Writing ability is defined not merely as students’ control over surface textual features (grammar, mechanics, format, usage). It also involves their ability to adjust writing to the demands of audiences, to organize it, to invest it with critical thought, to utilize argumentation and presentation, and to produce documents that fulfill the expectations of both general and discipline-specific audiences. These are all attributes of the approaches to writing that we hope WI faculty instill in their students.
Writing ability is not learned once and then applied formulaically in all new situations. Writers learn their craft by learning a series of specialized principles and smaller abilities that students acquire and practice over long periods of time in a wide variety of situations. While some of these principles and abilities can be developed in first-year college writing classes, several others are discipline-specific and genre-specific.
First-year writing courses cannot, nor are they designed to, achieve all of these goals. Therefore, after being introduced to the general principles of academic writing in these courses, students must learn to write in disciplinary settings. University faculty members are uniquely qualified to help acquaint students with various means by which writers in their field achieve their ends. This, in turn, can help students understand that writing is a discursive process that requires students to invest time and energy in writing practice. Furthermore, writing in the disciplines is a means by which students learn more about the content in their disciplines. That is, writing about content is inseparable from learning in the ways that members of disciplines think, argue, and research.
Ultimately, students also learn to write by practicing and receiving feedback on their efforts. Peer review can provide writers with input from other writers engaged in the same writing tasks as they are. Faculty comments on documents (via written comments and/or student conferences) also provide students with invaluable feedback during the drafting and revision process.
Improving writing instruction at Tarleton State University means an increase in the amount of writing students do, by enlarging the number of contexts in which they write, and by making sure that writing is assigned and evaluated in courses beyond first-year writing.