Two Ends to Composition

I may restate myself from the Take 20 response paper, because that paper sums up a lot of my thoughts on this topic.

The "End" of Composition

Composition exists to give students skills in communication which can transfer from freshman comp to senior English, from analyzing a chemistry lab to the workplace. Composition should teach students to formulate a clear thesis from an idea, and to understand the main point of essays, articles, speeches, etc. It should teach students different methods of persuasion, and which are more effective. Composition should also teach students to be critical thinkers.

The Means to the "End"

1. Develop a list of transferable skills: summarizing and paraphrasing, writing a professional letter and e-mail, basic grammar (punctuation, capitalization, sentance construction), maybe even grant-writing and internship/graduate school application letters. Create a class based on these transferable skills, possibly called "Business Writing," and require students to take it during their junior year. I think that's the best time - students will need to start thinking about internships that summer, graduate school the following fall, and a job the following spring.

This course will also address the need for critical thinking. Students will be given essays and articles to read and summarize; later in the semester, students will identify the methods of persuasion used by an author, and which methods are most effective. Students should also bring in examples of various persuasive tools. Also, students will watch speeches, and determine the persuasive techniques used. Students will learn the concept of counter-arguments (which they should be familiar with by junior year), and will read various work, including their own from other courses, to determine where a counter-argument would be effective.

2. Develop major-specific courses; or, at the very least, offer one course in "writing in the humanities" and one course in "writing in the sciences." Require students to take one of these courses their freshman year, depending on their major. If a student is undeclared, he or she may choose one to take; however, to graduate with a BS, a student must take "writing in the sciences"; to graduate with a BA, a student must take "writing in the humanities."

a. Writing in the humanities: Cover proper form of documentation for English, history and psychology papers (ie. parenthetical documentation vs footnotes vs endnotes). Also, proper tense use in history papers (past) vs literature papers (present). Explain passive and active voice, when it is appropriate to use one or the other. Focus on thesis, transitions, argument and counter-arguments, different schools of literary and historical analysis. Teach basic research skills, specific to the liberal arts. Require a research paper.

b. Writing in the sciences: Cover proper documentation in various fields (physics, biology, chemistry). Also, discuss proper tense use, and explain that use of the passive voice is appropriate in scientific articles. Teach the conventions of a basic lab report and scholarly articles. Teach basic research skills, specific to sciences. Require a research paper.

Feasibility

Accomplishing courses such as this on a large scale would require extensive teacher and grader training, an extremely specific syllabus including in class activities and out of class assignments. It would require a lot of input from various departments and cooperation of departments in deciding what material to include and what to omit. Students would need to enter college with an idea of their area of study, something often not decided until junior year. To be most effective, the major specific courses would use work from the students other courses, such as a history or english paper. This assumes the students are taking a course in their major freshman year.

Can this be done on a large scale? The business writing class can. It would be possible to make assignments for that course which would easily fit into a system such as TOPIC. Would a discipline specific course work in a system such as TOPIC? Yes, if a system like TOPIC was created to exist seperatly from the humanities TOPIC, for the science course. It would require a lot of training for graders and teachers, since there wouldn't just be a course in "English Writing" or "History Writing."

Conclusion

I have never taught in a classroom. I have only been a student in a classroom. Is this too much to expect from students, from teachers, from graders? I don't know. Is this something one can actually accomplish in a classroom in one semester? I don't know. I guess if something like this is ever implemented, I'll see.