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.

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.

Feedback is always welcome.

If you ask me, it’s getting way out of hand. I am no stranger to standardized testing. My family moved at the most every two years. It seemed as though I would take the assessment test at my old school, then move to a new state and start a new school just in time to participate in their standardized test. But, like many from my generation, I survived. I don’t know how well I scored on the tests, though I’m sure my mother has the reports around somewhere. We did not dwell on the material in the tests in our classes. I remember getting advice on test taking from my teachers: “get a good night’s sleep” “have a good breakfast” “bring an extra pencil.” That was it.

So when the latest article on standardized testing came out, I found myself behind approximately 98% of the contents. Specifically, this paragraph almost made me cheer:

The obvious cure in Illinois, and in other states, is to carefully limit or dispense with test preparation in class. Teachers should instead be working on the high-level academic skills that students need to perform well, not just on tests, but in college and long afterward.

I think it’s obvious that there is too much time spent on testing preparation. Honestly, I have to admit that when it’s in print in the New York Times, though, I do a little happy dance. Why? It’s getting attention outside the educational sphere. This means that the non-educator citizen is starting to pay attention. So, I say thank you, to the New York Times. I thank all of the parents who have called and complained that their child should not fail a math test for bubbling in the wrong answer when they have the work to show that they got the answer write. I applaud the parent able to de-stress their child by not stressing out over the test at home. I applaud the teachers who do not dwell on the test preparation in their classroom. I applaud Carl Chew for standing up for what was right.

Writing…the Black Sheep of the Curriculum?

I do not, however, applaud the New York Times for the ideas they put forth in the opening paragraph of their essay:

To get the well-educated, highly skilled workers that the country needs, states must strengthen public school curriculums, especially in math and science. States also need to adopt high-quality tests that show how students are performing from year to year.

Unfortunately, the New York Times has jumped on the bandwagon of bettering education without looking at the whole picture. If we are going to strengthen public school currriculums, it needs to be done across the board not “especially in math and science.” I spend a good portion of my summer grading writing placement tests and I have to say that each year, the results seem to get even more dismal. In addition to placing more students into basic writing classes because they cannot write to college standards, I hear more complaints from parents about the placement, get more pressure from administration to not place these students in basic writing and continue to grow more annoyed with the entire system. The problem with placing students in basic writing is two fold. It’s a result of bad PR for basic writing and it’s a result of less writing curriculum in the high schools.

Basic Writing (Read “Remedial Writing” to Parents and Students) is for Dummies

The biggest problem with Basic Writing is the bad PR it has gotten over the past few decades. Few schools offer this class as a credit class, which means the students enrolled in the class are paying for a class that does not in any way count towards the credit hours they need for their degree. Writing instruction in this class often begins with writing paragraphs and graduates to writing a full essay. For this reason, students who are placed in basic writing (and their parents by default) see this class as a course for remedial students or Second Language students. They feel that since they passed all of their English courses in high school and did not fail the Written portion of the Standardized Test, this is not the place for them. Unfortunately, this can create a very hostile learning environment for some students.

AP students are the worst in a Basic Writing class. This is largely because they enter into AP classes in high school with the preconceived notion that passing the AP test clears them from all need to take college writing and that if they don’t pass it, they certainly won’t be placed in Basic Writing.

The High School Writing Curriculum

In many high schools, writing is not actually part of the curriculum. Now, I don’t want to generalize, because I have seen several schools that do a great job of incorporating writing into their English classes. However, for the most part, writing instruction seems to simply involve

“Write an essay discussing the symbolism in [enter novel name here]“

When the student turns in the essay, they receive comments on whether or not they interpreted the symbolism appropriately, used MLA correctly, and used correct grammar. Unfortunately, I have found that too often writing instruction beyond these small areas consists of

• An essay has five paragraphs (introduction, 3 body paragraphs, conclusion)

• A thesis statement goes at the end of the introduction and is constructed as such: “In [the novel's name], [Author's name] uses symbolism to [item one, item two, and item three]

That’s about all it seems that my students know about writing. Even when they place into our traditional Composition I class, they don’t have the information to write a persuasive essay of any form. They can inform until the semester is over, but they can’t persuade an audience. In fact, most of them are never introduced to the ideas of writing to an audience. So it bothers me even more to see writers from the New York Times pushing for improvement in math and science curriculums.

Preconceived Notions of Writing

I think the biggest problem with writing curriculum and students’ disinterest in their writing classes comes from being in a field that they don’t believe will use writing. Over the last few years, I have heard more students say “I don’t need writing in my career, I’m going to be a [insert career here].” I’ve heard this from disciplines across the university, including:

• Business students
  • “My job is about numbers and management, not writing”
• History majors planning to attend law school
  • “I’ll have a clerk who will do my writing for me”
• Nurses
  • “All the writing that we do is notes that appear in charts”
• Chemistry
  • “I’m going to find a cure for cancer, I don’t need to know how to write.”
• Theater
  • “I’m an actor, writing isn’t my job.”
• Art
  • “I say it with paint, not words.”

I could go on and on with the disciplines, but I’ll leave it here. I’m not compiling a laundry list. I don’t know where they get the idea that their specific career is not one that requires writing, but I would love to see more emphasis on this in the curriculum. No matter how much I remind students that they will have to write in their discipline, they seem to brush it off as something their English teacher said. I don’t know anything about their discipline because I’m not part of it.

There’s a problem with the entire system. From not teaching students to write well in high school to the preconceived notions that they don’t need to write. Everything that gets done in this world today is in some way connected to a necessary document. Law students become clerks before they become lawyers. Even as lawyers, they still have to write briefs. Business students have to write proposals. Actors have to apply for jobs and those applications sometimes involve a cover letter.

In short, we need to change writing instruction now. We cannot afford to wait for another generation to slip through the cracks.  Please, teachers, start stressing how important writing is to the subject you teach. Kids need to know. If you teach English, move beyond the five-paragraph essay. If you’re a student, look into your career and see what kind of writing is going to be required; I think you would be surprised. If you or your child gets placed in a Basic Writing class, work with it. There are lots of things that you can learn from this class. I promise, it is not a remedial class. It is designed to aid you in becoming a better writer.

Now, you may be thinking that is extremely tacky and unthoughtful of me, but I was completely within the boundaries of my syllabus and the bounds of what I would do in any other FYC class. I had students who had not turned in assignments that were due in the middle of September and the beginning of October. So, I posted an announcement on the website, made announcements in class and set a deadline of Friday at noon for students missing assignments to get these assignments to me. They needed to have these assignments back since we began the Midterm Portfolio today and they were needing comments from me to begin their revisions. Now, before I go any further, let me set up the numbers for you. I’m combining the two classes so the numbers are overall instead of individual.

30 students enrolled

- 3 students I’ve never even seen (but haven’t dropped the class)

-3 students who have stopped coming to class (but haven’t dropped)

- 4 students who dropped because they felt they were “misplaced”

-3 students I dropped over the weekend

So this puts me down to about 17 students. But, I have another 3 (what is it with threes in this class?) who didn’t show up for the peer reviews for their Midterm Portfolio. So, I may well be down to 14 students.

Whether 17 or 14, I’m going to use the smaller class size to focus more on the needs of the students that I have left. These students, in my opinion, are the ones who are working hardest (with a few exceptions) to actually pass this class and get on with their regular classes. So, I’m making the class even more student-centered. I’m doing this in three ways:

• Discussion Board posts that allow students to express their areas of concern in writing so that I can focus more on the concerns students have, not concerns I expect them to have.
• Roundtables that allow us to talk as a group, not as teacher-student. We’ve done this a time or two in the past and the students loved it. Perhaps more of this structure will allow students to feel better about communicating their concerns and discussing class material
• More in-class writing time to allow for more student-teacher time

I’m hoping that shifting will help me make the students who are still devoted to the class more successful in their final weeks. I’ve seen all of them make significant improvements over the past few weeks, and I’m hoping that having more time to devote to this small group’s needs, I can improve on their previous work and get them prepared for college life. We’ll see!

For starters, in addition to the 30 students originally enrolled in my class, I was given 6 additional students when the two classes I’m teaching were collapsed with another two sections. Then, as though 36 is not already a few too many for a class that requires so much one-on-one, an International English class created to aid new international students in preparing to meet the standards necessary to enter Basic Writing was cancelled, and three of these students somehow managed to miss filtering and become part of my class.

So, as day three of my classes began, I had a rather motley collection of students ranging from homeschooled students who didn’t get “around” to taking the state test that would evaluate their writing–this group feels that they don’t “need” the class–to students who have no English skills whatsoever–I have one in this group who cannot even seem to communicate questions with me, but instead can only gesture at her computer screen. The class discussions have been lively; you don’t have to write well to engage in the discourse. Still, I’ve wondered if they were “getting” anything.

I was spending half an hour after class summarizing the lecture for my Nigerian, who can read and write English, but apparently cannot comprehend spoken English. She’s also prone to losing things. Just the other day she wanted to me to write down what goes in the learning logs I’m requiring this semester, I explained that this was on a handout and she just looked at me dumbfounded when I provided her with another handout instead of physically writing down each component of the assignment.

Then I have the mouth and the mutterer. Mouth tries to focus the entirety of the class period on her while mutterer is really using this class as a place to pick up women. Seriously, he sits by a new girl each time and spends the class period muttering to her just loud enough that I can hear him.

Oh, and I have several of my “I don’t need this class” students who have decided that this is not a class, but is study hall. So, they bring their homework to class and work dutifully on it while in class. I don’t think those around them have noticed; they’re too busy MySpacing.

In previous semesters, this last group of students would have been ejected from class after being given a verbal warning. However, with the new rules in our department, I can’t do it. So, I’ve just taken to not mentioning it, acting as though I’m oblivious and then deciding to add a participation grade to the gradebook.

And none of this is new to my classroom; I’m used to all of this crap happening in the classroom–just not at the same time. And, I certainly wasn’t expecting this from students who need this class more than anything.

So, by the time week four rolled around and they were to turn in their first mini-assignment, many of them were so confused (due to serious lack of reading the handouts) as to what was to be turned in that they had to ask for an extension. Week four ended with their first writing assignment being turned in. As the culmination of week four, we spent an entire class period discussing the writing assignment before the class turned in their work. I received work from 2/3 of my students. Yet, yesterday, I had a student ask for clarification on an assignment related to their revisions (from WA1). When I told her that this was a sheet that would have been returned with her first essay she started acting like she didn’t know anything about the assignment (the one that we had been working on in class for two weeks). Then, she begged to know if she could turn it in late (I don’t take late work). At this point, the discussion went something like this:

She: “But, I didn’t know we had to turn it in.”

I: “You were part of the roundtable last Wednesday. Remember when it was over and I asked you to turn in your paragraph and *Sarah* asked for clarification on which one.”

She: “Yes.”

I: “So you knew you had to turn it in.”

She: “I didn’t think you meant right then. So, it was due right then.”

I: “Yes. It was.”

She: “And you don’t take no late work does you.” (I swear, that’s exactly what she said. I will never forget that line.)

I: “No, I don’t take late work.”

She: “So can I turn it in on Friday?”

Now, this discussion continues for several more minutes before she realized that I wasn’t going to take her work.

So here I was, at my wits end with these students. It was Monday, I had the beginnings of a bad migraine, and I was ready to fling myself into a brick wall just to get them to understand.

And then came Wednesday

Wednesday, with a migraine and the beginning of what has proven to be the flu, I trudged in to work. I am so glad that I did. In my first class of the day, I watched a lightbulb go on with one of my students. She had finally connected Generative Grammar to not only a homework assignment that I forced them to turn in, but also to a good strategy to writing her own paragraphs. Yeah! Then, in my next class, I had a student stop me after class and ask me if we could sit down and talk sometime because she’s learning a lot in the class, but doesn’t know how to incorporate this into her other classes.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that we should always wait until week six before giving up hope on a class. But, I think that once we reach week six, we should wait two more weeks just to be sure. Just when you’re at your wits end, some good student will throw you a rope. We just have to wait and see if they are going to pull us up or if we have to do it ourselves.

Originally, the progymnasmata was used in Ancient Greece to imbue students with the knowledge they needed to become effective orators. It consisted of fourteen specific exercises:

1. fable
2. tale
3. saying
4. proverb
5. refutation
6. confirmation
7. commonplace
8. encomium
9. invective
10. comparison
11. characterization
12. description
13. thesis
14. law

Now, it is easy to see how these exercises build upon one another in difficulty, but they were designed to do much more than that. Students began with these exercises at home working with a private tutor (about the equivalent age of grammar school students) and worked with the exercises through their college years. But it’s much more difficult than it looks; students were not just told to write a fable and then left to write that (as some teachers tend to do in this day and age), but it was rather a process that built slowly to the student’s writing of fable.

First, the student was presented with the genre which had to then be named, defined and divided into subtypes by the student. This section of the assignment allowed students to gain a better grasp on the genre they were working with (such as fable).

Once the student had a grasp on the full span of this genre, they were provided with an “art” for invention of this genre to study. Much as today’s students are taught clustering, mapping and outlining, ancient scholars were taught ways to invent specifically for the genre they were working with.

Once students had a grasp on the genre and the invention, they were taught criteria for evaluating sample productions of the genre. Here, in my opinion, lies the beginning of the most important steps of the progymnasmata. Students need to comprehend the aspects of good writing in any genre, so for me, this is one of the most important steps in the process.

After teaching students how to analyze genre writing to determine good from bad examples, students were provided with a model from the genre they were working with.So, continuing with the fable genre, we could say that students were assigned a reading of one of Aesop’s fables. With this model, students studied the model through a variety of exercises including:

1. Reading
2. Paraphrasing
3. Transliteration (translating into a second language)
4. Memorization and recitation
5. Correction of the paraphrasing and recitation

Only once the students could prove their understanding of the model and demonstrate their ability to complete the exercises were the students allowed to delve into writing their own version of the genre.

So, the key to these exercises was not merely to have students write within the genre, but to have students pay close attention to the details and nuances of the genre so that each genre made a lasting impression on their rhetorical and oratory abilities.

Again, special thanks to the BYU Silva Rhetoricae and J. David Fleming’s “The Very Idea of a Progymnasmata”