Critical Review

Written by Angelica
GES Core
04-19-06

This article entitled Benefits of a faculty writing circle--better teaching (1992) by Fassinger, & Gilliland, discussed a successful and pedagogical teaching technique based on creating writing circles to improve academic skills such as reading, writing, arguing, and analyzing discipline’s contents in college students through specific workshops. Therefore, I have to say that I agree with a writing circle has benefits because it is one way of engaging both teacher and students in creating the best atmosphere in classrooms, and avoiding traditional ways of offering simpler written comments to students by discussing why writing is an important academic skill.

Creating a faculty writing circle provides us three pedagogical benefits reached by college students, while this teaching way was implemented in mixed courses (sociology and history). First of all, authors accurately and sufficiently described the issue defining each pedagogical benefit and included an explanation of unfamiliar expressions. The first of these pedagogical benefits proposed a new teaching method called “writing groups in the sociology classroom”. According to the authors, this method creates an atmosphere composed of three characteristics -collaboration, conviction, and reciprocal supports- mostly performed by students. After authors define the terms such as peers’ work, they proceed to give us examples about minor topics and show us evidences of strategies using an understandable language. For example, they think that classmates should perform constructive criticism on someone else’s paper more than the instructors concerning evaluating ideas, rewriting summaries, and understanding how global article’s structure must be done. One example focused on using students comments was “…my reading has changed. I am much more focused on main points and logical flow of articles now. I noticed that I now read articles as if I were writing summaries- -carefully” (p. 3). Furthermore, the authors clearly suggest specific ideas of how instructors could use assignments if they want to improve writing activities in classroom such as “reading your-professor’s work as a sociology assignment”. Finally, the last section mentioned some author’s notes and cited works as well as the third pedagogical benefit based on a new perspective of understanding that students have differences in learning levels and intellectual development; therefore, the authors say teachers have to promote a friendly environment in classrooms. While students can be more exposed to good writing, they will check their own writing. That is the global goal defined by authors as “connected teaching” using an inductive process that shows students that writing is a difficult and intellectual process linked to other complex activities such as research.

In reviewing this article, I found that the explanation about reading your-professor’s work as a sociology assignment” was not enough explained as I was expecting. In my opinion, it deserved to be explained better as the newest activity in writing classes than by the small section used to explain it. In this sense, establishing how students have to recognize that some teacher preferences in writing styles as well as their authority positions tell them how much they know about their teachers’ knowledge. For example, the authors underlined this student’s comment as a proof of knowing about professors’ works is important for them: “I would like to read more work from my professors. I think it tells me a little bit more about them. It helps to show what they can actually do…” (p. 3). The second benefit in this article was related to considering the main problems faced by students in writing assignments. Because teachers have to feel that their students are writers, they have to encourage them to finish any writing tasks.

In conclusion, I want to say that I was motivated to read this article even though the authors did not conclude as strongly as I was expecting. But, their clear writing style and supporting details about pedagogical benefits was good enough to understand each strategy. Because my background in this field is good, I felt comfortable with the idea of looking at alternative ways in teaching writing classes. I definitely agree with the perspective of creating pedagogical experiences to teach something difficult as writing styles. In addition, I could not stop thinking about the fact that that engaging students in learning how to write is possible only if teachers have the enthusiasm to avoid traditional ways of teaching writing. In addition, teachers have to face with students the most common negative feelings on writing skill, and promote as much as possible encounters between students and well written texts. Moreover, I think that activities such as a faculty writing circle should be considered in teaching writing in both native and second languages.

Reference:
Fassinger, P. & Gilliland. (1992). Benefits of a faculty writing circle--better teaching. College Teaching, 40 (2), 53-56