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.