Bam by Amanda Winalski

Bam - these student essays are killing me.

After taking a page or so to get to her point - that she used to believe that the ability to communicate effectively was more important than effectively communicating - she continues with the experience that led her to the revelation that the transition from high school to college consists of a student's willingness to learn, understand and modify the rules of grammar in order to communicate ideas.  the odd thing is that the mistakes she recounts making as an inept writing student are the very same here - she never quiet gets to the point of defining what college level writing is, prose is long and complex without reason (i.e. sentences could be more efficient), etc.  \

It could be that she is trying to model what bad college writing typically is...but why make me suffer through it?

Putting on the Sunglasses: The Argumentative Thesis as the Keystone to "Good' College Writing by Mike Quilligan

While easy to read, this essay easily breaks my top three list of articles i'm looking forward to burn.

The author's conclusion is that college writing is explicative writing, i.e. that it's a matter of sufficiently explaining thier topic.  He takes to task the curriculum at Indiana University by stating that students often pick up the attitudes and beliefs of the texts they're assigned to read rather than to imbed thier own ideas into thier papers.  He attempts to use a 1988 movie as an analogy, but i'm not sure how it's supposed to work; his idea seems to be that we need to ask students "So what?" so that they are forced to explain - to which i imagine that he's never postulated the possibility that students might not care to explain thier ideas.

The Great Conversation (of the Dining Hall): One Student's Experience of College Level Writing

the first thought that struck me as i read this is that this is exactly what one of the contributors to this book said should not be considered as college writing- it is a piece largely constructed from the student's observation and experiences - which i probably why i loved reading it.

That said, that's pretty much what the entire essay is about.  We get two essays and the experienes that came with them: one in high school and the other in college.  In both cases, the experience is similar: she struggles to produce something worth reading, passionately diving into the process so that she can having something validated by those whom she respects.  However, it seems to me that the process she's describing is more about the ideas she was formulating rather than the writing; once she learns that she can write the way her brother can play music, with cadence, style, tempo and all that jazz,she never returns to that particular subjects, leaving us with the impression that college level writing is all about communication of ideas and the struggle to formulate them. 

Vocabulary as a Means of Defining First-Year Composition by Kathleen Blake Yancey with Brian M. Morrison

The key argument here is that vocabulary is the key to teaching composition as well as the standards of what college level writing should be defined by.  She makes the distinction between teaching literature and teaching writing, but more importantly between teaching processes/practices and teaching terms.  The article runs parallel between her discussion of the subject with what i am assuming to be a paper by a senior student (Brian M. Morrison) on blogs.    Her argument, essentially, is that in teaching the specialized terms of the craft (composition), students will be better prepared to compose; writing is the content of a writing class.

I agree with this; as a math teacher, i don't students how to solve restaurant-tip problems; i teach them the concept of percents, decimals and fractions and then give them the practice and guidance to apply said concepts and skills to the problems at hand. 

Defining by Assessing by Edward M. White

After toying around with the titular question, White points out that college level writing is like pornography - "a term with little instrinsic meaning, though in common enough use", meaning that while it is difficult to define, everyone assumes to know what it means.   His paper focuses not on what he believes college level writing should be, but rather what college assessment assumes it to be, analyzing various assessment standards to discover thier assumptions on the matter.  Of course, there are problems with this sort of analysis, one being that any assessment analyzed only produces conclusions at the campus using said assessment.

He first looks at a scoring guide developed in 1988 by the California State University system; after analyzing the criterion he reaches the concluson that, according to the scoring guide, college level writing pays careful attention to the question, has a full and organized development of a response and reasonable mechanical correctness give the nature of a first draft. 

After giving two examples of student essays as well as the comments provided by the readers giving the grade, his conclusion is that college level writing as a term is meaningless since any definition we provide tell us more about the individual than the term.  According the to him, the best way to define college level writing is to examine the criteria and sample writings provided by institutions.

However...aren't criteria decided upon by individuals?

A Community College Professor Reflects on First Year Composition by John Perkins

John Perkins begins by stating that the purpose of ENC 1101 College Composition (what I presume to be the FYC at the community college where he is employed) is to expose students to the practices of one specific form of writing: academic discourse.  One of the reasons students have a problem learning the form and style of academic discourse, he states, is the general decline in reading which he attributes to a lack of reading among FYC students and the attittude among those that do that reading is boring - which he then connects to the passive/addictive qualities of the television/video medium. He also claims that public school teachers have accepted this general decline in reading and so require less reading that was what required of them at that particular part of thier lives. 

The other reason that students have problems participating in academic discourse is that students have no interest in the "traditional values" of college education; the only reason that they are in college is because of what college can do for them financially and therefore, academic discourse has no value to them. 

Part of the solution, according to John Perkins, is that the profession must take upon itself to identify criteria and methods of evaluation of student writing.  A lot of what follows in his article are suggestions of how it could work and its benefits.  This leads him to also question the point of including the personal experiences and observations of the student if the the purpose of an FYC is academic discourse.  This in turn leads him to indicate that part of the solution is more reading - that to focus solely on writing in a composition course is to ignore half of the process (his analogy is very convincing).   He includes in his sales pitch that stricter standards and criteria might first cause higher failure rates, noting that this change in curriculum would have to begin in the beginnings of public school. 

Do You believe in Magic? Collaboration and the Demystification of Research by Kathleen McCormick

McCormick decides to focus on the skills required to write a research paper becasue it is a type of writing the majority of students find most challenging and it is the least taught. She presents a collaborative pedagogy involving the discussion and debate of perspectives and genuine revision. She claims that this encourages students to move away from formulaic writing and to take an original position on a topic. With this we will the elusive college-level writing we are looking for.

In presenting her pedagogy she critiques what she calls the silent classroom, insiting on "instructing students explicitly in the process of how to engage in an assignment" (207). Many teachers leave the instructing to the textbooks, but they are not clear enough and oftentimes leave students confused and isolated. She proposes allowing the class to research together and collaborate/workshop products and progress at all stages, including finding sources. They help each other along, but write their own papers. This gives them an opportunity to see different models and methods of it supports thinking. They learn from eachother and discover, along with the teacher, their strengths and weaknesses.

I thought that this was a very good idea for students that are new to the researching porocess, adn I really liked her synthesis activity. Having students review each other's sources and summarizes and connect the information provided is a great way to teach a combination of skills. Although the focus on research presented a helpful and unique perspective, it is not the only type of writing necessary at the college level and is very different than other formats. However many of the skills enforced, if learned, should transfer well.

The idea that college-level writing should not be formulaic has been discussed in several other essays, and studetns taking an original position is akin to having an original voice, original thoughts. Overall, I felt the information provided was helpful, but not groundbreaking as far as defining college-level writing. Haven't really seen it in most of what I've read so far.