Four-Year Writing Study Concludes

When the undergraduate careers of the Class of 2001 end in two weeks, a landmark study on collegiate writing will conclude with them.

The study, which begun in the fall of 1997 when the Class of 2001 first enrolled at Harvard, tracked the writing experiences of more than 400 members of the class throughout their four years at Harvard.

Nancy Sommers, the Sosland director of the expository writing program and director of the study, says the study was the first of its kind in the nation.

Two previous studies at the UMass-Amherst and the City University of New York had followed the writing experiences of three or four students, but no study had followed such a large group of students.

Study participant James P. McFadden ’01 says while the study may not have provided direct feedback on his writing, the opportunity for reflection it provided was useful.

“The study helped me to improve my writing by making me ask myself questions,” McFadden says. “It’s not something that students often do otherwise.”

While the study has not yet come to a conclusion, Sommers has made several preliminary findings.

The study found that on average students write fewer papers as they progress through their academic career, but that the papers in later years grow much longer.

On average, first-year students write 13 papers of at least five pages as well as 14 response papers of one to three pages.

“It was surprising to me during freshman year how much writing Harvard students do,” Sommers says.

The study also found a significant difference in the writing experiences of humanities and social science concentrators versus science concentrators beginning in sophomore year.

During sophomore year, a typical humanities or social science concentrator wrote 14 papers, while a science concentrator wrote only six.

Additionally, while the writing of humanities and social science concentrators significantly improved during sophomore year, that of science concentrators remained virtually the same.

This represents a marked change from first-year writing—science concentrators were more likely to receive A’s in their expository writing class than their humanities or social science peers.

Sommers attributes this result to the presence of writing-intensive sophomore tutorials in many of the humanities and social science concentrations. She also says the study demonstrates that a year-long sophomore tutorial is more beneficial to writing than a semester-long tutorial.

“The dramatic differences surprised me,” Sommers said. “It is quite stunning the progress the students [in concentrations with tutorials] made in one year.”

Study participant Simon W. Grote ’01 agrees that his sophomore history tutorial was critical to the improvement of his writing, particularly by forcing him to express his thoughts in a way that readers other than himself could understand.

Sommers notes that some of the science concentrators in the study expressed a desire to do more writing within their concentration.

The study also showed that students generally agree that writing is an important component of their academic experience and helped them to connect with their subject in a way that merely attending lectures or studying for tests did not allow.

“Writing made me set high standards of thinking and expression,” Grote says.

While the study was primarily designed just to document the experience of undergraduates, it will offer some suggestions for ways to improve the overall writing experience.

“I think there are a few policy recommendations that will come out of this,” Sommers says, including the need for better thesis advising and the importance of high quality teaching fellows.

She also says the study has already led the expository writing program to place more emphasis on teaching first-years how to frame academic arguments, as the study demonstrated that undergraduate writing assignments often stress argumentation.

Sommers says she plans to write two books based on the results of the survey. One will be targeted to incoming Harvard first-years to inform them of what to expect in terms of writing during their four years at Harvard. The book will first be available in either 2003 or 2004.

“We want to give back the wisdom of the students [who participated in the study],” Sommers said. “We want to give [incoming] students an overview of what to expect each year. We want to give to give them the idea that they will be reading and writing all the time.”

The other book will be targeted to a broader audience, both inside Harvard and at other colleges across the nation.

“The book will describe the role of writing in undergraduate education,” Sommers says. She says the book will be a type of anthropological study, looking at the “writing culture” of Harvard.

Although the study has not yet been completed, Sommers says it has already gained significant national attention. She says teachers at other schools—including Stanford and Duke Universities—have contacted her to establish similar studies at their schools.

The study did not require a lot of effort on the part of most participants.

Most students in the study were only required to fill out an online survey once each semester concerning the experiences with writing they had had in the previous semester. A sub-sample of 65 was chosen by Sommers for more intensive study, which included a once-a-semester interview with study staff and the collection and analysis of all the papers they wrote during a semester.

The study included students from 38 of the College’s 41 concentrations. Sommers solicited participants by mailing a letter to all members of the class of 2001 early in their first year, inviting their participation. Sommers says she had expected only about 100 students to respond, but was delighted at the much higher number who did reply.

Sommers encouraged participation by providing small gifts, including coupons for free pizza and gift certificates to Amazon.com.

The study was made possible through a grant from the Mellon Foundation and from extra University funds made available by Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine.

Sommers says she may attempt to perform a follow-up study on the writing experience of the class of 2001 after graduation.

—Staff writer Daniel P. Mosteller can be reached at dmostell@fas.harvard.edu.