In article <35B25C39.EF650DC5 at ln.nimh.nih.gov>
Bharathi Jagadeesh <bjag at ln.nimh.nih.gov> writes:
> A) A student of yours is writing a report/summary of work that will be
> turned into a committee (i.e. qualifying exam, etc.), and gives you
> something that you consider unreadable. You don't believe that it can be
> turned into the committee as is. Also, it would be unacceptable for you
> to re-write it yourself. On the other hand, you cannot give a writing
> course to the student. (Let's assume here that the student is a native
> english speaker, so we're not addressing the special circumstances of
> foreign students who do not yet speak english well). What do you do?
I have been dealing with this a great deal lately at the level of
qualifying exam proposals and theses. Yes, it's very hard to keep
yourself from ripping the offending text apart and starting all over
again. I give critical comments together with generic suggestions on
how to improve matters. The criticisms that fall into two different
categories: content and style (BTW, it is possible to give a fast
English course in the span of an hour).
In the content category, I say things like, "this is not really the
point of the article/proposal, is it?" "how about covering background
more directly related?" or "you should explain your reasoning more
clearly-- remember you have to 'lead your reader by the nose'" or
"don't forget that you need to explain how you are planning on
interpreting the results of all possible outcomes".
In the style category, I sound like an English instructor: "Remember
that the most effective scientific writing is to have your topic
sentence first in the paragraph"; "Does all this other text in the
paragraph relate to your topic sentence?" "You have two topic
sentences here." "If you collapse all of your paragraphs into your
topic sentences, there should be a logical flow of ideas-- do you see a
logical flow if you do that to your manuscript/paper/proposal?"
In one recent case, the first draft of the proposal was a total
disaster and the student was having an avoidance of reality reaction.
Since this individual seemed ready to drop out because they were so
discouraged about writing, I gave them one week deadlines for each part
of the proposal after spending an hour talking about overall style and
content. This worked well-- the first week they gave me a specific
aims page; the second week the background and significance, the third
the experimental design. I never provided detailed feedback, but just
generic comments on each section (eg., "don't give such super-detailed
methods" "all this stuff doesn't directly relate to your proposal, why
don't you cover stuff more closely related?"; break your experimental
design section into 'rationale (why are you doing this aim?)',
'approach (how are you going to do the experiment', 'interpretation
(how are you going to think about all possible outcomes of this expt/'
and 'potential problems and pitfalls (how are you going to deal with
possible pitfalls or problems?)'-- that way you know if you've covered
everything. Somehow, when the task was broken up into smaller hurdles,
everything flowed. I only saw one version of each and actually never
looked at the final version of the proposal until the exam itself.
This person passed their qualifying exam with flying colors. I thought
this was all perfectly kosher, however, the rest of you may think
otherwise (?).
reply to nishir at ohsu.edu
Rae Nishi, PhD
Professor
Dept. Cell & Developmental Biology
Oregon Health Sciences University
Portland Oregon
