Christopher Thaiss

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Welcome! I've been a faculty member at GMU since 1975, the year I finished my Ph.D. in English Literature at Northwestern University. I began here as an adjunct professor assigned to English 101, then became an assistant professor in 1976, an associate professor in 1981, and a full professor in 1994. Along the way I've had the chance to teach many different courses, from composition to business and tech writing to classical mythology to contemporary social structure to Shakespeare's comedies to advanced nonfiction writing to graduate seminars in the teaching of writing and literature.

The M.A. in English with a Concentration in the Teaching of Writing and Literature (TWL) and two doctoral programs, the Ph.D. in Education and the Doctor of Arts in Community College Education have given me the opportunity to work with a number of graduate students individually through independent studies and thesis or dissertation committees. Since 1978, I have also had the chance to work with K-12 teachers through the Northern Virginia Writing Project

Further, I've also had the chance to work with many faculty, staff, and students in all fields through various administrative roles, among them Director of English Composition (most recently in 2003-2004), Director of Writing across the Curriculum (1990-1998), and Chair of the English Department (1998-2002).

In addition, my teaching, writing, and program development have led to my being asked to serve as a consultant to schools, colleges, and other organizations locally, nationally, and internationally.



 
 

My Recent Course Syllabi:

Summer 2006

English 302B: Advanced Composition for Business

Spring 2006:

English 615: The Teaching of Writing

English 610: The Teaching of Literature (for Graduate Teaching Assistants)

English 498 and 504: Internships in Writing and Editing (See "Internships" in the GMU Nonfiction Universe)


Fall 2005:

English 615: The Teaching of Writing

English 302N: Advanced Composition (Science and Technical)

English 498 and 504: Internships in Writing and Editing (See "Internships" in the GMU Nonfiction Universe)


Summer 2005:

English 302B: Advanced Composition for Business


Spring 2005:

English 697: Theory of Composition

English 399: Creative Nonfiction


January Intersession 2005:

London Theatre Tour


Fall 2004:

English 302B: Advanced Composition for Business

English 489: Advanced Nonfiction Writing


Summer 2004:

English 302B: Advanced Composition for Business


Spring 2004:

English 615: Seminar in Teaching Writing (for Graduate Teaching Assistants)

English 697: Theory of Composition


Fall 2003:

English 309: Introduction to Nonfiction Writing

Summer 2003


Spring 2003:

English 610: Seminar in Teaching Literature

English 399: Creative Nonfiction

English 302B: Advanced Composition for Business







Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life

Core Research Questions to Faculty
Survey of Student Writing in Majors
Conclusions
Implications for Teaching

Since 2000, colleague Terry Myers Zawacki and I have been engaged in study of the ways by which learners/writers become proficient in the discourses of disciplines. This research has involved

This research has been supported in part by a grant from the Council of Writing Program Administrators and by internal assistance grants from George Mason University.

The first phase of this research was published in 2002 as a chapter, "Questioning Alternative Discourse: Reports from across the Disciplines," in ALT.DIS: Alternative Discourses in the Academy, eds. Schroeder, Fox, and Bizzell (Heinemann). The project up to this point will be published in 2006 by Heinemann as Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life.



Core Research Questions to Faculty


Cluster One:

How do informants define “standards” for writing in their disciplines? What do they see as alternatives, acceptable and unacceptable, to that standard discourse? How do they see their disciplines changing to accommodate alternative approaches and discourses?

Cluster Two:

Have informants sometimes written in alternative forms? If not, why not? If so, why and how did they come to choose the particular alternative form(s)?

Cluster Three:

a. What are their writing/learning goals for students and how closely do these goals match the “standard” disciplinary discourse?

b. Do informants ever give assignments asking for alternative ways of thinking and writing?

c. How open are they to students writing in alternative ways to assignments they give? How do they treat such writing?

d. In particular, how do they treat student writing that shows “alternative” syntax and organization (e.g, “errors” in Standard Edited American English)? 

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One tool of this research is a survey that we administered in Fall 2002 to some 300 GMU students enrolled in ENGL 302, Advanced Composition, a course required of all GMU undergraduates and tailored to the varying demands of writing in diverse majors. The survey is below. If you would like to use this survey for similar research at your own institution, or if you would like to modify the survey, we would appreciate knowing. Please send email to cthaiss@gmu.edu.



Survey on Writing in the Majors

1. What is your major?

2. Approximately how many courses have you taken with the prefix of your major, e.g. HIST, ENGL, PSYC, GOV?

3. Within your major do you have a particular area of interest or concentration? If so, what is it?

4. Are you aware of some specialties or concentrations within your major? If so, name some.
 

5. How aware are you of characteristics of good writing in your major? Circle one.

Very aware            Somewhat aware              Unaware            Never thought about it

6. List some characteristics of good writing in your major:
 
 

7. How have you learned characteristics of good writing in your discipline?  Rank (1=most important):
_____ teachers
_____ reading
_____ fieldwork
_____ published writing guides
_____ other students
_____ articles on websites

8. How confident do you feel about your writing in your major?  Circle one:

Very confident          Somewhat confident      Not confident        Scared to death

9. From the following list, check those writing assignments you’ve been given in your major courses (those with the prefix of your major, e.g. HIST, DMIS, ITEU, CS) :
_____ Researched paper
_____ Journal, reflection paper, or narrative
_____ Collaborative project
_____ Lab report
_____ Impromptu in-class writing
_____ Critique, review or reaction paper
_____ Position/issue paper
_____ Summary, abstract or outline
_____ Letter (e.g. to an editor, a public official, a family member, etc)
_____ Other ______________________________________________
 

10. From those you circled above, which have you done most often?
 

11. Have you ever been given writing assignments in your major courses that surprised you? If so, describe briefly.
 
 

12. Have you ever been asked to write about yourself in an academic paper in courses in your major? If so, describe briefly.
 

13. Have any teachers in major courses allowed you or asked you to write in ways you thought were not typical of the major? If so, describe the assignment and how you approached it.
 
 

14. Have you ever been discouraged from using a style you thought would be a more original and/or individual way to respond to a writing assignment in your major? If so, describe briefly.
 

15. To what degree do your teachers in your major courses expect you to conform to strict guidelines for writing in your discipline? Circle:

1  (not strict at all)           2            3              4              5  (very strict)            don’t know
 

16.  Do you find that your teachers’ expectations for writing in their courses are generally similar? If not, describe briefly a time you felt a teacher’s expectations were atypical.
 
 

17. Have you ever read any of your professors’ writing? Check all that apply:
______ book
______ professional article
_____   conference paper
______ website article
______ assignments.
 

18. If you have not read any of your professors’ writing, how aware are you of what they
might be writing?

Very aware        somewhat aware       not at all aware         never entered my mind
 

19. Is English your first language? If not, for how many years have you been educated in an English-speaking culture?
 

20. If English is not your first language, do you recall any time(s) teachers in your major were dissatisfied with your writing because of something other than grammar or content; organization, for example?  If so, describe briefly.


 
 




Conclusions

The following is based on Chapter Five of the book and was distributed in a presentation at the NCTE Convention in Pittsburgh in November 2005.

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“Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines”: Research on Writing in the Disciplines and Alternative Discourses

Researchers: Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki, George Mason University

Since 2000, colleagues Terry Myers Zawacki and Chris Thaiss have been engaged in study of the relationship between "alternative discourses" and writers' understanding of the conventions of discourse within academic disciplines. This research has involved interviews with publishing and teaching faculty in a range of fields, analysis of course materials, surveys of students in a range of degree programs, student focus groups, analysis of student essays, and use of data compiled as part of George Mason University's discipline-based assessment of student writing proficiency. This research has been supported in part by a grant from the Council of Writing Program Administrators and by internal assistance grants from George Mason University.

Results and recommendations for practice will be published in a forthcoming (March 2006) book from Heinemann: Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life.

Conclusions

Good College Writing Comes from What Writers Care About

Faculty informants put undergraduate student “engagement” ahead of knowledge of scholarly conventions.  Department assessment rubrics balance concerns for disciplinary standards in method and arrangement with concern for “original thinking.” Our most proficient student informants all write about their growth in a major being dependent on finding room for their own voices and interests.

College Writers Must Confront the Tension between Convention and Individual Desire

College writing tasks oblige writers to be original thinkers, but also to identify and conform to expectations of teachers, disciplines, and the academy. Most of our student informants did not feel unduly constrained by such expectations, and most wanted to “give teachers what they want.” Most of our students saw teachers granting them freedom of subject and approach, but few saw much stylistic freedom in majors. Both faculty and our most proficient writers saw themselves having to negotiate between their desires as scholar/writers and disciplinary conventions.

There Are No Simple Rules for College Writers—Study the Reader & the Task

Most student informants saw teachers’ expectations and criteria as similar in very broad ways, but differing significantly in details. For example, students expected courses to demand research in support of theses or hypotheses in writing tasks, but they saw teachers differing greatly in such matters as attention to mechanical correctness and definitions of valid evidence. They felt that every class demanded their effort to understand teacher idiosyncrasy. Feedback on their writing early in a course they found vital in this quest.

Everyone Agrees on the Terms, but They Don’t Agree on the Meanings

Faculty and students across disciplines are amazingly consistent in use of terms to describe qualities of “good writing” in their majors. This apparent consistency masks the wide variation in connotations of these terms. Similarity of terms makes writing seem a much simpler matter than it is, both for student and teacher. It leads students to put faith in textbook formulas that are of little use in actual classes

Part of the complexity of terms comes from teachers' being influenced in their assignments and standards by what we identified as five different environments of which they are members as teachers and scholars: the academy, the discipline, the sub-discipline or area of interest, the specific local unit (with its own policies), and the individual's unique history. What students usually see as teacher "idiosyncrasy" is actually the confluence of these often identifiable environments.

College Writers Move to Proficiency through Stages of Development

College writing growth is developmental; it can’t be rushed or “taken care of” in one or two first-year courses. We saw great difference in proficiency and understanding between student informants with limited experience in writing in their major courses and those who had written in a variety of courses at different levels.

Students Credit Responsive Teachers for Their Growth as Writers

Students see teachers, by far, as the most important influences on their writing development in the discipline. Reading of work in the discipline is also important. Teacher feedback on writing is vital, our informants said; our most proficient student writers wrote and spoke at length about the importance of those teachers who had shown the most interest in their writing.


Some Implications of This Research for Teachers

1. Careful assignment design: students benefit from models, rubrics, and disciplinary examples of terms like “clear thesis” or “concise sentences.”


Teachers across disciplines need to be prepared to help students negotiate the general terms they and other faculty often use to describe their expectations (e.g., "logic," "clarity," "evidence"). When very real differences are cloaked in the language of similarity, it’s understandable that students rely only on other cues to guide their writing (feedback on the first paper, lecture styles, etc).



2. When we ask for "original thinking" or "your own conclusions," we need to show what this might mean--especially in writing based on the research of others.

Students have internalized an array of different messages about “voice” and “originality.” Many less-experienced college writers think that “voice” and “originality” are only desirable in English classes. Many don’t understand what teachers mean when they ask for original thinking, especially when they are writing from research. When we talk about "voice" or "original ideas" with our students, we need to explore with them all the ways that their voice(s) can be heard no matter what course/major they are writing for and what it might mean to be original in their chosen disciplines and in the teacher's particular subdiscipline and course.

3. We can benefit students by explaining the methods, scope, and discourses of our branches and research fields within the larger discipline.

Between the sparse principles of “academic writing” and the truly idiosyncratic desires of the professor, there exist  unarticulated and unexamined (by both faculty and students) concepts of the writing characteristics of  “the discipline,” of specialties within disciplines,  and of local or institutional policies and practices. If faculty wish to impart these concepts to students, then they need much more clearly to articulate the ways of thought, procedures, and formal structures of what they call “the field”—and to differentiate these from more localized or subdisciplinary practices that also affect what we assign and expect.  It's often helpful for teachers to describe their own research interests and writing, so that students can begin to see how our practices align with and differ from a general concept of the discipline.

4. Feedback to students on their writing is crucial to student understanding of the discipline and the discourse.

We were gratified to find that most of our focus group students had teachers in their majors who gave them feedback on their writing and, often, the opportunity to revise. "How else can we improve ?" some said.

To a person, these students said that feedback on the first paper of a course was the most useful information they received about how to write for a given teacher.

Proficiency essay writers credited the detailed commentary of specific teachers in the major for giving them the most insight into how to write in the discipline.

5. We should help students find and express their passions for learning within the assignments we give.

All our faculty informants talked passionately about their scholarship and their disciplines; moreover, all emphasized the priority of undergraduate students' "engagement" with the subject. Moreover, most department rubrics include "original thinking" as a criterion for student writing.

BUT only our most proficient, experienced student informants saw a connection between their passion for learning and their learning the conventions of the discipline. Most of our focus group informants saw meeting their professors' expectations as requiring submergence of their own voices and interests. "Either get the grade or do what you want; you can't do both."

6. We should give students opportunities to write reflectively on their growth as writers.

We were impressed by the maturity and discipline-awareness of the small fraction of focus-group informants who said that they had been asked by teachers to write occasionally about their growth as learners and writers. These were more likely to have a "third stage" understanding of disciplines, as well as confidence to realize their own goals in a disciplinary framework.