Active Voice

Emily Corrigan
Graduate Instructor in Composition
Graduate Student in Musicology
October 23, 2005

Thoughts about First Year Composition from an Instructor�s Perspective

The thing that has been troubling me most about the course, is the idea that this is the only English course they will take at the college. Again, the U of M wants to integrate writing, but can we as Composition instructors, count on people who are teaching content to supplement their writing curriculum? Since I have three years of background as a content plus writing instructor, I know that I have expected my students to come prepared to write college levels papers after Freshman Composition. I have always been disappointed that the students do not know more about writing. How can I teach them how to write in my discipline, if they still cannot form a thesis statement? If they cannot structure an argument, they cannot learn the subtleties that make a musicological paper different from a history paper.
Then, I feel within my classroom that they need to know as many skills as possible before they leave me. I know what the content instructors are expecting of their students. I want my students to perform well in their writings, not fail because they don�t know the mechanics of collegiate writing. I am, therefore, attempting to cover how to write as a college student in 15 weeks. It is an impossible task. They need to learn how to argue, how to critically read and review, how to write scientifically, what the business world expects of them etc. They really need 2 semesters of writing before they can attack 3xxx level �W� courses. I still only have 15 weeks. Then they are learning how to argue, how to review, how to write scientifically etc., but I can�t focus on them as much as I would like to. Hopefully they will leave my class knowing how to write a thesis statement, but will professors on campus feel they learned enough in Freshman Composition? Probably not, but I am trying my best to give them as many tools for their box as I can before I send them up against the opposition.

Christina Robert
Ph.D. Student
Department of Family Social Science

As a TA for undergraduate classes, including classes attended by juniors and seniors, I am often appalled at the inability of students to write coherent and well-organized essays. I am shocked that students who make multiple grammatical errors will be graduating from the University of Minnesota with a degree. As an elite university, I should think we would be embarrased that many of our students will be entering the work world, as representatives of this institution, with very poor writing skills. I agree with one of the previous comments that it is not feasible to teach writing in 15 weeks, especially when the focus is on content. I think this begs the question as to whether students should be allowed to pass a class, in which the content is being evaluated, if their writing skills are not meeting standard requirements as well.

As a teacher of psychology courses (but as an undergraduate English major) I definitely recognize the need for students to write well and to communicate their thoughts in succinct and organized ways. Based on my experience, I wonder if students need more practice at lower levels of education not only in writing but in giving their thoughts and opinions on topics, in critically evaluating and in persuading. Having to do this builds skills in organization and provides a reason to learn to write and write well. Maybe this would be a good intervention point for the university -- to develop a presence in Minnesota schools that would encourage these skills

I also feel the frustration of those who have already posted here. I was a TA for 5 years, sometimes for writing courses, but I always addressed writing issues (since the writing was often so poor that the content was obsured). I was also an undergraduate TA here 10 years ago (in General College composition). In my first years as a graduate TA in art history, the quality of writing I encountered was generally lower than what I encountered 5 years before in General College. There seemed to be a small improvement the past 2 years; although students were writing broad, vague thesis statements, they were at least attempting to have a thesis. They write in complete sentences now.

I have also had the opportunity to adjunct at other local small liberal arts schools the past few years. There is simply no comparison in the quality of writing - the students at the smaller schools by and large write at a much higher level(in my experience). The strength of the students at the U of M is that they are much less afraid to think outside of the box and are more creative in their interpretations of assignments and solutions to problems - is there a way to improve the writing without squelching the creativity?

In my efforts to understand the nature of the writing problem, I have attended as many writing workshops offered through my department and the graduate school as I could. They were most useful in showing me how my standards were too high for today's students. Apparently grammar is no longer taught in junior high and high school as it was when I was younger, and essay assignments at the secondary level are geared more toward how students feel about a given topic than learning how to think critically or construct an argument about these feelings. Since the basics are no longer covered by the time students today reach high school graduation, we need to be determining ways to cover the basics (IE grammar, punctuation) as well as collegiate writing. It would be unfair to demand what they have not yet been taught (or at least this is the message I'm receiving from the workshops). I think that Karen Marsh's suggestion is excellent beginning to addressing this.

Although I do think that there are problems in elementary and secondary education today, I'm not sure that it completely addresses the difference in the quality of writing I see at the small liberal arts schools and the U of M. Since their student base is largely similar (although not as diverse) as that of the U of M, what are they doing differently? Two schools have a full year of freshman writing, reading, and critical thinking. One allows students with high ACT scores to take it as one intensive semester. I know the U of M is has done away with this through the writing-intensive courses, but I think most students need more their first year and they need it from someone who knows how (and wants)to teach writing. By the way, I wouldn't want to see the writing intensive courses go away altogether; they force the students to keep reapplying what they've learned so they are more likely to develop a lifelong skill rather than a skill to get through one semester. Is there a happy medium?

RE: Recommendations regarding how to create a research-based model with one mission and central direction to establish the University of Minnesota as a national leader in undergraduate writing in all of its forms, including freshman writing, technical writing, writing across the curriculum, senior writing projects, and tutoring.

I have two suggestions:
1. Continue to develop civic engagement and service-learning courses that provide cross-disciplinary learning and outreach opportunities to writing students. We can make civic engagement part of every freshman-level course while continuing to appeal to student interest in globalization or nature and the environment and the other thematic offerings. Advantages of making civic engagement a common theme include a distinctive identity for the program aligned with research, teaching, and outreach activities that serve the University�s mission.

2. Increase curricular emphasis on publishing as a culminating act of writing. Doing so meets pedagogical goals of engaging students on a personal level while deepening their understanding of social, political, economic, and cultural influences that attend the publishing process.

Publishing student writing can raise the level of public debate about the quality and purpose of writing instruction at the University. One side of the current debate seems to take the presence of errors in student writing as absolute proof of poor writing instruction. Complaints are more complex than that, of course, but few acknowledge the complex range of our students� achievement in writing. A great deal of what goes wrong in student writing can be traced to causes that don�t have much to do with writing instruction (time pressure, culture shock, assignment design, among others). And authentic learning is not always accompanied by victory over error.

Publishing student work lets our successes out of the closet. It also raises the stakes for students, instructors and the program, which is what strategic repositioning is going to do anyway.

I agree with the comments made in two areas: publishing student work and offering two semesters of first-year writing rather than one.

Publishing student work helps students understand audience and purpose in their writing in a more tangible way than writing papers to their teacher. There are many ways to encourage publishing, civic engagement being one, but also assignments could be written to/for clients, assignments could be written as editorials to newspapers, assignments could be written as blogs (online publishing), etc. I agree that publishing helps students become aware of the quality of their writing--there is more pressure to check grammar and mechanics and to do the best job possible. We have many ways to take advantage of publishing here at UMN, such as the UBlog, the Minnesota Daily, and a great civic engagement program. Let's use those avenues.

I also agree that a two-semester sequence of writing would benefit students. But in order to do that, the U of MN would need to consolidate the many first-year composition offerings (currently taught under three different units). There would need to be better coherence among the three units to create the two-semester sequence. We could generate guidelines for all sections, and yet offer flexibility for instructors to be creative in their teaching.

I am hopeful that the strategic positioning process will improve our current writing instruction configuration.

I think your department has been much improved already compared to years ago when I took a composition class at the University of Minnesota. The composition instructors seem genuinely concerned with their students. Reflecting back on the years when I attended the University, I would recommend that the instructors not belittle students who write poor papers but try to understand the etiology of the writing deficits and work at improving those deficits without belittling the dignity and self esteem of individual students who might actually be highly intelligent but just lacking in college writing skills.

As an undergraduate at UMM, I feel like I have learned more writing skills from my philosophy classes than from my composition class. I agree with the writing teacher who posted above; one semester of writing is not nearly enough!

Students these days often have abysmal writing and verbal abilities for some reason. Just look at the sub-500 average scores on the GRE in recent years. I noticed on the graduate school statistics that one program actually accepted someone with a verbal score in the 300's!

I agree with another poster who said students from UMN should absolutely not be allowed to graduate without basic grammar and spelling abilities. Every student should have to pass some kind of intensive writing exam before they claim their degree.

You would think spelling problems would be a thing of the past these days because of the ubiquitous spellchecker, but the fact is errors abound on WebPages, résumé’s, term papers, internet posts, etc.

I think the most important type of writing for most of us is persuasive writing, and I'm afraid that English classes may be a little too content free to properly teach this. I would like to see a requirement for students to take an intro-level philosophy course with an emphasis on writing and argumentation in addition to freshman comp. Philosophy courses, especially ethics-related courses, can do a good job of motivating students to learn because they deal with real issues that students care enough about to argue over.

The problem may also be that students are just not reading enough good writing to kind of “pick it up”. In his book “On Writing” Steven King remarks, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or tools) to write. Simple as that.” English professors may cringe at taking advice from Steven King, but it makes a lot of sense!

I also think writing is kind of a habit that needs to be developed and maintained. Students whose majors do not naturally emphasize writing (Engineering/Computer Science) may need some kind of general requirement that they take at least a 1-2cr. Writing/reading related course each semester to make sure they don’t forget about this skill. They need to get to the point where writing a one-page paper every day is painless and natural.

Igraduated from high school in Iowa, 1962, and UMM 1976, a friend and I worked on a speech/sociology, dealing with their abilites to become a part of the community, through intergation into the communityafter leaving their own community. We completed 100 pages of the report. This was a time, when everyone was expected to read and write appropriately. I had 2 English teachers, who taught us the parts of a sentence. I'm sure many would not know about noun, verb, active, inactive, adverbs, etc. I believe this has us to be aware of our writing skills.

Writing at the University of Minnesota helps a person improve his communication skill. One can learn a lot if he practices. So I think that a person should not rely on theories alone, but has to practice his writing skills.

Writing is a good way to improve communication skill. You get to learn a lot while doing the process. It helps you learn how to communicate effectively where you and the person you're communicating to will understand each other well and avoid conflicts.

The University of Minnesota sucks raw dogs!