“A university student who is earning her bachelor’s degree” by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

It is known that no matter how hard a writer tries, old writing habits are not easily dropped when trying to adjust to a brand-new curriculum. Most new writers have a tendency to use one specific writing habit in all writing environments including school, university and the common workplace. Elizabeth Wardle, author of “You can Learn to Write in General” calls this common writing mistake “writing in general”, and it affects new writers every time they step into a new field of study. Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam, authors of “Learning to Write Professionally: ‘Situated Learning’ and the Transition from University to Professional Discourse”, list out the opportunities that new writers can take to adjust to these new writing environments and improve their writing styles based on their given tasks. All three of these authors believe that writers can improve their skills through collaboration with their instructors at schools and Universities. In the common workplace, these three authors believe writers can improve their skills through the goals they set for themselves, along with observing the work of more experienced writers.

The main thing that new writers look for in a new curriculum is the context of the assignment. In other words, new writers need to know the prompt of the assignment and what they need to do to do the assignment correctly.  According to Elizabeth Wardle, things like the context of the course and collaboration among peers all “impact what writing is and needs to be in each situation” (Wardle 30). Without these things handy, students often have difficulty getting through coursework. Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam observed students completing a case study at home. They found that the assignment became a lot easier for the students once the instructor gave advice “in the context of the students’ struggles” (Freedman and Adam 404). The amount of collaboration and advice provided varies depending on the course. Sometimes the “writing is powerfully shaped and constrained by the instructor from the first meeting of the course” (Freedman and Adam 407), meaning that all the information that the instructor thinks the student needs is given to them at the very beginning of the course. No matter how much help is available, students can easily get help on improving their writing styles through collaboration with others.

Schools and universities aren’t the only places where writers can improve. In the common workplace, improving one’s writing style is much more difficult. According to Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam, the writer isn’t aware that the learning is even taking place (Freedman and Adam 410). This is because the learning occurs when the writer achieves their task and ends up helping others through their services. In other words, they achieve what Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam call their “writing goal” (Freedman and Adam 411). Each time this happens, the writer gains a little more writing experience having learned from their mistakes. They also end up receiving feedback from their mentors.

Gaining writing skills in the common workplace is no easy feat at the beginning. Aviva Freedman and Christine Adam explain that if students are looking for ways to become familiar with the tasks they will have to carry out at a common workplace, they should consider a mentor that provides them with tasks well below the “ability and professional orientation of a novice worker” (Freedman and Adam 412). When writers start off like this, new writers will observe more experienced writers at work.  They will begin to become familiarized with the context of their tasks, along with the challenges it will provide. Writers will observe the mistakes that more experienced writers make and learn from them. From there, writers will eventually warm up to not only to what is expected of them, but also to the work environment that was completely foreign to them before. Elizabeth Wardle stresses that in the case of a new working environment, new writers should always be aware of the context of their tasks and “on the lookout for examples [of what they are expected to do]” (Wardle 32). In other words, new writers should already know what they have to do to complete their tasks and look to more experienced writers for help if they need it.

Whether It’s in a classroom or in a workplace, all writers should try to improve their writing skills however they can rather than using, as Elizabeth Wardle calls it, one distinct “magic formula” (Wardle 32). Writers can collaborate with their instructors, mentors, classmates or co-workers to learn and improve from one another. Writers in the common workplace can complete their writing goals and gain experience in their field of writing each time they do so. Finally, writers can observe and study the work of more experienced writers before taking on more rigorous writing tasks themselves. Elizabeth Wardle concludes in her article that new writers should have been “immersed in the context” (Wardle 31) and have a new sense of what their writing style should be. Improving starts with the help of others. It’s up to the writer to ask for it.

Works Cited

Freedman, Aviva, and Christine Adam. “Learning to Write Professionally: ‘Situated Learning’

            and the Transition from University to Professional Discourse”. Journal of Business and

            Technical Communication, vol.10, no.4, 1996, pp. 395-427.

Wardle, Elizabeth. “You can Learn to Write in General.” Bad Ideas about Writing, edited by

            Cheryl E. Ball, Drew M. Lowe, West Virginia Libraries, 2017, pp. 30-33.