WHAT WE DID
Some Wesleyan students enter campus proud of their writing, while others are worried about it. Still others are unsure. In our interviews with Writing in the First students, we asked them to identify with specific statements about how they felt about their writing. We also asked them to describe their writing and what others had told them about their writing and then grouped their responses by whether they were positive or negative. Below, we dig into the negative responses.
WHAT WE LEARNED
First, we should note that there aren’t many incoming Wesleyan students who are very negative about their writing. When students were asked to choose one statement they identified with it, most (83% in Round 1 and 88% in Round 3) considered themselves “average” or “capable.” Of course, we may be seeing some selection bias here. One could argue that those who perceive themselves to be good writers might be more inclined to have agreed to participate in a project like Writing in the First.
But when we did into the interviews, we do hear about what students worry about and these comments appear regardless of what sort of overall evaluation they gave of their writing. For example…
Students worry about their grammar.
Some students describe themselves as having “grammar problems.” For some, these issues crop up because of a lack of attention to detail.
But for others, “bad grammar” comes from something deeper: a lack of understanding of “the rules.”
Since grade school, I’ve always gotten that revision. “Fix your grammar. You’ve got to fix your grammar.“
I feel like I never really learned some proper grammar rules, which, I don’t know how important or critical that really is, but there’s some things that I really just don’t really know the use of.
Students worry they are too wordy.
Some students describe their writing as too complicated, too wordy, or using sentences that try to contain too much information or try to accomplish too much. These students often aspire to be more “concise.”
I feel like sometimes I can just get so wordy with everything, and kind of talk in circles.
I’m also really bad at being concise, so it’s often like … I’ll have these big sweeping paragraphs that they really could be about two sentences, but it’s prettier if you say it this way.
Students worry they are not wordy enough.
Conversely, some students want to complicate their writing, lengthening sentences, introducing more vocabulary, and strengthening their analyses.
Some students’ comments suggest they want to do this so that they can make room for better arguments. For others, one senses that they simply want their writing to feel more like “college writing.”
I need to work on my sentence structure and creating more elaborate sentences. I think right now I use a relatively simple sentence structure.
I often don’t have as much to say as I should or I should be digging deeper and analyzing more, getting to a deeper level than I am because I think I barely scratch the surface of what I’m trying to write about.
Students worry about their clarity.
Some students describe having repeatedly received feedback in high school that their writing didn’t make sense.
This seems like a particularly difficult criticism for them to overcome because they often don’t understand what is unclear about their writing.
I’ll always get the question mark and it says, “This sentence doesn’t make sense,” and when I read it, it makes sense to me but then that’s when I have to go up to the teacher and say, “What do you mean by this?” They’re like, “Oh, this doesn’t make any sense,” and I’m just like, “What do you mean?”
Because a lot of times, what I feel like what my teachers would get is, I’d give them my paper, I love my paper, and then it can get back to me, “Your ideas are great. Your sentence structure makes it confusing to understand some of your ideas.”
WHAT WE CAN ASK
First, if these above are some of the things that students worry about in regard to their writing, who do they share these worries with? Do they share these concerns with their FYS professor? With writing tutors or academic peer advisors? With their parents or friends? With no one at all? And what do they do if they aren’t sharing their concerns with anyone?
Second, what are the benefits of sharing your writing worries with someone other than an interviewer for a research project? If a student were to share their writing worries with a faculty member, how would that shape the subsequent interactions the two have and the feedback on their writing that the student receives?
Third, how can we as an institution get students to share more about how they are thinking about their writing? What exercises could take place in our classes, perhaps on the first few days, that gets students talking about how they feel about their writing? How do we encourage students to do this in a way that does not make them feel overly vulnerable?
