Date Released: 23 March 2017
Steven Pinker’s provocative article “Why Academics Stink at Writing” that recently appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education attempts to identify the reasons why academic writing can be difficult to read. He outlines a variety of ways in which academic writers, in service of other goals, fail to meet readers' expectations for clear and productive prose. In this session, Megan Jewell, Writing Center Director, and Martha Schaffer, Associate Director of Composition, will lead discussion on our own processes as academic writers, and how we tie our own assumptions about what makes for "good academic writing" to our teaching. Specifically, we will address the ways in which the feedback we provide to students about their own writing might be informed by our expectations as academic writers. Some questions that we will consider include: What expectations do we as readers have for academic writing and how does this influence our own writing practices? How do we communicate our own and other academic readers' expectations to novice writers in our courses? How can we provide useful and effective feedback to novice writers to help them understand these expectations?
Join us on Thursday, March 23, 2017 from 12:00 - 1:00 p.m. in the Herrick Room, which is on the ground floor of the Allen building (at the corner of Adelbert and Euclid). Pizza lunch and sodas will be provided at this session.
To help us estimate the amount to order, please let us know if you plan to attend this session by replying to this email or sending a message to ucite@case.edu.