We found in talking with students about their writing assignments that sometimes the mesh between their assumptions and instructors’ intentions is less than ideal. Consider these comments from instructors and their students:
| What Instructors Expect | What Students Understand |
|---|---|
| "For the short paper on a video, I wanted students to make connections among the archeologist’s questions, the methods used to get answers, and principles from their reading." | "This assignment was like writing a high-school movie review. I wanted to give my own personal understanding about the video, so I was going to write a narrative." |
| "In the journals I wanted students to really wield their own opinions and grapple with issues, to really think about course material." | "When I first heard the assignment, I thought I was supposed to write anything, like a reaction, just to show if I learned something." |
| "I wanted students to really wrestle with the questions on the assignment sheet, to give in-depth answers. I wanted students to distinguish between the author’s words and their own interpretation." | "I was supposed to write a 6-page analysis on a reading and juice up the answers. I tried to make it sound good by adding lots of details and sounding excited in my writing." |
Why students sometimes "misread" assignments...
1. Students translate an instructor’s goals into processes they think they can handle.
An instructor’s desire to have students "grapple with issues" becomes for the student "to write anything, like a reaction, just to show if I learned something." Translations such as this point to significant gaps in students’ understanding of the instructors’ purposes and expectations.
2. Students enter your course with strategies they devised to deal with earlier writing assignments, and they may try to use these strategies again rather than risk something new.
For example, the student who tried to make "a 6-page analysis . . . sound good by adding lots of details and sounding excited" had learned to try to please the teacher and thus to win the "A." Sometimes prior experiences promote new learning; at other times they impede learning.
From assessment studies appearing on The University of Hawaii Manoa Writing Program WAC homepage