Elizabeth-Chapter+17+HALR

The obvious idea that writing and thinking are intimately related caught my eye. Occasionally, students neglect to give their writing enough thought, especially when they have waited till the last minute to write a paper. The result is a "Canned paper" which is structurally and organizationally mediocre and where ideas are not well developed. One of the literacy demands of entering the university is writing numerous papers and blogs. Critical thinking improves the quality of higher order concerns that a paper deals with. Some students fail to do their own critical thinking and analysis. They paraphrase and quote extensively, and although they give credit to the original authors, they neglect to do their own thinking and reflection about the text they are paraphrasing and how it relates to other texts, to the world in general, and what the practical implications are. In addition, they don't give examples. The result is a dry paper. They don't take time to discuss their papers with peers, peer tutors and writing consultants. The writing center is a free resource center and the writing consultants wait for students to come and share their ideas and to get input from a different viewpoint. At the writing center I have conducted many brainstorming sessions with students to generate discourse about their topics. The last student I brainstormed with was a returning student who used to be in middle level management and was an assistant manager at Burger King. He is now majoring in hospitality management. He came for a consultation and was vaguely aware of how to express his idea that assistant managers are more involved with employees and customers than higher level management and felt that assistant managers' suggestions for improving business are not seriously considered. When we passed by each other today at Halle Library he thanked me for helping him and discussing with him his own experiences at Burger King through raising many questions and helping him how to find theoretical and practical resources to support his claim. He said that the questions I asked him helped him see through things more clearly. He'll be back with a written draft.