by Lea Davidson, Geology
In my first month of being a WIP TA, I’ve spent much of my time thinking about what makes me qualified to be a writing instructor. Specifically, what makes me qualified to guide undergraduates into producing ‘good’ writing. This is not to say that I doubt my own ability to write. I truly love writing; I find it exciting and creative and personal. The opportunity to write is one of the primary drivers of my interest in a research career.
Personally, I feel that I’ve never exactly had the words to articulate to myself what is incorrect or ineffective about a passage that I wrote. I can identify the ‘feeling’ of a problem or area for improvement, and act appropriately to fix it. What is difficult is translating that feeling into something concrete that I can point to as incorrect. I think this largely stems from a sense that I was never formally taught the details of sentence structure and grammar. I attribute the development of my writing guardrails to voracious childhood reading. This exposure is what taught me patterns of effective writing, though I never felt that this translated to any kind of mastery without remedying my knowledge gap in arcane grammar rules.
WIP pedagogy quickly helped me to realize that when teaching writing, grammatical and sentence level errors are only a small piece of effective writing as a whole. Specifically, I found concepts of reframing how students approach writing and refocusing on the end goal of a piece to be more deeply correlated to foundational writing improvement.
I am particularly drawn to the concept that there are no good or bad writers, that writing is a muscle, an instinct we hone. This is an understanding I have worked hard to impress upon my students, many of whom did not pick geology for their love of writing. When we discuss writing we often focus on its utility for our field, the necessity of being an effective communicator. It is this focus on effective communication that has allowed me to recenter on the simplest goal of our work: teaching effective communication through the vehicle of writing. When I focus myself on this goal, it helps me recognize the path forward in a student’s writing. When my students recenter on this goal, their direction and message are clarified, giving way to conciseness, improved structure, and more relevant supporting arguments and sources. Improper grammar and sentence structure errors both fall to the wayside and are addressed only through their relevance to the clarity of the message. Considering the writing-muscle mindset extends freedom to both students and instructors. For students, there is no longer a focus on the binary of correctness, but instead movement towards the main goal of effective communication. I believe this feels both more attainable and manageable, counteracting the anxiety that is a common barrier to writing.
WIP pedagogy is about reframing how we think about writing: not as a system of rules but as the clarity and communication of a message.
As an instructor, this reframing is freeing in that it redirects my focus from the weeds of sentence level errors to the big picture. I feel confident in my ability to indicate where and how an argument breaks down, as well as the steps students need to course correct. For both parties, incorporating WIP pedagogy is about reframing how we think about writing: not as a system of rules but as the clarity and communication of a message.
Lea Davidson is supporting GEOL 3020 and 4020 as a WIP TA this year. She studies hydrogeology, specifically how changes in river flow effect groundwater quantity and quality.