Remedial English courses

In this week’s reading, I was most struck by the figures about remedial English courses offered at the college level. In Albert Kitzhaber’s essay, “The Present State of Freshman Compostition,” he says that no more than 40% of colleges still offer remedial college courses. This is in the 1960s and it doesn't seem like there has been much improvement now.

“One university in the South frankly calls its course ‘subcollegiate’ and says that the main object of the course ‘is to teach high school English to weak college students,’” he says on page 264.

It’s interesting that Brereton in his essay, "The Origins of Composition Studies..." (pg. 98) talks about three important figures in the beginning of composition programs in American colleges and the programs these men are describing would now be considered “remedial English” courses. They both advocate for drill-based classes to help students who have never before been taught basic grammar and sentence structure. English departments moved pretty slowly from the late 1800s and early 1900s to the 1960s.

When composition programs were first beginning and English departments were trying to establish themselves across American universities, these types of courses were important in establishing a student base that could write in order to be successful in other aspects. It’s still of the same importance now to create students, who may have been deprived of learning how to write in high school of lower education, that can be successful writers and ultimately successful communicators.

The three appeals in writing

The three appeals of rhetoric immediately reminds me of my high school speech class in which I had to use these tools in order to persuade my wonderful teacher Mrs. Applebaum to give me praise for my speech and ultimately, a good grade. Talking about them five or so years later makes me think of how I can use them to my advantage in something that is of more interest to me. Surrounded by teachers, I can see how one would apply these to the classroom and at my job as a marketing assistant writing press releases, I can use them in order to appeal to the form of media in which we want our events and news to be featured.

But as I move away from persuasive writing and into creative writing, which is my true desire, I struggle to apply the three appeals as I sit in my room alone (usually late at night) trying to create something very personal. This goes back to how rhetoric in general influences my creative writing. It's a little disheartening as I think about my audience as a creative writer and that I must appeal to an audience in order to make a living. I would like to maintain the purity of creating something that I feel is important, but at the same time I must write in order to sell myself to a publisher and a general public.