A User's Guide to Resources
for Writing at Barnard College*
Writing and Your Barnard College Education
Writing
is an indispensable part of thinking and understanding, and
the Barnard faculty will work with you to strengthen your
writing. Whenever you verbalize what you are studying -- in any
subject -- the act of expressing yourself in words makes you
focus, clarify, sort and arrange information and concepts, understand
and acquire new vocabularies, take possession of your knowledge,
and deepen that knowledge. Writing is a means of exploration
and communication. Good writing skills will be as crucial to
the career you choose after college as they are to your college
career.
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Barnard's Writing Resources
Writing in the first year
Most Barnard students take two writing-intensive courses during
their first two semesters at the College, First-Year English
and the First-Year Seminar. Some entering students also take
a semester-long "Studies in Writing" course.
Specialized writing courses in the English Department
Beyond the first-year level, the English Department offers at
least three sections of Essay Writing every semester. These are
small, upper-level electives open to any student in any major.
The department also offers courses in creative writing.
Writing in majors and other courses
In other departments across the Barnard curriculum many courses
include an important writing component: students write several
short essays or one long term paper in the course of the semester.
Some upper-level majors must take at least one writing course
specific to their discipline -- e.g., "Critical Writing" in History
or in English. During the senior year, most Barnard departments
require a writing-intensive Senior Project.
Barnard Writing Fellows
Writing Fellows are Barnard undergraduates who read and write
well and enjoy working with their peers. After a rigorous application
process and an intensive semester-long training seminar, Writing
Fellows are qualified to provide you with knowledgeable feedback
at any stage of the writing process. You may work with them in
The Writing Center or in writing-intensive courses across the
curriculum.
Writing Fellows never grade nor do they correct the content
of your papers; they are not teaching assistants. Rather they
will help you to structure your writing and your own writing
process (see below).
If you are interested in becoming a Writing Fellow yourself,
and you are a Barnard student in the program. Applications are
available each year, immediately after Spring Break, in the Writing
Center (currently in 18 Milbank) and the English Department (417 Barnard
Hall).
Writing-intensive courses across the disciplines
Students in these
courses undertake at least three writing projects, each of
which goes through at least two drafts. Writing Fellows
read and confer with students on the first drafts of their papers,
which students may then revise, handing in both first and second
drafts to their instructors, who comment on and grade the revised
drafts.
To find out about the specific writing-intensive courses offered
in any given semester, ask your adviser, the Dean of Studies
Office, or the Writing Program (411 Barnard Hall).
The departments of Anthropology, Architecture, Art History,
Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Biology, Economics, Education,
English, French, History, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology,
Religion, Slavic, Sociology, Spanish, and Women's Studies have
offered writing-intensive courses. Both instructors and students
report positive results. Students appreciate the help they get
in revising drafts and experience significant gains in their
writing skills. Instructors find that the revised papers they
receive allow them to focus their comments on course content,
rather than on the mechanics of writing.
The Writing Center
In addition to their
work in specific courses across the curriculum, Writing Fellows
staff the Erica Mann Jong Writing Center (currently in 18
Milbank). Any Barnard student is welcome to confer on a particular
writing project or to discuss some broader aspect of her writing
(e.g., how to articulate, organize, and structure thoughts, how
to use evidence effectively, how to work on English as a second
language...). Students bring chapters of their senior theses,
drafts of papers for First-Year English, outlines or ideas for
papers in upper-level courses, lab reports, personal statements
for admission to law school, etc. If you would like to work on
your writing, we encourage you to use the Writing Center.
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Getting the Most Out of Barnard's Writing Resources
Writing and Program Planning
Despite the emphasis on writing in the Barnard curriculum, some
Barnard students spend whole semesters enrolled in large lecture
classes with few writing assignments.
Your ability to write
effectively -- like your ability to do math or speak French
-- grows only with practice. If you do not
write repeatedly, over time, you risk losing the fluency you've
begun to develop in your first year here. When faced with their
senior project, some seniors find themselves struggling to regain
control of the very writing skills they might have been strengthening
for four years.
In planning your program each semester, look for at least one
course that features writing and aim to work consistently on
this skill throughout your eight semesters at the College. (N.B.
Unless you are a tireless writer, you may find it strenuous to
take more than two writing-intensive courses in the same semester.)
Strategies to Use in Individual Writing Assignments
Reading the assignment
Do you understand what you are being asked to do in a particular
assignment, and why? If the assignment seems vague or confusing
to you, ask your instructor to clarify it. If its aim (that is,
what the assignment is supposed to teach you) isn't clear, ask.
Choosing a topic
When an assignment
offers you a choice of topics or asks you to come up with your
own topic, we suggest you choose to write
about something that is hard enough to challenge you but not
so hard as to overwhelm you. Talk over your ideas with your instructor.
Students often decide to tackle topics that are too broad to
fit within the scope of the assigned paper. You can bring a broad
topic into manageable focus by choosing to explore one aspect
of it that particularly interests you.
Writing the assignment
Eggs
Writing is hard.
Many college students further complicate the act of writing
by envisioning it not as a process, but
as one vast, daunting, undifferentiated lump: The Paper. In
this conception, The Paper must be laid like an egg, complete,
intact, at one sitting. This egg-paper demands of its author
that she do everything at once. The predictable result is all
too often writer's block, which leads in turn to rushed, blurry,
last-minute prose and great frustration on the student's part
and her instructor's because she isn't writing as effectively
as she might be.
Writing as process
The writing process begins the moment the writer starts thinking
about any given paper. It continues as she gathers material,
organizes and writes a draft, asks for the comments and reactions
of a reader, and revises her draft. This cycle -- inventing,
planning, writing, getting feedback, revising -- is the writing
process, and we urge you to take advantage of it to strengthen
your prose.
The writing process, step by step
To begin with, writers think. When
they have a piece of writing to do, they mull over what they
might write about, focus on a topic of interest, narrow it
down, begin to read about it, take notes, discuss it, scrawl
down scraps of thought, think some more, formulate opinions,
gather evidence. All this occurs in the first stage in the
writing process, long before a first draft takes shape on
paper.
Note-taking. Whether
by hand or at your computer, take notes carefully. Before
you write
down anything else, record all relevent bibliographical information:
author, title, publisher, place and date of publication,
page numbers. Next, be sure to copy direct quotes accurately
and to differentiate as clearly in your notes as you will
later in your paper between the words and thoughts of the
author you are reading and your own words and thoughts. Clear
notes are an invaluable help in writing papers, and they
are your surest protection against involuntary plagiarism.
Once writers have done the preparatory work of thinking,
doing research, gathering evidence, etc., many find it useful
to freewrite about their subject. Freewriting means
writing continuously, without censoring yourself at all,
for a defined period of time, usually twenty minutes or so.
Set your alarm clock and start writing. The only rule when
you freewrite is that once you begin you may not stop. No
going back to correct yourself, to reread, to qualify in
any way what you are writing. The resultant uncensored rush
of language often contains interesting ideas or phrases that
you can go on to develop. Freewriting also yields secondary
benefits: it gets your prose going and shows you how many
words you are capable of generating.
Outlining is next. In general,
an outline reflects your line of reasoning and conclusions.
But keep in mind that different writers outline in different
ways. There is no one correct formula. Nor should you ever
feel chained to your outline. Writing is exploratory, and
you will obviously make discoveries in the process of doing
it. When this happens, you should feel free to discard your
original outline and invent a new one, taking into consideration
the new material you've unearthed. Some writers outline after
they have written a draft. One technique for doing this is
to number the paragraphs you've written and summarize, very
briefly, what each paragraph is about. This will give you
an outline of your draft as it actually exists, and you can
go on from there.
And so to the first draft. Each
of your papers should go through an exploratory first draft
whose sole purpose is to help you find out and define what
it is you want to say. Most students have had the experience
of suddenly realizing that what they have just written in
their conclusion is what the whole paper is really about
-- except they didn't know that until this very minute and
the paper is due right now, so how can they take their conclusion
and make it their first paragraph and begin again?! The document
they've just completed, which they now hand in to their professor,
is in fact a first draft: extremely valuable to its writer,
but not yet ready for the professor's eyes. Make sure you
give yourself enough time to write an exploratory draft and
a subsequent revision of it. Don't start to write your paper
the night before it's due.
No first draft is perfect, nor should it be. It should be
an experimental dialogue with yourself. But once you have
revised that dialogue and taken it as far as you can, all
alone in your head and in your page, it is an excellent idea
to go and get an objective reading from
someone else, in order to find out if you have made yourself
clear. Perhaps the most useful question your reader can ask
you at this stage is "what do you mean here?" Ask it of yourself,
if no one else is available. It will lead you back into a
revision of your draft.
Revision can
be the most exciting part of the writing process. Often
at this stage you reorganize
your paper, move whole pieces of text around in support of
the argument you're developing, add new paragraphs, gather
fresh evidence, and delete pages that have become irrelevant.
Your best writing frequently occurs at this stage, for it
is now that you focus, sharpen, shape, understand what it
is you want to say. Revision moves you deeper into your own
terrain, so that you make the paper your own.
Only at this point need you edit your
work at the level of language. Sharpen individual sentences;
scrutinize individual words; hone your prose until it is
as powerful, accurate, active, and vivid as you can make
it. Finally, proofread for spelling and grammar. Use your
spell check, by all means. But do not rely on it. Machines
cannot substitute for the human eye and brain. Print out
a copy of your paper and proofread it
as though you were the instructor to whom you are about to
submit it. You might find it helpful at this stage to read
your paper aloud; many writers hear sentence-level
errors that silent reading allows them to slide past. Another
proofreading technique: read your paper backwards,
last sentence first, second-to-last sentence next, etc. This
forces you to pay attention to what's in front of your eyes.
Only after you have proofread carefully should
you submit your work to your professor.
If, even after you have proofread, you find yourself still
making numerous mistakes at the sentence level, we suggest
that you focus on one or two repeated problems, such
as verb-subject agreement or comma use, and work specifically
on these in the paper you are currently writing. Then work
on two or three different problems in your next paper. It
might be a good idea to write a note to your instructor,
spelling out that this is what you are doing. Consult a writing
handbook (e.g., Elements of Style, Rules for Writers,
etc.). If the handbook seems unhelpful, consult your instructor,
your fellow students, or the Writing Center for assistance.
Try keeping a separate notebook in which to write down each
of your errors and, next to it, the correct version. Memorize
the correct version. By the end of the semester you will
not only have learned to write more correctly, you will have
created an ongoing dictionary-handbook of your own.
In some courses, such as writing-intensive courses with
Writing Fellows, you will find the writing process built
into the structure of assignments. But in other courses you
will need to take yourself through each stage of the process.
This is especially important when the only assigned writing
in a given course is one long term paper, due at the end
of the semester.
Make use of the Writing Center. Writing Fellows are available
to discuss your papers with you at any stage.
You may also want to become writing partners with your friends
or classmates, reading and responding to each other's drafts.
Ideally, you will learn after a while to act as your own
Writing Fellow, sitting down with your own drafts, reading
them as though they were someone else's, offering that someone
else rigorous feedback.
Whatever your situation, we urge you to make revision one
of your central goals. Revision is the single most useful
tool you can wield to improve specific papers and your writing
as a whole.
Writing and Grades
Do you understand your instructor's criteria for an A,
B, or C paper?
Ask.
If you are to write a specific assignment in a specific course
in a specific discipline to a specific audience, yuo must know
the conventions that your instructor takes for granted, as well
as her underlying assumptions about what constitutes good writing.
If she can explicitly define the characteristics of an excellent
paper, she will be teaching you about the nature of writing in
her discipline. And you will be more likely to complete your
assignment to her satisfaction.
For this reason, it is also an excellent idea to ask your instructor
to share with the class as a whole any particularly strong papers
she receives and to discuss their strengths.
Most instructors at
Barnard, whatever the discipline, would agree that a strong
paper is clear and well-organized, provides
evidence in support of its assertions, and is characterized by
precision, detail, exactitude of language. But beyond these general
characteristics, the definition of good writing may differ depending
on the discipline and, within a given discipline, depending on
the reader. Many instructors and departments have their own specialized
guides to writing (e.g., How to Write a Lab Report in
Psychology). Be sure to ask.
Due Dates for Papers
Meet them.
Why and How to Avoid Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the
use of someone else's words and thoughts without giving proper
credit. The plagiarist makes it appear, whether
involuntarily or voluntarily, that someone else's work is her
own.
Why do we make such a fuss about this at the university?
One of the greatest privileges of belonging to this intellectual
community, one of its deepest pleasures, one of our chief reasons
for being here -- all of us, teachers and students alike -- is
the passionate exchange of ideas. Plagiarism threatens that exchange.
If you think that I am likely to steal your ideas without giving
you credit for them, you'll stop talking to me, and our intellectual
dialogue ends.
Some students plagiarize
out of fear. They are afraid they can't do their work on their
own. But the way to deal with insecurity
is not to plagiarize. Rather, use the suggestions offered in
this document and the support offered by the Barnard community.
Work on strengthening your thinking and writing to such a point
that there will be no reason for panic.
In fact, much of the plagiarism we encounter at the College
arises from an ignorance of what constitutes plagiarism. Its
most frequent forms are unannounced direct quotation -- that
is, copying directly from another source without indicating to
your reader, through quotation marks or indenting, that the passage
is a quotation; and unannounced paraphrase -- that is, closely
rewording another source without telling your reader, through
a phrase such as "Smith outlines this idea as follows..."
Footnoting in such instances is not enough. You must explicitly
indicate to your reader, in the body of your text, that you are
quoting or paraphrasing someone else. In addition, you must give
a reference. There is nothing wrong with direct quotation or
paraphrase, as long as you announce what you are doing and document
it properly. Clarity is the chief rule here. Be sure that what
is your thought, and what is the other writer's, is clear to
yourself and your reader.
The rules governing scholarly attribution of sources are covered
in First-Year English, in Rules for Writers, and in
a Barnard pamphlet entitled The Preparation of Papers,
which you may obtain from the English Department (417 Barnard
Hall). If, after consulting these sources, you still have questions
about plagiarism, feel free to address them to any member of
the Honor Board or to the Dean of Studies Office. They are eager
to clarify this subject.
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Your Personal Writing Goals
Your writing belongs to you. It is your domain, just as it is
your responsibility.
Perhaps there are particular aspects of your writing, beyond
the specific questions that may arise in individual papers, on
which you would like to work. These might include, for example,
how to develop a convincing argument or a distinctive voice,
how to organize your thoughts better on paper, how to improve
your syntax, or to accede to greater fluency or clarity or vividness.
Barnard is a community
of writers. All of us know that the struggle with writing is
an honorable one and that it continues as long as
we continue to write. We urge you to discuss any questions or
concerns you might have with your adviser, your instructors,
the Writing Fellows you will meet in your writing-intensive courses
or in the Writing Center. We urge you to take advantage of the
numerous resources for writing that Barnard offers you.
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Submitted
by the Writing Program Committee:
James Basker,
English
Karen Blank, Dean of Studies
Lauren Fitzgerald, English
Duncan Foley, Economics
Ellen Kreger, First-Year Dean
Nancy Kline Piore, English
Jeanne Poindexter, Biology
Rosalind Rosenberg, History
Aaron Schneider, English, Associate Dean of Studies
Margaret Vandenburg, English
Catherine Webster, Assistant Dean of Studies
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