Читать книгу Engaging Ideas - John C. Bean - Страница 40

In many courses, the student artifact that most fully exhibits critical thinking is a formal paper requiring analysis and argument as opposed to algorithmic calculations. Too often, however, what students submit as finished products are often simply edited rough drafts—the result of an undeveloped and often truncated thinking process that doesn't adequately examine all the available evidence, consider alternative views, develop ideas fully, or imagine the needs of a new reader. Students often avoid or truncate the messy writing process through which undeveloped and initially confusing ideas become gradually focused, deepened, and clarified through successive drafts. No matter how much we emphasize global revision of early drafts, many of our students will continue to write their papers the night before they are due. The most powerful solution is for teachers to structure their courses to promote writing as a process. There are many strategies for promoting writing as process: incorporating exploratory writing into the course (in‐class freewrites, out‐of‐class thinking pieces), breaking difficult assignments into scaffolded parts, teaching metacognitive skills for self‐assessment and reflection, setting due dates for rough drafts, requiring peer review of drafts, scheduling paper conferences, and encouraging use of the campus's writing center. We should note especially that writing centers are effective at teaching students how to use the writing process for brainstorming, organizing, and developing ideas. Experienced tutors or consultants can help students understand the demands of an assignment, draw out initial ideas, overcome writer's block by encouraging imperfect first drafts, and help writers revise for clarity, complexity, and development. On many campuses the director of the writing center is one of an instructor's most important resources for developing ways to incorporate writing into a course. Chapters 11–16 offer many suggestions for encouraging students to deepen and extend their writing processes.