At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, I was the Principal Supervisor of a HK$4 million WAC Program that, over a four year period, directly benefited nearly 5,000 students of the university from about 100 courses in the Faculties of Arts, Business Administration, Engineering, Medicine, Science, and Social Sciences. Smaller programs were also conducted at the City University of Hong Kong and at Hong Kong Polytechnic University under my supervision. The Need for WACAt high schools, colleges, and universities, the teaching of writing is often the responsibility of English Departments. However, many students are still not prepared for the academic writing tasks they face and teachers/professors across the disciplines—from anthropology to zoology—are well aware that their students need more help with their papers. The WAC movement aims to broaden the teaching of writing by encouraging teachers/professors from all disciplines to incorporate writing more often and more thoughtfully in their courses. The WAC Approach to Teaching WritingIn traditional “product-oriented” approaches, the writing instructor sees only the final paper submitted for marking; students have no opportunity to revise the paper. Such an approach assumes that students are sufficiently skilled in English writing to compose a paper independently. The WAC approach, on the other hand, uses a “process-oriented” approach, focusing on the process by which the written product is created rather than the product itself. Teachers or teaching assistants intervene during the writing process, providing advice to the student writers on contents, organization, and grammatical features, so that the students can compose better papers. By reading the drafts and providing feedback to students, the WAC teaching assistants (when they are available) relieve the professors of this responsibility. When you decide to establish a WAC program at your institution, I can • help you draft fundraising proposals (if funding is not already available at your institution) • identify suitable undergraduate courses for inclusion in the WAC program • identify staffing needs and help recruit suitable staff such as teaching assistants or writing instructors • train staff to carry out WAC duties • conduct workshops for professors of your institution to encourage them to join the WAC program • assist professors from across the disciplines to incorporate writing in to their courses • develop appropriate teaching materials for your WAC program, and • develop monitoring instruments for your WAC program. For more information on the WAC program and the services I could provide, please contact me at georgebraine@gmail.com |
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