...many writers are paralyzed by the thought that they are competing with everybody else who is trying to write and presumably doing it better. This can often happen in a writing class.... Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself. (Zinsser, 1998, p. 79)
I have been teaching EFL at the English Department of JPU since 1989. Originally hired to run first- and second-year Language Practice classes in the undergraduate program, I have also participated in the development and teaching of language development courses in the Russian retraining and the postgraduate in-service programs. Besides, my responsibilities have included the design, administration, piloting and analysis of two types of language proficiency test.
In all of these activities, the contribution I have attempted to make to the quality of education at the institution has been in the development of the personal narrative and academic expository writing skills of students. To be able to present a coherent analysis of relevant factors and procedures in the space available I have had to make a concession: This chapter will focus on undergraduate writing courses, even though the JPU Corpus comprises scripts by other students. This means that I have had to exclude lessons learned in Language Practice courses for undergraduate and Russian retrainee students, as well as writing courses for in-service postgraduate students, from whom I have received contribution to the corpus. However, as Chapter 4 will show, the majority of scripts do come from the student population discussed here.
This chapter will introduce the development of writing skills at the ED of JPU. To be able to appreciate the work students have done to develop personal and academic writing skills and to see the context of their scripts presented and analyzed in Chapter 4, we need to identify the curricular and pedagogical factors that have shaped this performance. After listing the types of data used for the discussion of these factors (in Section 3.1), the chapter will focus on the major components of writing pedagogy. The description and evaluation of pedagogical concerns and of the curricular status of academic writing (3.2) will be followed by a detailed evaluation of the process of developing the syllabus for recent writing skills courses (3.3). Finally, in Section 3.4, future directions will be drawn on the basis of this discussion.
A total of 336 students have participated in the writing courses I have taught in the past three years, representing the majority of students who have gained admission to JPU since 1996. Of these participants, 204 took undergraduate WRS courses, with the remaining 132 pursuing postgraduate studies.
Apart from my role as teacher and tester, I had for some time been collecting student scripts for action research purposes. I became familiar with the concerns of students, was able to observe their decisions in writing, and began to develop a set of materials that exploited a growing corpus of learner English.
Yet another strand of my concern with student writing derives from various activities that aimed to help provide a forum of student voice. This line of interest was represented by two types of journalistic activity: founding and co-editing, with a colleague, Paul Olchváry, a JPU English magazine, The Pannonius Post, and editing several classroom magazines for students enrolled in undergraduate and Russian retraining Language Practice courses (such as SnaX, Every Thursday, Talent, and The Friday Gazette). I aimed to provide classroom materials that were authentic in the sense that they (1) communicated my motivation, (2) attempted to enhance students' integrative motivation, and (3) aimed to widen the scope of communication.
Such experiences have appeared to contribute to students' involvement with their own discourse communities and in the classes. For example, The Pannonius Post, between 1990 and 1996, helped initiate dozens of students into the art and craft of article writing, editing, and publishing. Interviews, reports, news stories, poems, short stories and reviews by students and faculty were published, contributing to the ethos of the department. Classroom magazines, such as Talent, invited students to explore the campus and discover talented peers in one field or another. In such extracurricular projects, students seemed to benefit from the discovery of knowledge that they found relevant to learn about and to publish, which was an especially valuable factor given the potential risks that the university credit system posed in group forming.
My involvement in these curricular and extracurricular projects was complemented by a third type of activity that bears directly on my role as a writing teacher: editing. In 1996, I became co-editor (together with Nikolov Marianne) of the Hungarian ELT and Cultural Studies journal, Novelty. This publication was in its second volume when the publisher, the British Council in Budapest, approached us to consider taking on the role. The daily tasks of soliciting articles, reading them, suggesting changes in focus and tone, the technical skills of establishing the use of a standard referencing system, and the contact to be kept with contributors, readers and the publisher provided me with experience and skills that are central for the writing teacher: both the wider issues of constructing and reconstructing meaning, visualizing structure, appreciating a solid research design, arriving at valid conclusions, and reverberating with readers; and the finer details of understanding and evaluating sentence- and word-level authorial choices, and establishing consistency in spelling and punctuation.
My work as co-editor positioned me as a suitable candidate with various types of teaching, extra-curricular and editing experience. With each new writing course syllabus prepared, I aimed to incorporate what I had learned so that my pedagogical concerns were met: that students would participate in classes that gave them opportunities to express and explore themselves, and that they would be equipped with skills that would enable them to continue to improve.
The 1998 curriculum caters for two types undergraduate and two types post-graduate course of study (Tantervek, 1998). Each of the four types requires the passing of an entrance examination. In the undergraduate course, a centrally designed written exam is administered to high-school graduates, followed by an oral exam developed and assessed by department staff. By contrast, students wishing to gain admission to the postgraduate course are required to possess a teacher diploma and pass an oral exam.
Table 4: The eight divisions of the core curriculum
In terms of the specific content of the eight divisions, two set prerequisites for students for taking courses. The others also have prerequisites, but these are set from within. The majority of courses in the core can be taken independently of courses in the other divisions, with students making up their own timetables based on the information they receive from the curriculum and the separate list of courses issued each semester. There are no external prerequisites for Language Development courses either. As can be seen, this first division is one of two strands that are given most weight in the core curriculum. Together, Language Development and Linguistics contribute over half to the core. This is illustrated by the pie chart (see Figure 13).
Figure 13: The respective weight of each of the eight divisions in the core curriculumThe Language Development is made up by eight courses, as illustrated in Table 5. As the prerequisites column shows, the main course in the division is Language Practice, making up a half of all credits. It is also the only course that sets registration requirements.
Table 5: The framework of the current Language Development division
The core curriculum places much emphasis on language development. Of the 16 credits to be completed in the LD division, eight come from Language Practice seminars, two from the WRS course, with an additional six represented by introductory courses to the study of linguistics, literature and culture. The WRS course represents that part of writing pedagogy at the ED which is specifically devoted to writings skills. Most other courses within and outside the division include written assignments in their requirements. However, an analysis of such content and requirements is beyond the scope of the current study--future department-wide longitudinal action research could reveal the role of such requirements and text types.
The preamble of the curriculum specifies the output of the course, the method of training, and the sequencing of the course types. Graduates earn a degree that qualifies them to teach English language and literature at high schools. Participating in correspondence courses, they study four types of subjects: applied linguistics, linguistics, and the literature and culture of English speaking counties.
As the Faculty of Arts operates a credit system, this is adopted in the postgraduate course as well. However, students enrolled in the program do not have the option to choose courses--this being the result of the correspondence type of education. The constituent courses are specifically designed for these students, and are not open to others. Theoretically, students in the postgraduate program could register for others, but because the groups meet only five times a semester, there is no practical relevance of this option.
A total of 48 credits have to be completed for a degree, a fourth of which come from one of the four areas of study. After the fourth semester, the last period of study is available for students to complete their theses--during this period they are required to consult with their advisors.
The Writing and Research Skills course had its origins in the Formal Writing course established at the ED of JPU in 1986. The development of the syllabus of this course in its early stages relied on product-based approaches to writing. In the year 1995, its syllabus offered three main strands: essay, paragraph, and sentence organization. How this content was delivered in the seminars and what the requirements for course completion were are not obvious; as the syllabus (reprinted in Appendix B on p. 203) reveals, the only specific information for students was the sole text (a U.S. college handbook for writers) required, the place and time of the classes, and the name of the teacher.
This approach to the teaching of novice writers was modified by the Spring 1996 course: it appears to have been a richer, more detailed, and obviously more process-oriented course (see its reprint in Appendix C on p. 204). The document identifies objectives which were in line with the Language Development curriculum of the time: to familiarize students with formal writing requirements. The linguistic and discourse levels are defined similarly to the earlier approach, although their sequence is reversed: it was only after students gained experience in sentence- and paragraph-level structuring that the course went on to building skills in the larger units of written discourse.
The syllabus offers no evidence of what materials were to be read, discussed and responded to in writing by individual students or groups. However, one may assume that because the teacher began the course with rules, she kept the faculty-wide regulation that specified students' right to object to any requirement not expressly communicated in the syllabus. If this was the case, one is tempted to suggest that although the Spring 1996 course seems to have offered two advantages over its predecessor, it fell short of two theoretical and practical requirements. First, it seems to have ignored the evidence research established about the positive effect of reading on writing. Second, as text types are not specified, the document's only definition of what constitutes "formal writing" is in its use of the term "assignment." It was after such beginnings that I embarked on my own writing teaching career. As the next section will demonstrate, I introduced a number of changes as I believed that neither of the earlier approaches was appropriate in dealing with the specific needs of Hungarian university students. Throughout my activities, in the past five semesters, I aimed to incorporate those findings of the field and my own experience that appeared to better contribute to success.
The following, mainly qualitative, study is based on the records I have kept of five undergraduate courses run between the Fall of 1996 and the Fall of 1998. The syllabuses of these courses are reproduced in Appendixes D to H (pp. 205-214). In the description and analysis of these documents, I will compare and contrast the courses in terms of objectives, tasks, techniques, text types, readings, feedback, evaluation and students' views.
Specific writing subskills were also identified: of the five listed in the syllabus, the one that appears the most relevant in terms of syllabus development was the last set of subskills--appreciating, analyzing and commenting on other students' writing in "a professional manner." Neither of the earlier two syllabuses made even passing reference to peer negotiation of meaning in the development of writing. I, however, saw this factor essential in building sustainable skills. Unless students were given opportunities to share their scripts, the writing teacher would run the risk of creating a vacuum, instead of creating a forum. By accommodating peer reviews of scripts, I aimed to develop a sense of community in the two groups of students.
The tone appears similar to that of the Spring 1996 syllabus: it is formal, with students addressed in the third person plural. The variety of additional information, such as time and place of office hours, the telephone number, and the internet address of selected course materials, however, added a personal dimension to the document.
One seemingly immaterial syllabus-writing decision merits reference, before we move on to the next document--the position or role that the writing teacher identifies with. This can be detected in how the name of the teacher is introduced in the appropriate heading of the syllabus. Hungarian university tradition seems to prefer the position of the "instructor," partly perhaps as an effect of Anglo-Saxon academic preferences. Of the many conscious decisions I made in designing my first WRS syllabus, the change in denomination was one. Instead of referring to my role as that of an instructor, I took the position of "tutor."
There were two reasons for this. For one, this was the term I had used in earlier courses, and I saw no reason to want to change. For another, and this is the more important aspect, I never viewed the act of helping students to learn to write better as an activity that can be achieved by instructing. That approach seemed to offer little in the way of negotiating meaning, allowing for personal differences in learning style and strategy, and I saw it as seriously limited in its potential of establishing a learning environment that would engage sustainable development. Opting instead to act as the "tutor" of students, I argued, told the students that I considered myself an expert in the field but that I was primarily concerned with individuals and teams of students to be motivated in discovering the power of writing for their own benefit.
The term "tutor" is about the only detail that is common between the first and the Spring 1997 syllabuses. Reflections of the positive results and shortcomings of the earlier course, and the application of the theory and empirical research with which I had become more familiar by the time I was producing plans for the new course, enabled me to introduce innovations that were far-reaching. One of these was the decision to officially change the name of the course. It was no longer a "Formal Writing" course of study, but one that focused on "Writing and Research Skills." As we will see in a later section (3.3.3.2), the first WRS course also included a research element, even if at that time it was far from being integrated into the texture of the course. The change in name reflected a change in approach and content. For the first time in the history of JPU ED writing pedagogy, there was a course that operated with reasonably specific academic terms. (See the Spring 1997 syllabus in Appendix E on pp. 207-208.)
These terms were used in the "Aims" section of the syllabus: the course, offered to three sections of students, proposed to address and improve writing and research skills that were to be developed during the seminars. It emphasized success: the course would "empower [students] to achieve" it in such discourse types as were seen as essential in the design, planning and execution of descriptive and review essays and research papers. In terms of writing processes, the stages of conceiving, structuring, editing, drafting and presenting were outlined.
The communication of the syllabus was still relatively formal, with the tutor referring to himself in the third person singular, and to the students in the third person plural. But the classes were now termed as "meetings," which occurred in two of the three sections in the Arizona Room of the university, a computer network facility that promotes dynamic and effective group work made possible by the GroupSystems courseware. In terms of content, another innovation was the introduction of the concept of plain English. As can be seen in the syllabus, the reference to this quality of writing appeared in the "Course themes" section. In later courses, the concept gained central position.
By the Fall semester of 1997, eighty-five students had taken these courses. The goals of motivating students to experiment and of establishing a firm base on which future development was possible had been established. In designing the new syllabus (see in Appendix F, pp. 209-210), I aimed to emphasize the need for both extensive reading and writing. Another syllabus design element that can be considered new was the use of the concept of a "center" which would provide a framework for the study during the semester. The course was identified as "The Fitness Center," a place where the three groups of students would be assisted in "putting [their] writing skills into good shape by allowing [them] to work out and get the right amount of nutrition and protein." These metaphors were meant to communicate to the participant that writing economical, clearly structured texts could be achieved. As will be shown in the next sections on task and text types, although goal setting used terms that may have confused some students, the texts to be produced were the most concrete to date.
This syllabus was the first to break away from the formal tone tradition: the tutor welcomed participants to the course, spoke to them directly, and at the end expressed the hope that students would have a "useful and memorable experience."
The lessons learned in the fall of 1997 further motivated development. The Spring 1998 course can be seen as a stage that had established what appeared most effective approaches and content, including the continued centrality of aiming to assist students in producing plain and transparent text in English for personal and academic purposes. My dual role of teacher and editor, as well as my exploration of the theory and practice of writing pedagogy, had by now confirmed that this was a feature of writing I aspired to cultivate in students' writing. Specifically, the syllabus made reference to the development of fluent, accurate, and plain written English. It also communicated the goal that the seminars would encourage experimentation with "topics, genres, audiences, and purposes." The output of the course was identified in proficiency in writing four types of text, of which the personal descriptive essay was the new example. (See the syllabus in Appendix G on pp. 211-212.)
The tone is similar to that of the syllabus in the preceding semester: it addresses the student as a stakeholder, a participant, using simple and clear language. It also continues with the metaphor of the "center," but this time it is a "writing center," as opposed to the "fitness" center a semester earlier. The reason for the change was that, although the WRS course continued to focus on "low-fat" English and energetic text, the term "fitness center" was regarded as politically incorrect. By the time I was preparing the syllabus, I received word that at least one student with a limited physical condition had become an English major. Another notable feature of the text of the syllabus is that this was an example of paying attention to layout and packaging: icons and symbols provided visual information and aimed to facilitate cross-referencing between the weekly program of the sessions and the requirements. The titles of the sessions, quotations from one of the required readings, aimed to further raise students' curiosity.
It was after such work that the most recent WRS course I designed opened, in two sections, in September 1998. In the first session, students received the syllabus presented in Appendix H (pp. 213-214). The "Description" section retained the elements that had become the staple of the course, but was complemented by a focus on "opinions, observations in personal narrative and descriptive essays" as the text types that the course aimed to help student develop. Experimentation, writing processes, and the research elements were included as the other building blocks.
A procedural innovation was the employment student assistants. Students from the previous course were asked to consider volunteering to team-teach a session with me. Eight students expressed such willingness, a relatively high number, given the fact that this was not widely practiced at the university and that the offer was made when students were working on the revision of their research papers.
The closure of the syllabus is an example of how a teacher can frame a document of this type: if the audience is greeted at the beginning, a final personal remark seems to be relevant. In this instance, I expressly made the point that I was looking forward to the "time we will be spending together, and to your ideas and texts. I wish you a memorable and exciting time in the writing center." The syllabus, for the first time in the history of its development, operated with the first person plural pronoun, placing the students and the tutor in the context of a shared community.
The reason for dividing the activities into two categories was that the relatively short time available for group meetings. Courses had an average span of thirteen weeks, with 90-minute sessions a week. As early as the first course in 1996, this was supplemented in two ways. First, office-hour meetings were always announced and students made welcome in them. I regarded these meetings as essential for the fulfillment of course goals, especially because the average section had 20 students. The other way of making more time available was that the course did not end when the semester was over: volunteering students received encouragement to revise their papers in exam periods. Although I have not kept continuous records of all office hour meetings and all students' revision choices, the majority of students came at least once to the office meetings, with many choosing to frequent these occasions throughout the semester and beyond. A similar tendency was shown for revising: the overwhelming majority of the students decided to revise.
Tasks and techniques tended to follow a cycle: introductory sessions inquired about students' experience of reading and writing. Pair and group discussions were initiated to establish a cooperative network, one where students were willing to share their ideas, orally and well as in writing. As my writing pedagogy aimed to follow a process approach, cyclicity meant that after the introductory sessions, the different levels of text construction were dealt with as discrete elements and holistically.
The emphasis was on student participation: the course aimed to achieve sustainable development, which I hypothesized would be possible by fostering a classroom where questions, critique, and opinion are raised freely.
Besides this element of the classes, a few sessions incorporated a lecture component where I presented views on writing, often supplemented by illustrations from students' scripts. The lecture part aimed to make students aware of the larger issues of writing: processes in writing, audience, purpose, writer's voice, and plagiarism, and it also aimed to establish a link between individual sessions and the overall purpose of the course. Such presentations tended to include a metaphor: to bring fundamental issues closer to real experience, I devised several ways of describing the nature of writing. In one instance, the metaphor even became the central element of the course--in the Fall 1997 course, each element of the WRS was designed by the images incorporated in the metaphor.
In these approaches, I was led by theory and practice: different learning strategies need motivation from a variety of sources--the high-level cognitive load of construing writing quality and processes can be experienced via lower-level stimulus. The practical consideration was that such presentations and the ensuing discussion and application contributed to a lively classroom, with enhanced group dynamics. In developing writing habits and attitudes, images can be applied as a framework to plug the gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar. They can also motivate students to devise their own metaphors, share them, and attempt to use them as personally relevant elements of writing strategies. (See a brief discussion of the photographer, the plane flight, and the slim plain English metaphors in Appendix I, pp. 215-216.)
A culmination of the metaphor approaches can be seen in the five T tips: these presented paragraph-level conventions and notions of signaling a paragraph with indentation, what its topic is, in what tense the ideas are presented, how the tone of the writer exposes the topic, and how one paragraph may contribute to the unity of the text. These basics were incorporated in the Spring 1998 course, and then a semester later they appeared as the tips. They specifically aimed to provide students with a technique that was easy to remember and which could inform revision. The tips are a simple checklist of five questions the writer can ask in developing or revising a text:
These processes materialized in classroom and take-home assignments. Although the 90-minute session format did not allow for much in-class writing, all projects were discussed in the classes, either in small groups or by the whole class. A few sessions, however, experimented with group writing in class. An activity of this type was done in the Spring 1997 semester. One of the three groups had the sessions in a regular classroom, whereas the other two in the Arizona Room. The task aimed to provide students with practice in writing unified paragraphs based on topic sentence prompts that they were required to discuss. In the traditional classroom, pairs and small groups of students negotiated content and development and then produced subsequent drafts. The individual paragraphs were collected, with the full text typed up for next class for revision. In the Arizona Room, the GroupSystems software allowed for pairs to work concurrently on individual paragraphs, by using the Group Writer tool of the facility.
Group Writer is one of several options of GroupSystems that facilitates negotiation. Originally developed for conducting business meetings, it promotes dynamic and effective meetings. Divided into the facilitator's server and the participants' workstations, the system connects anonymous users who can work individually or in small groups, responding to questions and participating in other tasks. Responses are typed in and sent to the server, which collects participant input and displays it for all. They can then be applied for small group face-to-face discussion, a process that lowers anxiety and can result in settling an agenda more efficiently than by using traditional methods only. As I had used this network tool earlier in Language Practice and other courses, I had an opportunity to evaluate its usefulness in education. Especially suitable for such a purpose are the modules of Brainstorming, Categorizer, Questionnaire, Group Dictionary, and Group Writer.
After students learned to use the workstations, I sent them the topic sentences and asked pairs to discuss and write their paragraphs. With five topic sentences sent to the participants, they could choose their own. Once a pair began writing a paragraph, the rest of the group worked on other segments of the text. When a draft paragraph was prepared, it was sent to the server, which in turn channeled the text back to all participants. In this way, everyone was able to contribute to the effort, it was instantaneous, and pairs were also able to comment and change the texts by other pairs.
The key advantage of this type of use of the Group Writing tool is its reliance on teams. Also, the text can be printed when the drafts are sent to the server, which students can take home and work on individually.
Other tasks that relied on cooperation belonged to two types: commenting on students' writing and co-authoring texts by students and by a student and the teacher. The former task gained increasing weight as the syllabus of the course was modified; as the section on Readings will show, a marked emphasis was lain on students' opportunities to read their peers' scripts. The latter was first attempted in the Fall of 1997.
Reflection on peers' text was part of the test given in Fall 1998 semester. Students were instructed to select one of the portfolios from the previous semester, which were part of the reading set, and discuss a positive feature in it. These reflective scripts showed different foci of attention: styles and opinions, emotions and facts received evaluation, enabling the teacher to assess students' coverage of reading and to incorporate insights in modifying readings for future courses. They also represented cooperation on the receptive pane. The productive aspect of this process was practiced in the other type of cooperation: co-authoring essays. Writing is often conceived of as a solitary activity: the author commits to paper thoughts, ideas, and opinions that seek expression. But writing in academic and other fields often takes place as an effort by more than one person; in fact, writing intended for a public always involves at least two people: the author and the editor.
Working on a theme by sharing an experience will result in growing consciousness of reader-based prose: contributing writers, when such partnerships are formed voluntarily, can provide insights that the solitary writer may not possess. For this purpose, the WRS course introduced the task of co-authoring essays as one of the many options. Beginning with the Spring of 1998, this meant either a script written by two students, or by a student and the teacher. The next section and the one on text types will present more details on this task.
The Faculty of Arts requires that teachers make five hours of contact time available for their students for such meetings every week of a semester. Officially, this was how much I minimally spent in the office. I was also willing to schedule appointments with students in different slots.
Meetings were held in my department office, their times specified in the syllabus and announced in classes. I attempted to do this so that students would feel welcome--my goal with the meetings was to provide a course that ran parallel with the sessions. Especially in the last two semesters, which applied the writing center framework, the meetings came close to establishing such a form of interaction. This seems to have been appreciated by the majority of students; although I did not keep continuous records of their attendance, the office did become a busy meeting point by the middle of each semester. Of the many types of activity that took place in these consultations, I will present two types: one involving the optional task of co-authoring essays, the other the application of technology.
As discussed in the previous section, students were asked to consider writing at least one text with their peers and another with me. Several students chose to write pieces with their peers, and quite a few with me, too. The rationale for the task was to provide an authentic information-gap writing task for both the students and the tutor: by cooperating on developing a text initiated by either party, they may learn about each other and about each other's writing strategies as well.
One of the students who found time to participate in this project was Polgár Judit in the Fall 1998 WRS course. When Judit came to one of the office hour consultations, she told me she wanted to write an essay with me. I asked here whether she would be interested in drafting a narrative essay on her name, which I could complement with a similar draft. We agreed we would try and swap texts when done. This was how the parallel type of the co-authored essay was developed. (See the essay in Appendix J, p. 217.)
Another way students exploited the time in the office was technological. As they were requested to submit most drafts typed or printed, students with no computer literacy were helped either by their peers or me. Introducing them to the operating system of the computer and the use and functions of the word processor served a practical purpose. Others came to search for materials on the internet or to explore concordancing programs.
As we shall see in the next section on text types, the research paper requirement included the compilation of a reference section, one that contained all sources cited in the main text in a standard form. The WRS course was the first at the ED of JPU that required the use of either the standard of the American Psychological Association or the Modern Language Association. Writing a References or Works Cited section is no easy undertaking for the novice writer--in fact, even academics, I realized as editor of books and Novelty, with a long publication experience tend to ignore or be unaware of this requirement.
Several worksheets and activities were designed to help students with this task. Multiple copies of the publication manuals of the APA and MLA were ordered for the library. The updated version of the department's thesis writing guidelines (Horváth, Nikolov, & Turner, 1997) incorporated sections and illustrative examples on the issue. To help students even more, I designed a set of two simple computer programs to generate APA- and MLA-type reference lists (Horváth, 1999c, 1999d).
Finally, office hours set aside time for students to familiarize with the spelling and grammar check modules of the word processor.
Theoretically, the warm-up with personal writing was seen as a phase fundamental for later work. From the students' point of view, this was seen as crucial in (1) establishing positive attitudes to writing, (2) providing practice in designing, planning and drafting clear and concrete texts, (3) helping them develop effective relationships so they had trust and willingness to share scripts, and (4) motivating students to want to revise so they had practice in text-, paragraph-, and sentence-level revision. From the teacher's point of view, the four outcomes were equally relevant, but they were complemented by a reader's curiosity of these students' ideas expressed in the scripts.
Dozens of personal text types were designed over the past semesters to achieve these goals. Of these, I will present the ones that proved most effective, explaining the underlying pedagogical and rhetorical considerations. Each of these text types was presented as an option for students' portfolios, but students were free to choose among them, as well as formulate their own themes and purposes.
The follow-up task invited students to choose one of three drafts they had submitted before: the learning essay, a script based on a theme selection table, or the one about their own essay metaphors. After reading their scripts and the teacher's commentary, they were required to make any revisions they deemed necessary. Following this phase, students had to read out their own scripts and record them on tape. The rationale was that the aural experience may make students aware of other potential needs for change. By listening to a text, we may realize an unintended sentence fragment, an awkward term that "does not sound good," and other features that can and should be revised. Students expressed overwhelming support for the task, even though producing the tapes posed technical problems to many (cf. Horváth, in press).
The research paper requirement was thus conceived, for the first time in the history of writing courses at the ED of JPU, in the Fall of 1996, to provide a transition between personal and academic writing, and between the course and the rest of the university studies. With language, organization, and revision skills practiced and improved, the next task was to conduct a small-scale authentic research project. The small scale of the project meant that students had to have enough time, about five weeks, to decide on a research question, formulate a plan and produce a first draft. The authenticity of the project was concerned with its coherence within the course; this being a WRS course, its research options had to do with the subject matters of its syllabus.
Four of the five semesters offered several choices for this component; the exception being the first one, when students had to write about one topic: the analysis of newspaper articles published on the day they were born. The task involved the location of a relevant source in an accessible library, the selection of the data based on the research question, and the use of reference material about journalism.
In each of the other courses, at least five options were presented, with the ones listed in Table 6 becoming constant elements by the fall of 1998. As the table shows (the same as what students received as one of the handouts in the course), there were six specific themes with corresponding data and suggested reference material. An open choice was also provided for students who wished to explore other opportunities.
Table 6: Research paper options in the Fall 1998 course
The research paper length requirement varied between 2,000 and 1,200 words--initially it was longer but was reduced in later courses. Students were to follow a standard structure: Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion, and Conclusion (IMRSC), supplemented by a list of their references either in APA or MLA format. In each course, relevant aspects of the department guidelines were to be followed.
As can be seen from this brief description of the research paper, the task and the text type aimed to plug the gap between the WRS course and future courses. The reference conventions it introduced and explained were practiced extensively. Separate task sheets and class forums were used to initiate students to academic modes of delivery.
What this component inherited from the earlier phase of the course was a continued emphasis on clarity and simplicity of language and ideas, and the multiple-draft process approach. Although the course officially ended by the time students submitted their first drafts, the majority welcomed the opportunity of revision and continued to submit second, third, and, in rare instances, fourth versions.
In terms of research design and data applied, the courses aimed to introduce students to two basic types: presenting quantitative and qualitative results. This component of the course functioned as initiation into basic decisions researchers have to make when they embark on a project.
One innovation in this regard was the increasing emphasis accorded to students' writing. As early as the Fall 1996 semester, an essay by Schubert Gábor (1996) was featured in the syllabus; the essay, the first student contribution published in Novelty, was included to introduce students to the idea of analyzing a course syllabus, and to serve as a possible model for student writing in which the voice of the author was clear, supported by the semi-fictional nature of the experience described in the narrative part of the text.
Schubert's article was the first of many student scripts used in WRS courses. Not all of these appeared in the Readings lists--as the course developed, students themselves began to share their own essays as well, which was facilitated by the course folders placed in the department library.
To provide an overview of the types of texts used as reading materials in the courses, I have prepared the following table (Table 7). It structures the readings according to the three types and presents them chronologically. Note that I had omitted years of publication to economize on space for titles where such information is not necessary for identification--I indicate readings by authors, editors, or titles. The full publication information is provided in the References.
Table 7: The three types of reading materials in the five semesters
The courses also introduced students to the use of an important writer's tool, the thesaurus, which the majority of students had never used before.
Besides these resources, several other texts were reviewed in designing courses and made available for interested students in office hours. These extra materials included one of the first descriptions of plain English for educational purposes, by Gowers (1953). Study-skills handbooks such as those by Smith and Smith (1990) and Sotiriou (1984) complemented composition texts from the U.S. and U.K.: Arnold and Harmer (1978), Clouse (1986), Crews (1987), Elsbree, Bracher and Alitzer (1977), Evans (1998), Gere (1985), Gould, DiYanni and Smith (1989), Hall (1988), Hamp-Lyons and Heasley (1987), Hansen (1987), Hult (1986), Legett, Mead, Kramer and Beal (1988), Leki (1989), Madden and Rholck (1997), McMahan and Day (1984), Rackham and Bertagnolli (1988), Raimes (1983b; 1996), Rankin (1972), Schenk (1988), and Weiner (1973).
Of the textbooks published in Hungary, the most recently used were Csomay and Szerdahelyi's (1997) process-syllabus resource for advanced students and Kiszely's (1998) collection of texts and tasks. Besides, the chapters of my own developing course material, Take-off (Horváth, in preparation), were made available to students.
By writing on an author's script, the editor-teacher becomes a co-author of the text. This relationship necessitates professionally sound and useful comments, which are clear, specific and which lead the student to want to reflect on the advice. Commentary has to give an authentic view of the reader's impression of the content and overall quality of the text. To achieve these aims, my practice involved two types of comment: (1) handwritten notes in the margins focusing on sentence- and paragraph-level issues and notes at the end summarizing overall impressions, and (2) typed reviews.
As far as the portfolio scripts are concerned, most comments were written in hand on the scripts. Besides, I applied the technique that was later also discussed in Grundy and Li (1998): to save the original script from becoming an illegible mixture of main text by writer and subtext by reader, I used Post-It notes. These could be flipped over or removed when revising. Another traditional technique was using pencils: this even allows students to erase comments they did not agree with.
In all of my work on feedback, I aimed to focus on positive features so that students were able to build on them while addressing weaknesses. Also, by reading my feedback, students became co-authors of my writing, which I considered another authentic text type.
When a portfolio was presented for evaluation, I had seen most scripts at least once in their earlier versions. The purpose of the typed feedback was to provide one more reading material to students that was special in its detail, and hopefully useful. As for the comments on research papers, the feedback followed the categories of evaluation. Before students received the options for the research paper task, they learned about the evaluation criteria. Extensive comments were given on all first drafts. Tables 8 and 9 show the version used in 1997 and 1998, respectively.
Table 8: The evaluation categories of the research paper in 1997
Table 9: The evaluation categories of the research paper in 1998
The combination of spoken and the two types of written comments, although a most time consuming effort, appeared to contribute to students' willingness to participate in classes and to revise. Also, by setting an example with my own motivation to respond promptly, with most written feedback provided within days of receiving a script, I aimed to communicate my own motivation to students. Further empirical research, however, is necessary in the field: both qualitative and quantitative data should be gathered to establish factors that most effectively contribute to improved writing. Also, as will be explained in the next chapter, the use of teachers' typed feedback can be extended to form part of the annotation of a learner script, thus facilitating a systematic study of the nature, typology, validity, and reliability of such commentary.
In the past five semesters, four types of assessment categories were applied in the courses. As Figure 14 illustrates, their relative weight changed across the five courses, with participation being modified least, and the test the most. The Spring 1998 course was an example of the four categories receiving equal weight.
Figure 14: The relative weight of assessment categories across the five courses
Each of the four types of activity assessed provided information on students' achievement, and thus were integral elements of the final picture that emerged.
Student involvement in achievement testing is also an option. This was elicited twice in the course, with the most recent project occurring in the fall of 1998. It involved the evaluation of the portfolio, which was assigned a maximum mark of ten, on a holistic scale. The requirements I considered in assigning a grade to a particular collection were the following: regularity of writing during the course, the number of scripts (a minimum of five), the application of readings and of the five T tips, and evidence of effective revision.
Overall, on the basis of the information gathered from the participating students, it appears that not only were students successful in their portfolio projects, but the majority also regarded the evaluation as fair. As a tutor of these students, I was glad to see a marked agreement between the two scores. But to be able to add to the reliability of this part of the study, further investigation is necessary. In discussing preliminary findings of this project, several students suggested that in reporting a score to me, some participants may not have given the true score of their work. In a future project, student research assistants may need to elicit this information. Also, interviewing students could provide insights into the process of students' self-evaluation.
Another aspect of assessment is how levels of performance are compared. Most university courses appear to apply criterion referencing: in the syllabus the teacher specifies a grading scheme with percentages representing levels. This may be a valid approach in lecture courses involving a large number of students. However, in seminar courses norm referencing may be more valid from the point of view of the construct of seminar work. Comparing students' results with each other informs teachers of the work they have been able to do. Also, fine-tuning level setting may carry higher face validity.
For these two reasons, I applied norm referencing throughout the five semesters, deciding on required levels of performance for each of the four passing levels by consulting the graph of final scores.
Thirty students participated in the procedure of the Spring 1997 course evaluation. The three sections of the course, ANG 1601, 1602 and 1603, had a total of 36 registered students, of whom two had not participated in the last four to six classes. Out of 34 students, 32 were present in the last classes. Data was collected on May 12 and May 13, 1997, on the dates when students were submitting their end-of-term assignments.
My hypothesis was that students would express positive and negative attitudes to the course and that the information I would receive may be useful in planning next semester's syllabus for a slightly modified course.
In each of the three sections, students were asked to participate in the evaluation anonymously in writing. The questionnaire consisted of four categories that students were asked to rate numerically. They were told that they had the option of not completing the questionnaire or not submitting it. I administered and collected the questionnaires. Two students chose not to participate.
Students were asked to rate each of the following four evaluation criteria on a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 represented extremely negative, and 7 extremely positive views:
Out of the 30 students who returned the questionnaire, 28 responded to the item on how fair they found the evaluation of their work in the course. In the three sections, students seemed to consider my evaluation fair; two gave the Fairness of Evaluation criterion a value of 4, five students gave it a value of 5, six students a value of 6, and twelve students gave it the top value, 7. Figure 15 presents the distribution of values for the fairness criterion.
Figure 15: Number of students selecting values for the fairness of evaluation query (N = 28)
The second item asked students to rate how much assistance they received from other students in the group. All 30 students who took the questionnaire answered the question. With three students giving this criterion a value of 3, nine students a value of 4, ten students a value of 5, three a value of 3, and five a value of 7, the assistance students reported they received from others appeared to be somewhat lower than I expected. Figure 16 shows the distribution of values for the Assistance from Students criterion.
Figure 16: Number of students selecting values for the assistance from students query (N = 30)
The third category was Assistance from the Tutor. All 30 students who returned the questionnaire responded to this query. One student assessed the tutor's assistance by giving it a 3, two by giving it 5, seven by giving it 6, and twenty-one by giving it the top value, 7. Figure 17 demonstrates the distribution of values for the assistance from the tutor criterion.
Figure 17: Number of students selecting values for the assistance from the tutor query (N = 30)
The last course evaluation category in the questionnaire invited students to assess the usefulness of the writing course. Again, all the 30 students returned their questionnaires by assigning one value to this category. One student gave it the median value, 4, nine the value of 5, fourteen the value of 6, and six the value of 7. Figure 18 shows the distribution of values for the usefulness criterion.
Figure 18: Number of students selecting values for the usefulness of the course query (N=30)
To obtain information on how students' evaluations differed from each other, I calculated the standard deviation (STD) figure as well. An STD can show how similar or different respondents' opinions are by comparing each respondent's rating with the mean. The lower the STD, the more uniform individual responses are; conversely, the higher this value, the more divergent the opinions. Although it is extremely rare that in any group all members would agree on all issues, I regarded the STD of the four criteria as another essential aspect of the reception of the course.
As Figure 19 attests, the most divergent opinions were expressed about the fairness of evaluation (1.79). The other three category STD figures were lower, with the usefulness category STD value being the lowest (0.79), showing that this was the evaluation category that elicited most uniform responses.
Figure 19: STD values of participants' evaluations of the four criteria
Another way of looking at the results is by calculating the mean figures of the category values. To be able to form an overall image of students' evaluation of these criteria, I conducted this calculation and found the following: The lowest mean was obtained for assistance from students (4,93). While this was the lowest value, it was still in the positive range of the scale. Students ranked the usefulness of the course criterion higher, as the mean figure for that category was 5.83. For the fairness of evaluation and assistance from the tutor categories the mean figures were 6.14 and 6.53, respectively. Figure 20 shows the rating of the four factors.
Figure 20: Mean figures of the evaluation of the four criteria
Finally, to assess the reliability of the results, I undertook a comparison analysis by calculating the means of the values assigned to the fairness of evaluation (F), assistance from students (S), and assistance from the tutor (T), and by comparing that with the mean figure for the usefulness of the course category. I hypothesized that the comparison would result in little if any difference between the two values if the results were reliable, but be markedly different if they were not. As Figure 21 reveals, almost no difference was found between the usefulness of the course and the composite of the other three factorial means.
Figure 21: Comparison of the mean score for the usefulness criterion and the averages of the fairness, assistance from students and assistance from the tutor criteria
I obtained valuable information on students' evaluation of the three WRS sections. I hypothesized that students would share their positive and negative opinions in selecting values on the scales for each of the four categories. Most opinions students expressed about these courses were in the positive range of the scale, with only one student assigning one of the categories a slightly negative value (3, in assistance from the tutor).
As a result of conducting writing research and practicing the pedagogy of writing, I have benefited professionally and personally. Students' views and opinions have continued to shape the focus of the course. Their continued interest in participating in voluntary conferences in office hours provided further evidence that a teacher's motivation was a significant factor in maintaining and raising student involvement. Most importantly, their personal descriptive essays and research papers have helped me understand more clearly their views of the world, themselves, and the educational and linguistic issues they identified as essential. In so doing, they have also helped me want to become a better teacher writer.
The opportunities I have had as a writing teacher have gone beyond the classroom and the office hour. Several students have begun to pursue writing activities for their own pleasure and for various purposes. An increasing number of fiction and non-fiction writers have emerged. Over twenty students have published their articles, essays, and reviews in Hungarian and international newsletters and journals. To have been able to motivate and assist them has been another source of satisfaction.
The invigorating effect of reading a first draft, of discussing its merits and problems in class and privately, of reading a revised version of the script: the opportunity to be part of the development of an idea that a student is willing to share with peers and the tutor is among the greatest benefits a writing course can offer. Besides, the use of earlier groups' essay and research paper collections in new courses establishes a link between students, and thus helps maintain an authentic and relevant discourse community.
How this community is being developed throughout university was beyond the scope of this study. This area may be well worth the investigation in future action research, involving a representative sample of courses. Another type of follow-up study could investigate how what is acquired and learned in the WRS courses is applied in students' theses. For wider institutional appeal, and for encouraging cross-institutional cooperation, Hungarian colleges and universities could set up research and pedagogical projects.
Plans are now underway to further raise the quality of the writing course. The content of the syllabus for the Fall 1999 WRS course has been drawn up. It retains what appeared to be effective and valid components of earlier courses, but introduces several new task and text types. Of these, the most challenging may be the two co-authored research papers: one written by two students, the other by a student and the teacher. The rationale for the inclusion of these task and text types is that by collaborating on these small-scale projects, students may receive a more coherent introduction to the nature of the research effort.