Curricula in College Writing Programs: Much Diversity, Little Assessment

Curricula in College Writing Programs: Much Diversity, Little Assessment

These are quotes from a study with the above title by Richard M. Larson, college of CUNY. Full bibliographic information follows. That rationale begins with the conviction that the central act by which the student develops as a writer (almost all students entering college know "how to write" at some level, in some fashion) is the act of writing iteself: the act of inventing, planning, drafting, and revising a text of the student's own. -11 

 Along with that conviction goes the further conviction that a writer, writes to be read. The reader may ostensibly be (as in the case of a diary) only the writer herself (though diaries have a way of being read by people other than those who keep them). But usually a writer writes for another person or persons . . . -11

 

 Sometimes the writer imagines herself addressing a small number of readers close to and well known by the writer; sometimes she is addressing people she knows slightly or knows about but does not know well; someitmes she is addressing people she does not know at all and has to "fictionalize" completely as readers. I use here the spectrum of possible readers described by James Moffett in several of his writings. -11 

 From these convictions I move to asserting that the central act of the teacher of writing is the making of the assignment, the specification of the work to be accomplished by writing. --12 

 A second responsibility then is to be sure that the student understand what the assigned writing is intended to do, to or for whom, and why. -12-13 

 Instruction in writing, of course, is not constituted solely by the assignments. Assignments appear in contexts: textbooks used, discussions conducted, procedures for composing that are encouraged, responses made to writing, supports avaiable (such as writing laboratories, tutorial programs, facilities that offer students the chance to use word processors), assessment procedures (required examinations to test proficiency in writing for example--examinations that the student must constantly keep an eye on) and so on. Many features of these contexts are invisible to anyone who does not watch writing classes in action on the campus . . . -16 

Some 35 percent of the curricula we looked at are "textbook-driven": -22

Roughly 30 percent of the institutions rest some part of the curriculum in composition on assignments in literature. -23

 I view attention to "writing processes" as chiefly just the stretching out, and highlighting, of several acts that most writers regularly perform, quickly and perhaps subconsciously, as parts of the act of writing. There is nothing new in recognizing that writers go through processes while composing.) --25  

Attention to form dominates the advice about revising that we saw, not the need for ideas, data, evidence, clear reasoning, convincingness, and effectiveness in context. --26

 ...is the writing course as we now know it a justifiable requirement for all students (except maybe for an exempted few) in our colleges if that writing course is not taught by well-prepared, experienced teachers familiar with the theory and research on the teaching of writing? Even if one still answers that question "yes" (and I would incline to answer it "no") would one answer "yes" to this question: ought the first year course, as we know it, to be the only course in the curriculum where students are required to write and receive guidance in writing? I would answer this second question unequivocally, "no." -34 One might argue--I have heart it argued though never demonstrated--the the opportunity to write under the watchful eyes of intelligent people, however inexperienced, is important for students even if that teacher is not familiar with the workings of discourse or with ways of gathering data and constructing thought in the field under discussion, and even if that teacher is not a perceptive reader of academic prose. --38