by Wong Jock Onn

As an academic writing teacher, I regularly stress to my students the importance of transferring the skills they have learned from my IEM writing module to other modules. However, I learned to my dismay that some students, including year 2 students, are not required to write. They tell me that they won’t be able to use what they have learned. Examples are economics and computer science students. Additionally, I also found out to my horror that some students are not even required to read published material. One computer science student who was reading my tier-2 module said that he did not have to read anything beyond his lecture notes! I was dumbfounded.

Such revelations give me the impression that we at CELC sometimes fight ‘lonely’ battles. While it is our role to teach students writing and communication skills, the effort should be more holistic and concerted, involving all parties concerned, not just CELC. I have also heard of a number of stories about how faculties do not treat us with respect, nor fully co-operate with us in our endeavors to teach their students.

All writing teachers worth their salt and academics who want their students to be able to communicate clearly in writing their ideas to others must recognize the importance of reading to write. Just as a child learns how to speak by listening (to how people speak to them), a student can learn to write well by reading. I am a writing teacher who has published a number of journal articles, but have never attended formal classes in academic writing. I have learned how to write by reading extensively and learning from comments written by my former PhD supervisor and other reviewers. This tells me that the role reading plays in learning how to write well can be as important as attending formal classes, if not more. Yet, the importance of reading seems to be underestimated among some academics and university students. As a result, I had students who did not read or fully engage with the reading material before class, evidenced in their inability to participate fruitfully in class discussions. They did not seem to think it is important to fully engage with the reading material and prepare themselves before class.

The benefits of reading to write in whatever genre cannot be overestimated. Speaking about creative writing in The Guardian, an author writes:[i]

As well as a large vocabulary, novels give writers a sense of how it is done. They offer templates that can be borrowed and adapted; they teach a writer how to create narrative structures and characters, how to develop tension, write dialogue, and maintain a consistent tone and pitch.

 

Although the author is speaking about creative writing, what he says could be applied to academic writing too. Below I rephrase what the author says:

As well as a large academic vocabulary, scholarly articles give student writers a sense of how it is done. They offer templates that can be borrowed and adapted; they teach a student writer how to contextualize a study, how to develop arguments, write literature reviews, and maintain a consistent line of argument.

 

A Google search using the phrase ‘reading to write’ yields a number of sources[ii] that support the idea that reading helps writers. In another source,[iii] it is written:

If you want to write well, you must read well, and you must read widely. Through reading you will gain knowledge and you will find inspiration. As you read more, you will learn to read with a writer’s eye. Even grammar sinks in when you read. If you’re worried about memorizing all the rules of grammar, then just read books written by adept writers. Eventually, it all will become part of your mental makeup.

A well-read writer has a better handle on vocabulary, understands the nuances of language, and recognizes the difference between poor and quality writing.

A writer who doesn’t read is like a musician who doesn’t listen to music or a filmmaker who doesn’t watch films. It is impossible to do good work without experiencing the good work that has been done.

Again, although the author here is not referring to academic writing in particular, what she says is certainly relevant. It is only common sense and consistent with my experience, and, I believe, the experience of most other writers (academic or non-academic). The moral of the story is, “good writers read”.[iv]

When I tell my students to read, I tell them to be engaged in ‘active reading’, not ‘passive’. According to a source,[v] active reading “simply means reading something with a determination to understand and evaluate it for its relevance to your needs.” According another source, it involves “reading to collect data and retain information.”[vi] Various academic and non-academic sources have presented strategies and tips for active reading. An example comes from a webpage by Princeton University, which says that active reading involves not only what the text “says” but what it “does”.[vii] This is an example of what every student needs to do when they read an academic text. They do not just read for content but the purpose of each piece of text as well.

In my IEM class, which focuses on both content and exposition, I tell my students what or how to read when I teach them exposition. I tell them to focus not only on the content, but the exposition as well when they read an academic text. Among other things, I tell them to read to learn how the author contextualizes the study, formulates the objective, connects their ideas, begins every section, develops their arguments, and writes the conclusion. I tell my students to focus on what tenses are used to formulate the objective statement, to write the methodology, to write the conclusion, and so on. I use an academic paper for ‘notification’ purposes, to show students what to look out for, and where.

When active reading becomes a habit for the student, the rules of academic writing could be learned subconsciously and internalized. It is well known in the area of first language acquisition that children learn how to speak without formal lessons. As stated by the Linguistic Society of America, “Children acquire language quickly, easily, and without effort or formal teaching. It happens automatically, whether their parents try to teach them or not.”[viii] However, they need input (ibid.): “Although parents or other caretakers don’t teach their children to speak, they do perform an important role by talking to their children. Children who are never spoken to will not acquire language.” Children learn by being spoken to and internalizing the language rules. Evidence comes from their initial non-learning of exceptions. As an example, consider the exchange below:[ix]

Parent: What did you to today?
Child: I drawed a chat.
Parent: You drew a cat?
Child: Yeah.

In this exchange, it is clear that the child has internalized the past-tense rule (but has ignored exceptions for the time being), which the child has learned subconsciously through observing others. If a child can learn a language by being spoken to, it is difficult to see why a student writer can’t learn how to write well by engaging published academic material (i.e. journal articles & book chapters, not lecture notes or PPT slides).

Thus, it is my priority as a writing teacher to prescribe reading material for my IEM students. However, as mentioned, the importance of reading seems to be underestimated. Students came to me to say there was too much to read, or that they didn’t have time to read. Admittedly, active reading requires time, energy and concentration, which many NUS students seem to lack. It could also be that they prioritize their faculty modules over our writing modules.

Whatever it is, I think that it is important for the university as a whole to find ways to promote a reading culture among students; it should not be CELC’s effort alone. The effort must come from all faculties who are interested in their students’ academic progress. All faculties must play a part in engaging their students in reading and writing, and in turn support CELC in its mission. It has to be a concerted effort.

 

[i] https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/mar/02/best-advice-writers-read

[ii] Interestingly, most of these sources come from a creative writing context.

[iii] https://www.writingforward.com/better-writing/read-more-write-better

[iv] https://goinswriter.com/good-writers-read/

[v] http://www2.open.ac.uk/students/skillsforstudy/active-reading.php

[vi] http://tutorials.istudy.psu.edu/activereading/

[vii] https://mcgraw.princeton.edu/active-reading-strategies

[viii] https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/faq-how-do-we-learn-language

[ix] https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/