Chemical Education Today
Book & Media Reviews
Writing Across the Chemistry Curriculum: An Instructor’s Handbook by Jeffrey Kovac and Donna W. Sherwood Prentice Hall; Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001. vi + 91 pp. ISBN 0-13-029284-2. Paperback, $18.00. reviewed by John P. Lowe
This pleasing little book is intelligently designed to be useful to a busy teacher. The authors make a convincing case for the importance of writing activities in all chemistry courses, not only for the development of writing skills useful in a professional career, but also as a way of enhancing the learning of chemistry by requiring students to actively process ideas and information. The authors quickly get down to the practical matters of designing effective writing assignments, grading the results, and responding to students in ways that encourage their continuing development. While I have often made use of writing assignments in some of my classes, I came to this book with no formal background in writing instruction and little familiarity with the extensive literature on this subject. Nevertheless, I found that the authors were writing at just the right level for me. They point out that designing effective assignments requires awareness of basic rhetorical forms (an eightfold hierarchy ranging from listing, through summary, and up to scientific argument). The book also suggests appropriate levels of difficulty within each form and discusses both informal and formal writing tasks. This presentation is particularly easy to follow because many examples of actual assignments are provided along the way. (An example of an assignment on the classification mode: “Essentially all simple inorganic reactions can be classified as either precipitation, acid–base, or oxidation–reduction reactions. Provide a clear definition and examples for each category. Identify the basis for classi-
fication of each example.”) Chapter 3 deals with general strategies for using writing in a chemistry course or in a sequence of courses, and it sets the stage for the detailed discussions in following chapters. Chapter 4 focuses on grading writing either holistically or analytically, and offers practical advice on timesaving ways to do this without loss of objectivity. Examples of grading charts are included. I was impressed by the description of ways to train graders. The matter of how best to provide feedback to students is addressed in Chapter 5. Here again the discussion is helped along by inclusion of actual examples of student paragraphs, with possible teacher’s markings and marginal comments. Chapter 6 is made up mostly of sample assignments, broken down into categories, that can be used in various chemistry courses. Some of the sample topics in the ContentSpecific category are Acids and Bases, Atomic Theory, Thermodynamics, and Chemical Bonding. Other categories include Reintegration/Enrichment (analyzing chemistry content in relation to other disciplines), Exam-Preparation, and Professional Advancement (e.g., resumé preparation). This chapter is impressive testimony to the many ways that writing assignments can be used to achieve different learning goals. The final chapter is an extensive annotated bibliography of style guides, usage guides, Internet resources, and papers dealing with science writing. Those interested in including writing as an activity in their courses are likely to get some good ideas from this book. If you do not include writing in your courses, this book is likely to convince you that you should. Indeed, chemistry department faculty would benefit from collectively reading and discussing this book. It makes a strong case for integrating writing activities in a sensibly sequenced manner throughout the entire four-year college chemistry experience. John P. Lowe is in the Department of Chemistry, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802;
[email protected].
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 9 September 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
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