Something has been bothering me lately. It has recently come to my attention that a majority of college students are idiots - or at least that's what they project - and the main reason they come off this way is due to the fact that they can't write their way out of a paper bag. Since I've recently become a tutor at the University Writing Center
One student is here on a student Visa and the other is a resident of California California
Despite the many similarities between the problems Student A and Student B face, they are very different students, and it has been a rather interesting experience working with both of them. After four weeks or so of closely working with them, I have to say Student A is improving at a much faster rate than Student B. In fact, I would venture to say Student B is not improving at all - and trust me, it's not because of anything I am, or not, doing. There is a qualitative difference between the two students, and it honestly comes down to Student A caring and Student B not giving any sorts of fucks.
Now I know it's easy for a tutor to say that it's the tutee's fault; however, there is a definite trend in the realm of tutoring: foreign - whether exchange students or simply non-native speakers of English - students are better students than most native-speakers of English. If I'm tutoring a non-native speaker of English, I can say fancy words like "infinitive" or "superlative," but when I'm tutoring a native-speaker, I'd be wasting my breath if I said "predicate" or "adverbial clause." Again, I know that it's easy for the tutor to toss around the blame and say "well shit, let's just get some more grammar classes!" but, really, that's not the best idea. Grammar classes, especially for people who aren't going to study it extensively, can actually serve as a detriment to a student's growth. Grammar is prescriptive, meaning we don't really know exactly how we learn it - we just do. Sound retarded? Yeah, I think so, too, but that's seriously how it works. Simply put, grammar classes, or lack thereof, are not the reasons why people can't write - the source of the problem is the individual.
I can say, since I'm a tutor and I work closely with people in low-level English courses, I don't know a single student enrolled in a class below Freshman Composition who has taken a single grammar class; on the other hand, I can also say I know a handful of people who have taken only one grammar in their college careers. I think I know a couple of students who have taken more than one grammar class, but they're all crazy bastards who want to get their Masters in TESL. But that's neither here nor there. What is important, however, is that we, as students, all have a more or less equal playing field in terms of the knowledge of basic grammar.
If you've made it this far without rolling your eyes or wishing it was Eric Strege's day to blog, congratulations, and I swear to Walt I'm about to make my point. So here it is. The problem with people writing is the student's level of apathy. Why are non-native speakers such great students? Simple: they fucking need to learn the in's and out's of how to write a paper. They need to pass the GWT in order to get a Bachelor's degree, and if they don't they'll be in trouble. They'll face being deported without a quality college education. They'll be set back three to five years in their life, and they'll face a myriad of problems once they return to their home countries. Native speakers of English, namely American citizens, don't really have this fear. They know they'll be able to get something worked out. They know they'll be able to pass the GWT, even if they do have to take it more than once. And even if they don't, what's the worst that could happen? Not much, to be quite honest. Having a college education doesn't grant anyone anything anymore, and there are plenty of people who lead their lives without college degrees.
So what's the point of this blog? I'm not sure, really. I do hope, however, some of you will take a look at the world we live in and perhaps implore ourselves to do better - to actually care about something. The standards are low, folks, and it seems to me that we're starting to just give up. Writing is important, people. It's what separates us from monkeys. So please, don't be a monkey. Pick up a pen and fucking writing something meaningful.
Until next time,
JF
It is often hard to place the blame of falling behind, especially in a subject such as writing, on the student. Writing is complicated and probably the single hardest subject to teach in school because it does not progress linearly like a math or even a literature class does. When one enters a writing class, they are surrounded by other people with a variety of writing skill levels. The teacher cannot possibly attack and overcome each of these problems during a single quarter, while still covering the materials required of the class itself. This would just be unrealistic. Linguists have been trying to solve this problem for decades now. In 1970s the writing conference movement began, headed by linguists such as Donald Murray and Muriel Harris and today many of their methods can be seen integrated into college classrooms, take Dr. Moss’s class at Cal Poly Pomona for example. However, even though many of the methods of Donald Murray and Muriel Harris have been incorporated into a writing class, and these methods do provide for a better learning environment for writing, the only real hope for a struggling writer is a one-to-one session with a tutor or teacher who will identify every problem that the writer has and attempt to fix it. Yes, a lot of this relies on the student to actually go to a teacher and ask for help. But in a society where writing instructors are often cruel and people, in their early years of writing and education, are made fun of because they do not know how to use a comma or what an adverbial clause is versus a prepositional phrase, it is no surprise that a student would rather give up than attempt a complex writing task and ask for help along the way. Fewer words on a page means fewer chances to make a mistake and fewer chances of being ridiculed or criticized.
ReplyDeleteFor many people, writing is a gift that has always come naturally. And you are right when you say that grammar is often unsuccessful when taught and can actually be detrimental to the student, but then again, so can trying to learn anything complex when your foundations are weak. If grammar classes where taught more frequently and writing as a means of expression versus as a formulaic design was stressed more in schools, we might not have so many students entering college not knowing what a comma is used for. I can only speculate on the benefits of these changes, but I would imagine that if grammar was built upon year after year and became a norm in the education system, it would only benefit the writer. Our minds are strengthened the more we use them. A person who has learned math and science their entire life will excel in these subjects, that is no surprise. It is just like a person who plays soccer their entire life, they will excel in soccer over swimming. And no one would expect someone who has only played soccer for a few months to be a very proficient soccer player. Well the same holds true for writing. We cannot expect people who have avoided writing their whole life, for one reason or another, to excel or even be proficient in writing. We need to have students practice writing if we are to expect them to succeed in it, but they also need to be coached along the way. The problems many writers face today cannot solely placed as the fault of the writer himself; instead it is important to look at why the writer is how he is, and how academia could be changed in order to better teach writing.
Sorry for the length of this, this blog just tickled my fancy.
-Nick
I would never, under any circumstance, wish that it was Eric's day to blog.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some interesting ideas, Nick; however, as I said in the article, I don't think grammar classes, or the lack thereof, are the source of student's inability to write, nor do I believe that writing is a talent which lies latent in the individual, due to the fact that writing is unnatural. I went to primary and secondary schools which were more or less the same as most of the tutees I see in the writing center, so I don't think the problem could possibly be grammar. After all, perfect grammar does not make a substantive paper.
ReplyDeleteSo, I will refocus my initial postulation and claim writing assignments as the source of the problem. I was thinking about what could possibly be different between other students and me, and I really do think writing assignments are a viable source of many writing problems.
I recently found one of my freshman composition papers, and I have to say it was pretty awful. Although my grammar was decent for a college freshman and I understood the mechanics of basic structure, what was actually being said was pretty shallow - at least shallow in comparison to the subject matter I frequently write about now. Looking over the assignment, I think the reason why the paper was so bad was because the prompt was bad. It was a simple ID essay, and those are pretty awful. There was little to no critical thinking involved in the writing of the essay, and this made me think degrees of critical thinking must be why some students are better at writing than others.
So, Nick, think about the best papers you've looked over at the UWC. When I think about all of the papers I've seen, EGR (ethical issues in engineering) papers are some of the best I've read. The prompts present moral and ethical dilemas, and the students must think critically and make an argument to support why they think the way they think. On the other hand, some of the worst papers I've seen are ENG 104 papers - especially the identification/classification papers.
First of all, no one writes ID papers for anything but ENG 104. Second of all, the process papaers require little to no critical thinking. Yes, process papers are a bit more in depth than one might initially think - if you don't think so, sit in on someone acting out a process paper of making a PB&J sandwich; it's fucking annoying - however, these types of assignments are essentially useless, in my honest opinion, that is.
The reason I bring this up is because some students write less than eight essays in their college career. In fact, my sister, who attends a college in Orange County, claims to have only written five essays in her college career, and they were all IDs, summary-based book reports, and process papers. So if students are only getting these surface level writing assignments, how could they possibly develope into good writers? Well, it's sad to say, but I don't think they do. I don't think they stand much of a chance.
We've all said writing is something that needs to be practiced and refined, but if students are only receiving assignments which merely serve as a way to earn a passing grade in a class, as a result of not caring about inane essays subjects, there is no way they'll ever care enough to actually become decent writers, nor will they be afforded to become decent writers even if they want to. Writing assignments need to be thought provoking and brain-twisting. They need to actually make students question their beliefs. If students actually care about what they're writing about, and they actually find it necessary for them to express themselves meaningfully, then they need to be given assingments which will foster this desire.
Thoughts?
JF