Workshop teaches good habits

contributing writer

Daniel Melzer, California State University reading and writing coordinator, demonstrated that students can improve skills required for writing well, even including the grammar skills, by practicing their writing during the “Writing Across the Curriculum” workshop on Oct. 6 and 7.

About 70 students and 30 faculty members participants attended the workshop. Through such an atmosphere, a lot of information was exchanged, especially, for faculty members. Students were just as engaged and enthusiastic about sharing their aspects about the importance of writing. 

This was part of what assistant professor Paul Zemliansky, one of many organizers of the event and faculty member of the writing program, had in mind.  Increasing the “awareness of issues related to writing and the teaching of writing on our campus, both among faculty and among students,” is important, Zemliansky said. He wishes to see “sustained efforts on the part of many members of the JMU community to keep writing in the forefront and to improve its teaching.”

The presentation explained that assignments are not pointless, but difficulty arises from the lack of understanding of how writing works in different academic disciplines by the students. 

However, Melzer believes faculty members can also improve and provide better assignments by overcoming the same problem of learning how to teach better by understanding the differences of writing for each curriculum and being able to write across it accordingly.

Melzer was pleasantly surprised by the amount of student participation. He had also noticed that many of the students were education majors, and hoped that his presentation had helped in developing their teaching style. 

Junior IDLS major Amanda Harris said the presentation was informative, but was geared towards more for the educators.  “It helped us to know how to teach our future students,” Harris said.

Aside from understanding how to “[Write] Across the Curriculum,” a wide range of information and sources within the topic of writing were discussed. 

One of the faculty members from the audience asked for Melzer’s viewpoints on how the technology was changing the way people write.  In his response, Dr. Melzer expressed writing is about exploration. Melzer said he learns from his students, by watching them creating blogs, another form of cutting-edge writing technology.

Melzer added students should understand that writing well means communicating well. Understanding its importance is critical, but faculty members should attempt to write and integrate writing into all curriculum as well, Melzer said.