Building a Student Community to Improve Student Writing Skills

 

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2016, Volume 37

Dawn Carter & Corey Ptak

Abstract

First year college students find scientific writing difficult. They often take a first year writing class, but the style and content required in laboratory reports is new to them. In addition, scientific disciplines approach student writing differently, and there is often no systematic approach to teaching science writing across the curriculum, and no expectations for progress from year to year. As scientists, we communicate by reading and writing papers. Reading papers is daunting for first year students, and writing like a scientist is even harder. At first, students find reading papers very difficult. The language is strange, they don't understand the jargon; papers are long and quite difficult to follow. They wonder how they will ever belong to the group that actually writes these documents! Introducing students to scientific literature early and using suitable examples helps them to model and improve their writing.

Keywords:  student writing skills

Boston University (2015)