College Writing Program

Every year in August, on the Wednesday before classes, the Director of College Writing offers a one-day workshop for faculty scheduled to teach "W" classes in the coming year. The workshop is not required, but all first-time "W" instructors (except graduate teaching fellows, who are required to attend separate workshops) are automatically invited, and all new "W" instructors are strongly encouraged to attend. For information about this year's workshop, including how to reserve a spot, contact Dori Mikus, the program secretary, during the school year; during summer call the English Department: 615-322-2276. Consult the link below for materials available online.

The Annual Faculty Workshop on the teaching of writing on Wednesday, August 18, in the Duncan Library, Benson Hall, third floor begins around 9:15 a.m. A breakfast snack will be provided; we'll start at 9:30 and you'll be out by 3:30 at the latest. Compensation for attending the workshop will be $125. The workshop focus this year will be on designing a sequence of writing assignments. As preparation, I would like you to do a little reading and a little writing.

I’d like you to read David Bartholomae’s influential essay, "Inventing the University," which argues that student writing should be designed to initiate students into specific kinds of disciplinary thinking. Other schools of thought have contested this approach, arguing that students should not be encouraged to imitate us; rather, they should be learning transferable skills or how to express themselves.

I would also like you to bring in four (4) copies of your "W" syllabus. When designing a syllabus, you should always begin with the writing assignments before slotting in the reading. So if you are among that tiny percentage of instructors who writes the syllabus the day before classes begin, I would like you at the very least to come in with your sequence of writing assignments. Questions to ask yourself: given the kind of writing you want students to be able to produce at the end of the semester, what kind should they begin with? Can the assignments build on one another? When should revisions be required? When should individual conferences be slotted in? As food for thought I’ve included here a daunting assignment sequence raisonné produced out of a Cornell philosophy class. You should know that it was written after the fact as part of a prize submission, so the account rises to a level of self-consciousness and self-congratulation I wouldn’t expect to find in the context of our pre-semester workshop. It does, however, model some impressive thinking about how to put a writing course together. To open up your sense of the range of possible writing assignments, I also recommend that you read an online memo, Types of Formal Writing Assignments, which is linked to the Faculty page on the CWP website: http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/cwp. I encourage you to look through other materials there as well, especially the Course Design memo and the Writing Guidelines handouts.

Finally, I’ve also included three student essays written in a section of History 115W, along with the assignment sheet. Each is a compare and contrast essay, a mode of analysis students need to master. Please familiarize yourself with the essays as preparation for our work on paper response during the workshop. You need not mark up or grade the papers. (For an excellent guide to writing comparative analyses, see http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/CompAnalysis.html

We’ll also leave plenty of time to discuss any specific concerns you might have about the teaching of writing. Feel free to contact me with any questions: mark.wollaeger@vanderbilt.edu.