Imagine a world in which Expos never ended.

For many undergraduates, the idea is akin to the seventh circle of hell, but Nancy Sommers, Sosland director of expository writing, is extending the Expos experience into four years for 422 members of the Class of 2001.

After 1993 senior survey results indicated that most seniors felt that first-year expository writing classes suffered from an "academic isolation" in the curriculum, Sommers and her team began the first-ever long-term study of college writing.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and President Neil L. Rudenstine, the study is now beginning its fourth semester. The data on the transition from high school to college-level writing is in and analyzed, and results are just now coming in on the sophomores' adjustment to the writing demands of their individual disciplines.

"As one student put it, the freshman year was like `drowning in a swimming pool'--sophomore year is like being `immersed,'" says Kerry L. Walk, assistant director of the Harvard Writing Project.

The Harvard Writing Study

Sommers loves to talk about the "thrilling, exciting project" on which she has spent the last year and a half. Her excitement is tangible as she shows off the four large filing cabinets that span the length of her spacious office in the Expository Writing office, filled with the contents of dozens of sophomores' entire college writing careers.

Sommers says the study has a twofold purpose. The first is to critically look at the 127-year-old Expository Writing program. "We can do a better job if we know what writing at Harvard means," Sommers says.

The second goal is to collect the writing experiences of undergraduates in their own terms. Sommers says she wants to find the "defining moments that influence a student's writing each year" and examine how students use their writing.

Sommers plans to write two books with the results from the study. The first will be a scholarly book for academia and the second will be geared towards students.

Writing at Harvard "will try to take some of the mystery out" of writing says Sommers. She says it will include practical guidelines learned from the study.

In the fall of 1997 letters were sent to the class of 2001, inviting them to participate in the study. Twenty-five percent of the class--422 students--responded. They filled out a questionnaire available at the study's Web site at www.fas.harvard.edu/~wrstudy. For their efforts, they received a $5 coupon to Pizzeria Uno's or Toscanini's.

"At first the free gift factor seemed nice," says Jorge Alex Alvarez '01, a study participant. "But helping them figure out how to best help undergraduates develop, refine, and use their writing skills makes me feel as if I'm helping out future students and, more importantly, helping a Harvard that cares about how we express our knowledge."

The questionnaire collected demographic information and the student's views on their writing and the place of writing in their education.

The second questionnaire--asking them to reflect on their first year of writing--received responses from a phenomenal 95 percent of the original study participants. They will also fill out one questionnaire junior year and another senior year.