Emerging voices of undergraduate writers: A study of the phenomenon of writing changes during the college years.

Abstract

College faculty can support the growth of undergraduate writers by establishing a learning community focused on learning as motivation. Conferences that provide specific, concrete suggestions, as well as leading questions, can support the developing college writer's evolution into a more mature writer who is also capable of supporting other college writers. Composition faculty must extend communication about writing across disciplines to facilitate a stronger and unified support system for undergraduate writers.

Change was apparent in all participants. In some ways, each participant's story was unique, but there were a number of similarities in the undergraduate experiences of these writers. All believe that grammar plays a role in good writing. During their undergraduate years they developed skills for research and synthesis of resources, facility with language and detailed support of ideas, and audience awareness. During their undergraduate years, they moved from a focus on grades and the teacher to a focus on personal satisfaction of clear communication of their ideas. The writing samples indicated that these students had matured in T-unit length as well as complex construction of ideas. The smooth inclusion of resource information was also a characteristic of the style of these senior writers.

Writing development spans a lifetime, but until the middle 1990's, few had studied the particular changes experienced by students during the undergraduate college years. In this phenomenological study, I interviewed eight undergraduate students, diverse in their field of study, analyzed an inventory they took, and examined writing samples that spanned their college years, to come to some understanding of my research question: How do students construct themselves as writers during their undergraduate college years?