Tackling Science in the Writing Center

Tackling Science in the Writing Center

As tutors, it’s a common experience to feel an innate dread when an appointment notification pops up with a chem or bio report. But why? We have all been trained as generalist tutors, supposedly prepared to tackle any piece that is thrown at us; why would a lab report or scientific paper be any different? 

The Study

At St. Mary’s University in Canada, David Dansereau, L. E. Carmichael, and Brian Hotson conducted a study on the effectiveness of generalist tutoring for STEM students, specifically in biology. Through a form of Writing Fellows, staff worked closely with professors to craft a series of assignments that would lead the students to use the Writing Center. This consisted of two reports, both with a chance for revised submission, and a final. With increased use of this program, grades improved by at least ten points, and the number of returning writers increased in tandem.

To Be A Writer

Not only needing to build the skill set of basic writing, freshman STEM students are thrown to the wolves in intro chem, bio, and physics courses. Intending to “weed out” “weaker” students, these classes present new content with deliberately difficult assignments, including writing. 

Some professors have even stopped assigning these tasks, citing the often poor quality of student work (Dansereau et al., 2020). Moving through higher-level classes, students are then left stranded when needing to write lab reports and papers—skills of which their careers will forever depend on.

This uncertainty, fear, and educational neglect leave writers at our doorstep. But when even we don’t feel confident in helping them, how can they be confident in their own work?

Conventions of Scientific Writing

What we can always get a handle on is the use of passive voice in these works. Be impersonal, be cold, be unattached. The problem lies elsewhere…

• Jargon – Without at least a surface-level knowledge of the subject, the jargon that’s necessary to use is lost on most. It’s hard to review writing when you don’t know what it says. Straying from the need for definitions for topic-specific verbiage, an increased knowledge of the subject is needed to understand the content. For more info, see Slone, T.O. (2001) Encyclopedia of Rhetoric.
• Structure – Sections in these papers follow a very strict, exclusive outline, which for most writers is a difficult thing to adjust to. The University of Toronto has a great resource on what the contents may look like. On the sentence level, scientific writing employs its own convoluted grammar scheme tailored to communicate swathes of information as quickly as possible. This is detailed well in Hanuaer, D.I. & Englander, K. (2013) Scientific Writing in a Second Language and Snow, C.E. (2010) Academic Language and the Challenge of Reading for Learning About Science.
• Description – Explanation and image-evoking language take the back-seat, you need to be as direct and succinct as possible; the most amount of description in the least amount of words. This is why jargon and niche examples are used to evoke ideas such as “drops of electricity,” “spin,” “string theory,” etc. Dougherty, J.P. (2013), The Nature of Scientific Explanation explores these implications.

These factors, while also juggling the constant use of passive voice and the past tense, can make scientific work insurmountable; it definitely doesn’t make it easy to read. This means that generalist tutoring doesn’t work for most STEM writers, as corroborated by the original study (Dansereau et al., 2020). So…

…What do we do when generalist tutoring fails?

A simple, yet monumental answer: we learn. 

Reaching out to professors with programs like Writing Fellows can familiarise tutors with the concepts of complicated topics on top of assignment descriptions. Workshops can be held for tutors to learn the conventions of this work and increase their experience with it. Giving tutors more experience reading these papers by conducting pseudo-written feedback in a workshop could help them get more acquainted with common topics and provide the space to ask questions and work with peers.

Outreaching to a greater diversity of majors in CSH can greatly increase the amount of resources for writers who are looking for someone with experience in STEM, as they tend to prefer tutors in their field (Dansereau et al., 2020). This can be limited to advertising our hiring to CSH students, or as prolific as holding workshops for writers in STEM to come in with their reports.

Even taking the time before an appointment to quickly get acquainted with difficult terms or general ideas of the subject can greatly increase a tutor’s abilities in an appointment. By directly inserting ourselves into scientific spaces, we can increase the knowledge of our staff and ensure adequate resources for any appointment.

Scientific writing is an entirely different ballgame, but one in which it is possible to succeed. Everyone is a scientist with curiosity and an aptitude for discovery. So, next time an appointment like this is on your books, going out of your way to learn can make you an even more invaluable resource to our writers.

References

Dansereau, D., Carmichael, L. E., & Hotson, B. (2020). Building First-Year Science Writing Skills With an Embedded Writing Instruction Program. Journal of College Science Teaching, 49(3), 66–75. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27045866 

Dougherty, J.P. (2013). The Nature of Scientific Explanation, 70-71. The Catholic University of America Press.

Hanauer, D.I. & Englander, K. (2013). Scientific Writing in a Second Language, 25–29. Parlor Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CqsWEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=why+is+scientific+writing+complex&ots=tYxo91dig7&sig=auXKvgbLyXeBk3g07-xoCL8s-1E#v=onepage&q&f=false 

Sloane, T.O. (2001). Science. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (Online Editor Fuller, S.). Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195125955.001.0001/acref-9780195125955-e-223?rskey=aPF9Za&result=223 

Snow, C. E. (2010). Academic Language and the Challenge of Reading for Learning About Science. Science, 328(5977), 450–452. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40655773