by Laura Mathews, Statistics

This semester I was asked to TA for the writing-intensive capstone course for undergraduate students. This was a new experience for me, as I have not had any formal statistical writing instruction and was unsure of how to teach students how to write in a new discipline. My background is in ecology and evolutionary biology, with an MS in statistics. I had little experience myself in statistical writing. With the exception of some private tutoring, I had no experience in teaching. My experience helping students through the semester has taught me a significant amount and has influenced the way I will approach teaching future students about writing. Here are three key things I have found that can help students when learning to write in a new discipline.

Provide examples

Students learning to write in a new discipline may not have even read a significant amount of literature in that discipline. This is certainly the case in statistics, where courses are focused on learning statistical methods and theory. Reading example texts, both those that are well-written and those that are not, can allow students to identify key structural components of the writing and the appropriate style for their discipline. Having students annotate the examples provided not for content but for writing components can be a good way to make sure students are engaged with the text and what you expect them to get out of reading it. Students can learn from comparing example texts as well. This allows them to identify patterns in writing and identify good as well as bad examples of field-specific writing.

Make expectations clear

It became abundantly clear early in the semester that the instructors’ expectations for statistical reports and what the students assumed were the expectations were quite different. One assignment asked students to write a “brief report” on a statistical analysis of a data set. The instructors assumed the students would write something with a formal introduction, methods section, results, and conclusions and include citations. Conversely the students assumed that “brief report” meant a few sentences explaining the results, and they did not include any of the sections that had been expected by the instructors. Giving very clear expectations may seem like handholding, but it will allow students to learn not only your writing expectations for the class, but the expectations and conventions for your field in general. Some things to include in assignment instructions are how long should it be, what sections to include, do citations need to be included and in what format, etc. Students who are new to the writing process cannot be expected to complete assignments correctly if they were not given specific guidelines as to the expectations of the instructors. 

Break the paper into sections

Assigning students a “report” can be very overwhelming when they are learning the expectations for a new discipline of writing. Typically, statistical reports are broken into sections: the introduction, methods, results, conclusion, and discussion. If students can learn to master each section individually, a full report will seem less daunting. It could be very helpful for new students, learning to write in a new discipline, to be assigned one section at a time, without overwhelming them with an entire report at once. They would be able to learn better writing skills if individual sections were taken alone so that they could learn from the initial mistakes they learn, and then use the new writing skills in future sections of their reports.