Sequential Writing Assignments in International Relations and American Government Survey Courses

Abstract

Like many colleges and universities. Elizabethtown College has adopted a writing-across-the-curriculum program that attempts to establish writing as a principal means of communication and as a tool for the development of intellectual skills. Set to begin in Fall 1990 as part of a new core curriculum, the program requires that each core course provide writing assignments that “emphasize the process of writing or rewriting in response to critical evaluation by faculty and/or peers.” A major stimulus to the development of the program was an NEH Summer Seminar on Writing Across the Humanities, conducted on campus in 1985 by faculty in the College's Professional Writing Program.The Department of Political Science, with four professors, has been an active promoter and participant in the campus writing program. Most of our own less formal conclusions about the role of writing in learning are congruent with those of the Harvard Assessment Seminars. We, too, find that close faculty-student interaction in assignments spread out sequentially provides the writer with directive and suggestive comments in a less threatening and more encouraging way. Such consultation leads to a higher quality final product and student mastery of more skills in style, organization, and analysis of substance. Two assignments that have worked particularly well for us at the introductory level are the foreign policy issue brief in the international relations course and the issue analysis project in American national government.