and effort in responding to Writer’s Journals. To do so, they use a marking guide that I provide them and a chart to keep track of their progress. At the end of the term, I collect the chart and calculate the grade they have assigned themselves.

Objective

The first versions (example 1 and example 2) of the Writer’s Journals were typically aimed at guiding students’ reading so that they would pay attention to the concepts I wished to discuss in class and get in the habit of looking beyond a text’s literal meaning to see inferences and connections to other ideas.  Revised writer’s Journal prompts from spring 2003 (example 1a and example 2a) included these objectives but added systematic practice at synthesizing diverse texts, since this skill seemed especially difficult for students.

Results

The first version of the Writer’s Journal assignments resulted in a dramatic and welcome increase in daily student preparation.  Compared to the students in 2001, who did not write journals, students in 2002 arrived to class with thought-provoking opinions and questions about the readings, and their level of engagement was remarkably higher than the students from version one of the course.  Still, the results of classroom research in 2002 left me unsatisfied with students’ writing skills as they exited my course.  This disappointment led me to revise the Writer’s Journals for the spring 2003 version of L216 so that students would have more systematic practice with the skill of synthesis in their thinking (and thence in their writing).  The new prompts, as described above, coupled with class discussions focused on synthesis questions, were designed to help students practice the skills they would need to write effective papers.

Possible Directions for Change

Although I did not conduct formal classroom research in the spring ‘03 version of L216, I was still unsatisfied with student performance with respect to writing when students exited the course.  Accordingly, I am considering assigning fewer Writer’s Journal sheets so that students will have more time to devote to specific writing skills such as structuring solid paragraphs and incorporating evidence effectively.  I think more focused writing instruction on my part and more practice on theirs alongside the cognitive moves they must already practice for Writer’s Journals will lead to more satisfactory results in the development of writing skills in future students.