doctoral candidate in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication
what do they learn?
Alan Lew, a professor I respect at Northern Arizona University, where I work, wrote,
Unfortunately, there are few more frustrating challenges for me than the poor writing ability of many of my students. If they cannot write a coherent sentence and paragraph (let alone a whole paper), then they will not be able to effectively communicate in the real world when they graduate. You cannot gain professional respect unless you are able to write to the level of your professional peers. And I am always wonder just what my students are being taught in those required English classes that they take.
I’m not calling out a professor nor am I trying to start a intra-campus / college versus college war here. But I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard that outside of the English department, and how frustrating it is to hear it.
It must be the instruction. It must be the lessons that the students are being taught because it couldn’t be the students themselves. It couldn’t be that students are coming in with nearly non-existent writing skills, and it is expected that they will be writing at professional levels by the time they have completed the required semester of freshman English.
It couldn’t be that this college has the least amount of resources and funds and the highest number of students that go through it. It also couldn’t be that so many of those students barely have the requisite reading and writing skills to pass basic levels of composition, let alone college level composition courses.
I don’t teach freshman English courses (thank goodness), but I may have to when I start my doctorate. I have been teaching the technology section of those courses in recent weeks (to assist the GAs who are not as learned in technology as I am) and I can tell you that it is nearly impossible to get those students to even pay attention, not to mention learn something. It’s nearly impossible to get them to cite sources (which I have them do when they grab an image off the ‘net) or to even be able to write a coherent, well-developed paragraph in the allotted time.
It’s not about what they are being taught in the requisite English classes. It’s about having a system that is underfunded, overloaded, and being met with skills that aren’t up to par in the first place.
That’s a hard place to start.
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#4 written by cathelin 4 years ago
oh, wow. where to start?
this makes me think of something that happened in my class recently. i had a student, that among other things, was continually writing ‘cant’ on a paper as a substitute (or so i thought) for ‘cannot.’
he stayed to talk with me after class about something else, and i mentioned this. he said, and i quote, “what do you mean, it’s a contraction? what is a contraction?”
i ended up drawing a diagram on the board, showing what the contraction “can’t” was made up of. he was floored.
so was i. this was a student that had not made the cut at a four year university, so he is now a student at our tiny community college.
when a student arrives in my freshman English class with that level of… non-knowledge? ignorance? (although i doubt the ignorance is willful) it makes me despair sometimes that all too often we are expected to “turn them into writers” in 15 weeks.
sorry for the rant, but i very much appreciate the thought-provoking post, dawn! this is something that has been on my mind…
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If they don’t start learning how to compose sentences and paragraphs properly in high school, college may be too late. But sadly, most students go through high school not getting the English education they need. Only AP English classes are rigorous enough for the students to learn anything meaningful about composition.
I shudder to think how one finishes high school having taken regular English classes. If they get to college with that sort of training, it’s no wonder they can’t even articulate a simple idea without a spelling error, much less a citation…
Tell that professor not to worry. I doubt he’s alone. The truth is students are like that all over the US, and they’re all going out and getting jobs. I think pretty soon we’ll all be awash in a sea of mediocrity and unthinkable syntax.
But hey, who carez if u can uz a blckbrry, rt?