SPRING 2018
WRITE TO LEARN,
LEARN TO WRITE
WRITING INTENSIVE CURRICULUM PROGRAM NEWSLETTER
Index
Improved Student Writing in the
Disciplines Through Improved
Student Reading
Kate Parsons
Study Finds Students Need
Instruction in
Digital Reading, Part 1
Tanya K. Rodrigue, PhD
Spotlight on Faculty:
Christopher Schoen
Haley Reed
The WIC program is looking
for newsletter contributors.
If you are interested in
writing an article-length
piece, a tip on the teaching
of writing, a book review,
or a reflection piece, please
contact Tanya Rodrigue at
trodrigue@salemstate.edu.
Welcome to the seventh issue of Write to Learn,
Learn to Write, the Writing Intensive Curriculum
(WIC) Program newsletter. This issue is part one
of a two-part series that focuses on reading and its
relationship to writing. The two articles in this issue
bring attention to the importance of teaching print
and digital reading at the college level.
In “Improved Student Writing in the Disciplines
Through Improved Student Reading,” Kate Parsons
describes the connection between sophisticated
reading abilities and strong writing abilities. She
argues that college students are not “expert readers,” especially when it comes to
reading in disciplinary-specific genres. As a result, their writing potentially suffers.
She advocates for the teaching of reading at the college level and provides several
pedagogical suggestions to help students become stronger readers.
In “Study Finds Students Need Instruction in Digital Reading, Part 1,” I introduce
qualitative research I gathered on students’ digital reading habits and practices. I
discuss two study findings that ultimately reveal students need explicit instruction
in reading and engaging with digital texts; I provide pedagogical tools for such
instruction. In the next issue, I will write a companion article that presents more
findings, specifically about the relationship between digital reading practices and
school-based researched writing.
The Spotlight on Faculty section features Christopher Schoen, PhD, associate
professor in sport movement science (SMS). He discusses the role of writing in SMS
and in the public as well as his involvement with the new general education writing
courses.
I hope you enjoy reading this issue and have a relaxing summer!
Sincerely,
Tanya K. Rodrigue, PhD
WIC Coordinator and Assistant Professor of English
SPRING 2018 | WIC Program Newsletter | 1
Improved Student Writing in the Disciplines
Through Improved Student Reading
By Kate Parsons, MA in English, MA in TESOL candidate and WIC Graduate Assistant
Instructors at the university
level are very likely to be
sophisticated readers, or
what some scholars refer to
as “expert readers.” Expert
readers approach new
content with meta-textual
awareness that allows them
to read quickly and efficiently.
This awareness includes the
organization of a text, how the text’s ideas fit into a discipline,
and its specialized vocabulary.1 Undergraduate students often
arrive on college and university campuses without meta-textual
awareness, and even if they have it, they may struggle to apply
it to discipline-specific genres that are new to them. Therefore,
teaching reading in the disciplines is essential for student
learning and their success in college.
Reading-Writing Connections
Reading, of course, is part of the larger phenomenon of literacy,
so it is intimately connected to writing. The Commission on
Reading of the National Council on the Teaching of English
defines reading as “a complex, purposeful, social and cognitive
process in which readers simultaneously use their knowledge
of spoken and written language, their knowledge of the topic
of the text, and their knowledge of their culture to construct
meaning”2 while the RAND Reading Study Group defines reading
comprehension as “the process of simultaneously extracting
and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement
with written language.”3 Sophisticated readers strongly engage
with the factors of the reading trifecta, and thus have strong
reading comprehension abilities.
Attempting to deal with poor student writing4 without tackling
“underground” reading issues is akin to mowing the “weed”
but leaving the taproot untouched. The problem will simply
resurface.
Davies astutely observes the negative outcomes when a lack
of sophistication in reading meets the demands of disciplinary
writing:
These unsophisticated reading processes, coupled with the
sophisticated writing prompts that faculty in the disciplines
assign their students, can lead to poor student performance
or student writing that might not accurately reflect students’
knowledge of and engagement with the subject matter. 5
In other words, problematic writing practices such as
patchwriting, 6 “cherry-picking” quotes, and plagiarism, may
be due to students’ novice reading processes. Citation Project
researchers, who studied 1,911 citations from first-year papers,
found that 46 percent of citations were from the first page of
a source and 77 percent were from the first three pages. Lead
researchers Rebecca Moore Howard and Sandra Jamieson
explain the consequences of superficial source engagement.
They claim that “students do not seem to be engaging with the
entire text, and they frequently simplify or partially misrepresent
the source to make it fit their arguments” 7.
In order for students to become expert readers, they need to
engage with texts in a meaningful way. But what does that
mean and how can faculty support students in becoming strong
readers?
Pedagogical Suggestions

Dr. Laura J. Davies, Director of Writing Programs at SUNY 1. Writing to Read: First and foremost, faculty can use low-
Cortland, likens a lack of sophisticated reading processes to stakes writing to help students become active readers. The
the taproot of a dandelion that represents student writing. findings of a 2010 study by the Carnegie Corporation, 8 “Writing
1
Alice Horning, Reading, Writing, and Digitizing: Understanding Literacy in a Digital Age (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012).
2
National Council on the Teaching of English, Commission on Reading, “A Call to Action: What We Know about Adolescent Literacy and Ways to Support Teachers in Meeting
Students’ Needs,” 2004, www.ncte.org/positions/statements/adolescentliteracy.
3
RAND Reading Study Group, “Reading for Understanding: Toward an R&D Program in Reading Comprehension,” 2002, www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_re-
ports/2005/MR1465.pdf.
4
Laura J. Davies, “Getting to the Root of the Problem: Teaching Reading as a Process in the Sciences,” in What Is College Reading?, eds. Alice S. Horning, Deborah-Lee Gollnitz,
and Cynthia R. Haller (Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse, 2017).
5
Davies, 162.
6
Defined as “copying from a source text, and then deleting some words, altering grammatical structures, or plugging in one-for-one synonym substitutes” Rebecca Moore Howard, “A
Plagiarism Pentimento,” Journal of Teaching Writing, 11.2 (1992): 233.
7
Rebecca Moore Howard and Sandra Jamieson, “Researched Writing,” in A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, eds. by Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper Taggart, Kurt Schick, and H.B. Hessler (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 234.
8
Steve Graham and Michael Hebert, Writing to Read: Evidence for How Writing Can Improve Reading. A Carnegie Corporation Time to Act Report (Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent
Education, 2010).

2 | WIC Program Newsletter | SPRING 2018

to Read,” problematize the traditional binary approach of using
(often high-stakes) writing to assess reading comprehension.
The researchers argue that reading and writing are reciprocal
and interrelated. The study shows that reading comprehension
improves when students engage with a reading by writing about
it, specifically by responding to a text, summarizing it, making
notes about it, and/or answering questions about it.
In a recent critique of this study, Chris Anson9 argues that
while these suggested writing activities are helpful, they leave
out important aspects of student engagement. He asserts
that simply asking students to summarize or make notes on a
reading is not a sufficiently complex cognitive task and that
such activities fail to make use of student motivation or faculty
creativity. Anson offers several examples of low-stakes “writing
to read” assignments that require students to read, summarize,
and be creative. For example, he contrasts two writing
assignments: simply describing changes in land use over time
and the more interesting task of writing from the perspective of
a grazing sheep contrasting its own experience on the land with
that of its ancestors.
2. Clarify the purpose of readings: Strong readers understand
the purpose of reading, thus instructors can assist students
in approaching texts with purpose. One way faculty can do so
is to point out important aspects of a reading before students
read the text. Instructors might ask themselves: Is a particular
reading for background, a central text, or something in between?
In other words, how will the reading be used in the context of my
particular class? How does it fit into the progression of the class
and other readings Is there something I want students to pay
close attention to (e.g., a novel method, theoretical paradigm, or
sequence of events)?
3. Model previewing techniques: Expert readers do not simply
start with the first sentence of a reading and continue to the
end. They may engage in several of the following previewing
practices. Instructors can introduce the following processes to
help students preview a text:
• Skim the whole text to gain an awareness of its content
and structure
• Note its length and set a reasonable goal for how much can
be read in one sitting
• Get a global sense of the text by reading the title, section
headings and subheadings, bolded words, bulleted lists,
graphics or other visuals, and set off definitions
• Read the introductory and concluding paragraphs
• Use discussion questions at the end of the text to
focus attention
• Activate previous knowledge about the topic of the text
9
Chris M. Anson, “Writing to Read, Revisited,” in What Is College Reading?, eds. Alice S. Horning, Deborah-Lee Gollnitz, and Cynthia R. Haller (Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse, 2017).
• Encourage students to make predictions about the reading
and to make connections with past readings and
course content
Consider previewing some readings in class to model this
strategy. This can be done as a whole class, in pairs, or in
small groups.
4. Teach genre patterns explicitly: The “Write to Read” study
mentioned above also revealed that reading comprehension
improves when students are taught the writing skills and
processes used to compose a text. Each discipline has its own
way of writing and hence its own way of reading. Instructors
should call attention to patterns of disciplinary discourse as
well as different disciplinary genres to help students become
stronger readers and writers. For instance, science instructors
may explicitly discuss the components of scientific research
writing including the IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results
and Discussion) structure, the rhetorical moves made to identify
gaps in literature, and the way evidence is used.
Bibliography
Anson, Chris M. “Writing to Read, Revisited.” In What Is College
Reading?, edited by Alice S. Horning, Deborah-Lee Gollnitz, and
Cynthia R. Haller. Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse, 2017.
Davies, Laura J. “Getting to the Root of the Problem: Teaching
Reading as a Process in the Sciences.” In What Is College Reading?,
edited by Alice S. Horning, Deborah-Lee Gollnitz, and Cynthia R.
Haller. Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse, 2017.
Graham, Steve and Michael Hebert. Writing to read: Evidence for
how writing can improve reading. A Carnegie Corporation Time to
Act Report. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education, 2010.
Horning, Alice S. Reading, Writing, and Digitizing: Understanding
Literacy in a Digital Age. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars, 2012.
Howard, Rebecca Moore, “A Plagiarism Pentimento.” Journal of
Teaching Writing 11.2 (1992).
Howard, Rebecca Moore and Sandra Jamieson. “Researched
Writing.” In A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, edited by Gary
Tate, Amy Rupiper Taggart, Kurt Schick, and H.B. Hessler. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014.
National Council on the Teaching of English, Commission on
Reading. “A Call to Action: What We Know about Adolescent
Literacy and Ways to Support Teachers in Meeting Students’
Needs.” 2004. www.ncte.org/positions/statements/
adolescentliteracy.
RAND Reading Study Group. “Reading for Understanding: Toward
an R&D Program in Reading Comprehension.” 2002. www.rand.org/
content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR1465.pdf.
SPRING 2018 | WIC Program Newsletter | 3
Study Finds Students Need Instruction
in Digital Reading, Part 1
By Tanya K. Rodrigue, Coordinator of the WIC Program and Assistant Professor of English
As university instructors, we make all kinds of assumptions When I first read these studies about technology and reading
about our students, especially when it comes to their practices, I was very disturbed. I wondered: are these claims about
relationship with technology. Most of our students were born technology accurate? How are students actually reading on the
in the digital age and thus we think they have a strong fluency screen? How do their reading practices affect their comprehension
in technology: these “digital natives” understand technology, and the way they work with sources in college writing?
they know how to use it, and they know how to engage with it.1
When it comes to digital reading, therefore, instructors may not In an attempt to answer these questions, I conducted a small
even think about students’ digital reading competency. After all, study where I explored how six students, specifically freshman
students are constantly reading on a screen—everything from in a required writing course, read on the screen. I gathered data
text messages to emails to articles to Facebook status updates. from think-aloud protocols5 of students reading digital texts
So they clearly have the ability to read and engage with digital and collected students’ source-based writing that incorporated
texts in meaningful ways, right? these digital texts. I also administered surveys and conducted
interviews.
Wrong.
My research goal was twofold: (1) to identify the kind of reading
For two reasons. strategies students used to engage in screen reading, and (2) to
understand how these strategies helped students navigate a text
First, scholars have contested the idea of the “digital native,” for the ultimate purpose of using it in a research-based essay.
arguing it is not only wrong but problematic to identify this While my study has many limitations, most notably the number
generation as being completely competent with technology. 2 of participants, it’s the first of its kind and thus has potential to
Second, and most importantly for this article, multiple studies shed some light on literacy practices at institutions of higher
have revealed that students’ reading abilities have declined over education. For this newsletter article, I will explain what I learned
time, and technology likely has something to do with it. In “Is about students’ digital reading habits and present pedagogical
Google Making Us Stupid?,” Nicholas Carr claims that habits suggestions based on these findings. In the next newsletter, I
such as skimming, multi-tasking, and giving in to distractions
have negatively affected people’s ability to engage in long,
dense texts
as well as read in a way that invites comprehension. 3 Maryanne
Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University, claims that
technology has literally altered our brains. Wolfe says our ability
for deep reading, the kind of reading that invites comprehension,
has been compromised. She claims, “The problem is that many of
us have adapted to reading online just too well. And if you
don’t use the deep reading part of your brain, you lose the deep
reading part of your brain” (qtd. Raphael 2014). Further, my own
research with the Citation Project claims students’ inability to
comprehend texts may not only lead to insufficient learning, but
also to plagiarism. 4

1
This term was coined by Marc Prensky. See “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” On the Horizon, 9, no. 6 (2001a). http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital
%20 Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
2
Apostolos Koutropoulos, “Digital Natives: Ten Years After,” Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 7, no. 4 (December 2011). http://jolt.merlot.org/vol7no4/koutropoulos_1211.htm
3
Nicholas Carr, 2008. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Atlantic, July/August. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/.
4
Rebecca Moore Howard, Tricia Serviss and Tanya Rodrigue, “Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences,” Writing & Pedagogy 2, no. 2 (2010): 177-92.
5
This protocol asks research participants to report aloud what they are thinking and doing. These protocols are recorded and later analyzed.
6
This research is also written about in a scholarly article: Tanya Rodrigue, “The Digital Reader, The Alphabetic Writer, and the Space Between: A Study in Digital Reading and
Source-Based Writing,” Computers and Composition 46 (2017): 4-20.

4 | WIC Program Newsletter | SPRING 2018

will present my findings about the relationship between digital
reading practices and source-based writing. 6
What I Learned
While my research yielded many findings about students’ digital
reading practices, the think-aloud
protocols revealed two which
may be particularly meaningful for
college instructors.
Finding #1: In the think-aloud
protocols, students engaged
most frequently with reading
strategies known to be effective
for comprehension. I coded these
two strategies “cursor use” and
“dialogue.” I define cursor use
as instances when students
move the cursor under words as
they traverse across the page,
either reading the words aloud or remaining silent. This act is
reminiscent of finger tracking, a practice taught to children when
they are first learning how to read (an observation that I will
return to in part 2
of this article). I define dialogue as a reader’s interaction
with the text, with interaction defined in a trifecta: the reader
interacts with the text along with the meaning and experiences
they bring
to the text. This engagement leads students to begin to make
meaning. The reader who uses this strategy positions reading
as a conversation and actively participates in the reading act.
Implication #1: So there’s seemingly some good news here.
Students are using reading strategies that are known to be
effective for comprehension in print reading. This finding is in
direct opposition to many scholars’ claims that the screen repels
the kind of reading that leads to comprehension. When looking at
students’ digital reading practices in isolation from their writing,
they seemed to be highly engaged during the reading process as
suggested by the use of these two strategies.
Yet, oddly….
Finding #2: Students engaged least frequently with reading
strategies specific to digital texts such as clicking hyperlinks,
engaging with images or video, or opening a new window.
Implication #2: The minimal engagement with the features of
digital texts and the use of effective print reading strategies
suggest that students approach reading digital texts in the same
way they do print—mostly engaging with the words on the page,
reading from left to right. It also suggests a lack of knowledge of
digital reading strategies as well
as what constitutes a digital text.
I surmise this lack of education
is directly connected to common
and traditional pedagogical
approaches in the teaching
of writing and reading. Many
instructors still predominantly
assign alphabetic papers (as
opposed to multimodal or
multimedia projects), as was
the case in this study, and often
times, these research projects
require the use of print texts such
as scholarly articles and books.
Accordingly, instructors may not be recognizing the need to
teach digital comprehension strategies because they expect
students to use print texts. Alternately, instructors may identify
their students as “digital natives” and assume therefore that
students do not need guidance in navigating a digital text.
Pedagogical Recommendations7
So what can we as university instructors do to help our students
engage in digital texts in meaningful ways? Below are three
pedagogical suggestions:
#1 Teach Students What Constitutes a Digital Text
Digital texts are multimodal in that they comprise various
combinations of alphabetic writing, still images, moving images,
and sound. All modes, or what Gunther Kress refers to as
“socially and culturally given resources for making meaning,”8
in their own right, are channels of communication. We “read”
images. We “read” sound.” We “read” images, text, and sound
individually and together. Modes encompass meaning; they
demand engagement and interpretation.
Within modes are more specific features such as color,
hyperlinks, graphics, pictures, icons, animation, maps, charts,
and graphs. All of these features encompass meaning and
Continued on page 6

7
Some of my pedagogical recommendations are published in a scholarly article: Tanya Rodrigue, “Digital Reading: Genre Awareness as a Tool for Reading Comprehension,”
Pedagogy, 17, no. 2 (April 2017): 235-257.
8
Gunther Kress, “What Is a Mode?” in The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, ed. Carey Jewitt (New York: Routledge, 2009), 54.
9
Donald J Leu, Charles Kinzer and Julie Coiro, “Toward a Theory of New Literacies Emerging from the Internet and Other Information and Communication Technologies” in
Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, ed. Robert Ruddell and Norman Unrau
(Newark, DE: International ReadingAssociation.
10
Julie Coiro, “Making Sense of Online Text,” Reading Comprehension 63, no. 3 (2005): 30 – 35.

SPRING 2018 | WIC Program Newsletter | 5

Continued from page 5
require particular comprehension strategies for meaning-
making.9 Teaching students how to interact and engage with
these features will make them stronger readers.
#2 Teach Students that Digital Texts Call for Different
Kinds of Engagement
We all know digital texts look different from print texts, but
digital texts also look different from each other. Websites look
different from PDFs which look different from a video. Bring
attention to the differences, and point out that different kinds of
digital texts call for different kinds of engagement.
Further, ask students to draw on their reading habits of
print texts to engage with digital texts that may be similar in
nature to print genres or that evolved from print genres. For
example, online newspapers and magazines emerged from print
newspapers and magazines, emails emerged from letters and
personal notes, and blogs emerged from diaries and anthologies.
Writing conventions carry over from print to the web, and so do
reading practices. Teach them to draw on antecedent reading
practices and adapt the strategies to engage with the features of
a digital text and its unique rhetorical situation.
#3 Teach Students How to Preview a Digital Text Before Screen
Engagement and Create a Reading Plan
Previewing a digital text, just like a print text, orients readers
and provides them with knowledge on how to approach
reading that text. For digital texts, ask students to draw on
their knowledge of digital text features, understanding of the
differences among digital genres, and antecedent reading
practices to preview the text and create a reading plan. One
process for previewing a text is: (1) read title of page and
website; (2) scan menu choices without clicking on anything
(3) make predictions about where each link goes; (4) explore
interactive features, pop-up menus, and scroll bars that may
reveal additional information about the site; (5) identify the site
creator; (6) try out any electronic supports on the site, such
as an internal search engine; (7) and make a judgment about
whether to explore the site further and, if so, where to begin.10
6 | WIC Program Newsletter | SPRING 2018
There are a multitude of other ways we can support students in
developing strong digital reading abilities. Please stay tuned for
future WIC workshops that address this subject as well as part 2
of this article in the next issue of Write to Learn, Learn to Write,
which focuses on my research findings about the relationship
between digital reading practices and source-based writing.
Bibliography
Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Atlantic, July/August
(2008). http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/
is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/.
Coiro, Julie. “Making Sense of Online Text.” Reading
Comprehension 63, no. 3 (2005): 30 – 35.
Howard, Rebecca Moore, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue.
“Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences.” Writing &
Pedagogy 2, no. 2 (2010): 177 – 92.
Koutropoulos, Apostolos. “Digital Natives: Ten Years After.” Journal
of Online Learning and Teaching 7, no. 4 (December 2011). http://jolt.
merlot.org/vol7no4/koutropoulos_1211.htm
Kress, Gunther. “What Is a Mode?” In The Routledge Handbook of
Multimodal Analysis, edited by Carey Jewitt. New York: Routledge,
2009.
Leu, Donald J., Charles Kinzer, and Julie Coiro. “Toward a Theory of
New Literacies Emerging from the Internet and Other Information
and Communication
Technologies.” In Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading,
5th ed., edited by Robert Ruddell and Norman Unrau. Newark, DE:
International Reading Association, 2004.
Prensky, Marc. “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” On the
Horizon, 9, no. 6 (2001a). http :// www . marcprensky . com / writing /
Prensky %20-%20 Digital %20 Natives ,%20 Digital %20 Immigrants
%20-%20 Part 1. pdf
Raphael, T.J. “Your Paper Brain and Your Kindle Brain Aren’t the
Same Thing.” PRI The Takeaway, September 18, 2014. http://www.
pri.org/stories/2014-09-18/your-paper-brain-and-your-kindle-brain-
arent-same-thing
Rodrigue, Tanya. “Digital reading: Genre awareness as a tool for
reading comprehension. Pedagogy 17 no. 2 (2017): 235–25
Rodrigue, Tanya. “The Digital Reader, The Alphabetic Writer, and
The Space Between: A Study in Digital Reading and Source-Based
Writing.” Computers and Composition 46 (2017): 4-20.
Spotlight on Faculty
By Haley Reed
Christopher Schoen, PhD,
is an associate professor
in the sport and movement
science (SMS) department
at Salem State. He teaches
several courses including
sports psychology, sport
in culture, and perceptual
motor learning. Professor
Schoen recently published
“A Qualitative Study of
Momentum in Basketball:
Practical Lessons, Possible Strategies” in the Journal of
Sport. He is currently working on a manuscript entitled “High
Performance and Mass Participation in Sport.”
Professor Schoen is an advocate for being active in daily life,
especially outdoors. If you ever see a man riding his bike around
campus, rain or shine, the chances are pretty high that it’s
professor Schoen. Even though he takes a physically active
approach to teaching, such as going outside for an activity or
showing a demonstration in front of the class, such as juggling,
he still implements writing into his curriculum. I sat down with
professor Schoen this semester to ask him about writing in his
field and the SMS department in general.
HR: Why do you think writing is important in any class at the
collegiate level?
CS: Some classes and subject matters are more conducive
to writing than others. Some are more about moving around,
like our perceptual motor learning class, so the writing isn’t as
necessary.
HR: Then, do you think that writing isn’t as necessary in exercise
science classes considering they are more practical based?
CS: I would say that it does have an important function, which
would be for careers. You are essentially training yourself to
get into graduate school where you are going to have to do a
lot of writing. Or you’re in a clinical or rehabilitation setting in
which you have to take case notes and you have to be very clear
when writing them. There is a place for writing in many of the
programs we have.
HR: How is writing used in your field of sports psychology?
CS: If you are going to pursue a research or education role, I
can’t imagine not being able to write. Since sports psychology
consists of a lot of research, we have to be able to write
effectively in order to publish studies or pursue grants. One
of the things that is important for our professional success is
to be able to communicate through writing and be able to take
advantages of opportunities that are there for us. I would say
to any student here, if I couldn’t write, I wouldn’t have this
job so I think it is important to be able to communicate clearly
and correctly, because if you couldn’t it would put you at a
considerable disadvantage in our information-based society.
HR: Going off of that, what are some disadvantages to social
media in our society and how does it impact writing and how we
perceive information?
CS: Social media has become very important for companies,
businesses, and individuals to promote themselves but it
comes with considerable downsides. One is that it requires a
tremendous amount of time in order to keep up with it. Another
concern is the lack of control you have over content. Nowadays
there’s less and less of a regard of what we would call factual
information and generally people don’t go searching for accurate
and valid information. We are too quick to respond to and agree
with what people are saying things we would agree with. So,
what you are going to have is a whole culture of people going
around and believing in things that make no sense whatsoever.
That becomes perpetuated, especially if you have a strong
presence on social media and you can write very well, you can
spew all sorts of nonsense and are going to have a following.
Continued on page 8
SPRING 2018 | WIC Program Newsletter | 7
Continued from page 7
HR: On the other hand, what are some advantages to writing in
social media?
CS: When it comes to writing social media is great for promoting
the content you write about. How I would consider that to be an
advantage, or what I am speaking about particularly, is it’s an
easy way to get out your writing style and getting it to people
who might more readily see it than in other forms of promotion.
When we are publishing this stuff, nobody reads it so social
media is a great way to get the word out there and promote the
message and content that you are writing about. So, it definitely
gives you a wider audience from that stand point.
HR: What is your responsibility with the writing curriculum at
Salem State?
CS: My responsibility resides within the curriculum committee
and to evaluate the courses that are proposing to be a writing
intensive course and since our curriculum mandates students to
write it’s something that I would not only expect someone to take
seriously and take responsibility towards but I guess you could
say that I am very passionate about it as well
HR: How do you think writing through the curriculum is important
to the students of Salem State?
CS: It’s my personal and professional feeling that at this school
and at any school is that you better know how to write. When
you can’t write you can’t communicate, and just by virtue the
amount of time that we have, I’ve got what 80-100 students in
any given semester, so in order to communicate with them some
of it has to be done through writing. And if you can’t write you
can’t communicate, and if you can’t communicate you’re not
going to be able to have that success you might want to have.
I can’t express how important communicating is and the types
of opportunities and the types of doors it can open for people to
take advantage of being able to write really well.
8 | WIC Program Newsletter | SPRING 2018
WIC Program Launches
Canvas Site
The WIC program recently launched a Canvas site. The site
specifically hosts information about two WIC programs: the WIC
Seminar Program and the WIC Brown Bag Lunch Event Series.
The WIC Seminar Program is a two-day intensive workshop
that supports instructors in learning about various topics
related to the teaching of writing. This program is primarily
geared toward W-II and W-III instructors, and it is offered
twice an academic year.
The Brown Bag
Lunch Event
Series offers four
one-hour long
writing pedagogy
workshops each
academic year.
These events
are open to all
graduate students
and faculty. On
the Canvas site, faculty can also sign up for the WIC weekly
tips on teaching writing, and access the current and past WIC
newsletters as well as the WIC blog. In addition, the Canvas site
hosts a link to a Google folder packed full of resources related
to the teaching of writing. Instructors can find information
about writing, the teaching of writing, and the vertical model
of writing instruction at Salem State as well as specific activities
that can be adapted or immediately used in classrooms across
the curriculum.