SNL Writing Boot Camps – Winter 2015

Students that need help with a project or essay can come to an SNL Writing Boot Camp at one of the campuses:

-Oak Forest & Naperville – Saturday, 2/28

-Loop – Wednesday, 3/4 & Saturday, 3/14

-O'Hare – Saturday, 3/7

For more information or to RSVP, email snlevents@depaul.edu.

Grammatical Perceptions

by Kamilah Cummings

In my research for a grammar workshop that I am developing, I read an article titled “I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why.” It was written for the Harvard Business Review by Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit. He proudly proclaims that he mandates grammar tests for all potential employees and tosses applications from people with “bad” grammar, regardless of the position.  Wiens argues that bad grammar, such as incorrect comma usage and the inability to distinguish between to and too, reflects poor attention to detail, laziness, and a steep learning curve (Wiens). In a NY Times op-ed response to Wiens’ article, esteemed linguist and professor John McWhorter, wrote “There is an extent to which scornful condemnation of “bad grammar” is one of today’s last permissible expressions of elitism” (McWhorter). As colleges increasingly move toward career preparation, faculty cannot ignore that these perceptions of grammar exist in the workplace. However, as faculty we must also acknowledge that they exist within academia as well. To prepare college students for employment, we must approach grammar as a skill that they can develop and refine without judging them for lacking it. 

To the consternation of college faculty, an increasing number of college students lack what we believe are “college-level” grammar skills. Although “good” grammar is a required element of effective academic writing, it is not essential for many careers. Thus, we see adult learners in our classrooms who might have established successful careers without “good” grammar skills. Additionally, multiple factors have resulted in an ever-decreasing emphasis on grammar in schools and society. With this being the case, we still judge people on their “good” and “bad” grammar. “We cannot help associating “bad” grammar with low intelligence, sloppiness and lack of refinement” (McWhorter). Wiens states, “I have a “zero tolerance approach” to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid” (Wiens).

I have certainly been guilty of making my own judgments about grammar. My mother was a grammar queen, making sure my siblings and I were grammatically correct at all times. In addition to home instruction, I attended a grade school where we had amazing language arts classes and teachers. However, I know that this was not and is not everyone’s experience. As I provide feedback on student writing, I know that I must consciously acknowledge and assess my own attitudes regarding grammar so that I do not make students feel “stupid” or imply that they are “lazy” or “unrefined” for not knowing grammar that they might not have ever been taught or been required to use in the last 20 years.

Author Wes Moore recently stated that the three main reasons students leave college in their first year are finances, academic preparedness, and feeling unwelcomed. I think that in some cases faculty perceptions tied to grammar might link the two latter reasons. For example, I have a student who previously confessed to me that writing is her “biggest challenge.” Despite holding a senior-level position at a major organization, she said that she has avoided writing at work because she is so insecure about her writing. She said that she is currently taking a writing course with me because she appreciated that my prior writing feedback (in a non-writing course) did not make her feel stupid. She said that she had actually considered dropping out in a previous term because her writing feedback made her feel as if something was wrong with her for not knowing certain things.

After reading her work, my assessment was that she is actually a good writer. She has no problem with generating ideas, supporting her ideas, or thinking critically. She does, however, have some issues with grammar and sentence structure that I think can be easily addressed. As Michelle Navarre Cleary offers in the article, “The Wrong Way to Teach Grammar,” “Researcher Marcia Hurlow has shown that many errors “disappear” from student writing when students focus on their ideas and stop “trying to ‘sound correct’” (Cleary).

Further dispelling the myth that grammar and ability are linked, research has shown that students who lack “good” grammar can improve grammar through writing without requiring as much formal grammar instruction as one might think. “We know that grammar instruction that works includes teaching students strategies for revising and editing, providing targeted lessons that students immediately apply to their own writing . . .” (Cleary). This has certainly been the case with my student whose revisions demonstrate her ability to apply what she is learning to improve her grammar. College classrooms present the perfect opportunity for students to write to get it, well, right. As faculty, we have to be more aware of our own perceptions of grammar and how they translate into the feedback that we give students.

I admit that I still cringe when I see grammatical errors (including my own) in professional and personal written communication. However, I think that by removing expectations and judgments about students based on grammar, faculty can help students improve grammar in a way that encourages their assets rather than focuses on their deficits. We want to instruct and improve rather than interrogate and vilify students who lack the grammar skills we expect them to have by the time they enter college.  I compare it to the gym. The gym isn’t a place where only fit people go to maintain their well-toned bodies. It is also a place for people who want to develop well-toned bodies. Likewise, the college classroom should not be a place only for people with “good” grammar. It should be a place for people who want to improve their “bad” grammar as well.

Works Cited

Cleary, Michelle Navarre. The Wrong Way to Teach Grammar. 25 February 2014. 1 December 2014 <http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/the-wrong-way-to-teach-grammar/284014/>.

McWhorter, John. Good Applicants with Bad Grammar. 13 August 2012. 27 January 2015 <http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/08/13/is-our-children-learning-enough-grammar-to-get-hired/good-applicants-with-bad-grammar>.

Wiens, Kyle. I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why. July 20 2012. 27 January 2015 <https://hbr.org/2012/07/i-wont-hire-people-who-use-poo>.

Open Educational Resources

Please check out the Open Educational Resources website, which provides free tools and support for post-secondary faculty: https://www.oercommons.org/browse/edu_level/post-secondary 

Take advantage of Writing Center Services

As you are preparing for your winter term, please take advantage of the Writing Center services for you and your students! Click here for more information.

SNL faculty discuss supporting student writers across the SNL curriculum

When the SNL writing faculty gathered this past October for our semi-annual meeting, we discussed the points in the SNL curriculum where students do the most writing or where their writing is assessed more heavily than at other points. To deepen a conversation of how to help SNL students become better writers and succeed in the program and beyond, we asked faculty who teach SNL's Independent Learning Seminar, Research Seminar, and Advanced Project to join us and contribute their thoughts about what writing looks like and where students need support. Below are some highlights of that conversation.

Not surprisingly, we agreed that the "path" for SNL students when it comes to becoming a better writer is not always the same. Some students enter with lots of professional writing experience but little knowledge of what it means to do academic research or why research matters when students are seasoned experts in their field. Others may come straight from a community college with a great sense of what a traditional academic essay should look like, but are not comfortable "writing from experience" or "writing to demonstrate competence". Others come to us with extreme anxiety about writing in general; the idea of writing an essay or a professional letter makes them cringe. There are, of course, students who are some combination of these. Although, the ideal path is not the same, we agreed that it would be useful to have students take a writing class early on in their SNL career. Discussing the major writing assignments and the conventions of academic writing earlier will afford plenty of time for students, their mentors, and faculty to wrestle with assumptions, contradictions, and requirements when it comes to writing at SNL. This early conversation gives students the opportunity to learn SNL's language (discourse), navigate the major writing assignments they will encounter, and begin to think about the best path for them. 

Another question raised was, "What are the priorities with regard to writing at SNL in general?" Based on the overview provided for us by the ILS, RS, and AP faculty, the SNL curriculum prioritizes insightful responses to the assignments within the conventions of the genre (ILP, Research Proposal, Artifact/Analyis, etc.). However, "error-free" writing is a very, very close runner-up. In alignment with this, SNL writing faculty explained how they prioritize global issues like thesis development, paragraph focus and organization, writing as a process, conducting research, and integrating sources in our two main writing courses (LL140 and LL260), and a great deal of time is spent on these in class, in online exercises and discussion, and through instructor feedback on drafts. Sentence-level issues like grammar and spelling are also covered in the two writing courses through one-on-one conversations, individualized feedback, and in-class activities.

However, as is true for anyone trying to improve their writing, students need more practice with all of these writing concepts than a 10-week course can afford. As a result, SNL writing instructors give students the tools to address their own grammar needs over time and provide them as well as other SNL faculty with information about resources for ongoing writing support, including the Writing Center tutors and writing groups, online self-directed activities, the SNL Writing Guide, and the Purdue Online Writing Lab. The most common issue is that students pass their writing course but then forget about these resources or the processes for research and effective academic writing because there is too long of a hiatus before they need to use them again. Another issue is that their ongoing development as writers is not directly emphasized again in the curriculum until they get to Research Seminar, where the expectation for writing proficiency is sometimes near a graduate-student level or sometimes heavily social-science oriented, which may be foreign to students who are not interested in pursuing a research-oriented path. The SNL writing faculty agreed that exploring some of the various approaches to these SNL genres is key, they also felt that a continued dialogue about these genres and types of writing throughout the curriculum is necessary. They felt that if all SNL faculty members play a role in reminding students of the available writing-related resources and support them in their ongoing development throughout their tenure at SNL, even if only via one-on-one feedback on an essay or a brief discussion in class, the students are more likely to excel and further develop their writing competence.

 While these were just a couple of the points we covered in the meeting, they are foundational concepts that we agreed to continue monitoring and discussing when it comes to adult learning, supporting SNL students in becoming better writers, and helping each student succeed in navigating academic discourse and in a competence-based curriculum that is writing-intensive. We plan to continue this conversation on a regular basis to consider additional ways each person in the SNL community can meet students where they are and continue providing resources for success. SNL Writing also will continue to provide support for SNL faculty in working with SNL students on their writing through our resources such as Writing Fellows and the Teaching with Writing professional development course, the SNL Faculty Support: Writing Resources website, the SNL Writing News blog, and the SNL Writing Rubric for Papers and Essays.

Encourage students to submit to the SNL Writing Showcase

As the term comes to a close, students should consider submitting their excellent final papers, portfolios, or other writing projects to the SNL Writing Showcase. Entries are welcome through April 1, 2015. More details are here:
https://snlapps.depaul.edu/writing/WritingShowcase.html

The 2014 Month of Writing Challenge: The Blank Page as an Opportunity for Revision

by Steffanie Triller Fry

During this 2014 Month of Writing Challenge, I’ve spent much of my time penning something my Creative Writing MFA program calls a “craft essay.” It’s an essay of 5,000+ words that analyzes the way a writer performs a particular aspect of her craft. 

But it’s not the craft in the essay that I’ve been struggling with this month; it’s the craft of the essay. I labored over the first draft: I revised over and over, printing it out to scribble handwritten notes over the entire document, rewriting my introduction, only to have my instructor come back with this: “What’s the original angle / approach of this essay? Does its author have her own ideas, or is she only going to call forth old chestnuts? Trust yourself. Use your own expertise.”

But I did! I thought. I drew together the ideas of numerous experts and, I thought, made some interesting and enlightening connections between their ideas. What was missing?

Then, about a week later, one of the students in the Write Now class gave his required “Pep Talk,” a 500 word reflection on how to effectively write at least 25,000 words in one month. His talk included the following message: 

“We can’t always pick our topicsand genres of writing outside of this class, but we can try personalizing everypaper or report by adding ourselves to actually become part of the story,instead of just telling it.” 

Oh, I thought. That's what was missing from my essay: Me. In trying to communicate my analysis in my essay, I failed to communicate even my main message. My writing became overly academic. 

So the spirit of the Month of Writing, I set my essay aside. I opened Microsoft Word and clicked open a blank document. I wrote my introduction again. I decided it was still too impersonal. I opened another blank document. I tried again. I thought of my daughter’s favorite toy: a set of stackable rings. I had them, every kid’s had them. The rings fit onto a cone-shaped tower. The blue goes on the bottom, then the yellow, green, orange, and red. When she first received the toy, my daughter loved the red ring: it’s also a rattle. She would dump all of the rings off the cone, and then put just the red one on. Of course, then none of the other rings would fit. She’d get frustrated. This is what I was trying to do with my essay: jump to the top ring without building the foundation of blue, yellow, green, and orange for my reader. 

As the author of my essay, I need to build that foundation of blue, yellow, green, and orange. Now in my final draft, I use a short personal narrative about my daughter (much like the one in the previous paragraph) to illustrate the main idea of the essay. I state my purpose briefly but completely, and I even include an example of a time that I attempted to use an object to evoke emotion in a short story, and failed. This time, as I worked on what felt like the 500^th draft, I felt like I was building and supporting my own idea. I had found my expertise in the topic. I appreciate the Month of Writing for giving me the courage to turn to the blank page, and to turn to it again. Without the blank page, I might never have found myself in this essay.

We would do well to remind our students and ourselves that we have a place not only to craft our writing, but to write about ourselves as part of our craft. As my student said, it’s not enough to tell the story. We need to become the story. Next year, the School for New Learning will partner with the University Center for Writing-based Learning to hold the 2015 DePaul University Month of Writing Challenge. Encourage your students to participate. Offer extra credit. Participate yourself! The Month of Writing can be a wonderful time to extend the invitation of the blank page, and to invite students to bring themselves to that page.

And, if you’re interested in the complete text of my student’s talk above, or to read more Month of Writing Pep Talks written by SNL students attempting the Month of Writing Challenge, see the Pep Talks page of the Month of Writing website.