The Speak-Write Project was established in the English Department of Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, in January 1997. Initially a three year project funded by HEFCE, Speak-Write was developed as a response to the widely-held perception across the Higher Education sector and Business community that standards of oral and written English were declining amongst undergraduates. The team built on research into undergraduate communications skills and classroom experience to develop an innovative foundation course for students. This was piloted in the English Department at APU and assessed by specialist academic readers from other institutions. The materials were continually refined and developed over a three year period.
These have now been published by Longmans as four course books:
Grammar and Writing ed. Rebecca Stott and Peter Chapman;
Writing with Style ed Rebecca Stott and Simon Avery;
Speaking Your Mind: Oral Presentation and Seminar Skills ed Rebecca Stott, Tory Young and Cordelia Bryan;
Making Your Case: A Practical Guide to Essay Writing.ed Rebecca Stott, Rick Rylance and Anna Snaith.
At APU the books are taught in workshop-style seminars: students work in small groups undertaking activities designed to encourage analysis and practise of advanced writing and grammatical skills and also to develop oral presentation, teamwork and argumentation skills. These activities are focused upon literary texts but also involve creative-writing tasks and work-based scenarios. The students write up the activities and commentaries undertaken in their groups in workbooks which are handed in for assessment of the module but also provide a valuable source of information to be referred to for the rest of their degrees. Students report substantial improvement in their understanding of the structures and use of language and many report an immediate rise in their marks for essays. Tutors, meanwhile can provide more specific comments on students’ written work because of this increased understanding of grammatical structures.
This year the FDTL granted the largest amount of continuation funding to the project to disseminate the materials to other HE institutions. As curriculum consultant Tory Young has visited many British HEIs to discuss the ways in which the materials can be tailored to suit the needs of other English departments and cognate disciplines in the humanities. This service has proved extremely popular and will be continued over the next two years of the project’s development (for contact details please see below).
From January the Royal Literary Fund will fund the next phase of the Speak-Write Project which will focus on Professional Writing. Newspapers constantly report complaints from the business community that graduates lack the specific communication skills employers need. The project team will undertake research into the kind of communication skills required of humanities graduates in writing-intensive professions such as publishing, public relations and arts administrations. The team will interview employees who have recently graduated and joined these professions and their employers to determine the nature and range of the writing tasks they undertake as part of their work. From this research a course in Professional Writing will be developed designed for Higher Education humanities degree programmes and will form the basis of the fifth book in the Speak-Write series.
Newsletter Issue 1 - May 2001
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