Writing seminars elicit mixed feelings

Three years after replacing the old University writing requirement, the Princeton Writing Program has elicited passionate responses — both criticism and praise — from the undergraduates who have braved its semester-long seminars.

According to Kerry Walk, director of the writing program, "writing seminars have a common goal — for students, through practice and guidance, to master essential strategies and techniques of intellectual inquiry and argument."

While students generally acknowledge that their respective seminars fulfill this basic objective, some, like Megan Ryan '07, question the program's effectiveness.

"I just think there are a lot of better ways to teach people how to write," Ryan said. "If students went into a specific field first before getting trained to write in that discipline, that would be much more helpful."

Walk, however, disagreed with this approach.

"In fact, an important premise of the writing seminars is that the similarities in writing from discipline to discipline outweigh the differences, and that students are best served by being introduced to the similarities — the generalizeable elements of academic writing," she said.

Walk, who came to the University after the fall 2001 faculty vote instituted the current seminar system, helped incorporate ideas from other writing programs at schools like Harvard, Cornell and Duke, into the Princeton Writing Program.

Before the 2001-2002 academic year, students fulfilled the writing requirement by passing a course designated "w" before the end of sophomore year.

"In the old 'w' courses, writing typically played a subordinate role to the course's subject matter and . . . the courses lacked a coherent writing pedagogy," Walk said. "But what makes our writing program distinctive is . . . the focus on intellectual inquiry and argument. In designing the curriculum for the writing seminars, we tried to keep in view the independent research projects Princeton students do, especially the JP and the senior thesis."

The writing seminars still have student proponents, though. "Mine's definitely been useful," said Jamie Jin '07 of his seminar, WRI 110: Culture and Memory.

"I like learning about different elements of academic essays like the motive and thesis," he said.

Felix Huang '06, a chemical engineering major who took a seminar titled WRI 169: Social Issues and Community Action, said, "I felt like our teacher made the assignments meaningful, which is a change from assignments in high school that just did literary analysis."

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However, Huang said he would prefer writing seminars geared toward developing more diverse writing styles. "I don't think it's particularly useful for science — it is a different style of writing. I'd appreciate if they offered a technical writing course for scientists and engineers," he said.

But even Walk said developing writers is a complex and lifelong process.

"All students can expect to keep improving as they take more courses and face new writing challenges," she said. "The writing seminar, then, is essentially a booster rocket for students' writing careers at Princeton."