Final Thoughts on Basic Writing

 I think the biggest take away from this class for me was what I learned from the group project on the Accelerated Learning Program at the Community College of Baltimore County.  We've read a lot about the problems that basic writers face and the inefficacy of many developmental writing classes but the research on ALP showed that these problems are widely acknowledged and that there is an active force behind finding solutions for these issues. Peter Dow Adam's proposal at the 1992 Conference of Basic Writing has gained traction and ALP programs are now part of the curriculum in community colleges across the United States, including the newly minted program at Queensborough Community College.
   
     Classroom teachers, despite good intentions, are often rendered ineffective because of institutionally imposed standards and curriculum. What's worse is that we are often aware of our own insufficiency but are unable to see a way out.  The Accelerated Learning Program is a way out even if it isn't part of whatever institution that we're teaching in because we can study the techniques used therein and implement them in "traditional" classes. This is great news.  Teachers typically get into the field out of somewhat altruistic motives -- we're certainly not getting rich doing it -- our compensation is linked to our students' success.  If we have low pass rates or our students are struggling, that negatively affects our performance as teachers and makes us even less effective in the classroom.  We all know teachers who seem to have given up. Perhaps, we've all been in classes that were taught by teachers that have given up.  It's excruciating.

     It's really good to know that there are things happening that will increase teacher compensation by increasing success rates for our students. It's equally beneficial for us to understand that we need to be advocates for the students we serve rather than servants of our institutions.  We should remember that change won't happen unless we demand it.

Future Basic Writing Teachers!

Resources for Teachers of Basic Writing

Council on Basic Writing Blog

E-portfolios at LaGuardia Community College

Accelerated Learning Program website

Podcast of Sun-Woo Cho from CCRC on ALP research findings

Working Paper No. 53: Research on ALP outcomes

Review of the Accelerated Learning Program at the Community College of Baltimore County

ALP Research Report

Reflections on Literacy Narrative "The Red Pony"

Reflective essay on Literacy Narrative

Comment on "Basic Writing Reconsidered" by Peter Dow Adams - What's Left Out? (from ALP blog)

         I agree with much of your assessment about the conditions that lead to the necessity of basic writing classes and the quality of those basic writing classes. One of my biggest problems with remediation programs is that students have to pay for classes that they don't get credit for. If it is a requirement of a program, some credit should be granted toward the completion of a degree. I also think that students who test into these programs should be allowed to take other classes simultaneously. If the student has more invested in the educational experience, they are more likely to succeed. It's not just...I have to take this class to get into a degree program; it's I have to complete this class along with another class--maybe a humanities course or computer science--in order to succeed in this program. Requiring basic writing and excluding students from any other options sends a very clear message--you're not good enough to participate in the institution that you're a student in. It's a very strange position to be in, I think--and one that values one kind of literacy above all the rest. 

     I also think there's a problem with the bar being set too low. I know a lot of people--some of them in my own family--who didn't succeed in post secondary education. And, I can tell you--there's nothing wrong with their brains--they're just not that good at the standard. There's a man I see sometimes on the 2 train, he calls himself Blue, he gets on the train, performs his own poetry an sells his self-published books. His background--as described by his poetry--was very difficult--drugs, jail etc. Some of his poems describe experiences he had in school--sitting in the back row...not taken seriously...he learned, basically, that if he was quiet the teacher gave him a passing grade. Talk about setting the bar low! Just be quiet and you pass. His experience speaks to an educational experience wherein people are alienated; they are not important, they don't have anything to contribute. It's really sad. Blue found a way out of the silence through poetry--his poetry is pretty good, I think, and I've read quite a bit of poetry. Many people never find that outlet, they're not compelled to speak out in the way that he is--by some inner mechanism--so, they attempt a more traditional route--school. They get the same message he did. Teachers should respect students' experiences, even if we don't know where they're coming from. It's easy to ignore people that don't fit the mold, don't perform the standard. Respect, I think, goes a long way in motivating people to learn. Classroom practices need to send the message that the students do have something to contribute and help them contribute better and in different ways. We need to teach skills that move between worlds and allow students to succeed wherever they want.

"Funding and Support for Basic Writing: Why is There so Little?" by Mary Jo Berger (from ALP blog)

  In "Funding and Support for Basic Writing: Why is There so Little?", Mary Jo Berger asks and attempts to answer the question: "Are our institutions reneging on their commitment to at-risk students?" Her first line of inquiry has to do with the question itself.  She wonders whether this commitment has ever actually been made and if so, by whom.  She sets points out several important moments in education wherein the promise may have been made: perhaps in the 70's when there was excitement around Mina Shaunnessey's Errors and Expectations, or maybe in the 80's when colleges were publicly stating their support or "diversity" and wooed black and Latino students to replace the dwindling body of traditional students.  Although she cannot determine when or if the question has ever been asked, she acknowledges the need for increased funding for developmental programs.

     Berger likens basic writing to a neglected item all but forgotten on the top shelf of a closet in the spare room.  She asserts that  basic writing, as part of general education, belongs to no one; it "belongs" neither to faculty, students or administration.  As it belongs to no one, it lacks a powerful advocate who could lobby on its behalf  hence it is underfunded. Despite its lack of both money and status, Berger exhorts teachers of basic writing to be a voice of advocacy for a program that is considered by some "shameful,...by recognizing [writing teachers] presence, let alone our value, will destroy traditional "educational values." (83) She emphasizes that understanding how institutional funding works is the first step to getting a bigger slice of the pie.

     Berger describes the workings of higher educations processes as "organized anarchy", a hotbed of ambiguity and individualism. In this situation, decisions for support and funding are often "the by-products, not of efficiently implementing unambiguous goals through a bureaucratic chain nor the result of a consensus reached by professionals, but of unintended and/or unplanned activity."(84) Berger asserts that there are important characteristics of higher education which we must be aware of if we intend to increase funding for basic writing.

     The first characteristic is that inactivity prevails in decision making in higher education.  Would be advocates have such limited time that they're unable to participate in the decision-making process.  So, most of the decisions are made by only a few people. Secondly, participation in decision-making tends to be intermittent; Berger recommends persistence by the advocates as a means of increasing funding for basic writing programs. The third characteristic of "organized anarchy" is conflict, Berger advises engaging in the process with stats and persuasive arguments. She also recommends that we mobilize allies such as students, parents, co-workers, interest groups and using the language of the institution to talk about our goals for basic writing students.

     The article concludes with Berger's counsel on the best ways to increase funding in this sorely needed area. First, understand the power structures of your institution. Second, publicize what we do as basic writing teachers. Next, organize for action, mobilize allies to help. And finally, talk persuasively to anyone who will listen.

Politics of Basic Writing" by Karen Greenberg (from ALP blog)

 In the Politics of Basic Writing", Karen Greenberg embraces her profession, a basic writing teacher, fully comprehending that it's a designation considered, in some way, "shameful." She also describes her role in directing her college's Developmental English Program as being inextricably linked with to research and development in the tools that assess success in these writing programs.  She disagrees with David Bartholomae's assertion that "most basic writing courses are "obstacles rather than opportunities" (65) and with his concern about the veracity of the assessment tools that place students into developmental writing classes. While she seems to agree that assessment tools are, in many cases, unreliable, she contends that it's not because assessment tools, in and of themselves, aren't useful.  Rather, it's that the assessment tools are so distrusted among teachers of basic--and other--writing courses that they essentially reject them as inappropriate and don't participate in their invention or implementation.  When writing teachers don't participate, the task of creating and implementing the assessment tools is quickly assumed by administrators and state legislators-- a group that has neither first-hand knowledge of the workings of writing programs nor any real incentive to support them or ensure that the students are successful. Greenberg seems to be taking Mary Berger's advice to heart by agreeing that teachers need to be more invested in the process to ensure a better result and to ensure that these programs aren't simply eliminated from the curriculum.

     Greenberg states that despite the misgivings of teachers, “state-mandated assessments of college basic skills programs are sweeping the country.” (65) Successful outcomes for basic writing programs will continue to diminish because already underfunded programs will continue to atrophy as funding is further reduced.  If the college has limited money, they are likely to favor programs that produce results that can be qualified as “successful” by state-mandated assessment tools. Greenberg stresses the importance of showing that these programs are useful to college success as a whole.  She states that the theories associated with basic writing practices need to inform the reality of the basic writing classroom and vice versa.  Despite theoretical  insights into basic writing practices gained from diverse fields such as cognitive psychology and applied linguistics, classroom practices continue to follow a “remedial” model and too many basic writers “are subjected to skills/drills content and to pedagogies that conceptualize writing as a set of subskills that must be mastered in a series of steps and stages.” (67) Greenberg goes on to describe basic writing instruction and assessment at CCNY and defines the goal of the program, “to help students develop more sophisticated ways of thinking and writing, based on induction, deduction, generalization and evidence.” (67) Greenberg connects the growth and diversification of basic skills programs at CUNY as leading to the inception of a variety of programs across the CUNY system.

     Greenberg writes that CUNY’s writing programs depend upon early identification of students’ strengths and weaknesses as determined by the CUNY Writing Skills Assessment Test -- a test developed by writing teacher “who surveyed the research and practice in the field of composition” (68) and based on academic research and the premise that the most important writing skill for these students was the ability to write “expositive/argumentative essays in Standard Written Academic English.” (68) The test, as a tool, is more effective than many, according to Greenberg, because it is read and evaluated by two or three full-time writing teachers. In her article, “The Politics of Basic Writing”, Karen Greenberg appraises the test and the outcomes as successful, citing 80%-93% pass rates at Hunter College.  She further states that the persistence and graduation rates of students who enter as basic writers are comparable to students that tested out of basic writing coursework.  These results, Greenberg claims, prove her assertion that assessment tools can be effective if they’re crafted and administered by teachers of basic writing rather than administrators without access to or knowledge of the student population they serve.   

      

Book Review

Review of the Accelerated Learning Program at the Community College of Baltimore County

Response to “The Phenomenology of Error” by Joseph M. Williams

     In “The Phenomenology of Error”, Joseph Williams aptly points out that the typical treatment of grammatical errors is far harsher than the error itself merits. He questions why this is so and also questions how the seriousness of the error is determined.  This question is puzzling especially since a group of university professors, after reading a manuscript about the proper treatment of errors, disagreed with each other about which of the errors was serious enough to merit attention.  Add to this the fact that after defining faulty parallelism in his trusted grammar handbook, The Elements of Style, E.B. White committed the error – according to his own definition-- twice in one paragraph.  So, one student paper will be corrected differently by whatever number of “experts” read the paper.  The corrections will be based on a number of factors including the experts’ “emotional investment in defining and condemning error” (155) and the perceived seriousness of the error. This seems an inefficient approach if our goal is to improve student writing.  It also seems an extremely prescriptive treatment of language. 

     Language is constantly transformed by usage especially in diverse populations.  The idea that grammatical rules should stand while linguistic styles, word definition of  and usage and idiomatic expressions change and are adopted into  mainstream vernacular speech is absurd. Just consider how the tech explosion influenced language, we’ve added to the mix verbs like text, upload, download and google. We’ve also layered meanings onto older verbs such as search, surf and scroll. There are also hundreds of new nouns and word combinations that left the world of jargon and entered mainstream language. It seems incongruous to take a descriptive approach with regard to meaning and a prescriptive approach with regard to grammar.

Letter to Reggie Blackwell

37 St Johns Pl.

Brooklyn, NY 11217

September 18, 2014

Reggie Blackwell

Guest Speaker, ENGL C0862

City College of New York, CUNY

Dear Mr. Blackwell:

      Thank you for visiting and sharing your life experiences with the class. As teachers, it’s important we should understand the reasons why students may not succeed in their attempts to acquire formal education. Of course, in theory, we know the reasons. However, it’s always much more powerful when the story comes from a real person who lived the experience.

      I was very impressed with the objectivity with which you told your story. It’s rare that people relate past, perhaps painful, experiences without self-pity but your story didn’t contain even a hint of that. On the contrary, your narration focused on the positive events in your life and emphasized your optimistic outlook. In my opinion, that character trait is extremely important and, perhaps, one of the main reasons that you have ultimately achieved such a high level of formal education. The idea that there’s only one way to be happy is a very limiting perspective and I believe that you, by saying that you were always pretty happy despite somewhat trying circumstances, demonstrated that self-satisfaction and well-being aren’t tied to anything particular that you may achieve. Rather, they are a product of positive interaction with the people in your environment.

      Finally, I applaud your response to one of my classmates’ questions about how your “lack of education” negatively impacted your life. You were able to verbalize, without condescension, the fact that you never lacked education.  Rather, that you hadn’t received the required amount of formal education. I think that people sometimes forget that there’s a whole world of practical experience and knowledge that people acquire over a lifetime. I think that practical knowledge is as important, if not more important, than anything you can ever learn in school. Rather than noting a “lack”, we teachers need to focus on and respect what people do know and then work toward helping them expand their body of knowledge in a more academic direction.  Again, thank you for sharing your story. You have a special gift to share with people who may not have started in the best place. If you continue to share your experiences, I’m sure that you’ll positively impact many lives.

Sincerely,

Caitlin Geoghan

Literacy Narrative

The Red Pony

Response to “Intentions and Revisions” by Nancy Sommers

     Nancy Sommers “Intentions and Revisions” depicts the revision process, as implemented in the composition classroom as a “non-creative act” during which minor points are corrected but nothing of value is added to the writing.  She details a 3 year study between unskilled and skilled writers and discovers that there is a major difference in their evaluation and revision processes.  The unskilled writer seems inhibited by grammatical rules and approaches writing as if it needs to progress in a certain order—like the student, Rita, who rewrote her introduction 6 times and ended up with a result worse than some of the earlier drafts.  Rita clearly understood the importance of the thesis statement but her efforts to craft her opening paragraph actually obscured her argument by adding information unrelated to her thesis. 

     Skilled writers exhibit a different pattern.  Walter, a skilled writer, started with an informal structure that led into an anecdote which contextualized his thesis making it accessible to his audience. He was much more willing to work outside of the boundaries of “correct” writing understanding—from his experience—that the initial writing was a place to explore and experiment with language. 

     I think teachers’ tendency to correct grammar in initial drafts leads students to seek “correctness” above meaning.  Drafts returned to students with grammatical corrections teach them that they always have to turn in polished work rather than that initial drafts are about communicating their ideas and that they are working toward clear expression rather than grammatical accuracy.  Nancy Sommers article illustrates this point exactly and demonstrates how the emphasis on correctness can actually inhibit the growth of student writers.

Response to “Making Meaning Clear: The Logic of Revision” by Donald M. Murray

     What strikes me most about this essay is this statement: “The teacher must give the responsibility for the text to the writer…”(34) in that it, for me, perfectly sums up how teachers, with the best of intentions, can sometimes hinder a basic writer’s progress. When students turn in a first draft, many teachers immediately mark errors related to lower order concerns (LOC). The student then revises the document; however, the teacher has interfered with the revision process by giving students information about where the students should focus his/her efforts—on LOCs. The student typically trusts that the teacher is giving them the correct information and focuses his/her revision process on spelling, punctuation and grammar.  While students need to understand and use these conventions to be truly proficient, these errors are --by far -- less important than organization, clear focus and development of the narrative so that the audience can access the writer’s purpose. The students’ revision process, disrupted in this way, may lead them to simply correct the errors marked by the teacher and, after learning nothing, consider their work done. This focus, by the teacher on LOCs, basically subverts the process and potential of writing. It inhibits the growth of critical thinking skills, the ability to reflect on writing and the discipline to tough it out through what can be a very difficult process. Teachers—and again, I’m including myself—need to allow students to do their own work in a way that benefits them in the long run. We need to relinquish control of the process and trust that our students will improve without excessive intervention regarding low order concerns.

Literacy Narrative_The Red Pony_first draft

The Red Pony

     As near as I can remember, it started with the red pony.  It was August: hot.  I was sitting on a dark green bench in the 282 schoolyard, half-watching my brother and some other guys playing half-court pick-up basketball.  I was there most mornings in summer; I was too little to cross the street by myself – that’s what my mother said anyway – so the only way I was getting off the block was to go with my brother to the schoolyard in the mornings.  We had to go early because that was the only way to get one of the three half courts.  If you got there too late, you’d have to stand around and wait for someone to drop out and for a team to pick you up.  Anyway, it wasn’t bad there in the mornings.  We went before it got really hot, before the blacktop started to get soft. I usually watched and waited for some other little kids to arrive, and then we’d play freeze tag or regular tag or old mother witch.

     This morning was different than most; I had a book that Tony, an old Dominican guy on my block that sold piraguas, had given me three or four days before.  Tony was nice to the kids on the block; the piraguas were a quarter but he’d let you slide if you were short.  One day, when I was buying my icy – coconut was my favorite – I noticed an old tan book on the milk crate where Tony usually sat.  The book was pretty big, about 7x9, and it had a picture of a red horse on the cover.  “You reading that book, Tony?” Tony said he’d tried to read it but his Ingles wasn’t good enough even though the book was kind of a kids’ book.  “You wannit, kid?” I wanted it.

            So that morning, I was reading about Buck and the red pony.  Buck was about my age but he lived on a ranch in Montana.  He worked on the ranch even though he was a kid; he was a cowboy and what he wanted more than anything was his own horse.  Well, he’d gotten one, a red pony that he loved more than anything.  He took good care of him; he bathed him and fed him regular, but the pony got sick anyway.  The doctor cut a hole in his throat so he could breathe but the pony didn’t get better.  One day when Buck went to the barn, the pony was gone.  He’d gone off (to die?!!?) Buck caught up with him a couple miles cross-country and was walking him back in when he noticed the vultures circling.

     That’s where I’d stopped the night before.  So, this morning, fingers crossed, I opened the book.  An hour later, it was time to go home.  My brother came over to the bench where I sat crying.  “Somebody mess with you?” I told him what happened to the pony and what Buck did after driven to violence by grief.  “Buck?” I started to tell Brother the whole story. “Wait a minute. You crying over a story in a book?”

     I was.

     When I think of the story today, I can still feel it: tightening chest and throat --shallow breath --watery eyes.  I still feel it; 35 years later --as I write this sentence – I feel the grief, the rage, and the loss of a 10-year-old boy who was the figment of someone’s imagination. It’s magical, no?  That feeling persists, after heartbreak, deaths in the family, addiction and divorce.  I still feel it.

     I think that day I understood, albeit in a very rudimentary way, the power inherent in the written word. Through the story of Buck and his red pony, I was able to really experience – emotionally -- something impossible in my world.  We didn’t get ponies on St. Johns Place; you were lucky if you got a cat.  In that moment, when I was reading, the story was real -- Buck and the red pony were real – what happened in the story really happened.  Maybe not word for word; but something like that; something that made a kid feel angry, sad and powerless; something totally unjust. So, I figured, that story was actually a lot of stories; stories that had different people and places, different events; different injustices but exactly the same feelings.

Response to “Interrogating Texts: From Deferent to Efferent and Aesthetic Reading Practices” by Cheryl Hogue Smith

     I agree with this author’s basic premise that students’ difficulties with regard to writing are directly linked to an inability to deconstruct and distill meaning from complex reading materials.  My own reading and writing skills are rooted in reading.  I was encouraged to read a variety of texts as a young girl; from the process, I inductively gained a set of skills that made writing much easier for me late in life.  I had internalized the conventions of writing and, with time, was able to reproduce what I’d read.  I was able to respond to a logical argument because I could identify the important elements and structure of the piece I’d read and respond in kind.  If a student is unable to identify the argument or what the compelling evidence of the argument is, they s/he is unlikely to be able to respond appropriately. 

     The occurrence of “inattentional blindness” defined by Simons and Chabris as the “phenomenon of missing something that should be obvious,” (59) also plays a part in students’ difficulties with regard to responding to text or even knowing how to respond.  I agree that part of the problem is that students miss important information because they’re concentrating on locating specific information in a text, but I don’t think that describes the problem in its entirety.  Students are also often unaware of the way different genres are structured and therefore can’t differentiate between important information and supporting details. This deficit can indeed be minimized by teaching students how to read and mark information that strikes them and then reread for greater clarity. There is a misconception among students that reading a text can be completed in one sitting and that all pertinent information will be available after that single reading.  Reading, like writing, is a process and needs to be taught as a process.