Academic Writing Experience

One potential difference between returning and traditional students in the technical writing classroom is the amount of time which has lapsed between their freshman composition course(s) and/or other writing-intensive courses and their technical writing course.  Students who have taken writing courses since returning to school have become reacclimated to academic writing and computing tasks, while those who took those courses several or many years ago tend to require additional time to readjust to writing and computing for college courses.

When academic experience is recent

Ideally, the returning student will have taken freshman composition and other writing-intensive courses since returning to school.  These may be transfer credits from another institution, but as long as they are recent, they will have given the students an opportunity to reacquaint themselves with the rigors of academic writing: time needed to research, draft, and revise; attention to organization, development, and style; and so forth.

Another benefit of having recent academic writing experience is the opportunity to develop familiarity with electronic resources and skills needed to complete each of the tasks listed above.  For example, freshman composition courses usually include a library orientation with an introduction to that school's online catalogue, indices, full-text articles, reference assistance, and so forth; returning students who have not had this current library instruction may have trouble making the transition from an older system, such as CD-ROMs or even card catalogues.  Research instruction continues in the classroom with discussion of appropriate use of web sites as sources, particularly how to distinguish reliable, scholarly material from less trustworthy sources.  Even simple skills such as working knowledge of current word processing programs and electronic mail features can be developed through freshman composition exercises.  Electronic document submission, networked peer critiquing and group work, and e-mail discussion lists are becoming more commonplace, and returning students who have recent experience with these writing classroom components come into the technical writing course prepared to develop and apply these skills at a more advanced level.

When academic experience is not recent

Depending upon institutional requirements, do not be surprised to see ten- and twenty-year lapses in returning students’ exposure to academic writing.  Even though these students have composition credits on their transcripts, they will probably have a certain amount of trepidation about reimmersion in academic writing after all of these years.  Our pedagogical approaches to academic writing have progressed over the last twenty years, so, for instance, students who were drilled incessantly on the old five-paragraph essay may be reluctant to deviate from that deeply-ingrained template.  In addition, they must master more advanced writing tasks, such as manuals and proposals, while they are still readjusting to even mundane requirements like grammatical and mechanical correctness.

Another disadvantage to the lack of recent academic writing experience may be an accompanying lack of computer proficiency.  While this is obviously not always the case, for some returning students, the technical writing classroom may be their first exposure to computer use for academic purposes.  Even traditional students have commented on my course evaluations that they learned more about practical applications of computers in my technical writing class than they did in the required introductory computer science class.  Between the growth of such introductory courses and the proliferation of computer-assisted composition pedagogy, not to mention technology growth in secondary education and in society in general, the traditional student typically enters technical writing with basic skills in word processing, e-mail, Internet-based research, online library resources, and graphic design, including document format, clip art, PowerPoint, web design, and so forth.  For the returning student who may already feel apprehensive about enrolling in a writing class, the added pressure of learning these computer skills while simply trying to complete assignments can become overwhelming.
 
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