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[phydeaux]

 I found Mark Richardson's article on first-year writing just before I went to bed, so my comments may not be the most coherent. Here are the easy responses:

"Teaching students grammar and mechanics through drills often does not work." My department is pretty well unified on this point. I don't know anyone who uses drills, worksheets, etc. at all. We work on mechanical skills, but in context, addressing issues as they come up in students' actual papers.

"first-year composition is only indirectly preparatory to writing in other disciplines." I'm on board here too. All too often, profs in other departments blame us when their students can't write well. Never mind that these colleagues (a) don't offer courses on how to write in their disciplines, or (b) don't require much writing of any kind. We get students only for a year--which, as Richardson points out, is rarely enough--and what we do is often not reinforced elsewhere. Cut us some slack, please; we do what we can, but we're not miracle workers!

"those who teach first-year composition should be as credentialed as those who teach Introduction to Sociology, World History, or Environmental Biology." We're working on this. All 6 full-timers in my dept. have PhDs, but mostly in lit. We're trying to change that, but when Rhet/Comp grads can pretty well write their own tickets, few will want to come to our small religious school.

Our main challenge at the moment is not with the degrees, but with professional development. My uni sends mixed messages when it comes to scholarship: we offer more money for it than many schools like us, but at the end of the day, the message is pretty clear that things like going to student events come first. We're trying to make the case that those who teach writing must be active writers themselves. It's a truth that we hold to be self-evident, but we don't seem to be making much headway with our VP.

"Farewell, basic skills. Hello, Introduction to Rhetoric and Comp." This is the one I need to think about. We recently changed our Comp II from the common hybrid of "intro to lit/the research paper" to an argument & analysis course (we created a new intro-to-lit sophomore course for our majors). Our Comp I is pretty much what you'd find anywhere else. When I was in grad school, however, I taught in a Great Texts kind of program where students wrote about Plato, Augustine, Dante, et al. from the start (something my generally-underprepared students would not be able to handle at all now!). The bottom-line issue Richardson raises is a good one: do we even need freshman comp anymore? If we do, what should it look like?

[sciencephd]

This is exactly the problem that the Writing Across the Disciplines movement was designed to address.  I've heard this has gone out of fashion.  Perhaps it's time to bring it back.

[tuxedo_cat]

This is exactly the problem that the Writing Across the Disciplines movement was designed to address.  I've heard this has gone out of fashion.  Perhaps it's time to bring it back.

I believe it went "out of fashion" because no one could decide what the hell it was, other than an institutional fantasy.  Bringing it back would be kind of like . . . resurrecting Prester John.

Ok, that was too obscure.  Unicorns.

Today was the first time this semester that I felt a nearly overwhelming urge to throttle about half my comp students -- even though I generally like them and I think they're working pretty hard.  I actually relish the challenge of teaching writing to first-year students, although I am trained primarily as a research scholar.  Nearly every comment in that column rang true for me.

[yellowtractor]

I believe it went "out of fashion" because no one could decide what the hell it was, other than an institutional fantasy.  Bringing it back would be kind of like . . . resurrecting Prester John.

You can't "resurrect Prester John."  If you believe in him enough to resurrect him at all, then surely you must accept that he's still alive.  If you think he's a myth, it would be difficult to resurrect him at all...

Although, come to think of it, both of those options also apply to Writing Across the Curriculum.  Your point.

[shastymcnasty]

I found Mark Richardson's article on first-year writing just before I went to bed, so my comments may not be the most coherent. Here are the easy responses:



"first-year composition is only indirectly preparatory to writing in other disciplines." I'm on board here too. All too often, profs in other departments blame us when their students can't write well. Never mind that these colleagues (a) don't offer courses on how to write in their disciplines, or (b) don't require much writing of any kind. We get students only for a year--which, as Richardson points out, is rarely enough--and what we do is often not reinforced elsewhere. Cut us some slack, please; we do what we can, but we're not miracle workers!

I think this goes both ways.  I absolutely agree that it's wrong for professors in other fields to complain that we aren't teaching students how to write when they rarely assign papers and never discuss the fundamentals of writing in their discipline.  At the same time, we do have an obligation to teach writing skills that are most likely to be used in other courses.  This means focusing on persuasive argument and analysis.  Rarely will professors in other courses require students to write a personal essay, or a narrative, or an explanation of "something that makes you happy." 

Comp. courses cannot prepare students for every type of paper they will be required to write in college, but they should teach skills most relavant to academic work. 

[daurousseau]

Well, folks, maybe it is time to do something about all this. Here's the situation from a bird's-eye view:

1. Students come unprepared to college and graduate school, unable to use a computer effectively, unable to write, and unable to manipulate numbers.

2. The economy is 20 years away from being a job machine, if it ever becomes one again.

Ergo: add another year onto college, for free, paid by the Feds.

Year Zero, before the freshman year, teach all the things that neither college nor high school do.
Teach sentence diagrams and assign exercises in all the writing fields--essay, report, journalism, autobiography, biography, technical, creative, etc. Teach basic computer skills, like managing multiple windows and formulating search queries for computer processing. Figure out what match students need in order to understand the algebraic and statistical tools they will need as freshmen.

Then, teach the Great Books or some other universal humanities/history/science appreciation course, so that the Zero Year students have something to think about while learning technical skills.

[tuxedo_cat]

Well, folks, maybe it is time to do something about all this. Here's the situation from a bird's-eye view:

1. Students come unprepared to college and graduate school, unable to use a computer effectively, unable to write, and unable to manipulate numbers.

2. The economy is 20 years away from being a job machine, if it ever becomes one again.

Ergo: add another year onto college, for free, paid by the Feds.

Year Zero, before the freshman year, teach all the things that neither college nor high school do.
Teach sentence diagrams and assign exercises in all the writing fields--essay, report, journalism, autobiography, biography, technical, creative, etc. Teach basic computer skills, like managing multiple windows and formulating search queries for computer processing. Figure out what match students need in order to understand the algebraic and statistical tools they will need as freshmen.

Then, teach the Great Books or some other universal humanities/history/science appreciation course, so that the Zero Year students have something to think about while learning technical skills.

This is an intriguing idea -- although I would guess that there isn't a single campus in the country that could actually do this for reasons of basic infrastructure:  it would mean having to magically expand student housing / classrooms / instructors by 25% to accommodate an additional class of students on campus. 

Simply requiring all students to take two courses in writing and research might work better -- the second one devoted more to writing in specific disciplines, and actually hiring people who are qualified to do that.  But of course this is one of the basic problems that Richardson points out:  the teaching of writing is undervalued and underfunded so it just doesn't happen.

I've taught on 5 different campuses (including grad school), and only one of those had a two-semester sequence.  No students coming out of high school, no matter how strong their writing skills are on a 30-minute sample exam, should test out of a first-year writing course.  They are being put at a significant disadvantage academically and have no idea that that's the case.

[cgfunmathguy]

Well, folks, maybe it is time to do something about all this. Here's the situation from a bird's-eye view:

1. Students come unprepared to college and graduate school, unable to use a computer effectively, unable to write, and unable to manipulate numbers.

2. The economy is 20 years away from being a job machine, if it ever becomes one again.

Ergo: add another year onto college, for free, paid by the Feds.

Year Zero, before the freshman year, teach all the things that neither college nor high school do.
Teach sentence diagrams and assign exercises in all the writing fields--essay, report, journalism, autobiography, biography, technical, creative, etc. Teach basic computer skills, like managing multiple windows and formulating search queries for computer processing. Figure out what match students need in order to understand the algebraic and statistical tools they will need as freshmen.

Then, teach the Great Books or some other universal humanities/history/science appreciation course, so that the Zero Year students have something to think about while learning technical skills.

This is an intriguing idea -- although I would guess that there isn't a single campus in the country that could actually do this for reasons of basic infrastructure:  it would mean having to magically expand student housing / classrooms / instructors by 25% to accommodate an additional class of students on campus. 

Simply requiring all students to take two courses in writing and research might work better -- the second one devoted more to writing in specific disciplines, and actually hiring people who are qualified to do that.  But of course this is one of the basic problems that Richardson points out:  the teaching of writing is undervalued and underfunded so it just doesn't happen.

I've taught on 5 different campuses (including grad school), and only one of those had a two-semester sequence.  No students coming out of high school, no matter how strong their writing skills are on a 30-minute sample exam, should test out of a first-year writing course.  They are being put at a significant disadvantage academically and have no idea that that's the case.

As an undergrad, I took two writing classes as part the BDRs (baccalaureate degree requirements). The first was your general Intro to Writing (or some such title). Because I was an engineering major, my second class was technical writing taught in the second quarter of my first year. It was a waste. The final paper, which was worth 60% of the grade in the class, was to be a technical research paper based on data and giving recommendations. WE WERE FRESHMEN!! We hadn't taken a single class in our majors yet, had no idea where to get data nor how to generate it, and had no idea if the proposals were even close to reality. Had junior standing been required as a prerequiste to the course, it might have been useful. Heck, I might have even done better writing up my senior design project.

[daurousseau]

I've taught on 5 different campuses (including grad school), and only one of those had a two-semester sequence.  No students coming out of high school, no matter how strong their writing skills are on a 30-minute sample exam, should test out of a first-year writing course.  They are being put at a significant disadvantage academically and have no idea that that's the case.

Here's an anecdote on that topic. After a junior year abroad I transferred to Berkeley and tried to test out of Freshman English. They sent me to the gatekeeper, the poet Louis Simpson. I told him, hey, I took an entire year of Freshman English at Boulder and got a B and an A. I told him I was editor of the church youth newsletter in both junior high and high school, and editor of the literary magazine at college in Europe. I offered to write anything he stipulated on any topic and in any style right then and there.

He said, "Ah, but that wasn't Berkeley. We want you to have the [face] time with our own faculty."

Did he do the right thing? Can't say. He compromised by letting me take creative writing, which would count for Freshman English if I got an A. I did, but about the only thing new I learned was how to write a play, a short story and some poetry, none of which I ever did again.

[jackofallchem]

"first-year composition is only indirectly preparatory to writing in other disciplines." I'm on board here too. All too often, profs in other departments blame us when their students can't write well. Never mind that these colleagues (a) don't offer courses on how to write in their disciplines, or (b) don't require much writing of any kind. We get students only for a year--which, as Richardson points out, is rarely enough--and what we do is often not reinforced elsewhere. Cut us some slack, please; we do what we can, but we're not miracle workers!

I think you missed the point.  It isn't that they are lacking college-level writing skills, they are missing ALL writing skills.  I have students who don't capitalize the first word in sentences (or the word I), students who capitalize all nouns but nothing else (and they aren't German), students who don't know that the sentence should have a subject, and I have very few students who know what a paragraph is.  My students have above-average ACT scores. 

It isn't that they aren't learning a few things in high school, they aren't learning ANYTHING in high school.  It is time more colleges start accepting the best students straight out of junior high. I am pretty sure that the students who score a 99%ile on the PSAT are fairly comparable to the average student I am seeing out of high school.  If colleges would do this routinely, it would provide incentive for students to do well in elementary and junior high.  It also might shake up the high-schools so they would at least teach some remedial junior high level material.   The other benefit to admitting students out of junior high students is that they haven't had 4 years of sitting in a classroom doing absolutely nothing.  Bad habits are hard to break.

[aandsdean]

I believe it went "out of fashion" because no one could decide what the hell it was, other than an institutional fantasy.  Bringing it back would be kind of like . . . resurrecting Prester John.

You can't "resurrect Prester John."  If you believe in him enough to resurrect him at all, then surely you must accept that he's still alive.  If you think he's a myth, it would be difficult to resurrect him at all...

Although, come to think of it, both of those options also apply to Writing Across the Curriculum.  Your point.

Bring me a hair from Prester John's beard and all will be well.

[tuxedo_cat]

I believe it went "out of fashion" because no one could decide what the hell it was, other than an institutional fantasy.  Bringing it back would be kind of like . . . resurrecting Prester John.

Ah, but I believe it's supposed to be a hair from the beard of "the great Cham."  Much more perilous.


You can't "resurrect Prester John."  If you believe in him enough to resurrect him at all, then surely you must accept that he's still alive.  If you think he's a myth, it would be difficult to resurrect him at all...

Although, come to think of it, both of those options also apply to Writing Across the Curriculum.  Your point.

Bring me a hair from Prester John's beard and all will be well.

[aandsdean]

I believe it went "out of fashion" because no one could decide what the hell it was, other than an institutional fantasy.  Bringing it back would be kind of like . . . resurrecting Prester John.

Ah, but I believe it's supposed to be a hair from the beard of "the great Cham."  Much more perilous.


You can't "resurrect Prester John."  If you believe in him enough to resurrect him at all, then surely you must accept that he's still alive.  If you think he's a myth, it would be difficult to resurrect him at all...

Although, come to think of it, both of those options also apply to Writing Across the Curriculum.  Your point.

Bring me a hair from Prester John's beard and all will be well.

Oops.  But Samuel Johnson is most definitely dead, unlike Prester John.  And I don't think he ever wore a beard!

[cstars]

Is Writing Across the Curriculum dead? We still have it, and it seems to have a death grip on our curriculum. Even to suggest that students might need some training in those hegemonic basics like capitalization, sentence structure, etc. is anathema.  And, of course we all can and should be writing teachers. What's more, the people in charge of this system tell us [endlessly] that this is the only reputable approach. 

[educator1]

I can rant and rail all day about the sorry state of writing instruction and its impact on other academic fields (I can't begin to tell you of the horrors of a "creative writing approach" to the preparation of a technical report).
However, I have been convinced that all of us bear the responsibility of teaching appropriate communication in our specific fields. No one outside of the profession can teach the proper way to write an engineering report or to explain the meaning of a statistical analysis to a non-statistician. Yet, these are the vital skills that our students need. They don't need to know how to express their innermost feelings endlessly unless they are preparing to be authors or to enter endless psychoanalysis.