How do you know good writing when you see it? What makes it good, and—more critically—how do you explain to an earnest freshman why her writing does not fall into this coveted category? The challenges of teaching students how to write well can be frustratingly intangible, the skills necessary to teach writing well not easily transferred.

But what if writing instructors were able to think about and discuss their assignments and grading in a more systematic way? What if they had the skills to isolate criteria for good writing, measure them, and utilize that information to better focus their teaching on the specific needs of a class?

The John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines has shouldered the responsibility for imparting foundational writing skills to Cornell’s freshman since 1986 via the First-Year Writing Seminar (FWS) program. Now, the Institute has partnered with the Graduate School and the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) to further address these challenges, offering graduate FWS instructors Writing Assessment Fellowships via the Council of Graduate Schools-funded PREPARE initiative.

For 2014 Fellow Jessica Abel (English Language and Literature), this meant an opportunity to a study the issue of formality: specifically, students’ lack of awareness of and inability to control the level of formality in their own writing. For her project, “We’re Not Exactly Tweeting Here: Teaching Students to Control the Level of Formality in Their Writing,” Abel established ways to critically examine formality and measured the formality of student essays before and after a series of readings and activities. Students were asked to write a paragraph from an assigned essay as they normally would, as a Facebook message, as a Tweet, as if they were Shakespeare, and as though writing to a Justice of the Supreme Court.

The results? Abel’s case study found that inappropriate colloquialisms and contractions in her students’ writing significantly decreased after completing the assignment sequence on formality. Perhaps as significant as student advances were the insights that Abel gained into her own teaching. As a humanities scholar, says Abel, “I’ve never been asked to make a poster in my life. This was an opportunity to familiarize myself with the ways other disciplines shared research. It had a huge impact on me, and it reminded me that I’m capable [of that kind of research].”

Dr. Kimberly Williams of the CTE leads the Teaching as Research (TAR) workshops that train the fellows in classroom research methodology. “The goal of this kind of research is to inform your own teaching,” says Williams, “and to be mindful about the potential to collect evidence while in the throes of teaching.” In a tight job market, especially in the humanities, adds Williams, the ability to think about teaching like a researcher can add considerable value to one’s professional portfolio.

Abel, for one, believes that the Teaching as Research training she has undergone could inform a future career that includes “teaching professors how to teach writing more effectively. I hope it [TAR] will come into play,” she says. “I intend for it to.”

See more past FWS instructor projects at:  http://prepare.cte.cornell.edu/opportunities/student-outcomes/