Writing Policy & Support

Making Effective Writing a Priority in the College of Education

   The faculty members in the COE at Pacific University are committed to helping teachers and teacher candidates use effective, appropriate, and accurate written language. We believe that the current and future students of our students deserve no less than that. Toward that end, we have adopted the following program goals related to our students’ professional writing.

   In an effort toward advancing these goals, the faculty in the COE at Pacific University has agreed that at least one assignment in each course will be evaluated for quality of written expression. For those designated writing assignments, COE instructors will provide their students with formative feedback regarding the quality of their written expression, requiring revision of assignments when warranted and basing the grade for those assignments partially on writing quality. Students in the COE who are struggling with their writing should feel free to meet with instructors to get the feedback and support they need in order to improve the quality of their writing.

Online Support for Effective Writing

   We want to encourage all Pacific University College of Education students to make writing a priority for their academic and personal growth during their time at Pacific. One excellent resource that can advance this goal is the Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). This award winning website has resources for teachers and students, all focused on supporting individuals’ development of writing ability. The address for the homepage of the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) is http://owl.english.purdue.edu/. Please take some time to explore the many resources available on this site. One feature listed on the homepage that may be especially helpful for students in the COE is the APA Formatting and Style Guide, http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/.

   Below is a list of specific pages on the OWL that members of the College of Education faculty believe would be useful to students who are struggling with mechanical and grammatical issues in their writing. These pages address the mechanical and grammatical problems that we see most frequently in student writing. The first two pages listed provide an overall set of strategies for proofreading papers. The subsequent pages address in more detail specific writing problems that recur in student writing. We recommend that students identify the writing problems that recur in their own writing and then locate and study the pages on OWL that address those specific writing problems. In other words, Pacific COE students should be proactive about their writing development, learning to revise and edit with an eye toward the writing problems that routinely surface in their own writing.