New writing seminars draw mixed reviews

With their required seminars behind them, half of University freshmen are now better writers — maybe better than the sophomores.

The University revamped its undergraduate writing requirement last fall. A semester later, students have mixed reactions about the program's effectiveness.

All freshmen are required to take a writing seminar in addition to four courses during one of the first two terms. Sophomores who had not completed the former writing requirement last year are required to take a seminar this year as well.

Elizabeth Pillion '05 said her seminar, WRI 153: Criminal Sentences, could have been better. "I think it was a little too monotonous writing that many papers," she said. "It just got boring after a while."

In the seminars, students wrote "pre-drafts" for each paper as well as drafts. In the pre-drafts, they prepared ideas and evaluated sources. "By the end you kind of got sick of writing," Pillion said.

Kerry Walk, who directs the writing program, said instructors emphasized the process as part of the purpose.

"One of the premises of the course is that writing is a process," she said. "You don't just sit down and the paper just appears on your screen."

The pre-draft assignments were from each instructor's "bag of tricks," writing strategies that would improve students' writing.

Walk added, however, that seminar instructors are working to respond to students' comments. One instructor, Walk said, cut the number of pre-drafts in half for the spring seminar.

Walk also said not every student will benefit from pre-drafts, but that generally they were useful.

Joel Greenberg '05 said despite the pre-drafts, he enjoyed his seminar, WRI 111/112: Encounters With the Other.

"I thought that even though that they were kind of annoying, in the end they actually did help you prepare for your paper," he said.

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Although he said others in his seminar felt the course had too much work, Greenberg — an engineer — said it was reasonable.

"I thought it was a really hard thing to go through," said Nick Brown '05, who took WRI 134: Social Class in Contemporary America.

Ryan Coyle '05 said his current seminar, WRI 139: T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, has been helpful, and that studying just one poem is beneficial. "You feel like you cover something very thoroughly," he said.

"I think it's helping me learn the concept of revision," Coyle said. "A lot of times I'll write a paper and that's that. And it would be better to go through it and take a second look at it."

Because the seminars are taught by instructors of varying qualifications, several students said, the quality of seminars can also vary.

This "mixed staffing model" was by design, Walk said. Half the instructors are full-time lecturers hired specifically for the program, and a small handful are "advanced" graduate students. Faculty and even administrators "itching to get back into the classroom" teach seminars as well, Walk said.

Walk also teaches a seminar, WRI 118: Hamlet. "For me it was the best way to make the transition from that school up east," said Walk, who used to head Harvard University's writing program.

Lecturer Frank Cioffi, who taught WRI 123/124: Medical Narratives, said student aversion to the seminars may be a result of the seminars' "bureaucratic quality." They are a required extra course and not all students get assigned to one of their top choices.

Cioffi taught WRI 151: The Craft of Writing last year. The two courses are not very different, he said. But the new seminars are an improvement over the writing courses offered by other departments in the old system.

"You had to write papers, but you weren't given a lot of writing instruction," Cioffi said.

Greenberg, who said he did not think his writing improved much over the course of the seminar, suggested that there be a placement test for the writing requirement.

Carol Rigolot, who taught WRI 106: Contemporary American Prose last semester and LIT 141w: Modern European Writers in the past, said tracking students at different levels would be difficult because their time and topic preferences already receive consideration.

She added that even students who might place out of the requirement would still benefit from a seminar.

"Even strong writers can learn more," she said.

Walk, who has read student evaluations from the first semester, said comments have been positive.

"A lot of students have learned through this course how to write at the college level," she said. "I think that's the key thing."