In fact, you could probably drop the two hours of lecture in favor of more reading and writing time — and students could probably revise one another’s early drafts.

As for email, I think we need to distinguish between emails as emails and email as a medium for sharing text. The professor in the article is using email as a way for students to send him drafts of papers, which aren’t ordinary emails as emails. That said, students probably need plenty of practice composing ordinary business emails — with capital letters and everything.

I think that’s a powerful insight, that too much feedback induces passivity — but I suspect the problem is “free” feedback on early, ungraded drafts. It’s too easy to let the teacher write your final, graded draft for you, bit by bit.

While I largely agree that students should learn by doing, I think the real reason for the master-apprentice model was always primarily economic. In an era before student loans, you worked your way through “trade school” by doing all the least valuable work around the shop and waiting patiently for a chance to try something interesting with expensive materials.

I don’t see anything about this that’s unique to writing. However: As the success criteria for a given skill get murkier and more subjective, the teacher needs more face time to communicate them effectively. And writing’s pretty far along that curve.

Writing as one speaks will only get the student so far. Soon they need to be exposed to different voices and styles of discourse so that they may choose the appropriate one that fits the occasion and purpose. The best way to gain exposure is through deep and wide reading, and there’s no substitute.

Writing emails is just one kind of discourse that is growing for 75% of the population; and although fun, accessible for youths, and low pressure, it’s not the kind of writing that necessarily engenders deep critical thought or builds analytic skills.

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The first requirement is that the student wants to learn how to write. This could be intrinsic, or could be because it is necessary to get qualifications.

After that what is needed is multiple and frequent submission of writing that is marked.

Too much feedback induces passivity — the student needs to work out for themselves how to get better marks next time. If they can do this, then they will learn how to write.

The underlying skill of writing is learning to read your own stuff objectively. Getting detailed feedback from others usually interferes with this.

We have known for thousands of years what context teaches skill. The answer is prolonged apprenticeship with loads of observation of the master and repetition by the apprentice.

Some masters can teach, but many can not. Luckily it is not necessary. All the master needs to do is be able to evaluate the apprentice’s work.

At the most basic, the master simply accepts or rejects the apprentice’s work, and maybe points out mistakes — but not how to fix them; the apprentice assimilates ‘how’ by observation, by working-with.

Harsh, but it works.