1. Introduction

My thesis examines faculty attitudes towards concerns they see happening in student

writing at Northwest Missouri State University. The purpose of this research is to open up the

conversation about the teaching of writing happening at Northwest and how non-composition

faculty’s concerns enter into the conversation about our writing program. This comes from

concerns that non-composition faculty have expressed that students simply don’t seem to know

how to write. Rather than treat this as a push against the writing program, my research invited

non-composition faculty to expand on those concerns and examine where those concerns fit in

with our current approach to teaching writing.

Northwest is a small, regional university located in Maryville, Missouri which

emphasizes career-oriented experience within the curriculum through both major-based

coursework and the general education curriculum. My research is specifically concerned with

Northwest’s writing program within the general education curriculum. This program’s

composition sequence is comprised of three courses: Composition 1: Academic Literacies

(Composition 111), Composition 2: Writing as Engagement (Composition 112), and Accelerated

Composition (Composition 115). Composition 1 and 2 are the core courses which most students

take during their undergraduate careers.

I interviewed Dr. Robin Gallaher, the composition coordinator for Northwest about the

history of the general education writing sequence as well as its goals, specifically where

Composition 1 and 2 are concerned. Dr. Gallaher outlined the recent history of the composition

program at Northwest, stating that, until seven years ago when Northwest transitioned its

program, they had an ambiguous Composition 1 course which was supposed to get students

acquainted with the method of writing an essay and possibly some narrative work. By the end of

Composition 1, students were supposed to be able to synthesize and respond to sources and

generate citations. Composition 2 built on the idea of the research paper. Some faculty would

assign smaller papers which eventually culminated into a larger research paper while other

faculty assigned a semester long project which included steps such as generating an annotated

bibliography and performing more intensive research tasks (Gallaher). Ultimately students

needed to be able to generate a research paper regardless of which side of the course design they

fell on. However, Dr. Gallaher went on to say that, around the time the scholarship began

critically discussing the role of the essay in composition, the program at Northwest recognized it

was time for a change.

At the time, the scholarship surrounding this conversation began pushing back against

how Composition departments were conceptualizing the research essay. This was coupled with

the dissatisfaction on the faculty’s end of how the courses were designed, both in terms of the

labors issues involved in teaching composition and the concerns in the scholarship concerning

the “English department conceptualization of the essay” as Dr. Gallaher put it. In turn, the

research at the time was showing that the essay was a theoretical piece of writing which didn’t

manifest itself in that same manner into other disciplines. This meant that what students were

being taught to, such as writing thesis statements and adhering to the MLA style of writing

weren’t being translated to other disciplines. Composition faculty began to feel like that what

was happening in the class “…wasn’t [considered] writing” (Gallaher). This led to a series of

meetings, workshops, and other crowdsourcing on Dr. Gallaher’s part meant to redefine how the

composition curriculum approached the teaching of writing. The result was Composition 1:

Academic Literacies and Composition 2: Writing as Engagement.

When Composition faculty were asked they felt students needed to know about writing,

they responded with writing “is a fundamental means of engaging with the world around us and

defining the world around us” (Gallaher). The goal of the new Composition 1 course is to

conceptualize writing and literacy as they occur throughout the university, not just in subsets of

Composition. However, as Dr. Gallaher stated, Composition 1 often became focused towards

academic literacy within literary studies. Composition 2: Writing as Engagement focuses on

getting students to engage writing as an act of participation in the world, whether it be within the

classroom or in the student’s community (Gallaher) using different forms of media, audiences,

and purpose with an underlying rhetorical focus. Because composition 1 and 2 are general

education courses, faculty began perceiving the composition courses as service courses where

the design and goals of the course were tailored to fix the writing of students and place them on

an equal playing field as far as writing and literacy were concerned, a notion which was

generated by the idea, in the literature surrounding composition practices, (Gallaher). The

Composition department at Northwest then made a decision to breakdown the service mandate

defined in the literature into more finite pieces, address the idea of ‘fixing’ student writing, and

define what the best service to provide to these students would be since preparing each student

for every course beyond the composition classroom is an impossible job.

The new service mandate, as defined by the Composition department at Northwest,

became preparing students to “negotiate the new territories of writing” that students would

experience after leaving the composition classroom (Gallaher). Most of this new service mandate

became isolated to Composition 1. Composition 1 works to expose students to a range of ideas

of why we write in an educational setting, what concerns other disciplines may express in an

educational setting, and the role of writing as it pertains to learning (Gallaher). Composition 2:

Writing as Engagement became focused on getting students to learn how to write beyond the

university for different audiences and in different genres. This meant asking students to engage

with an idea or subject of a project over a longer period of time (Gallaher). Students are asked to

work beyond the genre of the academic essay and with different types of media. This, in turn,

pushed students to consider their audience and rhetorical purpose and strategies when creating

pieces for the course (Gallaher).

Since the 1970s, composition practices have been theorized as process-oriented practices,

meaning that when writing is being taught the students’ internal process of putting their ideas

into writing needs to be the focus of consideration. Dr. Gallaher stated that the composition

program is not a process-oriented curriculum; while it houses all of the components of a process

pedagogy, it is more focused on rhetoric. Dr. Gallaher talked about how process-oriented

curriculums are focused on students recognizing how they function in different tasks,

understanding invention strategies and goal-work, and being aware of how they modify their

approaches to accomplishing different goals. While Dr. Gallaher noted that process is absolutely

a part of the curriculum and important to the teaching of writing at Northwest, she stated that the

curriculum is not rooted in process (Gallaher). Rather, Northwest’s writing curriculum is focused

on ensuring that students are rhetorically sound and flexible and are able to contribute to the

classroom and their field in a meaningful way. In other words, they should be able to go into a

new writing context and perform writing as needed. This means that students, after taking

composition, should be able to build on their writing skills within their major-based coursework

to create a set of skills that is acceptable in their field.

This study focuses on interviews performed with nine different faculty members across

eight different disciplines with composition being excluded. Each interviewee was asked to

discuss the specific concerns they see happening in student writing as well as discuss other

thoughts they have surrounding the topic. The research questions going in these interviews

included: What types of concerns will faculty identify? Do faculty see these concerns as being a

product of the writing program or something which students have cultivated for themselves? Are

there any identifiable solutions for these concerns that the non-composition faculty feel are

viable? By answering these questions, we can reassess the conversation we have about teaching

writing and make suggestions for how to approach helping students in addressing these concerns.

2. Literature Review

The literature surrounding this research discusses the history of process pedagogy and

what it works to accomplish, critiques of process pedagogy, and the importance of including

grammatical and mechanical instruction in the teaching of writing. Each of these sections helps

fill out a portrait of the conversation surrounding composition practices and some of the

pushback that the conversation has received. This also helps us place Northwest’s writing

program within the conversation and how we might look to incorporate other practices into the

program to address the concerns of non-composition faculty.

2.1 Theoretical Framework of Current Pedagogy

This section examines the emergence of process pedagogy as a dominant pedagogy

within writing curricula. While Northwest’s writing program is not process-centric, it is still

important to consider process pedagogy because it acts as a cornerstone for considerations given

to developing composition practices. Process goes hand-in-hand with helping students develop

cognition of their rhetorical choices and purpose and helps guide students’ rhetorical growth.

Process directs instructors towards emphasizing the student’s journey towards discovery of how

they write, not what they produce on that journey. What the student writes should be a product of

their discovery of their writing process, not a prescriptive form generated by prescriptive rules.

This led the pedagogical conversation towards questioning how students write, what processes

and sub-processes do students perform in order to accomplish writing, and the cognizance

involved in these sub/processes.

“Process Pedagogy and Its Legacy” provides Chris Anson’s narrative account of his

journey of discover towards finding process pedagogy and what that transition looked like for

him as a Teaching Assistant. As Anson discusses his discovery of process pedagogy, he outlines

what his approach was beforehand in teaching, stating it was a retrograde approach that which

was intellectually bankrupt and devoid of creative engagement (212-213). He came to realize

that no matter how much he simply lectured and provided feedback, Anson’s students weren’t

engaging with the material. After receiving a TAship and position in a doctoral program at

Indiana University, Anson found that this approach was less-than-ideal. As he became exposed

to the new literature on the writing process he notes that he was feeling “transformed” by the

exposure (214). He noted, in regards to the paradigm shift, that the (then) current pedagogy was

grounded in product-based approaches and not concerned about the acquisition of writing skills.

This was due, in part, to the fact that students seemed to be missing crucial elements of their

writing such as grammatical skills, punctuation, and style. These lessons were then applied to

prescriptive essays, or essays which asked students to fill in different components of the genre,

where students were expected to apply them (215). Anson goes on to discuss how it became

necessary to not just identify concerns happening in student writing, but why there were

occurring. He also notes that students needed to be allowed to find their own language and ideas

in their writing by navigating the subject through multiple drafts (217). This led to a movement

away from writing being viewed as a linguistic product and rather towards a sum of the creative

and complex processes used to create a draft or piece of writing (218).

Janet Emig’s year monograph The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders provided a

foundation for understanding writing as process. Emig’s study consisted of four different

meetings where Emig provided the participants with different stimuli (discussed further below)

and recorded the participants’ process in addressing the stimuli. Emig defines the schema of

writing performed, especially by these students, as expressive which becomes broken down as

either reflexive or extensive depending on the writer’s relationship with the field of discourse

(37). This relationship is affected by the stimulus (assignment) and different factors within the

stimulus such as audience, registers, linguistic formulation, and more (38). Emig found several

different significant results. The first deals with the context of the writing. The context of the

writing provides the interveners and interventions (those who would potentially interrupt or

dictate the process) as well as how the writing is sponsored (by either self or school) (91). She

also notes that when students perform pre-writing, this stage of the process lasts much longer in

self-sponsored writing (92). This sentiment echoes throughout the rest of Emig’s findings, that

students take less time to consider their process and approach to writing when they are asked to

generate a product for school-sponsored writing. Students are also more willing to revise and edit

self-sponsored writing because it is treated as a personal artifact and not a product (92-93).

Carl Bereiter’s chapter “Development in Writing” works to put into dialogue the

quantitative growth and development of student writing with an applied cognitive-development

framework. He starts off by noting that written and spoken Composition exist in different

modalities and that written Composition adheres to a list of conventions which are not pertinent

in spoken Composition. Bereiter also notes that because the written language is subject to the

capacity of being shaped and reshaped constantly it is also subject to the development of the

writer’s craftsmanship and ability to produce complex products (74-75). Bereiter goes on to

discuss the difference between mature and immature writers, noting that immature writers often

will shrink a task to a manageable quantity and try to fit it into their writing capacities whereas

mature writers will make use of scaffolding scheme in order to accomplish a written task (78).

This can be related to the writer’s specific knowledge of the genre they’re being asked to write

in. Writers who are unfamiliar with a given genre will lack the ability to translate and transform

information into an appropriate form and be unable to automatize certain lower order tasks.

Mature writers should be able to automatize lower order tasks and directly apply them to a given

writing assignment without hesitation (79-82). This is important in regards to process pedagogy

because it highlights that some students, while they are able to write and understand the

fundamentals of an assignment, do not understand their own process or critical application of

knowledge. These students lack an understanding of their rhetorical role in the act of writing.

Linda Flower and John Hayes, in their article “A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing”

outline what is considered one of the cornerstone approaches to the writing process. Flower and

Hayes’ model emphasizes the writing processes’ recursive nature as well as the changes, goal-

setting, and knowledge gaining which are a part of that process. They set four key points which

guide their model. They essentially come down to stating that the writing process is an organic

entity which requires writers to understand themselves and their own thought processes (367).

Flower and Hayes note that the most important element of writing, which occurs at the beginning

stages of writing, is the rhetorical problem which writers are asked to address. When working

with the provided rhetorical problem, writers must consider their role or place in the rhetorical

problem, the intended audience, as well as their goals and sub-goals for accomplishing their task.

Writers who can manage each of these elements are those labeled as successful (369). However,

many writers reduce these steps into smaller, simpler steps which become more manageable for

them. This causes writers to only fulfill portions of their tasks which they view as accessible or

fulfilling to them. In turn this causes writers to lose control or influence over their work and as a

result those writers exhibit poor writing skills. One of the other key elements in the writing

process that Flower and Hayes discuss is the writer’s long-term knowledge. When a writer is

given a prompt or rhetorical problem, it’s their long-term memory which provides them with the

cues needed to access their internalized knowledge of the prompt or problem. If the writer has

difficulty making sense of this knowledge then they are only able to present that information as

fragmented and incomplete (372). This is also influenced by the textual and linguistic decisions

that the writer makes. This further dictates, ultimately, how the writer reaches their intended

audience and controls their writing process (372, 380). Flower and Hayes, in performing this

research, were able to concretely identify writing as a system comprised of smaller, complex

processes rather than an act of creating a product. They also fleshed out students’ roles in the

process of writing and what students bring to the act when they compose writing.

2.2 Critiques of Current Pedagogy and Practice

While a robust body of research shows the benefits of process pedagogy for developing

writing skills, critiques and challenges to its tenets and its outcomes have also emerged. This

section highlights gaps in process pedagogy and puts into dialogue why those gaps are essential

to the writing process despite them having roots in the product side of the pedagogy.

Vivian Zamel, in her article “Responding to Student Writing”, offers a critique of the

current system which instructors use to provide feedback on student writing. In discussing the

effects of teacher feedback on L1 students, Zamel notes that teacher feedback tends to distract

students from their writing process and forces them to revise their writing in a way which suits

the teacher’s desires, not the students intended outcome (80). This may come as a result of

teachers basing their expectations and feedback on what ideal texts in the field look like. This

devalues the student’s writing process and states that their work is only a product. Further, Zamel

claims that when teachers provide feedback on mechanical or grammatical concerns, they’re

viewing the student’s work as a “…fixed and final product” (81). This also tells students that

localized concerns are more important to correct than content Keconcerns (82). Students are

further alienated by instructors’ inability to link vague comments regarding rules or expectations

to meaningful comments about the content of the student’s work (83). Zamel suggests that, in

order to fix that, instructors begin tailoring their feedback to fit a specific piece of student writing

rather than fit a prescribed set of comments onto any given work. This also means that

instructors must adopt a flexible system of providing feedback and evaluation for each individual

text (95). Students need to be allowed time to incorporate and process this feedback rather than

being given feedback during the writing process in order to avoid hindering the writing process

(96).

Summer Smith Taylor and Martha Patton’s article “Ten Engineers Reading: Disjunctions

Between Preference and Practice in Civil Engineering Faculty Responses” introduces a study

performed to measure engineering faculty’s preferences on feedback provided on student writing

against the type of feedback those faculty provide themselves. Taylor and Patton identify the best

practice model for providing feedback as one which focuses on higher order issues and discusses

specific sections of the student’s writing as well as provides coaching and encouragement (254).

Of the 10 faculty which participated in Taylor and Patton’s study, 9 of them stated that they

preferred feedback which was content-focused over feedback which focused on stylistic issues

(259). Faculty were also resistant to the idea of prescriptive feedback and answers. However,

when faculty were asked to perform feedback, Taylor and Patton found that faculty provided an

almost even split between content and form focused feedback. In their discussion of this

disjunction, Taylor and Patton theorize that the participants who performed form-focused

feedback despite their preference for content-focused were faculty who had a large amount of

experience either teaching or in the engineering field and also lacked any type of WAC training

(264-265). The faculty who wrote content-focused feedback were those who had less experience

teaching and less exposure to writing instruction in their education (265). Taylor and Patton go

on to state that exposure to WAC training seems to lead to more content-focused feedback (265-

266).

In their article “Student Writing: Strategies to Reverse Ongoing Decline” Michael Carter

and Heather Harper identify key components that have led to the decline in quality of writing in

university students. While several contributing factors to the decline in the quality of student

writing are cited, Carter and Harper note two reasons which are more pertinent to this research

than the others: testing and declines in academic standards. Carter and Harper state that the move

towards multiple choice testing has diminished students’ ability to apply critical thought to

extensive test answers and has trained them to memorize answers (287). They also note that a

recent trend in requiring less reading and writing in the classroom has led to deteriorating writing

skills and a shrinking vocabulary for students (288). Carter and Harper also list potential fixes for

these issues, the first of which is the requirement for all freshmen to take a writing intensive

course which emphasizes refining existing skills; for universities that already offer such a

program, Carter and Harper recommend reexamining the intensity of the program (291). They

also recommend increasing the required amount of reading and writing students perform in the

classroom (292). Lastly, they recommend instructors begin tailoring their feedback to address

content-specific issues in a student’s written work rather than comment on superficial issues

(293).

Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, in their article “Teaching about Writing, Righting

Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies’,

assert that current misconceptions around introductory writing courses are hurting the field and

recommend a shift in the practice of the introductory writing courses in order to achieve a more

plausibly transferable writing curriculum. Downs and Wardle suggest that, by turning writing

studies towards an introduction to writing studies (envisioned as other introductory courses

operate such as introduction to Chemistry) focus it’ll open up more natural pathways towards

WAC-based studies (554). Downs and Wardle also address the misconception that writing is

independent of the content it generates, stating that we cannot separate the syntactical and

grammatical issues from the written content (554-555). They go on to say that there cannot be a

unified an academic form of writing since students write for different communities and purposes

depending on the discipline. The academic writing forms shifts around depending on the genre in

which the student is writing (556). Downs and Wardle recommend moving towards a model of

writing instruction which emphasizes writing’s complexity and how it relies on content and

context in order to become a viable practice in a given field. They also say that writing should be

taught in the context of being a mediatory tool and how it functions in the world (558). Downs

and Wardle’s proposed writing instruction follows three main principles: the more a professor

can comment on a student’s content the more they can comment on the writing itself, students

are taught that writing is content- and context-specific, and students won’t be held to a double

standard of expert writing (559-560). Down and Wardle found that, in the case studies utilizing

this approach, that this form of instruction has a way of teaching transferable skills by not

teaching highly-specialized or context-driven material as many introductory writing courses do.

They also found that this instruction has the benefit of educating both instructors and students on

the content of the field of writing studies and what it means to study writing (578).

Dennis Baron’s book Declining Grammar and Other Essays on the English Vocabulary

offers some insight into the subjectivity of language as well as the common mistakes attributed

to grammar, English instruction, and how we value language. One point that Baron makes is that

preference in language often leads to self-doubt and reflection over a user’s own misusing or

mistakes in language. In turn this leads users to create a dichotomy in how they approach

language usage: users seek out objective correctness from authoritative figures but also seek

validation for their own language usage (5). This causes instructors to impart their own

preferences onto their students in an attempt to create a unified answer or approach to language

use. Baron discusses this approach as it applies to G/grammar. Grammar, with a capital /g/,

refers to the traditional knowledge of language such as sentence structure, morphemes, and

formal features while grammar (emphasis on the lower-case /g/) is focused on the art of being

correct, or personal preferences and stigmata (7). This creates tension between students and

instructors and the natural interpretation and development of language. Baron urges both sides of

this issue to keep on open mind in how we butcher, reshape, and interpret language.

Baron goes on to discuss stylistic choices in writing. Certain styles of writing, often those

seen as high-fluent or ornate, are held to the highest standard and set aside for those who would

write classic, best-selling novels. Any student who were to write in such a way would be

perceived as needless or “faddish” (24). On the other hand, a style consisting of concise and

simple language use is a craft all on its own; a student who is too plain or not annunciated with

their ideas runs the risk of being perceived as a lesser writer while someone who is not concise

with their ideas may come off as inexperienced or confused. Baron identifies a preferred style,

one composed of both simple and high-fluent writing, one with ornamentation and conciseness

of thought. He states that this is the style many scholars seem to agree on as being correct.

However, he emphasizes that writing which feels natural to the writing is more-often-than-not

going to be correct anyway (25). As instructors have demanded, there seems to be a trend in the

shortening of sentences being written by students; Baron cites a study which examined how the

average word count per sentence has gone from 20 words per sentence at the turn-of-the-century

to as low as 13 words per sentence currently, a result which many instructors and critics seems to

find worthy (27).

Baron continues to say that what we see as a failure of a student’s ability to write may not

be the result of a poor concept of standardized English or writing style; it may, actually, stem

from a lack of knowledge of both subject matter and context-specific conventions. This lack of

knowledge leads students to feel that writing, whether it’s edited and academic or something

performed for leisure, can be an unnatural act. This accounts for all writers, but writers who are

considered novice are further deterred from writing by the absence of any theoretical or factual

knowledge as well as little-to-no understanding of the conventions for that subject matter (55).

What this gives us are writers who appear unintelligible or unable to perform when, in fact, they

have yet to be given the tools to do so. What separates deemed novice writers from expert writers

is the expert writer’s ability to approach, analyze, and discuss their topic. They are able to

articulate their thoughts in a way which are appropriate for their audience and also work beyond

prescriptive rules which often leave novice writers sitting at the gates questioning if they’re right

or wrong (56). However, expertise in one of writing does not denote expertise in another area of

writing. Career chemists are no better equipped to write in the social sciences than an English

instructor is prepared to write for mathematicians. Students may be apt to perform writing in a

field which interests them or they’re invested in rather than one which they don’t see value in.

We certify students as qualified writers when we pass them in composition courses but

don’t tell them that writing is a fluid entity which takes on several different forms during their

career at university. This leads to students performing demoralizing acts of writing in different

courses and, ultimately, could devalue the work we do as composition instructors. Why shouldn’t

an ‘A’ in composition and a theoretical mastery of the English essay translate into the writing of

lab reports in Chemistry? What falls flat here is our ability to create an environment of

transparency for students and demonstrate how what we teach them in composition can be taken

beyond the composition course into their other course work. Rather than emphasize how to form

a thesis with supporting topic sentences, we should reinforce in students that providing clear,

articulated evidence is key when discussing and analyzing a problem. If students are able to see

how their efforts in composition translate into the courses they’re more invested in then maybe

we can begin providing instruction which they retain.

Another text written by Dennis Baron, Guide to Home Language Repair, places a much

stronger liberal emphasis on how we should approach writing instruction. The opening chapter of

Dennis’ second text focuses on context-based language use and how it might inform the way we

approach teaching writing. What may seem like a barbaric approach to how we write, Baron

suggests that we simply “use [y]our ear” and adjust our language use accordingly. This, of

course, falls within the context of how our audience reacts to and perceives our speech. He points

out that no matter how correct your language may sound if it isn’t relatable to your audience or

your audience isn’t interested in how you’re speaking then it ultimately doesn’t matter what you

have to say (5). As echoed in the previous text of Baron’s, it is emphasized that correct usage in

language is not an absolute; measuring correct language goes as far as the evaluator’s opinion

allows it to go. In fact, Baron points out in his self-proclaimed rule of language usage that most

word usage or phrasing which comes off as offensive to language experts is more-than-likely

already commonly used enough to be considered standardized (6).

Later on, Baron echoes the idea that instructors in English have little-to-no formal

training in the ways of enforcing the hard set rules of the English language (48). Of course Baron

attributes the causes of an instructor’s rigorous defense of the English language, despite their

lack of training, to social construction and perceptions of what English instructors do for a living.

What does matter here, however, is that this lack of formal training lends itself to the notion that

the English language is a fluid entity which has the ability to become flexible. This isn’t to say

that the lack of formal instruction has caused the widespread diversity in English usage, but it

has allowed for a wider understanding and navigation of the English language. In fact, what

Baron attributes the idea of misused language to is not the use of a varied vocabulary but the yes-

man approach many early stages of education apply to language assessment. Students are

rewarded for following instructions and hitting benchmarks. This leads us to establish correct

parameters in language use because those are the parameters we wants students to believe are

correct, not what may actually be correct (53).

2.3 Grammatical and Mechanical Instruction and Its Place in Current Pedagogy

Despite the common division of labor we see in composition studies between higher

order and lower order concerns, it’s become apparent through interviewing faculty members for

this research that lower order concerns can no longer be pushed aside as small. Higher order

concerns are elements of writing concerning the construction and organization of ideas and

arguments, such as thesis, topic sentences, and ordering of paragraphs. Lower order concerns

consist primarily of grammatical and mechanical issues, concerns which don’t disrupt the

structure of a paper but still cause readability issues for readers Lower order concerns, while not

detrimental to a piece of writing, are viewed as minor, irritating problems within process

pedagogy. However, what we see happening, as this section highlights, is that those lower order

concerns are a part of a dialogue in the writing process with influences how a writer translates

their thoughts into the written language. The experience of ESL students learning to write in

Composition mirrors the development of domestic students learning to write in an academic

setting. ESL students are asked to learn conventions and structures of a new language in a way

which allows them to communicate effectively both in the written and spoken word, much in the

same way that domestic students are being taught to navigate different rhetorical genres in order

to effectively communicate with different audiences. ESL students are a raw representation of

the concerns being perform in student writing and help showcase why grammatical and

mechanical instruction is a necessary component of writing instruction.

Robert Connors and Andrea Lunsford’s article “Frequency of Formal Errors in Current

College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research” study the frequency of concerns occurring in

college-level writing. From a batch of 300 essays, Connors and Lunsford went through and noted

which formal, non-content concerns were noted by the commenting instructor as well as

concerns that were not commented on. After identifying their top twenty concerns (spelling

being the top but excluded due its occurrence rate being triple that of the second-highest

occurring concern) Connors and Lunsford gathered fifty instructors to analyze the concerns. One

of their initial findings showed that instructors’ idea of what is considered a serious concern

varies greatly from instructor to instructor. They also found that English instructors do not mark

concerns as frequently as expected, noting that instructors only mark 43% of the most serious

concerns in papers they evaluate and that in the study the most serious of concerns was only

mark two-thirds of the time it occurred (402). This may be a result of a formula which accounts

for how annoying a concern is perceived to be by both the instructor and the student and how

difficult the concern is to comment on. They also note that patterns of concern in student writing

are constantly changing based on outside influences which are time-bound (404). However,

Connors and Lunsford do note that the frequency of concerns occurring in student seems to be

shrinking over time (406).

Liana Konstantinidou, Joachim Hoefele, and Otto Kruse’s article “Assessing writing in

vocational education and training schools: Results from an intervention study” assess the writing

development of students in Swiss vocational education and training schools (VET schools). To

achieve this, Kruse et al designed a process-oriented writing instruction that was incorporated

with the current curricula for both L1 and L2 students. This instruction was implemented into the

general education courses where the teaching of language and communication is an integral part

of the instruction (75). These courses are comprised of fields such as economics, civics, and law.

Literacy instruction is integrated into each of these courses and the instructors are allowed to

teach literacy in a way which is best suited to those courses. While Kruse et al note that the

writing model identified by Flower and Hayes is essential to how students write, they also noted

that process-oriented writing has negative implications for writing instruction. Process-oriented

instruction has created resistance towards the inclusion of language instruction. This also means

that linguistic activity is only viewed as a means of translating ideas into text and not as a

function of the rhetorical decisions made to create a text. Because of this, and the heavy

influence that traditional grammar and mechanical instruction has on students (L2 students

especially), Kruse et al state that this traditional writing instruction must find its way back into

the current curriculum (77). When designing their writing instruction, Kruse et al most notably

placed emphasis on the social aspects of writing as well as provided scaffolding to provide

support for linguistic activities. The emphasis on linguistic skills underlined how important

language skills are to the comprehension and utility of writing and prewriting (78-79). In their

results, Kruse et al state that mastery of a writing genre and its conventions are not a holistic

measure of a student’s ability to write. However, formal conventions and knowledge of the genre

are important to a student’s writing competency (91-92). In order to provide students with a

holistic writing competency they must be exposed to both comprehensive writing skills and

linguistic skills.

Sasan Baleghizadeh and Yahya Gordani’s “Grammatical Accuracy: The Role of

Corrective Feedback”, examines the role of feedback and how it influences the corrections made

by students who are provided feedback. Baleghizadeh and Gordani identify a couple of key

issues which lead to ESL students developing negative writing habits. The first of these concerns

is that there is a gap which exists between writing practices being taught by instructors and the

assessments being used to measure proficiency in the level of writing which ESL students are

expected to have mastery over. The other issue Baleghizadeh and Gordani identify is that what is

valued and evaluated in writing courses are note the same things being valued and evaluated in

writing performed in other disciplines (161). In a cited study, Baleghizadeh and Gordani also

identify three key characteristics of what places writing in the space of academic writing: 1)

there is clear evidence that the author is persistent, open to other arguments, and versed in the

issues their argument concerns, 2) there is a clear line drawn where reason and rational thought

overcomes the use of emotional argumentation of sensual writing, and 3) clear evidence that the

author is intending to create rational reasons, performing research for information, and drawing

informed, reasonable responses based on that information (161). Baleghizadeh and Gordani go

on to discuss the importance of grammatical lessons in the development of the writing skills of

ESL students. They cite a study which indicates that mere passive exposure to grammars and

mechanics is not enough to develop a cognitive understanding of how to apply those rules to

their academic writing (162). In their discussion of their research, Baleghizadeh and Gordani

found that the most effective means of feedback came in the form of the student-teacher

feedback model (171). While counterintuitive to some of the studies that Baleghizadeh and

Gordani cite, they stand by their results in that the student-teacher feedback model provides the

most cognitive development on improving student writing. They attribute this to the fact that

when students are made aware of specific s they tend to become hyper-sensitive to those errors.

While this may pose some issues to a well-rounded development of student writing, this method

does allow for instructors to pick out specific s which are the most crucial to a student’s

development and provide help in adjusting those errors.

Rei Noguchi’s book Grammar and the Teaching of Writing outlines the relationship

between the teaching of grammar, or lack thereof, and how it affects the teaching of writing. In

the first chapter Noguchi outlines three principle causes which work to explain why grammar

instruction is ineffective; these principles, in summary, state that formal grammar instruction is

perceived as uninteresting or, when understood, is not viewed as transferrable or is not

transferred to external writing situations (4). Echoing idea concerning the transferability of

writing skills, grammar skills must too be seen as valuable beyond the composition classroom.

However this is tricky to do, as Noguchi states, because grammar has never really felt natural to

those who are beginning to learn about it. This is due, in part, to the fact that eighteenth century

grammarians took a Germanic language (English) and tried to retrofit it into linguistic categories

designed for Latin (5). This has led to a severe level of impreciseness in grammatical instruction

which tells students that, despite them understanding what a string of words means, it ultimately

has no legitimate meaning even though it possesses a clear, legitimate string of thought. This,

when accompanied with the abstract metalanguage used to categorize language, causes students

to grasp the immediate lessons but not draw the connection to the overall abstractness of how we

categorize language (6).

While Noguchi doesn’t spend much time discussing the implementations of the third

principle he outlines, he does say that it is the most fatal of three. What he means by this is that if

formal grammatical instruction is viewed as having no direct relation to the entity we call writing

then there’s nothing we can do as instructors to alleviate this (8). However, Noguchi does

dismiss this as nothing more than hypothetical, stating that grammar does make connections with

writing instruction, just not on a formal scale. Issues of both organization and content aside,

Noguchi draws a connection between grammar and the stylistic choices an author makes when

writing. When talking about stylistic choices in this context, it should be emphasized that we are

not discussing narrative voice or style; rather we are talking about how sentences are structured

and pieced together in order to maximize how a writer’s arguments and ideas are being presented

to the audience. This allows us to identify how students write, what styles they use (such as

nominal or verbal), and how effectively that style choice is presenting their ideas (11). Noguchi

boils this down to a system of self-help and awareness. By providing students with a formal

grammar instruction we are giving them the tools necessary to determining if they are writing as

clearly or concisely as they should be, a concern which was all-to-popular in my interviews.

Noguchi also expands this idea of formal grammar having an impact on style towards the

reader-response side of writing. Despite some instructors moving away from grammatical

instruction and focusing more on the bigger picture ideas (such as thesis construction, voice,

supporting evidence) Noguchi points out that many educated people beyond the walls of

academia immediately connect poor grammatical skills with unintelligent writers (14). While we

may overlook minor or lower-order concerns in the classroom or dismiss them as being

unintrusive we cannot dismiss the impact these grammatical functions have on the non-academic

audience. In a professional setting negligence of the fundamentals of formal grammar is

indicative of poor writing skills (14). While this may not be a fair assumption to be made,

students are not at the mercy of an instructor who is working with them over the course of a

whole semester. Students, or writers seeking to enter into the professional world, must be able to

provide a snapshot of proper writing technique which is suitable to the needs of the world

beyond academia. However, Noguchi also states that spending a semester solely discussing and

revising small grammatical errors in a student’s writing does them a disservice; we have to find a

way to balance writing instruction concerning the higher-order concerns with teaching students

detection tools and methods for finding grammatical errors. When taking this approach we also

have to keep in mind what grammatical instruction can and cannot do. Noguchi suggests that we

focus on syntactic, morphological, and graphological errors, errors which are both stylistic and

have roots in formal grammar. He goes on to state that, while this is still an overwhelming

amount of grammatical instruction to tackle, we should focus on those which hold the most

pedagogical utility (19). Simply put, we should focus on errors which occur at higher frequency

and are more prevalent in a given classroom.

We also need to keep in mind that certain stylistic choices and errors, while they may

elicit a negative reaction from certain audience members, are not fatal to a piece of writing.

Stylistic choices, and the reactions they provoke from professionals, are a matter of the

profession and major-based coursework. Each profession and major call for different

conventions to be considered and utilized. In turn, these audiences have more visceral reactions

to different offensive choices. While this doesn’t hold true as a sweeping, generalized truth for

each individual audience member, Noguchi notes that those who provide the strongest resistance

or negative feedback on certain stylistic missteps are often the most influential or familiar with

the field they work in (26).

2.4 Relevancy of the Literature to the Study

All of this literature culminates in a reassessment of how we talk about approaching the

teaching of writing. Process pedagogy, when it became the norm for teaching writing in the

1970s with Flower and Hayes, emphasized that instructors must guide the student through their

own cognition of the writing process. This approach asked students to give heavy consideration

to what they wrote and why, highlighting the logical construction and representation of their

thoughts and arguments, or what we call higher order concerns. While process pedagogy did not

abandon components of writing such as grammar and mechanics, it placed them in a category

known as lower order concerns. While this distinction between features of writing has allowed

students to compartmentalize their writing and focus only on the bigger-picture concerns, not all

of the literature aligns with this thinking. In fact, some of the literature insists on reincorporating

the lower order concerns into writing instruction as a means to inform how students translate

their thoughts and arguments on the page, allowing for a sounder rhetorical approach to the

students’ decision-making process. Rather than looking at these writing components as a

dichotomy, the literature suggests we open a dialogue between all categories of concern and look

at how each one informs the writing process holistically.

3. Methodology

For this study, it seemed appropriate to take a qualitative approach to gathering the data.

This comes from the research, such as Taylor and Patton, where a disjunction of non-

composition faculty address concerns in ways which may not fit those concerns. The interview

setting allowed for faculty to identify their concerns and talk through them, providing a larger

context for why these concerns are important to them. This also allowed for interviewees to

justify why concerns which may not seem important elsewhere play a crucial role in student

writing. I interviewed nine faculty members from eight different departments, with composition

excluded, at Northwest Missouri State University located in Maryville, Missouri. A call for

interviewees was sent to the chairs of each department on campus. Those chairs forwarded the

call for interviewees to each faculty member in their department. Faculty members who were

interested in being interviewed contacted me directly via e-mail and a day, time, and location for

an interview was established through e-mail.

The interviews were scheduled to last thirty (30) minutes, but the time for completion of

each interview varied. The quality and quantity of data collected was not compromised by the

length of each interview. At the beginning of each interview, each interviewee was asked an off-

script, general discussion question of “What drew you to be an educator in your discipline or

field?” which allowed the interviews to provide me with a professional context to the answers

they would provide during the on-script interview. Once they had provided a response to the

opening question I read them an opening statement for IRB purposes and began the interview.

All interviewees were asked the same questions without deviation. The set of questions

used in each interview is provided (questions provided as sub-points acted as follow-up

questions during the interview):

1. What are the most common mistakes you observe happening in student writing?

a. How much time do you spend correcting these mistakes in student writing?

2. What courses do you teach?

a. Do you find these concerns occurring in your lower level courses or upper level

courses more frequently?

3. What key features identify writing in your genre?

4. How can we better prepare students to transfer the skills they learn about writing?

5. How do you provide feedback on student writing?

6. What skills do you expect students to have, as writers, when they complete your course?

a. What skills should students have prior to taking your course?

7. What other comments, thoughts, or concerns would you like to express that you think

would be helpful to me as I pursue this project further?

Questions were not asked in the same order for each interview. However, there was no

notable deviation in the information provided from each interviewee. After completing the

questions in the questionnaire, each interview concluded with general conversation on the

subject of my research project but was omitted from the results of the research due to either

irrelevance to the project, a repeat of previously obtained information from that interviewee, or

the information was of a personal nature.

After I completed my interviews I categorized the data provided into seven different

category, five categories of concern and one category of faculty-identified solutions. Each

category of concerns is an umbrella term for more specific concerns each faculty member

identified. For example, the category of concerns in mechanics covers spelling, punctuation, and

sentence fragments. The categories of concern include 1. grammatical concerns which included

concerns such as subject-verb agreement and tense choice, 2.concerns of mechanics, spelling,

and word choice which include comma usage, comma/semicolon confusion, and word pairing

confusion such as its/it’s, 3. concerns of communication and presentation which include

students’ ability to clearly and effectively communicate their thoughts and arguments, 4.

concerns of critical thinking and research application which include performing and synthesizing

research, and 5. concerns of feedback incorporation which include students’ lack of ability to

utilize professor-generated feedback. The data is presented both quantitatively as a chart and

qualitatively as the narrative received in the interview.

4. Results

The results of the interviews are broken down below into seven categories below: five

categories denoting different forms of concerns that faculty perceive in student writing, one

category where faculty expressed their expectations of what their students should be able to

accomplish in that faculty member’s classroom, and one category of solutions to these concerns

which faculty made comment of or suggested.

4.1 Concerns of Grammar

Only half of the interviewees surprisingly noted grammar as a serious issue occurring in

their students’ writing. The concerns for grammatical concerns came from Geography,

Marketing, Parks and Recreation, Humanities, and Computer Science with some restrictions. The

specific grammatical concerns which were identified were subject-verb agreement, the use of

passive voice, and tense confusion

Within the grammatical concerns there are three major sections defined by the

interviewees: subject-verb agreement, tense, and general concerns.

Subject-verb agreement was identified by participants in Geography, Humanities, and

Marketing. Issues of tense choice were identified by Marketing, specifically with the past-perfect

tense. Most of the issues expressed where grammar is concerned fell into the section of general

concerns. Geography has the most to say, stating that students fail to write in the active voice.

Geography describes this as their standard for writing because it is the written voice used “…to

assume responsibility for what we write and that it provides clarity for the reader” (Geography).

In conjunction with the active voice, Geography also noted that the third person narrative is

essential to writing in the social sciences because it allows writers to maintain an objective

stance in their writing. Continuing with the general concerns, Parks and Recreation didn’t cite

any specific grammatical issues that their students present, but they did note that students seem

to forget that English has guiding rules to which it adheres. They went on to say that students

need to be aware of these rules in order to properly piece together the written word.

Geography identified subject-verb agreement and the failure to write in the active voice

as their two main perpetrators. They say that active voice is their standard for writing because

they were taught that it is the written voice used to assume responsibility for what we write and

that it provides clarity for the reader. Geography also states that the third-person narrative is

essential to writing in the social sciences because of its ability to maintain an objective stance

and critical thinking application. Beyond the social sciences, Geography says this is the writing

style which provides the most clarity and natural sounding discussion and when students don’t

make use of this their writing often comes across as awkwardly written less clear than intended.

Humanities stated that their students have the largest issue with noun-verb agreement as far as

grammar is concerned. Computer Sciences noted that the only grammar issues they see regularly

occurring are in the graduate student population because it is primarily comprised of

International students but they didn’t identify any specific concerns. They did go on to say that

most of the work they do in coding breaks, what they identified to be, traditional grammatical

conventions, such as lower-casing the beginning of a string of code and capitalizing subsequent

words in the string of code, and Computer Sciences noted that his graduate students struggle with

this concept more than his undergraduates.

4.2 Concerns of Mechanics, Spelling, and Word Choice

Concerns of mechanics were identified almost universally by interviewees. Mechanics in

Composition include elements of the language which code the written language, such as

punctuation and spelling. Every interviewee besides Computer Science and Psychology

identified concerns of mechanics. These concerns include spelling and word choice from

Geography, pairing confusion and spelling from Business, run-on sentences, sentence fragments,

and comma and semicolon confusion from Humanities, Art Education, and Parks and Recreation

(who also identified capitalization), incoherent sentences from Chemistry, and comma misusage

from Marketing.

Geography identified spelling and punctuation as the major concerns being performed

when students use the prescribed style of writing in their courses. They state that students,

because they don’t proofread or because they rely on computer-based programs to catch mistakes

for them, often correct misspelled words to whatever their word processing programs

recommends, assuming that the suggestion is the word they’re looking for regardless of its

contextual correctness. Geography also notes that improper word choice is a result of students

trying to overextend their vocabulary and provide responses which exist beyond their natural

language use. Business initially stated spelling was the biggest offender among their students as

well as confusions with word pairings such as their/there/they’re, its/it’s, etc. being the primary

offense. They state that these concerns, despite being things students should have learned as

early as grade school, are becoming more and more frequent because students simply aren’t

being corrected or punished for making them. Humanities identified concerns such as run-on

sentences, sentence fragments, and improper comma and semicolon usage were their primary

concerns in this area. Art Education identified the same concerns of improper comma usage, run-

on sentences, and sentence fragments as the major offenders. Parks and Recreation stated that

punctuation, specifically comma usage and capitalization, were the biggest mechanical

offenders. They also note that their students had issues with the spelling of homophones.

Marketing stated that comma and semicolon confusion were the major mechanical concerns their

students were performing.

4.3 Communication and Presentation

Concerns of students’ ability to communicate in their writing, as well as how they

presented themselves as academics and professionals. A concern of illogical structures in papers

was identified by Geography. Business noted that students are unable to professionally represent

themselves in their writing. Humanities and Parks and Recreation said that students lack the

ability to properly organize their ideas. Computer Science and Chemistry stated that students

need to be crystal clear in how they present their information in their programming and technical

documentation of their process and results because it needs to be duplicable.

Referring to their military background, Geography made mention of a product-based

approach to their students’ writing when it comes to organization. They said that the introduction

to a paper should accomplish two things: stating the purpose of the paper so it can be determined

if the paper is worth reading and outlining how the writer is going to accomplish this purpose.

Geography stated that this should set up a logical roadmap to a logical and critical conclusion

but, instead, students take a stream of consciousness approach to how they organize their writing

which presents as unprofessional and broadcasts and inability to logically organize and process

information. Business said that conciseness and impression management are two of the biggest

factors that need to be considered when performing business-based writing. What this comes

down to, as Business said, is that businesses don’t want to hire people, student or otherwise, to

work for them if they cannot communicate properly or efficiently. If students are unable to write

concisely and intelligently then they are bad candidates to work in the business world. They go

on to say that, because writing in business is becoming more accessible via electronic

communication, it’s imperative that students learn how to write professionally and academically

beyond an academic space. They said that students should be able to move away from writing in

shorthand, as they may have become accustomed to through means such as texting, and represent

themselves as professionals no matter the form of electronic writing. Humanities noted that most

poor student writing begins with a lack of organization and the inability to thoroughly and

effectively communicate their ideas. Parks and Recreation echoed this idea by stating that

communication, ultimately, is what students need to work on. Students can have brilliant ideas or

brilliant thought processes but if they’re unable to communicate those in a way which exhibits

that brilliance then no one will bother to acknowledge them.

Computer Sciences said that students need to understand how to write clearly and

concisely. This also applies in the classroom when students are asked to write code; Computer

Sciences stated that, when students write code they need to be able to accurately and concisely

describe what the outcome of the code is supposed to look like so that when new users or coders

obtain that work, they are able to understand its function and accurately work with it. The idea

here is that students should be able to pick up another student’s code, run it through a program,

and begin working where the previous coder left off.

Chemistry noted that their 500-level students are unable to present their ideas in a

logically structured and organized paragraph which creates a direct breakdown in the

communication between students working on the same project. Chemistry expects his students to

learn how to write as much as possible in as few words as possible. They stated that the ability

for students to communicate clearly and concisely is absolutely necessary for the sciences

because their audience won’t read their work for fun; they read it to replicate the work and build

on it. This also requires students to be completely transparent with their readers and provide

every thought and detail in their writing. Students needs to be able to move towards the objective

view and pull themselves out of their own writing. The nature of writing in chemistry, the

interviewee described it, is supposed to be uncomfortable and difficult to read. In opposition to

this, they go on to say that students have a habit of writing and presenting poetically or flowery

which is not viewed as professional in the field of chemistry. Chemistry provided an example

where a student began their introduction with “Two widely used studies…” and Chemistry

proceeded to comment on how the word ‘widely’ would prove problematic because it sets up the

student’s audience to expect that they will provide proof or studies exhibiting these studies when,

in actuality, this student may not be able to provide sufficient evidence. This, in turn, leads to

needless distractions from the report. Chemistry emphasized that they want simple, concise,

precise language which clearly explains what the student is trying to say.

If the author is to present their voice in their assignment, it should only be used

stylistically to string together research and evidence to support their topic. Psychology stated that

the primary cause of this issue is that students are having to shift away from their initial exposure

to disciplinary writing and into a space which doesn’t allow for them to make the same choices

with style that they may have become accustomed to performing. Psychology specifically noted

that this is most difficult for students coming from the humanities or general education courses.

Parks and Recreation simply stated that students don’t understand what it means to write

and communicate at the University level.

4.4 Critical Thinking and Research Application

Seven out of nine interviewees identified concerns in critical thinking and research

application.

Geography and Chemistry stated that students have difficulty applying critical reasoning

to their answers and evidence they provide. Humanities said that students are simply not exposed

to enough criticism. Computer Sciences noted that students need to be able to understand how

their process works and how that process affects the end product. Art Education said that

students seem to be growing less familiar with how to perform first person research.

Geography stated they see students lacking in critical thinking skills, specifically when it

comes to utilizing research; they are able to properly incorporate research into their papers but

have difficulty interacting or engaging with the research material. Specifically Geography talks

about how students string together direct quotations from sources and tack them on to their

papers rather than paraphrase them and create a more natural sounding discussion. They stated

that they find readers tend to pause at the end of beginning of quotes and it disrupts the critical

thinking application on the writer’s behalf. Geography tells students that if they cannot find a

way to incorporate a source more eloquently or phrase it better than direct quotations are

acceptable but they expect their students to be able to engage with their research material in a

way which shows they comprehend it and understand how it fits into what they’re writing.

Chemistry expressed similar concerns, stating that their students have difficulty applying critical

thought or reasoning to the answers they provide on study guides, assignments, and tests. They

are able to give a basic answer but are unable to tie that answer into the critical conversation

required to explain science. Chemistry said this is a result of students training themselves to

write as they think, translating incomplete or fragmented thoughts onto the page and expecting

that to be sufficient.

Humanities identified this as a problem that leads to students developing poor writing

skills; they aren’t exposed to criticism or believe that the writing they performed in high school

is satisfactory in college since that writing was previously successful. This issue is one that

Humanities admitted they weren’t sure how to address other than just providing students with an

awareness that they are expected to grow as writers and become functioning member of

academia. Humanities said that students come to college expecting to learn how to write in a

college setting which places professors in a grading process concerned with fundamentals rather

than topics and ideas in the course. They went on to say that “it needs to be fixed on a

rehabilitative process, here, outside the…gen ed courses. It shouldn’t be up to gen ed professor

[…] it really distracts from the subject matter if you’re spending a great deal of time working on

basic English and grammar. It takes away from me being a professor in [humanities]…”

(Humanities).

In what might seem to be a product-oriented major, Computer Sciences emphasized how

important the process really is; in order for students to create an acceptable, working product

they have to possess an understanding of how the product is generated. Students have to be able

to care about and understand how important their writing is and the implications it has on the

end-users or audience. They went on to discuss how important revisiting previous work is and

trying to understand the process a student went through when they wrote something months

prior. While they said that many curricula don’t have the time to support such a process,

Computer Sciences said that this would be an ideal practice and allow students to apply their

current learning to past works and critically work with something which they may have once

understood to be correct.

Art Education talked about getting students to perform physical research at the library or

on their own has been a struggle. They noted that they believe Composition 112 provides

students with exposure to different forms of research and that placing emphasis on that would be

a good way to help push the research habit along. They also said that they believe students

having ready access to technology such as their smart phones or laptops diminishes the value of

performing primary research which is a problem.

Psychology talked about how every step of the writing process has to be supported by

research and evidence. She said that there isn’t as much room for the author to make

interpretations or inferences in their writing. They also notes that students have difficulty in

making broad generalizations and sweeping statements of fact without providing any form of

documentation or citation to support those.

Parks and Recreation identified critical thinking about the writing process and

understanding what communication is about as the first concern happening in student writing.

They stated that they felt it was important that every piece of writing have a purpose and

meaning and beneath that larger purpose, evidence and arguments should exist which make the

purpose clear. They go on to talk about how students often provide examples for answers but

don’t provide critical or specific enough information to warrant a college-level response. They

attribute this to students coming to university with a pre-conceived notion of what an academic

conversation or dialogue is and not opening themselves up to reinventing those ideas. They also

states that close-ended testing, such as multiple choice testing, diminishes a student’s ability to

think critically about the subject matter and come to their own conclusion. Students also don’t

always see the qualitative results of their testing. They see a numerical grade and often move

beyond that test without seeing how they performed and why they received the grade they did.

Students also suffer from disillusionments of university, that somehow what they do at university

doesn’t impact how they perform in the world beyond the classroom. Parks and Recreation

emphasized that students need to see that university is practice for the students’ careers, that this

is the time for them to understand how the consequences of not considering their actions impact

them.

4.5 Feedback Incorporation

Eight of nine faculty identified concerns of feedback incorporation.

Geography provides the students with feedback on their first of two papers, spending a

significant amount of time (30 to 60 minutes per paper) providing feedback and copyediting,

along with extensive feedback provided at the end of the paper, and he expects student to

internalize that feedback and editing then incorporate those changes or suggestions into the

second paper they write. When providing feedback, Geography makes use of a “Here’s where

you’re wrong and why,” approach which they feel gives students the necessary model to write

successfully. They state that this approach has led to an overall improvement in the quality of

their students’ papers from the first to the second assignment. However, students also failed to

incorporate feedback when there was no expectation placed on them to transfer the feedback they

received onto the next assignment which is why Geography uses the model stated above, to force

students to engage with their comments and edits. Marketing also provides extensive comments

for revision on the first assignment and expects their graduate students to internalize these

corrections and make use of them in further writing.

Business states that they have moved away from doing any form of close grading, such as

providing extensive commentary on lower order concerns, for their students’ writing because

they found that students either don’t care enough about feedback or only care about seeing the

grade they received. Business attributes this also, in part, to the fact that in business course

writing, written work is not reworked or revised in anyway as it is done in departments such as

Language, Literature, and Writing. They’ll provide feedback to students who specifically ask to

sit down with them and receive it, but otherwise they forego providing detailed feedback. They

did say, however, that the students who takes the time to consider what they write and how they

write it are the students who do not need feedback and are more successful writers, boiling the

issues down to students who care about what they’re writing perform better.

Humanities and Art Education both provide extensive feedback on mechanical and

grammatical issues. However, Art Education went on to state that their students don’t seem to

integrate their feedback concerned with mechanics which Art Education attributes to the fact that

they are graded almost entirely on their content rather than their form. They do make writing

form a part of their grade, but it’s a minute portion and one Art Education feels that their

students tend to overlook because it’s so small. Art Education’s other form of feedback is used to

push students academically as researchers and observers. Because their students do a lot of off-

campus observation and research, work that Art Education is not present for, they try to push

students into new avenues of research and to reflect more deeply on their experience in the field.

Art Education also points their students in directions they may not have considered in their

research or observations, providing them with new or alternate viewpoints for the work they’ve

done. Ultimately they pose more questions than they do statements for feedback and has found

this to work effectively in getting their students to be more attentive researchers and observers.

When I asked Art Education how they came to use this method for feedback, they told me that it

was something they’ve always been fond of but that it also comes as a result of working in a

deeply subjective field of study that is heavily pluralistic. Their primary concern when applying

this philosophy to their instruction is that Art Education wants their students to explore and

become engaged with their academic world, not to focus on pleasing them with a right answer in

their research, a notion which is reflected in their grading which they described as being used to

encourage intellectual pursuit and not academic correctness.

When asked about the extent and nature of the feedback Chemistry provides for their

500-level students they said that, for their major-course students, Chemistry spends 6 hours a

week providing just feedback on written mechanics and grammar, emphasizing that they’re

much harsher and blunter with these students. They attributed this to the fact that his courses are

often gatekeeper courses, so students who want to graduate with a degree in Chemistry must pass

his courses. This, in turn, places a feeling of responsibility on them to make sure that their

students are prepared to go into the field. For their 100-level students, they spend much less time

providing commentary on their work because of the amount of work they have whereas

Chemistry’s 500-level students have multiple people working on paper together. For their 100-

level students they provide feedback mostly on the scientific portions, correcting significant

digits and asking if calculations are correct, not the communicative skills the students exhibit.

Rather than spend time providing additional feedback on how students should correct

these mistakes after the first time they comment on the concern, Psychology provides them with

models of proper research and citation implementation. They also notes that there are some

issues of grammar, but they are not nearly as prevalent as the citation and research issues that

they provide feedback on. Psychology provides feedback in the form of examples and modeling

of proper APA writing as well as one-on-one feedback with students and comments on their

writing. They did note that they don’t see written comments as being effective as most students

tend to ignore what they say or implement very little of the changes they recommend.

Parks and Recreation discussed how faculty tend to assume that students have had the

same exposure to these lessons or exposure to the same training as them and often forget that

students come to university without prepared knowledge of many of these topics. This means

that faculty need to be completely transparent in their thought process and need to show how

faculty come to the conclusions they come to in their grading and feedback. When Parks and

Recreation provides feedback, they always mark corrections for mechanics, spelling, and

grammar despite not placing a point value on it. They emphasize the real world impact of these

mistakes, showing students that if these concerns occurred in a professional setting then that

communication is not acceptable and states that this is a matter of image management.

4.6 Expectations

While this section doesn’t necessarily fall beneath the guise of student concerns, it was

still a prevalent topic of discussion throughout the course of the interviews. While the

conversations were not as extensive as some of the sections above, they were consistently

brought up in the interviews which qualified them to be included in this research. This could

potentially be coded as concerns of gaps in preparation for students to write in their disciplines.

Geography expects their students to be professional, concise in their language, apply critical

thinking and application, and logical consistency in their writing. Geography wants to be able to

help their students tweak their writing skills or help them focus their skills in a way which

benefit their major-based coursework or career-oriented writing, not teach them the basics of

writing skills. Business has the same expectation for their students. They want their students to

come in knowing the basic of writing to an extent which allows Business to help them tweak

those skills to be attuned to writing in the business discipline.

Humanities has a little more to say on this topic, stating that they expect students, above

all else, to develop their critical thinking skills, both in writing and politics, by the time they

leave Humanity’s courses. They want students to be able to engage critically with the political

ideologies of both the academic and professional world. This, in turn, would lead students to

begin understanding more complex issues and thought processes which move beyond the two-

sided argument viewpoint that students seem to develop.

Computer Sciences stated that when their students complete their courses they expect the

students to come away with a better understanding of how important it is to write clearly and

concisely in both computer coding and technical documentation.

Art Education holds all levels of students accountable for their mistakes. They give some

room for concern to their freshmen because they are still going through the composition

curriculum and learning how to write at the college level, but Art Education holds sophomores

through seniors on the same level of accountability. When asked about the type of writing

performed specifically in art education, Art Education discussed how a lot of written work

happening in the field, primarily for students, is transitioning towards written exams, research,

and field work. They attributed their experience with this transition to their recent time in

graduate school, being two years fresh from graduation, and that the previous instructor who held

Art Education’s position was more of an artist and instructor of art whereas Art Education is an

artist as well as a researcher. They went on to say that their experience with research is

something they’ve brought into their curriculum, emphasizing writing in the field as an important

skill to learn, especially when it comes to job applications and professional communication. We

discussed how writing in art education has changed, especially with their influence, and talked

about what is expected of his students when they perform writing for him. Art Education talked

about how they expect their students to be able to build an argument and perform proper citations

and research. They also expect their students to structure their sentences in a way which creates a

logical train of thought. Art Education also emphasized that art education research entails

observation and deductions based on that observation and how that goes hand-in-hand with the

literature review that their students perform. There’s also an element of introspective reflection

their students perform which Art Education said can be equally as tasking as the field and

literature research.

Coming into their course, Art Education expects their students to simply be able to write

a well-structured sentence. Most of the content, they said, comes with the course so items such as

vocabulary and the principles of the field are learned over the course of their classes. Moving

into the junior and senior levels, Art Education expects students to build on the scaffolding from

their introductory courses and apply that knowledge critically. When students complete their

courses Art Education wants them to be able to make accurate, impactful statements about the art

and research they perform. They also ask their students to move away from the personal

narrative perspective and into the object first person perspective.

Chemistry provided the most unique answer of any interviewee when asked what they

expect their students to learn upon completing their course. Chemistry simply stated that they

expect the material to be taught equally. Their problem with expecting 100% efficiency on

students learning mastery of the discipline’s writing features is that Chemistry knows that is an

unreasonable standard. There are some students that simply will not learn what is asked of them

and to expect any faculty member to achieve absolute efficiency in imparting their knowledge on

students is an impossible task. They did express, however, that what they believed the

composition curriculum worked to accomplish in Composition 111 and Composition 112 was

completely wrong; they believed that composition was focused primarily on teaching students

how to perform mechanically and grammatically in their writing. They didn’t realize that the

composition curriculum was trying to achieve the same goal they were of teaching students how

to perform coherent, thoughtful writing over the course of feedback and editing.

Psychology expects their students to come into their courses having the ability to write

coherent sentences, display grammatical correctness, and organize their paper. When students

complete Psychology’s courses, especially their research-based course, they expect those

students to be able to approach those criteria as they would appear in APA style. Psychology also

wants their students to understand how to utilize evidence and research-based arguments and

ideas and how to make use of the concepts and ideas from the discipline alongside their common

sense.

Parks and Recreation expects their students to be able to link the ideas and concepts the

students write about back to the major themes and ideas presented in the course material. Parks

and Recreation also expects their students to be able to write their ideas in a clear, concise

manner. The students’ writing should also be grounded in how their observations and research

align with what they know or their own beliefs. Discipline-wide, as undergraduates, students

need to be able to report information and be descriptive of the purpose of the report and identify

a clear point of view and support. Graduate students are expected to be able to perform and

incorporate research and properly cite it.

Marketing’s students are expected to write a clear thesis, coherent paragraphs, critically

identify main ideas, and write clearly and concisely. These are things which Marketing expects

their students to come into their courses already knowing. Marketing focuses on their students

learning the course and disciplinary content and how to think critically when it comes to this

content. They emphasized that this all leads to the students being able to present their ideas and

experiences in a way which represents them in a professional manner.

4.7 Solutions

As part of the interview I asked interviewees to identify possible ways we, as a

university, might approach helping students correct these concerns. I received a wide variety of

answers from faculty which I found to be the most interesting result to present. In order to begin

correcting the concerns that Geography identified, they said that, despite not having deep

understanding of what the composition program works to accomplish, they feel that going back

to the mechanical and grammatical basics is where students should start along with

understanding the purpose of the writing being performed. They then said that focusing on the

organization and the art of design is the next step in correcting these concerns. If the outline is

solid, then issues such as run-on sentences, transitions, misused citations and research

incorporation should be solved. Lastly Geography noted that the process to making these

changes and fixes is a process which should be dealt with jointly between departments because

laying a proper foundation in the basic composition course is essential to preparing students for

the writing they’ll perform beyond that curriculum.

When asked how students could be better prepared to correct these concerns, Business

stated that the students need to be exposed to more drilling, editing, and consequences for their

writing. They said that, even if students have the ability to put their ideas on to paper and are

able to generate content for an assignment, if they write those ideas in a way which is

mechanically, grammatically, communicatively unsound then those papers won’t be read.

Business said that it comes down to an even split between mechanical, grammatical correctness

and generating correct, interesting content. Business stated that fixing these concerns should

begin with exposing students to criticism which highlights what they’re doing wrong and how

but not in a way blatantly says “You’re wrong”. They also said that having students generate

more writing and exposing them to more practice, repetition, as well as reading would help them

begin to understand how writing functions in any given context.

When asked how we might begin working to correct these concerns, Humanities

discussed how they felt that the habit of concerns that students form begins before college. They

felt that students come to college expecting to learn how to write for college courses which, in

turn, causes students to make mistakes as far as what they identified as basic writing is

concerned. This then, as Humanities continued, leads professors into back-tracking over their

lessons in order to address and try to correct concerns which students should already have

learned prior to their college education. They said if a general education instructor has to

backtrack to correct writing techniques then it draws away from the course material and distracts

both the student and professor from focusing on the course. However, Humanities recognized

that we as a University cannot correct prior learning if it isn’t happening in our facility and stated

that re-teaching students proper writing techniques should happen on a rehabilitative level, not in

the general education courses. When I asked Humanities what suggestions he would make in

order to help students improve their writing skills, they admitted to not being completely

educated on the resources and services available at the Writing Center and Talent Development

Center. They did say, however, that they allow students to bring them a full draft before the due

date and provide students with one-on-one feedback and conferencing. This method, they said, is

one they feel that all professors should be offering to their students because it broadcasts to

students where their writing skills compare to the professor’s expectations and it also allows

professors to recommend auxiliary services before the paper is due.

When asked how we can begin to correct these concerns and prepare students to write in

the computer sciences, Computer Sciences suggested modeling and practices of empathy. In

other words, provide students with poor examples of writing and documentation and ask them to

work through it so that they better understand what effects inaccurate or poor writing has on the

audience. They then went on to say that students should be able to read and work through model

examples of the writing they’re expecting to perform and engage with material that is deemed

acceptable. This, however, is something that Computer Science said they do not have much time

for and wishes they had the resources to implement in their courses. They said that challenging

and constraining students on their writing would be helpful as well; they gave the example of

using poetry, asking students to adhere to a very specific set of rules which force them to

critically consider how they can accomplish the goal of writing a poem with a stringent set of

rules. They also emphasized that communication is essential for students to develop these skills.

For students to develop proper writing skills, it takes effort on both the student and instructor’s

behalf to create a piece of writing that is satisfactory for both parties. What a student may write

and feel is acceptable may not meet the instructor’s standards if those standards are not clearly

defined and expressed prior to administering the assignment.

When discussing his thoughts on how we might help correct the concerns that his

students are performing, Art Education admitted that they’ve never had to send students to the

Writing Center and that they only have a vague idea of what services are offered there. They also

expressed curiosity in the effect that common core curriculum might have on instructing

freshmen in writing. While they stated that they disagree with many of the practices in common

core, Art Education noted that its ability to help students create arguments and focus on

fundamental writing skills is something they believe to be valuable for writing instruction. This

was tied into their uncertainty of whether or not the issue of concerns that students perform is

something that can be corrected as the students are freshmen or if the issues persist from high

school into their college career. They also stated that they don’t provide any type of follow up

assessment or assignment for written skills since they’re primarily focused on their students

becoming more invested in the art education field so they aren’t sure if their students are growing

in that area of their writing as they progress in their classes.

Chemistry immediately jumped to a writing across the curriculum approach to university

as a solution for these concerns, stating that the ability for instructors and students to

communicate with others who see and experience the world differently from them is a

cornerstone of what it means to be at university. They expressed, however, that they don’t

believe that this is a possibility. They equated the current state of working across the curriculum

to the biblical Tower of Babel, that we all speak the same mother language but we all speak it in

different modes and specialized dialects. They went on to say that this devalues writing

performed beyond a student’s discipline because they are trained to see writing in a way which is

only valuable when presented in an acceptable form in their discipline. Chemistry then stated

that the ability to step out from a professional and academic paradigm and admire or appreciate

the writing of others is simply a feature of being human. Ultimately they stated that WAC is

simply too difficult because faculty don’t feel they have the time to appreciate and value the

work of other disciplines even though this makes their jobs more difficult when students are

unable to draw connections between the writing performed in different disciplines.

When it came to discussing how we can begin working with students to alleviate these

concerns, Psychology emphasized that helping students understand the difference between the

different writing styles would be a place to start. They specifically noted that having a writing

fellow from the English department was helpful in providing them with perspective on how

students view the transition and suggested that asking students to approach an assignment from

both APA and their initial style might help students see how they should transition over to APA.

Parks and Recreation stated that students, first, need to learn how to provide specific,

argumentative details and not just parrot back the information they find. They also suggested that

observations would be helpful, placing students in the field and asking them to report on what

they see and experience. They stated that taking time each week to review and relearn the rules

of the different grammatical and mechanical features of English would also be helpful. We also

need to show students that they can write, they just need to figure out where they want to write

and how they write in that field.

Marketing provided a broader response than other interviewees. They noted that they

don’t believe students are taught to write properly anymore at any level. They stated that they

had spoken with English faculty about the issue and said that the cited issue from research was

that students learn to write from reading and that students don’t read nearly as much as they

should.

5. Discussion

What the data shows us, when placed in conversation with the literature, is that non-

composition faculty place equal consideration on what process pedagogy considers to be lower

order concerns as well students’ ability to articulate their ideas in a critical and thoughtful

manner. They have also discussed a decline in their desire to provide each individual student

with feedback or comments on their work due to students’ inability to effectively incorporate, or

even acknowledge, the revisions provided, as per Lunsford and Connors and Baleghizadeh and

Gordani. The value that non-composition faculty place on lower order concerns comes from a

place of wanting students to understand how the lower order concerns inform their decisions in

the writing process. While process pedagogy asks students to consider their rhetorical position

and problem, as per Flower and Hayes, as well as higher order concerns such as the organization

and structure of a written piece, non-composition faculty want lower order concerns to be given

equal consideration. These lower order concerns act as a tool through which students articulate

their ideas and produce writing in what non-composition consider to be a professional literacy,

Noguchi also suggests. This does not mean that faculty are asking students to prioritize lower

order concerns over higher order concerns, but that students should give lower order concerns

equal consideration when deciding how to translate their writing process into written language.

In a way, we might begin to think of academic literacy as a second language, one which

requires a meticulous approach to teach students what it means to practice literacy in the

university and professional setting. The same approach to drilling and criticism that ESL students

receive over grammar and mechanics would be applicable here, as Kruse et al and Noguchi.

Students need to be able to grasp the grammatical and mechanical rules of the language they

write in, not only as a method of professional representation, but also because linguistic choices

have a direct impact on how students translate their ideas into the written word, an idea strongly

promoted by Flower and Hayes as well as the interviewees in Business, Marketing, Geography

and Humanities. While working with ESL students has not been a primary component of this

research, I would suggest, for future work, that the approach to working with ESL students be

considered when examining this work and how it might impact the teaching of writing.

To facilitate this conversation, we may also look towards the use of a WAC

administrator. While minor, there are some misinterpretations of what some concerns are being

labelled as, such as Computer Science believing capitalization to be a grammatical concern

where Composition faculty label it as mechanics, and Parks and Recreation citing student

ignorance of the guiding rules of Composition as a concern when they did not expand on or

identify what those guiding rules are exactly. Providing faculty with WAC-training, as Taylor

and Patton say, allows for faculty to provide comments and revisions for students which promote

transparency in the classroom. This transparency, in turn, might help students understand the

scaffolding being built around their writing skills and see that these skills as transferable,

something which Baron identifies as being crucial in developing writing skills. The advantage

here, as far as the interviewees have shown, is that there is a common goal between composition

and non-composition faculty; they want students to become rhetorically sound writers so

including further WAC instruction may allow for these faculty to better address these concerns in

their own classroom.

One concern of faculty, which is not as strongly supported by the literature included in

this research, is students’ inability to perform and synthesize research. As Northwest’s writing

program goals suggest, students should be able to do both tasks by the end of Composition 1:

Academic Literacies. Since students are lacking these abilities, how do we address this? Do we

push students to take their composition sequence in their freshmen year, emphasizing that the

skills acquired in both courses are essential to their academic growth, or do we ask faculty to

place a heavier emphasis on these skills in the context of their classes? The prior seems more

appropriate, but this is an area which would require more research to contextualize the argument

for it.

While my research raises more questions than it does answers, it provides Northwest with

a starting point for how we might reassess our conversation about writing across campus. In

order to create students who are rhetorically sound writers in both the classroom and beyond

university, there must be a common understanding of how we reach rhetorical soundness among

all faculty. This may involve reassessing the use of grammatical and mechanical instruction in

the composition classroom or asking faculty at large to provide students with more descriptive

expectations of the writing performed in their field. While these are only two of many

suggestions, they are the two which align most closely with my research.

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