Why should college students care about developing their writing skills, and what are three elements of the writing process that should motivate students to devote more of their efforts to producing strong essays in ENGL 1101 and 1102?
Students should care about learning to express themselves clearly in writing because having the ability to write well is a transferrable skill. Being understood is important in many contexts that include the college classroom and beyond.
We might send text messages to peers in the classroom, friends, family, and/or co-workers; we might uncover an answer to a problem by jotting down ideas on a piece of paper or keeping a journal in a college course like American Literature, Introduction to Psychology, or Introduction to Sociology. Just as equally, planning on paper what we are going to say in a speech, an oral presentation for a class, or an interview involves a certain amount of structured thinking that can lead us to answers that we might not have otherwise discovered without writing the words. We can also become better communicators by creating a set of step-by-step instructions for a peer or relative that explains how to complete a task or by composing a personal narrative, short story, or poem about a meaningful experience.
Whatever the nature of the writing, the act of writing itself involves mental activity that can lead to higher-level thinking. Seeing our thinking process on paper allows us to find gaps in how we are developing our thoughts and generate ideas to fill those gaps.
To answer the second half of the focus question, "what are three elements of the writing process that should motivate students to devote more of their efforts to producing strong essays in ENGL 1101 and 1102?", brainstorming, writing a rough draft, and revising are akin to going to school with a bunch of ideas grown by experience (brainstorming), organizing the ideas by taking courses within a degree program (writing a rough draft), and finding a job requiring us to minimize the least relevant knowledge that we acquired along the way and maximizing the most relevant knowledge (revising).
Put in a real-world set of circumstances, the writing process makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? We have many ideas that we gather through the years, several of them that we might not be conscious of until we touch a pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard. College classes force us to read for ideas, write to pull out and generate them, and apply them in a culminating writing project at the end of a course.
The increasing level of focus that comes from completing a series of essays in ENGL 1101 and then another series in ENGL 1102 conditions our minds to naturally seek out and pick up on patterns in our surroundings. Some current technological tools (such as Chat GPT) seem to have created a culture that feeds off of instant, ready-made answers that eliminate the need for gradual and deep processing of patterns.
When we are in a group contributing our ideas to a project or an issue needing a resolution and the final answer must emerge from the group rather than from each individual, being able to work together and exchange thoughts (brainstorming), see connections between various experiences and insights (writing a rough draft), and discuss how ideas can be added, removed, or adapted for the benefit of the group (revision) involves critical thinking that probably is not instant in most cases.
"Critical thinking" is a popular term that educators like to use, yes, and it may sound technical--even mechanical--but in places where our smartphones and AI are not immediately accessible to us, the ability to think through a multidimensional problem that can arise at any time is at bottom about linking unlike or seemingly incompatible pieces by rounding out sharp edges and filling in gaps. We want to see patterns, and we want to make patterns. We instinctively need order, which is why patterns matter to us, and without critical thinking, there can be little order to help us analyze what does not appear to fit and better understand real-world problems.
ENGL 1101 and 1102 engage our critical thinking skills because they require us to create order out of a mix of ideas that we already have and those that were taken from other sources. The critical thinking frame that we prop up against our broken ideas enriches us because, through it, we can find meaning under surfaces that might at first seem insignificant. Deep thinking leads to deep living, hence the value of ENGL 1101, ENGL 1102, and, in turn, critical thinking for all of us.