provocative opinion Writing among Other Skills G. F. Atkinson University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1 In a recent Prouocatiue Opinion, Lahianca and Reeves1 enumerate some of the demerits they see in applying the "writing across the curriculum" approach to science students. They address hoth the needs of science majors and of science nonmaiors (or nonscience maiors), which are not the d points that same in all regards, and hring w my ~ x h several 1 trust will pnwide further ~rovocationto collenrues. Students entering any -college or universiiy program should meet certain basic standards of literacy, numeracy, and g r a p h i c a ~ yIn . ~ all three areas, hoth input and output skills are needed. Thus, the entering student should meet criterion standards rather than cohort-normed standards for reading, writing, listening, speaking, understanding and using basic mathematics. and inter~retineand constructine graphical displays of information &d relationships. Those who do not meet such criteria should he counselled to make good their deficiencies and when necessary ahould be provided with remedial instruction. Each institution must assess its resources and goals, and in the end set a cutoff level beyond which i t cannot pursue such remedial action; at that point, for hetter or worse, that student must he sent elsewhere. One reason for settine such criteria is to ensure that all students entering into &e full normal program have in hand a ranee of skills enabling them to nrofit from various modes of in&uction including self-ins&uction, learning by peer interactions, formalized small-group projects, and typical lecture courses. There will of course he need for the enhancement of the listed skills during a college degree program. It is this need that "writing across the curriculum" and other strategies propose to address. Such enhancement is a basic contrihution to enabling the student to pursue lifelong learning. Sitting in a classroom is atvnical of the wavs in which most ,. persons will mt.t.1 their learning needs throughout their lives. \Vritinr clesrlvsnd ruherrntlv is not onlv a kev.ineredient of " many jobs, pakicularly thoseUforcollegegraduates, hut also is one of the most widely useful ways of consolidating and internalizing whatever the person is learning. In no sense is time spent on enhancing such skills lost to the basic process of college education, producing a self-educating graduate. Similarly, time spent in learning problem-solving strategies-the algorithms of what to do when you do not know what to do-may often contribute more to a student's education, hoth present and future, than knowing more about the reactions of the second carbon atom from the left. Lahianca and Reeves state. "Science courses for nonscience majors should he full tb the brim with content, and writing instruction would onlv, finallv, reduce the content." This problem is of course-diminished if students are
' Labianca, D.A.: Reeves, W. J. J. Chern. Educ. 1985,62,400.
Boardman, D. "Graphicacy and Geography Teaching': Crwm Helm: London, 1983. Kooser, R.; Factor, L. J. Chern. Educ. 1982, 59, 1010. Sandman. P.: Klomous. C. S.: Yarrison, B. G. "Scientific and Technical writing": ~oit:~ineharta Winston: New York. 1985.
equipped, and expected, to engage in other forms of learning outside the lecture hall. As they proceed through a degree program, surely they should increasingly acquire facts elsewhere, and devote class time to discussion, learning methods of interpretation, and polishing a collection of skills needed to operate on those facts successfully. Kooser and Factor3 examined many science textbooks, and classified them into groups focussed on "Truth and Progress", "The Scientific Fix", and "Drills and Skills". All of these orientations overlie a body of content, and inevitably the amouutand choice of content i n a course is limited by some overriding considerations of goal over and above the dictation speed of the instructor and the transcription speed of the students. I t seems not unreasonable that facility in writing sensibly and successfully about the course content might he one content-constraining course ohiective. A good rase van he made for n technical writing course for science maiors, based on n trxt like the recent one by Sandman, ~ l o m p u s ,and Yarrison4, hut no student, I suggest, should he encouraged to think of "English" or "Writing" or whatever as merely another extraneous credit to collect. Competent written work-and for that matter, competent oral work-should he required in numerous courses in the major subject itself. In a second-vear (fourth-semester) course in instrumental methods of chkmical analysis, taught t o classes of majors in chemistry or chemistry and biology, I meet about 75 students (in two classes, fall and winter) each year. These students are required to write a term paDer of 10 to 15 pages for 25% of the total course grade. TWO copies of the paper are submitted, and one is graded for English by arrangement with the essay-grading service through which all term papers assigned in Renison College in this university are passed. That grading produces 10 of the 25 marks; the other 15 are from my grading of the second copy of the paper for its chemical content. chemical loeic. - . etc. This svstem has ooerated successfully for a number of years. I t isour intention to describe it more fully in a future publication. In a nonmajor course, we have used a different format for a writing task. About two-thirds of the way through the semester, a lab period is cancelled and instead each student is handed on arrival a library assignment sheet with general structure and format guidelines,-and a specific assignment. A typical one might be a periodic table with a different element marked for each student to deal with. the reauirement being to report one classical method, and one modern method. of analvzine . ..for the eiven element. (The distinction between methods at the nppked principles l'evel, and pmcedures at the (.ookt)ookerv level is vlearlv made earlier in the course.) The demonstrators are assigned to the library to provide help, and the assignments made a t 230 P.M. are collected by 9:OO. The library looks like a tornado track a t the end of the day, but the students are usually very pleased tndisccmer what they can d o i l they mnrt in providing aclenr nod conrise, though usually not \,cry polished, pirce of prose by applying writing skills and subject principles Iearncd in Volume 63 Number 4
April 1986
337
rlass to cuntent thar in niany cases they had never encountered eight . huurs earlier. We helieve this is a most valuable experience. If it is made clear to students that writing of a competent standard is essential for earning a respectable grade not just in a writing course, but throughout one's major or core (or
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Journal of Chemical Education
both) requirements, it is pleasantly surprising how well they resvond. It' the writ in^ task reauires some librarv work in ~ r ~ p a r a t i o(and n we require of k r majors a bibliography in good form four weeks before the paper's due date), it may move students significantly toward becoming ilf-educating.
