1. Introduction
“The whole idea behind the pedagogy is that we don't know what we think till we hear what we say, as the lady says in the play. And that it's through speech and through writing and through language activities that we are able to synthesize, to formulate our thoughts, to really learn what we know, and to say things to ourselves in a form we understand.” (Sally Boland, as quoted in Miller et al. Reference Miller, Boland and Hinman1993: 48.)
In this paper, we argue that, contrary to common practice in many linguistics programs, writing instruction and assessment should be integrated throughout the linguistics curriculum. First- and second-year linguistics courses generally focus on teaching notation and technical vocabulary, and on applying fundamental concepts in curated data sets. Many instructors believe that these pedagogical goals are at odds with writing activities and instead focus on problem-set assignments. This approach leads to a large curricular gap, especially in the structural subfields, when students reach their third and fourth years and are expected to engage more deeply with challenging primary literature, respond to and develop theoretical claims, analyze non-curated data, and develop original analyses, all of which require writing skills the students may not have developed. We propose that the solution to this curricular gap is to incorporate writing activities and instruction at every level of the linguistics curriculum, following the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) approach.
In Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), writing instruction is integrated at every level of a student's education, recognizing that writing is not an ability that can be mastered in one or two courses, but a lifelong skill that develops through practice. As such, the entire academic community is responsible for contributing to the development of students’ writing skills. In this approach, however, writing is not only seen as an end in and of itself, but also as an essential component of learning in every field. Through writing tasks, students learn and articulate concepts, sharpen critical thinking skills, engage in the writing process (including pre-writing), develop argumentation skills, and learn to navigate field-specific genres and conventions. It is through writing that students develop higher-order thinking skills.
WAC dates back to a 1965 University of London project on the psycholinguistic development of discourse in children (Shafer Reference Shafer1981). By 1980, the WAC approach was established at several North American post-secondary institutions (see Forman Reference Forman1980 about Goucher College, Raimes Reference Raimes1980 about Hunter College of the City University of New York, and Reiff Reference Reiff1980 about the University of Michigan), and was widespread enough that Maimon (Reference Maimon1980: 3) felt the need to note that “Writing across the curriculum is not a fad, although there are some in the academy who suspect so.” By 1989, a journal dedicated to Writing Across the Curriculum, The WAC Journal, was established as a local newsletter at Plymouth State University; it is now firmly established as an annual double-blind peer-reviewed publication.
However, despite its origins in the field of linguistics almost 60 years ago and its widespread uptake across fields, WAC in linguistics is understudied; at the time of writing this article, there are only two published papers about WAC in linguistics: Petrucci (Reference Petrucci2002) and Pappas et al. (Reference Pappas, Taboada and Alexander2019).Footnote 1 Strikingly, Petrucci's (Reference Petrucci2002) two-decade-old paper documents the same kinds of fear and resistance the authors still encounter in linguistics departments today: that writing in linguistics means writing a research paper, that writing in linguistics can only be done successfully after students have developed “a thorough understanding of subject matter often consisting of abstract concepts and discipline-specific terminology” (Petrucci Reference Petrucci2002: 133), and “that writing in the discipline in the introductory linguistics course was unattainable” (Petrucci Reference Petrucci2002: 134).
Both Petrucci (Reference Petrucci2002) and Pappas et al. (Reference Pappas, Taboada and Alexander2019) design innovative introductory linguistics assignments that promote student learning. Petrucci's (Reference Petrucci2002) assignments focus on applying course concepts to real-world situations in memorable ways, for example, debunking language myths or explaining why a particular name is often misheard. Pappas et al.'s (Reference Pappas, Taboada and Alexander2019) assignments are more analytic, with students explicitly explaining their thought processes while solving problem sets. Both types of assignments were successful at increasing student engagement with and understanding of the material.
This paper, in contrast, focuses on why writing instruction is so important, both in general and specifically in linguistics, although we also include examples of assignments and pedagogical methods throughout. We begin in section 2 by discussing the writing skills that are already integral to linguistics pedagogy. In section 3, we discuss the importance of writing as a transferable skill for students both within their university degree and in their future careers, with a focus on argumentation. In section 4, we counter the common objection that there “isn't enough time” by demonstrating how writing activities reinforce, and do not detract, from the “core” linguistics curriculum. In section 5, we provide evidence that students want and appreciate writing activities and instruction. Finally, in section 6, we argue that including writing instruction is an important way to support marginalized students. Section 7 concludes.
This paper is written from the perspective of the Writing-Integrated Teaching (WIT) program at the University of Toronto Department of Linguistics at the St. George campus. WIT is a Faculty of Arts & Science initiative that trains and supports one or two graduate student Lead Writing Teaching Assistants (LWTAs) for participating departments. The LWTAs, in turn, engage in scholarship of writing pedagogy, train and support TAs of individual courses, and develop writing curricula and assignments in partnership with instructors. This paper is authored by two former LWTAs and two instructors of WIT-supported courses. The examples come from the WIT-supported courses at the St. George campus, including some taught by our colleagues, and from individual courses the authors have taught across all three University of Toronto campuses, not all of which were WIT-supported. Survey results and teaching evaluation comments included in this paper were collected anonymously from students at courses taught across all three University of Toronto campuses between 2017 and 2021. A complete list of courses referred to can be found in Appendix 1.
2. Writing is already important in linguistics (but is not explicitly taught)
Linguistics students are expected to master specific writing conventions for linguistics genres. A major writing skill necessary for success in linguistics is the presentation and discussion of linguistic data. This includes mechanical aspects such as numbering and glossing examples, using the right kind of brackets around phones and other special characters, and linguistics-specific citation styles. In addition, however, students are also required to master more nebulous skills that can only develop with practice: providing the right amount of detail in their analysis, introducing their paper with a roadmap or outline, formulating a hypothesis, directing the reader to the important details of an example, and summing up a main claim and its significance, among many other skills. This is not lost on our students. For example, one student in a course which included explicit writing instruction wrote, “I also really really appreciate how this course didn't only teach us about language diversity, but also about the expectations of us as linguists (advice on argumentation, citation, writing, even chairing sessions in a mock conference!)” (instructor evaluation).
Furthermore, because linguistics as a field is interdisciplinary in nature, sitting at the crossroads of the social sciences, the cognitive sciences, and the humanities, mastering writing in linguistics actually requires mastering multiple genre conventions, since different subfields have varying conventions. By the time a linguistics major graduates, they usually need to be comfortable with both the IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) structure of an experimental paper, as well as the more open writing structure of the theoretical subfields. They need to be comfortable presenting linguistic data at the segment level, the word level, and the phrase level, as well as quantitative data. This broad range of writing skills means it is all the more important for writing to be taught in a variety of linguistics courses, if not all.
Despite the wide variety of writing skills students need to acquire, such skills are rarely explicitly taught.Footnote 2 It is common for students in undergraduate linguistics courses to be assigned writing exercises, from short-answer questions to full-length papers, requiring them to form some sort of argument. Such assignments are useful for giving students practice in writing; however, they are infrequently accompanied by explicit instruction on the necessary writing skills. It is unfair to evaluate students on skills they have not been taught.
Perhaps the most important skill set required of linguistics students is argumentation skills. As students develop and write an argument, they solidify their understanding of the course material, apply it to novel contexts, and demonstrate their knowledge and analytic abilities. The development of analysis and argumentation skills is a part of every linguistics class. Much of the analysis required of students, from solving phonology problems to drawing syntax trees, requires them to employ argumentation skills, even if students are not expected to write out their argument.
Students recognize that these argumentation skills are important. In a survey of students in an introductory class for non-majors, when asked whether they agree with the focus on argumentation over mechanics in their writing, 88.3% of students who answered the question (53 out of 60) agreed, while an additional four said the emphasis should be on both. Reasons given by the students for focusing on argumentation include that argumentation is more important, that critical thinking is transferable to other fields, that it helps them to understand the content, and that it is fairer to non-native speakers of English.
Instructors can help students develop argumentation skills by explicitly guiding them through the steps of forming a logical argument on assignments that require the same kind of analysis that a non-writing-based assignment would require. Pappas et al. (Reference Pappas, Taboada and Alexander2019) argue for an integrative approach to teaching linguistics content and writing at the same time. They argue that while assigning problem sets and other non-writing-based assignments provides students with hands-on experience, these assignments do not always permit students to justify their conclusions. Writing, on the other hand, gives students the opportunity to engage with their reasoning, allowing them to revise their methodologies, learning “[…] what counts as knowledge, argument, and evidence in the disciplinary discourse” (Pappas et al. Reference Pappas, Taboada and Alexander2019: 343).
Pappas et al. (Reference Pappas, Taboada and Alexander2019) demonstrate how this can be done through integrating writing into traditional linguistics assignments. Similarly, Emilia Melara and Heather Yawney developed a series of three scaffolded writing assignments for an introductory English grammar course for non-majors that applies this approach (see Appendix 2). The assignments guided students through the process of writing an argumentative paragraph, from outlining the claim, premises, and conclusions of an argument in the first assignment, through grouping these into the parts of an argumentative paragraph and adding other necessary information (e.g., background) in the second assignment, to writing a full argumentative paragraph on their own in the final assignment.
For each assignment, students were still required to solve the same kind of problems they would normally be completing at this stage in the course (e.g., syntactic constituency tests). The major difference was that students were required to write out their argumentation in prose rather than only their conclusion. These activities demonstrate that the types of problems students are assigned already require the argumentation skills necessary for writing. It is rather straightforward to turn a data analysis activity into a writing exercise, simply by requiring students to explain their thinking process and reasoning; such thinking skills are already implicitly part of the assignment. By making them explicit through a writing task, students become better able to assess their own understanding and take charge of their own learning. Furthermore, assignments such as these can prepare students for future courses where they are required to write papers and other larger pieces of writing, since the argumentation skills they develop in these kinds of assignments are the foundation of linguistics writing.
3. Writing skills are transferable skills
The transferability of writing skills is evident to students. They acknowledge that these skills are pertinent to aspects of life outside of academia and that they benefit by bringing these skills to other courses. When asked about this, one student in a WIT course points out: “Personally, I need to keep improving on content and argumentation. It is a skill that I think will be useful for the rest of my life, and I think it is more indicative of overall comprehension of the subject matter than form and mechanics.” Another notes: “I do prefer that feedback on my writing focus on content and logical argumentation because we must employ argumentation in other fields as well.”
Integrating writing into the curriculum allows students to develop a valuable skill that can be extended beyond the context of any given linguistics course. As students progress in their writing, they can transfer their improved skills and apply them to a diverse number of new contexts. Courses designed around instructor-student dialogue that build writing skills across a number of assessments can attract students and increase student engagement and learning. Integrating writing in first- and second-year courses gives students more opportunities to practise writing and engage in critical thought (see Lardner Reference Lardner2008).
Writing skills are among the most valuable transferable skills we can give our students, especially as most will not become linguistics professors. Regardless of a student's future career post-graduation, laying the foundation to proper argumentation and critical thinking allows them to actively contribute to the growth and evolution of their place of employment. Ultimately, being able to properly defend an opinion is arguably one of the most important skills provided by a university education, and forming a sound argument in linguistics will provide a strong basis for forming arguments in other fields. Although content and genre conventions vary across fields and contexts, critical thinking skills and laying out one's thought process in an accessible manner are valuable transferable skills.
We can see the transferability of writing skills in Nathan Sanders's letter writing assignment for an introductory course for non-majors (see Appendix 3). In this assignment, students read an article about the language development of children with cochlear implants and then write a letter as a pediatrician to the parents of a patient, applying the information they learned from the article. The patient is a child with hearing parents who is receiving a cochlear implant, as they are expected to become fully deaf at a young age. The student is instructed to make a recommendation to the parents about whether they should expose their child to only American Sign Language (ASL), to only English, or to both ASL and English. In the assignment, students must explain what they have learned about language acquisition and signed languages in non-technical language, while being mindful of the difficult and stressful situation. As a result of applying their knowledge to a real-world situation, linguistics becomes more meaningful to the students.
Another example of an exercise where students both apply what they have learned in a linguistics course and convey that information to a general audience was assigned by Emilia Melara in a general interest linguistics course on English words. In this assignment, students were given a set of comments expressing purist and prescriptive sentiments towards words that “don't sound real” to some speakers (or as Melara put it in the assignment, “legit words people think are made up”). The main objective was to have students informally respond to the comments, explaining how the words are in fact English words, with a focus on how they were created by English word formation processes. A second objective was to have students set up arguments in a less daunting manner; the informality of the language that the students were meant to use was important to help them focus more on the content of what they were saying rather than their language. The expectation was that students could then take the analytic skills learned in the course and apply them to real-world scenarios, where the focus of their arguments would be what they are saying, not how they are saying it.
In grading the assignment, the teaching team found that some students exceeded expectations. Students pointed out exceptionalities in the formation of certain words that had not been identified by the instructor. For example, there is a restriction on adding the comparative or superlative morphemes -er and -est to adjectives that are either monosyllabic or bisyllabic and ending in a vowel. One of the words students were assigned to analyze was winningest, and several students pointed out how that adjective violated the comparative/superlative morpheme restriction. Not only that, but students were largely able to clearly articulate, for a general audience, how the words were formed and how the restriction was violated.
These types of assessments can be assigned in any course. To design such an assignment, the instructor should identify a common misconception about language and create a hypothetical situation to which the student can respond. Other examples include countering misconceptions about the competence of L2 speakers, responding to a prescriptivist or racist meme, discussing cases of linguistic profiling, or writing a letter to a future student.
4. Spending strategic time on writing reinforces the linguistics curriculum
Including writing does not detract from the linguistics curriculum. Writing can reinforce course content by integrating important linguistic concepts into writing assignments, whether through low-stakes activities in tutorials or higher-stakes assignments worth a portion of a student's grade. If we consider Sternglass's (Reference Sternglass1997: 22) longitudinal studies of writing development, “[the students] would have benefited greatly from opportunities to practise analytic writing during their high school years. […] The students repeatedly told [her] that taking short answer or multiple-choice quizzes or exams at the college did not provide them with sufficient opportunities to demonstrate what they understood and what they learned.” This demonstrates that, regardless of the field of study, the earlier we can integrate writing into coursework, the more beneficial it is for students. Penrose (Reference Penrose, Penrose and Sitko1993: 55, cited in Sternglass Reference Sternglass1997) concluded that “the assignment we develop is a critical variable in the write-to-learn process, and it is the only variable the teacher can directly control.” Thus, the design of a writing assignment an instructor chooses to give their students will affect how the student engages with course material.
Writing helps in at least three different ways in relation to learning. First, it helps students remember facts and meaning. Writing not only aids students in the recollection of facts, but also encourages them to understand the relationships between these facts and their own ideas. Second, writing promotes critical thinking through analysis. Writing helps students understand increasingly complex material and difficult analyses. Students learn to make adjustments in their thinking through writing, moving analysis from a subconscious task to a conscious tool in the articulation of ideas and thoughts. Students grasp the implications of what they are learning and the importance of providing detailed explanation. Critical thinking and analysis in writing teaches students to identify the main elements in an argument, provide appropriate evidence to support their claims and understand the conclusions that can be made from the information being provided. Third, writing helps build new knowledge. Students know that whatever field they are working in comes with a great deal of pre-existing expertise, which may make it difficult for them to establish new knowledge. Writing enables the formulation of knowledge that is new to the student, even when this knowledge pre-exists in the field. The connections students make with newly acquired information that they perceive as important is a crucial aspect of learning (see Petrucci Reference Petrucci2002 and Pappas et al. Reference Pappas, Taboada and Alexander2019 for linguistics specific discussion; see Sternglass Reference Sternglass1997, among others, for a more general discussion).
The basic premise of WAC is that it is possible to teach writing skills to students without sacrificing course content by using the content itself to teach writing skills. This can be done in class or tutorial in the form of low-stakes writing activities, or as part of an assignment. For example, Kaz Bamba, Julianne Doner, Nathan Sanders, Lisa Sullivan and Erin Vearnecombe developed a tutorial activity for the sign language unit of an introductory linguistics class for non-majors in which students used the material they learned in lecture to outline a paper on how sign languages resemble and differ from each other in terms of phonetics and syntax. In previous iterations of the course, students simply reviewed the material through listing facts and class discussion. Through the outlining activity, on the other hand, students reviewed the material to a comparable level of depth, while also learning how to outline an argument and apply their knowledge to answer a question. In addition, the higher cognitive tasks of sorting and organizing information (rather than just listing it) improves students’ understanding and retention of the material (Stewart et al. Reference Stewart, Myers and Culley2010).
In addition to organizing and structuring information, linguistics students also need to learn which information is needed to produce a full and complete argument. Often, this is taught inductively through repetition; however, students learn this skill more quickly and become more proficient in it with explicit instruction. In introductory courses, many short-answer questions follow similar formulaic patterns, and so a useful approach for scaffolding this skill at the introductory level is to give students a checklist of the information needed in their answer. For example, Julie Doner teaches the checklist in (1) for the Binding Theory unit of introductory syntax.
(1) How to Answer a Binding Theory Question Checklist (adapted from a worksheet prepared by Alex Motut)
• Identify which NP is causing the problem and what kind of NP it is.
• State whether binding obtains, and if it does, what binds what.
• Explain why binding occurs or does not occur. Do this by explaining:
◦ what c-commands what
◦ what is co-indexed with what.
• Mention the binding domain, if relevant.
• State which Binding Principle (A, B, or C) is violated.
• Make sure you also say what the principle states.
In both assignments and in-class activities, students go through this checklist while considering relevant data and example answers and discuss why each piece of information is necessary. Student answers improve with this kind of approach, as they remember to include all of the relevant details and have a better understanding of how all of the pieces interact.
As students advance through the curriculum, it is no longer possible to teach argumentation quite so formulaically because the types of data analysis expected of students become more specific to particular instances. However, it is still possible to explicitly discuss how to construct an argument and to guide students through the process of identifying which information is required, through short answer or discussion questions such as the following:
(2)
a. What is the minimum number of examples that are needed in order to demonstrate that a language has ergative case alignment?
(Answer: two, a transitive and an intransitive example)
b. Construct a sentence that you predict to be (un)grammatical based on your hypothesis.
c. If you had a speaker of [language] to work with, what would you ask them as your next step?
d. In [assigned reading], why is example (X) relevant?
Through asking questions like these, students begin to recognize the structure of an argument and the relation between an argument and linguistic data. Students, by default, usually read for content, and so even a small amount of explicit discussion in class signals to students that they should pay more careful attention to the argumentation structures in assigned readings and apply them to their own writing.
By explicitly teaching how to organize and structure information, students begin to develop an awareness of how arguments are structured, and how an argument's various components interact and support each other. Once students begin to develop this awareness, instructors can gradually broaden the types of arguments that students engage with, nurturing in them flexible and adaptive argumentation skills. At the same time, students will develop a deeper understanding of the particular linguistics arguments that they encounter in the course content, as they engage with the argumentation process in addition to the conclusions.
5. Students want it
Students want or, at a minimum, appreciate explicit writing instruction. When providing midterm feedback on an Introduction to Language general-interest course that was part of the WIT program, students commented on the writing assignments integrated into the course. Many indicated that the instruction and feedback they received were valuable both within the course and beyond, helping them improve not only their grades, but also their writing skills, in addition to increasing their understanding of course content. Students who were less happy indicated that more explicit writing instruction would have been beneficial for helping them improve their writing skills and for understanding expectations. As one student wrote in a survey for a WIT course, “If this is a WIT course that focuses on writing instruction and practice, why have we only had the practice and no instruction? […] What specific things are you looking for in our writing when you mark?” Some suggestions from the students included giving explicit instruction when the assignment was assigned, providing more specific feedback, and sharing writing samples to help them clarify expectations.
We have had similar experiences in our other classes. When Lisa Sullivan was TAing for a second-year non-WIT class, writing instruction was explicitly introduced in tutorials after the students had completed their first assignment. Students displayed enthusiasm and eagerness for receiving writing instruction, and even asked for further resources to help them improve their writing skills. The students asked if the writing instruction materials would be available on the course site so they could refer back to them on subsequent assignments — something which they did not do for non-writing-related materials.
Furthermore, comments from course evaluations that focus on writing indicate that students appreciate the writing instruction and feedback they receive. One student wrote, “I really appreciate the detailed feedback she gives for each assignment! They help me understand what's good vs not good enough so that I can improve.” Another wrote about tutorial: “I really liked how [she] went through the correct answers to past assignments in detail. [She] gave examples of answers and went through common errors people made.” Both comments show that the students appreciate and value the writing instruction they receive. Pappas et al. (Reference Pappas, Taboada and Alexander2019) followed up on similar comments and found that the positivity students feel about learning to improve their writing might be attributed to a confidence boost.
A desire for more writing instruction and practice shows up in student surveys about writing instruction in published pedagogical research as well. Students want more writing assignments at both the introductory and upper-year levels, at least in hindsight. They want clearer and more detailed instructions, they want more resources, materials, and examples, and they want more feedback at multiple stages in the writing process (Miller et al. Reference Miller, Boland and Hinman1993: 56). This may seem counterintuitive, as students often grumble about writing. However, student resistance to writing assignments is likely due to other factors, such as lack of interest in the content, unclear assignment instructions, time pressures, and difficulty self-motivating (Reid Reference Reid, Portanova, Michael Rifenburg and Roen2018). These barriers can be mitigated by designing low-stakes or scaffolded assignments with clear instructions.
6. Explicit instruction is good for everyone, but especially for marginalized students
A variety of students may especially benefit from explicit writing instruction for reasons that often go unnoticed by instructors. English Language Learners (ELL), first-generation students, and their neurodivergent peers (among other marginalized students) often face challenges that can inhibit their chances of graduating with a degree. For example, first-generation students — those who are the first in their family to get post-secondary education — often come from lower-income families, may be student-parents, and/or enter college as mature students (Chen Reference Chen2005, cited in Jehangir Reference Jehangir2010: 534), and therefore bear financial responsibilities not shared by the average student. Furthermore, first-generation students tend to perceive a larger gap between academic discourse and the discourses they are more familiar with, affecting their confidence in their ability to express themselves (Penrose Reference Penrose2002: 458). ELL students enter school concerned that they will not be able to convey their intelligence and knowledge through spoken English and less so through writing. As well, marginalized students are more likely to speak stigmatized varieties, which adds extra barriers to writing. Even fluent diglossic speakers face additional pressures when attempting to mediate between their own identity and history and the formal writing conventions modelled after the language varieties favoured by the people in power (Charity Hudley et al. Reference Charity Hudley, Mallinson and Bucholtz2022). Neurodivergent students typically enter the classroom perceived to have problems that instructors are meant to “fix” (Walters Reference Walters2015: 342). As a result, neurodivergent students feel isolated because teachers don't connect the course content to neurodivergent students' lived experiences. Consequently, the isolation neurodivergent students feel can lead to high anxiety and frustration towards the course content.
In particular, these challenges may exacerbate the anxiety these students feel about writing. Their struggles seem to go unnoticed by fellow students and teachers, and they therefore question their place in academia (Rendón Reference Rendón1996, cited in Jehangir Reference Jehangir2010: 536; Watkins and Biggs Reference Watkins and Biggs1996; Zamel and Spack Reference Zamel and Spack2006; Walters Reference Walters2015). Writing instruction can aid with this as it can make the implicit explicit and clarify expectations, whether those particular to a specific assignment or more generally. Writing instruction can also target specific groups of marginalized students by addressing the particular challenges they face. For example, Charity Hudley and colleagues’ Students’ Right to Their Own Writing website (https://charityhudleydickterfranz.com/) provides resources for Black students and their instructors. Of course, this kind of instruction benefits all students, as no student comes to the university fully equipped for the kinds of writing that are expected of them, but they are particularly beneficial to marginalized students who may face additional challenges.
While high levels of writing anxiety correlate with poor performance in written assessments (Webb-Sunderhaus Reference Webb-Sunderhaus2012: 19), writing assignments have been linked to success in courses when they are designed to reinforce course content, encouraging students to become better thinkers through constructive feedback (Zamel and Spack Reference Zamel and Spack2006). Writing exercises and encouragement to share life experiences in the class context through other communication media have also been shown to minimize the isolation students feel (Jehangir Reference Jehangir2010). For instance, instructors who learned and acknowledged that linguistic difficulties prevented some students from progressing well in courses and adopted new teaching approaches with ELL speakers in mind noticed a significant improvement in the work completed by their students (Zamel and Spack Reference Zamel and Spack2006). Learning is encouraged when students are given the chance to actively engage with course content, generate and connect ideas, and experiment with new language and jargon (Zamel and Spack Reference Zamel and Spack2006). Furthermore, being encouraged to draw connections between their lived experiences and course topics allows students to be active participants in building their own knowledge (Jehangir Reference Jehangir2010). Recent research on how to diversify the field of linguistics recommends exactly this, to provide opportunity for students to connect course content to their lived experiences (Calhoun et al. Reference Calhoun, Charity Hudley, Bucholtz, Exford and Johnson2021). Ultimately, when instructors acknowledge that there are struggles that mask what a student is capable of and work with them to overcome those obstacles, both instructor and student succeed.
Fundamental to ELL instruction is the idea that linguistic performance is not the same as intellectual competence (Zamel and Spack Reference Zamel and Spack2006). This should be kept in mind when designing writing assignments for students as a whole, all of whom come to the class with different lived backgrounds. The most effective writing-to-learn assignments are informal ones that allow students to experiment with language without being penalized for it, like response papers, reflections, and journals — assignments that give students the opportunity to make connections among and raise questions about the material they are studying. These sorts of purposeful assignments are preferred by students; they dislike assignments that are meaningless and contribute little to their writing skills (Zamel and Spack Reference Zamel and Spack2006). In turn, these informal writing assignments permit students to shape their thoughts before class discussions, giving them more confidence to participate (Zamel and Spack Reference Zamel and Spack2006). These types of writing activities have been shown to benefit all students, not just the marginalized students they were designed for.
Effective writing instruction can benefit from these insights. For one, many students attend lower-level linguistics courses specifically to improve their speech and writing skills. While we as instructors tend to stress that linguistics courses are not language courses, students do regularly provide feedback indicating that they consider their language skills to have improved. Second, as linguists, we tend to praise ourselves for celebrating the diversity in and among dialects, registers, and language communities. When we design thoughtful and persuasive writing assignments, created with the diversity of students in a course in mind, we offer great opportunities to share that diversity, promoting a widening of ideas and more careful reasoning.
7. Conclusion
Writing instruction and assessment is integrated into some linguistics courses at various institutions; however, we argue in this paper that best practice in linguistics pedagogy should include the integration of writing at every stage in the curriculum. Writing and argumentation skills are already important to the linguistics curriculum, but are often only taught inductively, when many students would benefit from explicit writing instruction. It is important that writing be integrated throughout the curriculum because writing conventions and genres vary across subfields and because writing activities help students solidify their understanding of course concepts and develop higher-order thinking. In addition, low-stakes writing activities are beneficial for marginalized students, giving them space to explore course content in depth and relate it to their own experiences. Students recognize the benefit of developing writing skills, wish to be appropriately challenged, and expect to graduate with professional, transferable writing skills. It is not solely the responsibility of writing centres, high schools, and the English department to teach students to write well; this is a responsibility that all of us, as instructors, share.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Kaz Bamba, Alex Motut, Joel Rodgers, Nathan Sanders, and Erin Vearnecombe for their contributions to this paper. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their feedback to improve the paper.
Appendix 1: List of Courses Mentioned
LIN200: Introduction to Language
Second-year WIT course at the University of Toronto (St. George campus)
LIN204: English Grammar
Second-year WIT course at the University of Toronto (St. George campus)
LIN228: Phonetics
Second-year non-WIT course at the University of Toronto Mississauga
LIN306: Language Diversity and Universals
Third-year non-WIT course at the University of Toronto (St. George campus)
LINC11/FREC46: Syntax II
Third-year non-WIT course at the University of Toronto Scarborough
Appendix 2: Sample Three-Part Scaffolded Assignment
As assigned to LIN204: English Grammar by Emilia Melara and Heather Yawney in Winter 2021. At the beginning of each assignment, students were asked to consult certain documents found on the course website. The documents posted provided important information on how to structure logical arguments and how to format the assignment in question. For each assignment, students were asked to provide their answers using complete grammatical sentences.
Assignment 1:
For this assignment, you will have to recall our discussions and readings on basic argumentation. Each question will require an answer with an overall claim, premises (your reasons for believing that claim), and a conclusion (this is usually a restatement of your claim, starting with “therefore”). In each answer, explicitly label them like in the following example.
- Question:
Is Ruddy a good boy?
- Claim:
Yes, Ruddy is a good boy.
- Premise:
All dogs are good.
- Premise:
Ruddy is a dog.
- Premise:
Ruddy is a boy.
- Conclusion:
Therefore, Ruddy is a good boy.
Part I: Morphology
1. Certain words contain the prefix un- meaning “not”, like the following.
a) unhappy
b) unattractive
c) unregulated
Now consider the word underemployed. Does the word underemployed contain the prefix un- that is found in the words listed from a)–c)?
2. Now consider the word uncover. Does the word uncover contain the prefix un- that is found in the words listed in Question 1 from a)–c)?
Part II: Syntax
1. Consider the following sentence.
The computer was very expensive.
Use the Clefting test to show whether the underlined string of words is a constituent. As usual, you'll want to start off with your overall claim. Then, describe how the Clefting test works. Apply it to the string of words in question. Describe the result of your test. Conclude with what this shows (i.e., regarding whether the string is a constituent).
2. Consider the following sentence.
Jane will leave town.
Use the Substitution test to show whether the underlined string of words is a constituent. As usual, you'll want to start off with your overall claim. Then, describe how the Substitution test works. Apply it to the string of words in question. Describe the result of your test. Conclude with what this shows (i.e., regarding whether the string is a constituent).
3. Consider the following sentence.
They should hide in the cave.
Use the Sentence Fragment test to show whether the underlined string of words is a constituent. As usual, you'll want to start off with your overall claim. Then, describe how the Sentence Fragment test works. Apply it to the string of words in question. Describe the result of your test. Conclude with what this shows (i.e., regarding whether the string is a constituent).
Assignment 2:
For each short answer question below, explicitly label your thesis statement, background, hypotheses and predictions, evidence, and conclusion. Assume your reader knows what morphemes, stems, and subjects are.
1. Consider the following words and their definitions:
a) Convergent: characterized as tending to come together; merging
b) Dependent: a person who depends on or needs someone or something for aid, support, favour, etc.
c) Different: not alike in character or quality, distinct in nature
d) Insistent: earnest or emphatic in dwelling upon, maintaining, or demanding something
e) Persistent: lasting or enduring tenaciously
f) President: a person who presides over an organized body of persons
g) Recurrent: occurring or appearing again, especially repeatedly or periodically
h) Resident: a person who resides in a place
i) Student: a person who is formally engaged in learning, especially one enrolled in a school or college
You'll notice that all of the words end in -ent. There are different -ent morphemes in English. Do the words in a) through i) all contain the same -ent morpheme?
2. Is the bracketed phrase in the following sentence the subject of the sentence? Provide only two pieces of evidence to support your conclusion (HINT: refer to the structural properties presented in Week 4.).
Every day, [the young woman] leaves the keys on the dining room table.
Assignment 3:
The two questions assess you on your ability to provide a coherent written argument on content learned in the course.
Questions
1. Consider the following sentence, which contains an embedded clause in brackets.
Mav thought it was mean [to leave before everyone else did].
Is the embedded clause the direct object of the verb? Provide an argument that relies on two pieces of evidence to support your conclusion.
2. Consider the following sentence, which contains an embedded clause in brackets.
A bunch of us decided [that heading home would be a better idea].
Is the embedded clause finite or non-finite? Provide an argument that relies on two pieces of evidence to support your conclusion.
Appendix 3: Sample Letter Writing Assignment
As assigned to LIN200: Introduction to Language by Nathan Sanders in Fall 2019.
Background reading: Carefully read the article “Ensuring language acquisition for deaf children: What linguists can do” (Humphries et al. 2014), which is available on [course website]. Make sure you understand their arguments, and then write a letter according to the following instructions, containing approximately 500 words of well-structured, coherent, grammatical, and polished prose. Proofread! Edit! Revise!
The assignment: Assume you are a paediatrician in Atikokan, a small remote town in northwestern Ontario. You have a two-month-old female patient, Kendra, who shows clear signs of severe hearing loss. She is likely to lose most of her hearing in the first year of her life, eventually becoming deaf by adolescence.
Kendra's parents, Jamie and Taylor Ferguson, who are both hearing and have no experience with any sign languages, insist that Kendra be fitted for cochlear implants, which will provide sensory input directly into her brain by approximating the patterns of electrical impulses that hearing children receive via the auditory nerve when they hear sound. Kendra's parents want your advice regarding her linguistic upbringing, specifically with regards to spoken English versus American Sign Language (ASL).
Given the location and small size of Atikokan, there is no local Deaf community for Kendra to interact with. With her parents committed to cochlear implants, the three recommendations below are the main viable options you can suggest to the Fergusons. Read all three and then pick the one that seems most beneficial to Kendra's linguistic and cognitive development, as well as to her long-term success in life. Write a formal, professional letter to the Fergusons as their paediatrician, explaining and defending the recommendation you chose, focusing on relevant issues and facts from Humphries et al. 2014. You may also bring in outside research that provides further insight into this situation, but it is not required. Be sure to cite all of your sources appropriately (including Humphries et al. 2014)! Any citation style is fine, as long as you are consistent, though linguists tend to use something similar to the American Psychological Association's (APA) style.
Recommendation #1: Kendra can rely on her cochlear implants to learn English from her parents. Since English will be more useful to her as an adult than ASL will, and because learning two languages (especially with different modalities) can confuse a child and impede their linguistic development, Kendra should not be exposed to ASL.
Recommendation #2: Kendra's parents should immediately begin learning ASL and use that to communicate with Kendra. Since cochlear implants are not sophisticated enough to help a child acquire a spoken language, and because learning two languages (especially with different modalities) can confuse a child and impede their linguistic development, Kendra's parents should not attempt to communicate with her in English.
Recommendation #3: Kendra's parents should immediately begin learning ASL and use that — along with English — to communicate with Kendra, to maximize her exposure to all forms of linguistic input.
Writing goals: This writing assignment is intended to help you condense and transfer information and argumentation from linguistics into a form suitable for non-specialists, while remaining coherent and convincing. Your mark will be primarily based on the accuracy and thoroughness of your letter, as well as your skill at explaining the relevant concepts at the appropriate level. Write your response for a hypothetical reader who knows essentially nothing about linguistics, but do not write too simply, or you may come across as patronizing to the Fergusons. Assume they are bright and open-minded but haven't studied any linguistics or sign languages.
You will of course be assessed on other aspects of your writing, such as spelling and proper use of appropriate academic English. Remember that you are writing as a medical doctor, so your writing should help maintain a professional image. Please keep the assessment rubric in mind as you write, because it will form the basis of your mark for your written response.
As always, please follow strict standards of academic integrity in your writing. For this assignment in particular, it is crucial that you cite from outside sources appropriately.
Do not just copy or modify large chunks of text from any source, including Humphries et al. 2014!!!!!
If you borrow ideas from a source that did not come from your own head, then you must cite that source for every idea you borrow from it. It is generally better to paraphrase rather than use direct quotes, but on occasion, the original source may use particularly effective or noteworthy wording, in which case, you may want to quote it (using quotations marks). Whether you paraphrase or use a direct quote, you must still cite the original source.
Do not mirror the structure of another source. Your letter should not just be a parallel rephrasing of Humphries et al. 2014 or another article. You can (and should) freely take ideas from Humphries et al. 2014 and other sources, but you must summarize, integrate, and reorganize those ideas in a way that is appropriate for your letter, which will be very different from what was appropriate for the original sources. Be sure to read over your letter multiple times, changing wording and organization so that Kendra's parents would get the maximum benefit out of your letter.
Because of the nature of this assignment (responding to content from a specific source), it is very easy to accidentally commit an academic integrity violation. However, even accidental violations are still violations, so please be very careful and give this assignment your full, thoughtful attention, so that the prose truly does represent your own writing only and nothing about it could be confused as inappropriately coming from someone else.
Writing assignment checklist:
• read and understand Humphries et al. 2014, and based on that reading, choose a recommendation for how Kendra's parents should raise her: with English only, with ASL only, or with both English and ASL mixed
• write in a professional tone and support your recommendation with facts and logic
• DO NOT PLAGIARIZE!!!!!
Humphries, Tom, Poorna Kushalnagar, Gaurav Mathur, Donna Jo Napoli, Carol Padden, and Christian Rathmann. 2014. Ensuring language acquisition for deaf children: What linguists can do. Language 90(2): e31–e52.
Open access
