Writing Across the Curriculum: Chemistry Lab Reports Lois C. Rosenthal Santa Clara University. Santa Clara, CA 95053 "Writing Across the Curriculum" is an educational movement designed to integrate writing more fully into the college curriculum. The basic premises of the movement are simple: that writing is a natural and necessary part of all subjects, that students learn to write best when they are given writing assignments in all their courses, and that writing skill develops in tandem with analytical thought. The task of teaching basic writine skills is still to reside with the freshman composition prugrsm, hut itudrnts are to exerciie ~ t t ddc\.eInp their writinr ahilities with continuous ~ractice throughout their co~le~ecareers. The National Endowment for the Humanities has, over the past several years, sponsored workshops in writing pedagogy faculty members in the various disciplines the . ..~to give . tools necessary for making writing assignments more important in their teaching. l'he workshops arc run by the coilege's own composition-staff and generally cover such topics as composition theory, cognitive development, assignment construction, grammar and syntax, and grading, and they allow time for discussion of the writing process itself and various uses of writing in the different disciplines. There is no question that students majoring in chemistry, and perhaps other sciences as well, graduate with underdeveloped writing skills. As the field of chemistry has become more quantitative, the college curriculum has naturally emphasized quantitative skills over the more qualitative ones like writing. Additional factors, such as a full, prescribed curriculum, extensive laboratory work, and the use of mathematics as a language all contribute to apaucity of writing in the standard chemistry curriculum. Many educators have expressed concern about this trend and about the obvious deficiencies in student writing. At least 16 articles in this Journal have addressed the problem since 1975 (1-16). Some papers offer general comments on student writing, point out specific weaknesses, andlor offer guidelines for writing improvement (1-6). Others describe ways to add more writing to the curriculum, through new courses (7-9) or modifications of existing courses (10-15). While two of the papers (4,161 take the minority view that solutions should he sought outside of the chemistry curriculum, this lmdy of literalure yi\w thr sense of whdehearted Iwlief in the importance of writing as a communirarioti skill and, for its own-sake, as stimulus for thought (3). One approach to improving writing instruction for chemistry majors without instituting anything new is to concentrate on the writing component that already exists in the lahoratorv . part . of the curriculum. that is. the uuuer . . division I d ) rcpurt. The lat, report has been recognized as the primary locus of student writinp in the rhemistrs curricitlum, and sLggestions for expanding its use in this iegard have been described (10-13). It is certainly worthwhile, then, t o consider this built-in writing component from the point of view of modern composition pedagogy to see where and how well it fits with the currently accepted notion of a good writing assignment. Such an analysis should help us use the lab report to best advantage in helping our students develop their writing abilities while learning chemistry, all without Presented in part at the 192nd American Chemical Society Annual Meeting. Anaheim. Sept. 1986. 996
Journal of Chemical Education
diverting class time or placing an extra burden on the instructor. Modern Composltlon Pedagogy A widely quoted work in modern composition pedagogy is t h e 1975 report of James Britton and co-workers (17),who studied 500 writing samples of ll-18-year-old students in England to discern how writine skill develoos. Their central interests wen. todescrihe the writing processand tocrc,ntr a (,I nsilic3tion .. whrme that would reflert rhnt process and the maturation of abilities in analysis, generalization, and ahstract thought. The latter abilities are still develouing in American college-age students (18). Britton's findkgs, so eloquently stated in his report, formed the basis of the first Writing Across the Curriculum project, funded in 1971 by the Schools Council of Great Britain. Of particular interest to science educators is Britton's classification scheme for standard expository prose, which Britton terms transactional writing to emphasize the exchange of information between the writer and the reader. By reference to the actual writine samples in his studv, and drawinx on work 01 hlvffett (13) on ;~hitrnctionscales, Britton divided this type ot writina into cateaories based on the degree of abstraction, analys;, or generalization found in the piece. Similar schemes have since been described; one (20) somewhat less technical than Britton's is shown in the figure. Here, common writing tasks are ordered in terms of how much generalization, analysis, or use of abstraction is called for. It is noted that these qualities are accompanied by a sense of distance from the writer. Although such onedimensional approaches to intellectual thought are undoubtedly simplifications-for example, the concept of synthesis is not included-schemes like this do have direct relevance to science and scientific writing, especially from a pedagogical viewpoint. To avoid undue emphasis on catego"
Sdmtific Argument Academic Argument
HIGH
Summary
MEDIUM
Detinium
COW
4
Abstraction Distance horn Writer arrangement of transactional or expository writing tasks in increasing abstraction. Alter ref 20.
Typical
order of
rization. the writine tasks have beeu erouned - . into three categories, low, medium, and high, which are used below to describe the cognitive level of any given writing task. At the low level are listing, definition, and chronology. These and similar types of writing do not require the writer to find logical relationships among the components or to do much oreanization. A lab notebook is an example of such writing. The medium level tasks are classification, summary, and comparelcontrast. Here the writer draws some meaning from the components, extracts key features, organizes, and/ or finds unifying concepts. The Experimental Method section of a lab report is an example of a medium level task. At the high level are analysis and argument. Here the writer either looks at a grouping of facts from some already existing theoretical perspective (analysis) or constructs a theoretical framework based on the facts (argument), presentinn the reader with the facts. the theorv, and a convincing dis&ion of the reasoning p;ocess. ~ n d t h elevel, r scientific arcument. can he added, where the writer is also res~wniililrfor the experiment that produred the facts. Then the validitv and relevance of the farts as well as tho validity of the theory must be argued. High-level writing occurs in the Discussion section of a lab report. According to composition pedagogy, i t is essential for the instructor to he aware of the cognitive level called for in any writing assignment. Such awareness makes it easy to articulate the source of error in student work. One very common student error is writine a t too low a coenitive level. For example, the ~ x p e r i m L ~ t Method al sertion of a lab rrptm taken in calls for a summarj, in which the myriad ol'ncti~~ns the lab are organized hy function rather than hy chronology, and the purpose is made clear to the reader. Many students instead &itk a lower level chronology. An example follows: After remaining in the oven for 2 hours, the process of using the KHP to standardize the sodium hydroxide began. The weighing bottle was removed from the oven; placed in desiccator to cool off. Meanwhile, my lab partner was washing the buret Amon< the many errors in this piece, the most fundamental one, and thr onr that must hecorrrctrd hefore theothersare addrt.ssed, is the fact that it is a chronology, not a summary. Similarly, drfinifion is often substituted for romporel u,ntrosr.'l'his error is c
