The Process of Teaching (and Learning) Writing

At first, it felt awkward, maybe even unreasonable, like being asked to wear shoes on the wrong feet or eat yogurt with a butter knife. Why do it that way?

During the spring semester, Visiting Assistant Professor of Asian Studies Adil Mawani assigned students in his Asian Film and Religion course a weekly, in-class, 10-minute writing assignment — without use of a laptop or tablet. Out came paper, pencils, and pens from the recesses of backpacks. As students bent to Mawani’s open-ended prompt, the classroom grew so still that the motion-activated lights shut off.

In his own writing, Mawani sometimes turns off the computer to jot things on paper. “I found it organizes my thoughts, but I think it also can generate original ideas or original solutions,” he says. He’s not certain students view writing in that way, and he devised the technology-free exercise to spark an understanding. Initially, students were resistant, but after a few weeks, they reported that they’d grown more comfortable writing without a screen.

Dechen Cohen ’26 found it refreshing to set technology temporarily aside. Without the distraction of laptops or tablets, it was easier for her to focus on the task. She says timed writing was a good way to get students back into the course material for a long class (three hours) that meets only once a week.

 “I would say that the structure of his writing exercises actually produces not just better points, but more writing, lengthwise. I feel like I get a lot more done in those 10 minutes than maybe I would in 30 on my laptop,” Cohen says.

The quill atop the Chapel is no idle boast. From its beginnings, Hamilton has revered its commitment to writing, and Mawani is among its professors, across disciplines, who continually seeks ways to help students develop into accomplished communicators. Professors share ideas with one another, evaluate and reevaluate their own success, and, increasingly, seek advice from Writing Center Director Jennifer Ambrose. “We often have alums come back and tell us that the thing that essentially got them their job was people knowing Hamilton’s writing program and from that extrapolating that the students are communicators,” she says.

According to Ambrose, 95% of students use the Writing Center at some point during their time at Hamilton, and tutors conduct well over 3,000 conferences a year, which she finds an amazing number given the College’s overall student enrollment of about 2,000.

“I’ve never seen another institution where the Writing Center is so well integrated into how writing is practiced, and one of the things that I find significant about Hamilton is that the majority of our conferences are voluntary,” Ambrose says. “While we support about 50 required conferences each semester, more students are choosing to come in on their own.”

The no-tech writing assignment is just one of Mawani’s strategies. He turned to Ambrose for her expertise about how best to teach writing in classes made up of students with divergent academic interests, from Asian studies to biology. Ambrose has visited his classroom to lead sessions about writing. “When she taught the workshop the first time, it didn’t feel like she was doing a long lecture; she was basically drawing the ideas from the students,” he says. Ambrose offered great practical insights as well. For instance, Mawani and Ambrose presented students with essay structures and had them evaluate their effectiveness and decide how to make improvements.

Ambrose came to Hamilton in 2016. It was a time when many veteran faculty members were retiring, and many of the newer professors began to seek her guidance about teaching writing. Her approach is to encourage students to examine their rhetorical situation: What is the purpose of their writing? What are they trying to convey or argue? Who are they writing for? How do those things dictate the style, organization, and other elements of their writing? Students, guided by professors, need to consider all these things.

“I think it’s really important that we develop students’ abilities to use their own voices to speak clearly and to advocate for things in which they believe. And so teaching writing by saying, ‘Here’s how you do this,’ and ‘There’s only one way to do that,’ doesn’t represent the plurality of students and voices,” Ambrose explains.

To keep her writing advice in context for students, Associate Professor of History Celeste Day Moore tells them that she’s just one step in their writing journey. For students in her 100-level, writing-intensive courses, the journey includes a one-on-one discussion about their first paper. That meeting takes place before she gives the paper a final grade, and she tells the student the grade she would assign to the draft.

“One of the first questions I ask them in those meetings is, ‘Tell me about what people have said to you about your writing, what you’ve been told, and how you feel about it. What do you like about how you write?’” Day Moore says. She finds that it’s helpful to get that on the table before they figure out the next steps, and she makes sure students understand their next steps before they leave her office.

 Having taken five courses with Day Moore, Cam Blair ’21 met with her more times than he can remember, and they talked about writing in a way he hadn’t experienced before. Day Moore was “idea-focused,” he says, encouraging him to examine precisely what ideas he was trying to get across. He learned that before investing time in firming up his topic sentences and paragraphs, he needed a solid concept.

“That’s when I really started planning so much before I started writing. Because before these types of meetings, I had a tendency to write and develop my ideas in the course of writing,” he says.

A history major, Blair finished up his writing-intensive requirements by the end of his first year. That’s also when he took a job as a Writing Center peer tutor, a position he kept throughout his time at Hamilton. Day Moore was with him for the duration, too, including for his senior thesis.

At Hamilton the words “senior thesis” have weight, even for first-year students who’ve heard what lies ahead. The thesis, an academic capstone that can both intimidate and inspire, typically is the longest paper a student has undertaken. The project requires extensive research and data gathering, the creation of a literature review, and, of course, the final argument.

“When I turned in the first draft,” recalls Blair, “I thought it was really good. And then, when I turned in the final draft, I thought my first draft was awful. And that process was so rewarding when it was done. But, of course, when you’re doing it, it’s so awful.”

Day Moore shares the thrill when a student’s thesis labor pays off — the research, revisions, and testing of multiple arguments it takes to address a complex historical problem. Success, she says, is an answer that’s clear but not overly simplified.

“That’s the challenge. They try different strategies, and they’re kind of working around it. And there is some sort of magic that frequently happens, probably in the eleventh hour, late at night. All of that work and revision crystallizes,” she says. “It really is amazing. I love that moment, in a thesis, or in another paper. It’s really joyful to be reading something and be able to say to someone in the comments, or in person, ‘You did it. You nailed it. You found what you were trying to say.’”