Less is Less: Results of the LTWR Student Writing Assessment Project and Composition Research

Do these results complement composition and rhetorical research?

The short answer to the question is most assuredly, “Yes.”  What is important though is to recognize the ways our assessment results underscore the need for more writing instruction, not less.  In fact, the research suggests that to even hint at less writing instruction is to compromise the University and its communal responsibilities.

At the core of CSUSM’s All-University Writing requirement, an intensive writing curriculum which stipulates a 2500 word writing requirement for all courses, including math and sciences labs, is what Janet Emig explains in her article “Writing as a Mode of Learning.”  Simply put, writing allows thinks to know things that they would otherwise not have know if they had not written.  Emig explains the power of writing this way:

Writing…connects the three major senses of our experience to make meaning.  And the two major modes by which these three aspects are united are the processes of analysis and synthesis: analysis, the breaking of entities into their constituent parts; and synthesis, combining or fusing these, often into fresh arrangements or amalgams. (337)

The process of writing calls on thinkers to engage their hands, eye, and brain. In so doing, new ideas are formed.  In other words, writing necessarily is a multi-sensory approach to learning and as learning styles research shows us, the more ways we come to know something, the more we will know (VARK Inventory).

The work of Andrea A. Lunsford and Cheryl Glenn extends Emig’s claim by contextualizing writing through a rhetorical lens.  In their collaborative article, “Rhetorical Theory and the Teaching of Writing,” they explain that an intensive writing curriculum teaches content while simultaneously requiring students to engage fully in the thinking process.  Writing requires students to engage the communication triangle shown below (429):

Together these four components create meaning.  The visual image of the triangle also helps writers recognize that in any meaning making moment, they are negotiating the triangle.  In doing so, writers articulate their particular rhetorical stance—they craft a unique position in the dialogic (429-431).  Writers/students become engaged participants in the exploration and development of ideas.

As David Bartholomae argues in “Inventing the University,” students’ rhetorical positions are key to the university, for students are the university because of their writing and thinking. To discourage students’ written words is to jeopardize the healthy dialogic we need among faculty, students, and administrators.  Said another way, guiding students to become successful writers increases students’ intellectual access to the University (449) and enriches it.  The result then of a writing-centered curriculum is what Mike Rose identifies as a curriculum that liberates our students, not one that occupies them (28).

CSUSM’s All-University writing intensive curriculum sets us apart from other universities.  Writing is the single most powerful pedagogical tool we can bring into our classrooms.  We also recognize from our research that even with our writing intensive curriculum, we have work to do our campus.  As faculty and administrators, we must continue to work with our students and provide the necessary resources as we guide students towards sage ideas that are clearly articulated.  Students deserve to experience the intellectual satisfaction that comes from well-thought ideas expressed through writing. 

For further commentary about the importance of CSUSM's writing intensive curriculum, you may want to click on the following page: CSU LITE: An Opinion