Reimagining writing seminar for all writers

Few Princeton students can forget their writing seminars. From the stress and confusion over the D1 to the feeling of accomplishment unique to finally submitting the R3, the mandatory first-year course provides a shared introduction to all the mixed emotions that will define every Princeton student’s future academic pursuits. However, while writing seminars teach helpful research and argumentation tactics, they often ultimately fall short of helping students with their titular skill: writing. Currently, writing seminar utilizes a one-size-fits-all approach to writing, neglecting the teaching of how different forms, types of sources, and modes of analysis vary in different disciplines. It also does not teach its students how to make the best possible use of language, especially in regards to form and style. In other words, writing seminar fails at its most fundamental task: it does not teach its students how to write, nor how to do so well.

While the time limits of Princeton’s short semester — significantly briefer than that of other schools like Harvard — could limit the ability of instructors to teach broader concepts, there still exists a structural issue with writing seminar that makes its programming fundamentally ineffective. Namely, none of the three major assignments in the writing program are especially dedicated to form or style. The first paper is dedicated to learning how to analyze a single work in detail, while the second essay teaches students how to effectively compare arguments and build their own. The third paper is completely focused on fostering independent research techniques and strong engagement with a variety of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. While these assignments are invaluable for teaching students how to form strong research papers guided with sufficient evidence, none provide the essential skills of form & style required of a good writer.

Rarely does the writing seminar curriculum explicitly teach students how a purposeful, well-thought-out structure can effectively communicate ideas. After all, without structure, arguments simply don’t make sense. Future professors will evaluate lab scientific evaluations, close readings, and other varying assignments with their discipline-individual structures in mind because, in academic writing, coherency to a certain audience is key. The writing seminar program should set students up for success at Princeton — and in the wider world of publishing — by placing a greater emphasis on the many different kinds of idea organization in analytical writing.

Form — which goes beyond the organization of ideas, and encompasses the text type and media used to convey an argument — also does serious work to get an author’s point across clearly. Teaching only one form of the “academic paper” neglects how helpful it can be to expose freshmen to the many forms analysis can take across fields. A lab report, a poetic analysis, and a policy memo are all forms of academic writing whose form will diverge far from the source-critique-conclusion style of essay taught in writing seminars.

The present design of writing seminar also prevents students from expanding their idea of what sources from different disciplines may look like. It focuses mainly on engaging with scholarly secondary and tertiary sources and how a thesis can be formed on external research. Although the D1/R1 does focus on primary source analysis, students spend the majority of their time simply figuring out how to write an essay instead of engaging deeply with their primary sources of choice. Additionally, because many writing seminars focus on sociological or anthropological scholarship without incorporating the works favored in other disciplines, which call for different sourcing and analytical techniques.

Humanities disciplines that involve rigorous analysis of various texts may require skills that call for a different type of analysis beyond what is offered in the writing seminar curriculum. When you analyze a novel strictly through the skills taught in writing seminar you tend to miss out on the creative and cultural nuances of authors’ intents and perspectives. While some seminars certainly incorporate these creative works, it’s often done at a limited, marginal level.

Furthermore, in fictional works, when one only engages with the arguments made about a character in a novel can exclude the literary context in which the character lives, and the fact that their written existence in relation to a larger cultural moment influences the author’s purpose in creating such a character at all. Analyzing other writers’ style and purpose — especially in literary works — becomes much more difficult when you haven’t learned that those are viable elements for academic investigation. Journalistic scholarly pieces are not the only argumentative works. To focus almost exclusively on published academic sources is to ignore entire fields of work ripe for analysis and leads to the exclusion or minimization of other forms of writing, and accordingly subjective, creative analysis of one body of work.

Lastly, writing seminar also ignores the importance of style — a part of writing can greatly enhance the ability of a piece to read fluidly and engagingly. Except for passing warnings about personal style, style is excluded from the curriculum. But style is important: clarity and concision make pieces easy to read, and personal voice can make it interesting. If you don’t understand how to effectively develop and adapt your own style to different disciplines, your work will be far less engaging. This might mean professional consequences down the line, like low readership and decreased citability.

A significant part of understanding the proper use of style comes from the ability to write and convey meaning — especially through subtle manners. The focus on directly stated arguments during writing seminars neglects the various ways that an author might further more subtle points through tone, syntax, and figurative language. Developing these skills in your own writing makes it far easier to critically examine them in other people’s work.

The very specific style of academic writing favored in writing seminars makes abundant use of the passive voice, and favors long, clause-heavy sentences with complex grammatical structures. I call this “dissertation-ese”: a language which exists to remind the reader that the author is smart. But consequently, it can be difficult to read, and the clarity of the argument can get easily lost in excessive vocabulary. This is not to imply that complex ideas don’t require idiosyncratic constructions and polysyllabic words, but rather that first-years ought to focus more on clarity as they learn the basics of argumentative writing. By holding up wordy papers as paragons of great style encourages students to mimic that same wordiness in their own work, but often at the expense of clarity. If a student is struggling to understand the fundamental points an article is making, the addition of a functional language barrier via forced loquacity does not help the situation. A simply-written paper that can be clearly understood will be much more comprehensive than one that “sounds impressive.”

Writing seminar doesn’t need to be completely overhauled, and we don’t need to compromise the high curriculum standards of the writing program. However, there are certainly key modifications that could fix these problems and make our writing and research education more well balanced.

First, there should be a stronger focus on forming independent arguments that are informed by, but not wholly reliant on, existing scholarly discourse around a topic. In particular, an enthusiastic promotion of literary analysis can help expand students’ horizons and ideas of what analytical writing can look like. Second, there must be a greater emphasis on structural analysis as opposed to purely argument critiques. A curriculum that is designed to teach students about writing structures in different academic fields will benefit students in every discipline. Lastly, style should be emphasized in the curriculum: how to develop and hone both the subtle, creative aspects of academic writing, and the power of simplicity in service of a more interesting, widely accessible paper. Any of the above will help the writing seminar program best prepare students for larger and more complex assignments — both now, and in future academic endeavors.