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.
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You are so right in saying that we need to create students who will be able to be successful writers and communicators. In recent years,colleges have seen an increase of remedial courses because incoming freshmen are woefully unprepared for academic writing. An article from May 28 of last year in the New York Times says that over one million incoming freshmen must take at least one remedial comp course. We need to do a better job of teaching students how to write.
ReplyDeleteI agree that students need to be better prepared for college before they enter but it leads back to the larger discussion this and last week's readings point to. How do you find a proven method of effectively teaching or improving writing? I feel that under-prepared students are the result of a system that is unsure of how to remedy this problem we're reading about, what I have come to think of as "The Composition Mystique."
ReplyDeleteI work at Pikes Peak Community College, and because of their open admission policy (and maybe other reasons) they administer placement tests to all students and have remedial classes for English, Reading, and Math. Three levels of remedial instruction: 030, 060, and 090. Now admittedly, community colleges attract students who are probably not ready for 4 year college classes. Still, it's sobering how many students end up in these remedial classes.
ReplyDeleteThere was an excellent, and alarming, article in the Washington Post that talked about how research papers have virtually disappeared from high school English classes: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2009/11/_doris_burton_taught_us.html.
Is this a trend that is increasing? Because if so, we have serious problems ahead of us.
In "Striking a Balance - Seeking a Discipline," Robert Tremmel makes the argument that "writing teacher education for secondary teachers should not be a completely separate enterprise from writing teacher education for first year composition." (368) This comment is very interesting in light of the issue being raised here about remedial courses. Tremmel is making the point that freshman comp should build upon what the students already know, which would be simpler if there was some kind of communication between secondary and university education. Obviously, this is much more easily said than done, but it may help eliminate the need for three semesters worth of remedial courses if there was some form of cooperation. From the student's perspective, it must be demoralizing and infuriating to find that you may need a year and a half of instruction to be at entry level.
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