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Teacher Accounts

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Here are patches from the Writing Program Administrator’s listserv (WPA-L), connected with two discussions of regression and the teaching of writing, in April of 2003 and October of 2005.

This discussion of institutional pressures to define our courses in terms of grammar are so applicable to the encounters I have been having here, as I interact with the interdisciplinary Task Force responsible for over-seeing our new writing program. We keep going back and forth about whether to see grammar as ONE part of a larger writing process, or whether to see it as the end-all and be-all that marks the success of a student or program. I remember an article from way back when that made the argument that when a student (or indeed any writer) takes on a new sort of writing task, with difficult material and perhaps new genre conventions, the “surface features” of the writing may drop as the writer attends to these other elements. Does anyone know the citation for this? Phyllis

For some reason David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” comes up, but it is not really a study, or is it? Others of his works are also relevant, I believe, in addressing student’s ability/necessity with trying on the ways of knowing of the University and how there are attempts that might initially warrant a “What are you talking about?” attitude that really deserves a “Wow, you really are trying hard to sound like us/them aren’t you?” Of course, I wouldn’t really say that.

For years, the University of Chicago ran annual “Critical Thinking” seminars that brought scholars together for hands-on demonstrations of the ways that writing can become confused and even ungrammatical when otherwise competent MAs and PhDs tried to express themselves in new knowledge domains. Some fine, experienced writers discovered what our typical undergraduates have to negotiate when they take risks learning their major fields, etc. Joe Williams and others led some of those workshops—perhaps he could fill in details?

Meanwhile, haven’t we all got stories of the sophomore or frosh who might have been near tears or anger over papers that were “earning” Cs or worse in fields new to them, only to have them “get it” about the discipline’s conventions and tone, and later those same neophytes turn into leading practitioners? I remember one woman who almost left Psychology, and who now is a psych researcher at a superb university where she’s received national accolades for original work in relations between faith and psychological health.

So . . . keep the faith?

There is evidence from second language learning that merely unfamiliar topics as well as topics of increased complexity cause (temporary) deterioration of a student’s writing ability. I have long thought that this “problem of the new” is a really important phenomenon, especially as we consider design of writing assignments in FYC.

And in reference to the meetings here in Chicago in the ‘80′s, this issue did in fact turn out to be one of the themes.. The phenomenon has been observed in lots of contexts, not just writing. New medical students read X-rays well because they know the algorithm that tells them what to look for. Then they do less well when they start to learn how complex an x-ray and the body are. Then they get better again. Our (Greg’s and my) experience was with law students. More recently, it has been with new hires at business consulting groups. We get the constant refrain from their managers that their new hires can’t put together an argument, and indeed, it appears they can’t, at least based on the writing samples we work through before we give a program. I cannot say this for sure, but I suspect that in their earlier incarnations in business school or wherever else they spring from, they almost certainly could put together a decent argument. Otherwise, they would not have the kind of grades and recommendations that get them jobs for which they are vastly overpaid.. Then when they start writing in a new environment under pressure (and in a new format—Powerpoint), their writing and thinking skills seem to fade away. Then they get better. Of course, they might also have been bad writers all along, and we’re just intervening for the first time.

The question is such an important one and the research on it in such general agreement that one would think that it would constitute a point of received general knowledge in the field of comp, like the principle of DNA in biology.

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