By Katt on Jun 22, 2009 in Career and Tenure | 0 Comments
I’ve been on a lengthy sabbatical due to my doctoral qualifying exams. However, I’ve now gotten through the biggest hurdle of the process and am now happy to report that I am officially a doctoral candidate. My dissertation chair has given me the green light on writing my dissertation on social bookmarking and research-based composition classes. With that I’ve finally had a chance to catch up on some neglected reading and get back to my blog. Look for more posts starting this afternoon.
And for those interested, I’m keeping a separate dissertation blog at Deconstructing Rhetoric. Click on over if you want to keep up with the work I’m doing specifically on social bookmarking.
By Katt on Feb 22, 2009 in Basic Writing, First Year Composition (FYC), Pedagogy | 1 Comment
I find myself focusing my energies in my Basic Writing classes on helping students not only become better writers, but also to build confidence in their writing. On a regular basis, I encounter students, both L1 and L2, who fear writing because of a fear of the countless red-marked grammar errors they must correct when their paper is returned. Students entering college-level writing courses are not sure of what they are supposed to revise and this problem is compounded in Basic Writing by a lack of confidence. There needs to be a teaching method that aids in the improvement of student revisions while also building the writer’s confidence in each paper. I am impressed by the model course that Bartholomae and Petrosky implemented in their Basic Writing Program and I believe that by pulling aspects of this course that aid in building self-confidence while simultaneously heeding the advice Ferris offers and recognizing the importance of teaching audience, Basic Writing instructors can begin to accomplish these daunting tasks.
My classes are rarely comprised of only native English speakers, so as I was reading, I looked for a means of incorporating Bartholomae’s self-confidence building with Ferris’ work on L2 immigrant and international students to seek a harmony between these two divergent texts. Ferris argues that L2 learners work well with specific types of feedback and that, generally, these forms of feedback focus on lower order concerns, but correctly crafted higher order statements and suggestions can lead to successful revisions for students as well. The key to effective revisions is learning what works specifically for individual students. I would further argue that we cannot just provide students with the type of comments they already work well with, but we must teach them how to address comments that may not fit this mold. Ferris recommends using marked papers to teach students revision strategies and I believe this is not only a good idea, but also the key to helping build self-confidence in the writers.
Ferris’ suggestion worked well with what I considered the strongest part of Bartholomae and Petrosky’s course model. Their course utilizes the students’ texts as course reading, and I believe this method could not only garner more effective revisions, but also build confidence in the writer. Often, I use student models from previous classes as examples and I know that students appreciate having a sample to work with. Several semesters ago, I used a sample from the class I was teaching and it made a great impact on the way students responded to the text. They were able to ask specific questions of the actual writer and get concrete feedback about how she had revised. Previously, I was only able to provide hypothetical information about how the model student had undertaken revisions. This shift in paper forms led to two specific changes in my classes. First, the writer gained self-confidence in her revisions and began to demonstrate this improvement in her next drafts. Second, other students began to start experimenting with more revisions on their own papers and asking that we discuss their paper during the next revision workshop. There was a gradual change in the writing styles of several members of the class, both L1 and L2 learners and this change came as a result of using a current student’s paper.
Unfortunately, I cannot give concrete evidence of the success of this model in Basic Writing; my experiment was with a Composition II class. However, I would hypothesize that this model would aid in the confidence building of Basic Writers, and improve their revision strategies. My rationale for this hypothesis lies in the fact that students gain confidence when their work is selected as the class sample; it demonstrates that their writing was “good enough” for this display. Also, given the opportunity to speak to real writers about real revisions has the potential to aid students in better understanding the revision process by providing them with concrete examples that are well explained.
By Katt on Jan 28, 2009 in Blogroll | 0 Comments
“The first stage of Open Admissions involves openly admitting that education has failed for too many students” Mina Shaughnessey
“I cannot know for them what it is they need to free, or what words they need to write; I can only try with them to get an approximation of the story they want to tell” Adrienne Rich
One of my major objections to Basic Writing is that our students receive no credit for the class, though it remains on their transcript forever. Before teaching Basic Writing, I never thought about this concept. However, once I began to work closely with the Basic Writing students, I soon realized that this system seemed unfair; many of the students I taught were not lazy, but had not been given a proper education in writing. Essentially, the system had failed to give the students the education they deserved and the students were having to pay for the failure of the system. These students had been failed at the basic level of writing–transferring thought to text.
I was struck by the impediments Mina Shaugnessey provides and realized at the same time that these were common problems among my students. Spelling, punctuation,sentence construction and order, voice, grammar, are all reasons that my students have given for their “bad writing.” Perhaps this is the reason that so many Basic Writing courses emphasize grammar and mechanics instead of helping students develop their own writing style and voice. Basic Writing needs to help students become more confident in these areas, but to juggle all of these impediments alongside teaching students to construct an essay within a rhetorical situation seems a bit much for an instructor to cover in a 3 credit course. Nor is it what I would consider ideal to ask the students to undertake in a class for which they don’t receive credit. It seems that we need to consider a new model.
I had been reading a bit about the studio model over the past few weeks and this seems to fit into my ideal Basic Writing class. The studio model places students into the regular composition class and requires them to attend a 1 hour credit studio where they discuss issues that aid in the construction of their composition essays. I wasn’t sure that I liked this method until I read Adrienne Rich’s “Teaching Language in Open Admissions.” Rich writes:
“In order to write I have to believe that there is someone willing to collaborate subjectively, as opposed to a grading machine out to get me for mistakes in spelling and grammar” (Rich 202)
This passage enlightened me to the benefits of the studio model. Students are writing for their 1013 class, which provides them with a collaborative person to write for (the instructor, the peer group, etc.). At the same time, they receive the grammatical and rhetorical aid they need from the writing studio. Even if this studio is taught by the same instructor, the students receive their information and help on pertinent obstacles in a different setting. They are not dreading the instructor marking the comma splices in the final essay, but rather are getting help with their writing problems in their essays (which is advocated by both Clark and Hartwell). The studio model, therefore, would allow the students to create the “mess” that will become their essay in class while receiving the education they are expected to enter college with during the studio hour.
The studio model seems to create a Basic Writing utopia (which worries me; I wonder if I’m missing some aspect of this model that is terribly anti-pedagogical). Students receive credit for their composition class and get to stay with on track for their degrees. These two important changes would aid in removing the stigma from the Basic Writer. They also get the coaching in their weak areas that keeps me from arguing for mainstreaming the students. Simultaneously, they learn to make a “mess” of their writing and worry about the polish of grammar and mechanics after they have transformed the mess into an essay. Even more, the students are no longer paying for the failures of their previous educational career.
By Katt on Jan 28, 2009 in Basic Writing, Pedagogy | 0 Comments
Teachers of writing struggle every day to help their students overcome the belief that they are “bad writers.” Teachers of Basic Writing struggle even more with this problem because of the stigma automatically attached to the class they teach. Students of Basic Writing register for a class that, I believe, should require a supplemental class in self esteem. These students pay for a class that they receive no credit for at most universities and yet a class they are required to pass just to become a “real” college student. I’ve always faulted K-12 education for this stigma; the students in Basic Writing, regardless of what we call the class, know they have now been relegated to the same status as the remedial students led away to separate math and reading classes throughout the K-12 period. I never thought I would find fault in the academic world to which I belong.
The problem started when the American dream entered academia. The Civil Rights Act, The G.I. Bill, the Morrill Land Grant and many similar programs all encouraged a different group of minorities and lower class citizens to include college in their American dream. Unfortunately, the elitists in academia did not feel this American dream belonged to everybody. Their response to the desegregation of American colleges in the 1960s was segregation. Students who failed to reach appropriate scores on standardized tests were segregated into a program segregated into its own “subdepartment” (McAlexander and Greene 4). The courses were taught in second class locations segregated from other academics and were taught by instructors segregated from the elite tenure-track faculty (McAlexander and Greene 8-9). As if this was not enough emphasis on the separation of academic and Basic Writing, students also had to grapple with the fact that even after paying the money and working hard to pass the class, there would be no credit for the class.
The problem has not stopped. Yes, there are tenured professors teaching Basic Writing and many programs have access to the same classrooms as regular composition classes. Yet, we continue to charge students for classes they will receive no credit for and we continue to grapple with segregation in the program. Now, though, the segregation has changed. We concern ourselves with the question of separate writing classes for ESL learners and native speakers. We argue over the placement of Basic Writing within the university or the community college. We argue over the experience of the Basic Writing instructor. It seems that the issue of segregation is one that Basic Writing Programs cannot escape; there will continue to be problems of segregation at some level in the program.
At the core of the problem lies the question of marginalization or mainstreaming. Do we marginalize students by placing them in Basic Writing classes? Do we avoid the potential for marginalization by placing students in regular composition classes and hope for the best? I think that to place these students in traditional composition classrooms with a list of resources is detrimental to the student. Do we continue to stigmatize these students, as David Bartholomae argues, by marginalizing them into Basic Writing classes? Do we offer a hybrid system where students take a regular composition class and are required an additional workshop course that runs concurrent with the class? None of the solutions solve the segregation problem, nor do they remove the stigma from the Basic Writer.
I don’t think the solution lies in desegregating the Basic Writer; these students are in need of separate classes that help them prepare for their college writing careers. We cannot ignore the problem by mainstreaming the students. I think that we need to work to help those outside the Basic Writing program to realize that these students are not Basic Writers because of their affiliation with any specific minority group. Instead, I think we need to find a way to spread the idea of these students not as Basic Writers, but as New Students. Mina Shaugnessey maintains a powerful influence over Basic Writing programs today not only for her influence on the teaching of the classes, but also for her recognition that there are variant factors behind the student population of Basic Writing classes. To end the stigma of Basic Writing, we need a means of demonstrating this fact to those outside the department.
By Katt on Jan 28, 2009 in Basic Writing | 0 Comments
I’m finishing up my doctoral coursework with a class in Basic Writing Pedagogy. We’re two weeks into the semester and I’m already finding myself needing to write about this. So, I’m adding a series to the blog that focuses a bit less on technology and a lot more on the situation of Basic Writers in college.
Feedback is always welcome.
