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Two recently published studies investigated the effects of the internet on college student writing. While the conclusions were mixed, one finding was clear. College students today do a lot of writing. Between posting comments online, blogging, composing poems for poetry slams or lyrics for songs, sending emails, text messages, and tweets, the college students studies actually did more writing on their own than they did for class assignments. Yet more evidence that college is becoming irrelevant thanks to Web 2.0?
Think again. While colleges need to work hard to make the writing they assign relevant and engaging for college students, there is an important place for formal assignments evaluated by trained faculty. As the internet makes writing skills more valuable because it makes it easier to reach others with your writing, the premium attached to writing well goes up. How to you improve your writing? Well, writing frequently is clearly helpful, but writing regularly without thinking critically about how your writing can be more effective can result in simply practicing bad habits. If writing is increasingly powerful, and you want to become skilled at exercising this power, you should seek out teachers who can look at your writing and tell you how it could be more effective. Done well, those artificial academic writing assignments can be drills to help you develop fundamental writing skills. Doing footwork drills while a coach pushes you to do them right may not be as exciting as playing in a game, but if you want to excel in the game you need the drills. The same logic applies to writing. Not all college writing instruction, however, is equally effective at helping students develop their writing chops. The best assignments are those that are engaging because they encourage students to pick a topic and an audience they care about, are challenging because they demand that students apply new techniques and/or perspectives to their writing, and require revision after receiving feedback on how the first draft can be improved. These courses exist, and you should actively seek them out if you want to become a more powerful writer. If you can't find a course that builds in these requirements, see if you can work with your professor to turn an existing course into one designed to challenge your writing skills. If you approach a faculty member early in the term and explain that you want to get the most value out of her/his class, want to improve your writing, and wonder if she/he would be willing to review a first draft and challenge you to improve on what you can already do as a writer, most will be thrilled to work with you. So don't be shy about getting more face-to-face attention in the era of social networking. Asking to be coached is another particularly powerful communication skill it would benefit all students to develop in college. |
