Fulwiler, Toby. College Writing: A Personal Approach to Academic Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1991.

Summary of major points of interest for you

Fulwiler focuses on journal writing/ informal writing techniques to help a student through college. He begins very basically with his explanations. They seem geared to an almost remedial level of student who needs study helps to survive. The simplicity of his explanations seems directed to a college freshman who "never got it" in high school and needs the fundamentals spelled out in order to "get it" in college. Of course, this spelling out of the obvious could be necessary for some students who never previously saw an interconnection between the disciplines. The first three chapters especially have this basic quality to them.

In the final fourteen chapters Fulwiler's ideas serve for the students to set up interior monologues for the purpose of sorting out the wealth of information the college courses will inevitably present. The summarizing and questioning techniques presented empower the students in development of critical thinking, allowing them a hand hold on their own learning process.

Implications for your teaching and/or writing

My primary use of journaling has always been as a venue for students to express thoughts, feelings, and reactions to virtually any topic as long as the discussion is suitable for class consumption. I have never felt comfortable allowing students to "let it all hang out" in their journals. I have a confidentiality rule that I do not share what I learn within journals but I also feel the responsibilities of legal requirements (reporting any instances of abuse, etc.) and, quite frankly, there are bits of these people's lives that I don't want to know. So my purpose for students' journals is so that students learn to express feelings in writing. This will then lead into the writing of essays where they have to support those feelings with specific examples.

I have for the past two years used a Reader Response Journal (RRJ) activity in my College Writing classes. This has evolved over time but several of the techniques suggested have been part of the evolution of the RRJs. We started with the dialectic journal and options most utilized by the students involve the summarization, reaction, questioning, and free write response to the piece. Especially in deeper concept readings of WR 123, students use the opportunity for sorting out their doubts, questions, thinking process. With WR 121 readings, the techniques which students developed most were companion piece writings or change of perspective writings. I would Xerox Chapter 4 as a base of information for some possible journaling.

How this book might interest others

Many people use journals in the prompt-response vein (teacher writes/reads a prompt for the class and the students take off on it in some manner). This text takes the initial freeing experience of journal writing to another level by its purposeful critical, analytical use. I like the idea that there is an interconnectedness of the writing in all curriculum areas. The most recent state standards which require students to explain in writing how they solved math problems is a great breakthrough for those who consider mathematics as another language. The ideas touted by Fulwiler are helpful in showing effectiveness in journaling in all curriculum areas (the old Writing Across the Curriculum idea of how many years ago?).

Just as Fulwiler makes suggestions which are usable in other disciplines, I also see that the techniques he suggests are usable in many different grade levels and thus the book's title limits an otherwise much broader audience.