Dana Driscoll (English (Composition and Applied Linguistics graduate programs), Writing Center director) presented at the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing on July 7, 2021. Her 90-minute workshop was titled “Supporting Advanced Writing Processes for Graduate Students and Teaching Writing for Publication.” This workshop was informed by her ongoing research into expert academic writing processes and her ongoing work in supporting advanced graduate student writers in the Jones White Writing Center.
Abstract
This interactive workshop explores how to support writers and writing processes when teaching advanced graduate writers, through an in-depth examination of how to transition graduate students from student writers to expert professional writers. While this workshop is geared toward those who teach and support writing for publication in a variety of disciplines, the takeaways from the workshop are also appropriate for those supporting thesis and dissertation writers. Specifically, this workshop focuses on how to help transition graduate to independent expert writers by focusing in two directions. supporting and developing expert writing processes and helping graduate writers work through difficulties surrounding their existing writing processes. The first angle includes a body of research-supported practices (including her own ongoing research on professional writers) to offer a range of practices and suggestions for supporting writers as they work through stages of the writing process: invention/idea generation, drafting and textual production, revision and recursion, and proofreading/submission. The second focus discusses how to support student writers in transitioning to effective expert processes, including addressing unhelpful habits developed from years of coursework with short deadlines, such as binge writing, procrastination, and challenges with self-efficacy and imposter syndrome.
Participants will have an opportunity to explore their own writing processes and consider how these experiences may be used as tools for teaching their students. Participants will also have an opportunity to co-develop teaching strategies and activities for supporting different stages of the process. Through these discussions and materials shared by the presenter, participants will leave the workshop with a variety of new strategies to teach writing for publication and support advanced graduate writers in a variety of other academic writing contexts.