• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

Mina Shaughnessy Annotated Bibliography Miscellaneous

CONFERENCE PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS

Shaughnessy begins with the explanation that her “research on student writing” has not adhered to the traditional meaning of the word “research” (299). She attributes this variation the ways basic writers’ essays “differed…from [those] English teachers had come to expect from freshman” and that their “errors [were] in surprising places” (300). Her “first point” is that “errors matter,” and once recognized, these errors can provide the key to helping the basic writer improve his or her writing skills (301). Shaughnessy argues it would be more appropriate to consider these students as “beginning writers” not “poor writers” (302). The students’ errors are also an indication of how the educational system has failed them. She supports this by stating “where a system of spelling or punctuation or grammar has not been adequately explained or learned, students tend to invent their own systems,” hence the uniqueness of their errors (303). The “second observation…is an extension of the first” (305). Shaughnessy concludes that students who have difficulty with the “grammatical features of formal English” will also encounter problems “where formal English itself appears least logical or predictable” (305). However, the most important observation, “how deeply unprepared such students are” and how “superficially equipped…teachers [are] for teaching analytical writing” to those students, encompasses these two areas of difficulty and alludes to even more (306).

Shaughnessy defines the “miserable” paradox created by the increased awareness of national literacy issues and the cut in funding and support of programs created to alleviate the problem (110). The “truth” or “truth[s]” that she speaks of are the result of what has been learned through the implementation of Open Admissions (109–110). The first truth, the failure of the education system, is based on the discovery of a student’s ability to receive a high school diploma and still lack the basic skills of “reading, writing, and arithmetic” (110). The second truth shows that students are eager to learn, “to begin their lives anew,” because they see the personal and professional advantage of having an education (111). They want to “redefine themselves as young adults who might accomplish something in the world” (111). The third truth that has emerged from the Open Admissions program is the teachers’ lack of knowledge in regard to working with these students. Colleges and universities are no longer able to select students that they merely have to “present” the course material, instead, they must now be able to “teach” the information to the incoming students (113–114).

Shaughnessy addresses the double standard created when professors feel they do not need to adhere any specific standard for the teaching of writing, but at the same time they require their students to meet a set standard of writing proficiency. She explains how focusing on errors does not correct the problem students are having with writing, rather, the “errors…[reflect] more difficulty with written English that then term ‘error’…impl[ies]” (274). The basic writer’s errors “[keep] him not only from writing something in formal English but from having something to write” in addition to “straining “the writer’s relationship to his audience” (275). Shaughnessy advocates “the need for teachers [to be] psychologically and professionally prepared to work with adult students who happen to be beginning writers” so that they can help the students in the most effective and efficient way (277). She also sees a need for “courses [and professors] across the curriculum” to aid in the continued development of a student’s writing skills (277). Shaughnessy does admit that “timetables and curricular plans that correspond to developmental realities” are necessary; however, she counters with the statement that the “designing [of] remedial fix-it stations that reflect what we wish would happen rather than what can happen” should not continue and “[t]o think of testing [students’ proficiency] without having these realities in mind is to think of testing as a managerial task” (277). She argues that “students have not been undone by testing but by irrelevant and irresponsible testing, not by the setting of standards but by the widespread acceptance…of double standards” and concludes with the call for standards to be set for both “teachers and administrators as well as…students” (278).

LITERARY PUBLICATIONS

---. “Milton.” Hofstra Review Spring. 1967: 3.

SUGGESTED READING

Maher, Jane.Mina P. Shaughnessy: Her Life and Work., Urbana: NCTE, 1997.

CRITICISM

Rouse, John. “Feeling Our Way Along.” College English 41.8 (Spring 1980): 868–75.

---. “The Politics of Composition.” College English 41.1 (1979): 1–12.

MLA’S MINA P. SHAUGHNESSY PRIZE