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Mina Shaughnessy Annotated Bibliography Articles

Shaughnessy begins with a reminder to the reader that “[o]ne school’s remedial student may be another’s regular or advanced freshman” (178). She gives a brief overview of some of the difficulties encountered by both students and teachers in a Basic Writing composition class. One of these is the competition between “the grammars and logics of academia” and “those [the student] has acquired on his own” (193). Shaughnessy stresses the important position of the teacher in this instance as a “mediat[or] between the two worlds” (193). Not only does she provide an extensive bibliography of texts and essays relevant to Basic Writing and explains how the works interrelate. She divides her bibliography into four categories: Classic Studies of Language, Readings in Grammar, Readings on Language in Various Social Settings, and Readings on Writing. This revised edition of Teaching Composition follows with Andrea Lunsford’s “An Update of the Bibliography on Basic Writing” (207).

Shaughnessy uses metaphors to describe the four developmental stages that emphasize the “[central focus] of the teacher’s emotional energy during that stage” of interaction with his or her students (234). The first stage, “GUARDING THE TOWER,” marks the initial encounter between the teacher and student where the teacher attempts to “guard the tower” built from and around the methods and standards that have been held prior to Open Admissions (234–235). The second stage, “CONVERTING THE NATIVES,” exists because the teacher is responsible for “carry[ing] the technology of advanced literacy to the inhabitants of an underdeveloped country” (235). However, these attempts often fail because the instructor speaks in the foreign language of academia. He or she must learn to speak in a manner that is understandable to students (236). “SOUNDING THE DEPTHS” is the third stage of development in which the teacher evaluates the student’s writing to gain a better understanding of how and what needs to be taught (236). The final stage, “DIVING IN,” occurs when the teacher decides “to remediate himself, to become a student of new disciplines and of his students themselves” (238). The teacher immerses himself or herself in the “challenging” commitment of teaching basic writers (239).

Shaughnessy believes that there are three reasons for this “malady” (91–92). The first concerns the job of teaching of writing, and its inability to compete “with [the elevated status of] other subjects in the department” (92). English professors dislike of teaching basic writing skills to students results in the classes being taught “by the most marginal members of the profession,” which is basically any instructor who is not an experienced or tenured white male (91). Those who are selected to teach tend to be “ill-prepared” because they are “[not familiar] with the psychology of writing,” the historical evolution of writing from being “distributed more widely across classes” to its present day “exclusive cultivation” among the privileged, and “the anthropological or cultural part of writing…the study of the functions…[and] forms of academic writing” (91–93). Her second reason stems from the professor’s “tendency to underestimate the capabilities and the difficulties of students whose backgrounds and states of preparation are very different from his [or hers]” (94). This underestimation, if unchecked, only widens the gap of communication between professor and student making it even more difficult to effectively teach writing. The final reason for the “malady” results from the lack of “rewards and privileges” offered as incentive for professors not only to continue teaching composition, but to invest themselves in the advancement of the field in practice and application for the students, as well as, to cause fellow academics to re-evaluate their perception of its importance (95).

Shaughnessy writes the Introduction for the premier issue of the Journal of Basic Writing. She explains that the journal was created to help those College English teachers who were finding themselves in the “unmapped territory” of writing instruction for the diverse student population created by Open Admissions (2). These instructors who once taught about “poems or novels, plays or criticism” now needed “to take a closer look at the job of teaching writing” (3). All of the essays in this issue are written by teachers who have “been teaching writing for the past five years or more in the Basic Writing Program at City College [in New York]” (3). She acknowledges that the focus for all of these essays, error, “may seem to be an old place to begin a new discussion about teaching writing” (3). However, she attests that there is “logic” to be found in a student’s errors, and by trying to understand and interpret this “logic” will help the instructor decided the best manner in which to teach the student to write (2). Shaughnessy ends the Introduction with an invitation to “other teachers from other open admission campuses” to submit essays for future issues of the Journal of Basic Writing (4).

The Open Admissions writing instructor is held to a standard that is based on the standards of “social scientists” rather than being judged based on a set of standards that actually measure the progress of his or her student’s individual and long term progress in the development of writing skills (401). Those who are against Open Admissions insist that students’ progress or success be measured in “attrition rates, grade point averages, or objective tests” (401). Shaughnessy believes such measurement to be “insensitiv[e]” (402). The use of these criteria as a way of measuring a the impact or influence a writing course has upon these students sets the teacher up to fail to meet the standards and causes him or her to feel “inferior” among colleagues (401). The teachers feel pressured to meet a numeric goal set by those who have little understanding of writing instruction let alone the reasonable expectations for a student in the time span of a semester. Unfortunately for the students, this pressure will sometimes cause the instructors to “[move] faster through [the] lessons than [they] should in order to ‘cover the ground’” (402). Shaughnessy believes that the Open Admissions teachers should take it upon themselves to develop a new and more accurate method of evaluating the progress of the students and their progress as teachers.

Shaughnessy begins by comparing the act of teaching reading and writing to teaching someone “to play the piano or to dance or to play football” (317). Her point is that these activities have an established and sequential method of instruction while the teaching of reading and writing does not. In order to better prepare teachers for the writing classroom, Shaughnessy believes more research must be done in the field. She outlines the four areas she feels to be most important by asking questions to get the research ball rolling. The first area is “signs of growth” where Shaughnessy observes that the “unprepared writers” growth is different from their “better-prepared” peers, therefore arguing the need to study “the developing writer…over four- or five-year stretches (318). The second is the development and contribution of a student’s “sub-skills of writing” which include “spelling, vocabulary, and syntax” (318). The third area of study pertains to the “skills we have failed to take note of in our analysis of academic tasks” (319). Shaughnessy addresses the “beginning adult writers” lack of familiarity with “the rituals and ways of winning arguments in academia” (319). The fourth and final area in need of research should focus on “what [can, does, and should] go on in the composition classroom” (320).

Shaughnessy opposes the idea that there is a specific “foundation” from which writing evolves (103). She believes that the only way “to [improve] writing is [by] writing” (103). Often English professors who teach composition courses use what they know, literature, to teach students how to write. She explains how the writer is simultaneously his or her own reader. Writing is more than written speech and learning how “to make choices (semantic, syntactic, organizational)” which clarify meaning (105). Shaughnessy states that it is a common misconception for students to think that writing must be perfect upon the page and believes they “have to discover that the mess [of drafts and revisions] is writing; the published book is written” (105). She does not see the writing instructor as an absolute necessity for learning to write; however, “he [or she] can save the student time” by sharing knowledge (106). Shaughnessy argues that “a teacher must know what skills…[and] difficulties’” are encountered in “basic English” in order to provide effective guidance to the student (106). The five skill areas given by Shaughnessy are: handwriting, spelling and punctuation, making sentences, ordering sentences, and grammatical correctness. She believes that it is through the development of student focused exercises that the student will be “able to invent rather than memorize answers” (114). She stresses the concept of viewing the student as an individual; therefore, it is necessary for the teacher to adjust his or her teaching practices to accommodate the student and not to submit the student to the instructional models which have already proved to be fruitless.

This article was “originally prepared in November 1976 as a working paper for the CUNY Task Force on Writing” (115). There are two territories, “choices” and “givens,” one must considering when evaluating writing proficiency (115). The “choices” deal with “the selection of words and sentences patterns and rhetorical strategies” unlike the “givens” which are “concerned with correct forms” (115). Shaughnessy outlines five points to consider when evaluating the “development…of [a student’s] proficiency” (116). Three of the five points fall under the category of “choices” (116). They are “exposure to written English,” the understanding that “[the unprepared student’s proficiency is not] permanent,” and the acknowledgment that there are “key competencies” of writing development “that can and ought to be reached by the end of formal instruction” (116). The two points Shaughnessy lists as “givens” are “grammars, punctuation, spelling” and the student’s ability to achieve “set criteria for correctness” within “the boundaries…of training time” (117). It should be noted that Shaughnessy ends by stating “the committee recommends that the criteria listed above be refined through the process of examining cases in reader-training sessions” (119).