In
order to answer this question, I think we must first consider what we want the
point of first year writing to be. Since all students are required to take
first year writing, it is impossible to tailor the course to fit the needs of a
specific major or group of majors. Therefore we must consider the question—what
writing skills do all college students need?
At
the risk of stating the obvious, they need the skills to succeed in their
college courses. As the first year writing program is designed to be taken as a
freshman, many of our students will go on to write many more college papers
beyond what we assign them. So they need to be able to successfully write an
essay.
In
my time as an undergraduate, I found that a five page essay was pretty standard
for most of my courses, with the exception of some research papers in more
advanced classes. As the quality of high schools from which our students come
vary, it is doubtful that many of them have a solid understanding of how to go
about writing such a paper. For this reason, I believe that it is valuable in a
first year course to go through the steps of writing an essay, ideally breaking
it up into smaller and more manageable assignments.
From
my own past experience I know that it is easier to tackle a longer project when
it is broken up into smaller parts. For example, one lesson might focus on
having the students write a workable thesis. The next might focus on having
them write an outline. I think this would be especially valuable, as I noticed
in my grading of BA 1 that a fair number of students said that one of their
weaknesses was an inability to be organized in their writing. They seemed to think
that they had plenty of ideas, but were simply unable to communicate them in a
way that made sense to others. Once the students had a working outline, they
could turn their attention to building up a complete essay by the end of the course.
That
is not to say, however, that I think our current emphasis on rhetorical analysis
is not valuable. On the contrary, I think that rhetorical analysis can be
valuable not only for our students’ remaining college courses, but for any
reading or writing they do in their lives. Rhetorical analysis, when done well,
allows students to become more aware of the choices that are made in a piece of
writing. When they learn to look at writing objectively, they learn to better
evaluate others’ arguments. At the same time, they learn how to better argue
their own points. Regardless of the career they mean to pursue, the ability to
communicate one’s points articulately is invaluable. For this reason,
rhetorical analysis also fits with the goal of the course to prepare students
from all majors for success in college, as well as in future life.
Mary--Sounds like you're doing a lot of grading these days! Yes, we must think about what FYC is about in order to know what assignments to include, and also to know why we're valuing certain things in each assignment. Teaching is akin to writing, isn't it? There's a reader/writer/text or rhetorical triangle/situation within each teachable moment. So what are those skills students need? Good analysis of weaknesses in BA-1. Think through what's working and what could possibly be improved in the curriculum that you're working in. Good thinking about career or "after-the-academy" approach, what Bruffee calls the classroom without walls, what Dewey suggests in terms of preparing students for positions in society.
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