College Writers and the Challenge to Prepare Professors
In “Our Students Can’t Write. We Have Ourselves to Blame,” published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Robert Zaretsky focuses on the poor writing skills of his upper-level college students and shares his ideas for improving writing skills at the college level. He contends that his students’ papers are often “word-salad bars that overflow with diced sentences and sliced syntax, stale phrases and failed analogies, and dressings that cover the full range of opinions (yet not a single serving of textual analysis).” As a composition teacher, I understand this frustration and appreciate the analogy. My college writers often struggle to move beyond the grips of the five-paragraph essay structure and the temptation to be overzealous in their use of the thesaurus feature. They have been practicing this form and process for many years, and they are resistant to trying something that is not as systematic in structure. After all, it got them into college, so why change now? To address this issue, Zaretsky proposes that more writing intensive courses should be the norm for all college students, and in order to improve student writing, professors must take a lead.
Zaretsky proposes that all professors should be trained to teach composition. He asserts, “Colleges would need to reward tenured professors who retooled as composition teachers and reassure tenure-line professors that teaching writing is as important as writing monographs.” This part of a solution would go a long way toward helping students and professors, if only to encourage the professors to focus more on the process of writing. A required drafting process would help students identify weak syntax as well as weak critical thinking in a first draft, giving them the opportunity to revise. Effective peer-review strategies may be incorporated in conjunction with the option of a conference with the professor. Zaretsky’s suggestion that all professors are educated in writing instruction is only a start, though. The greater issue seems rooted in higher-education’s professional development expectations. A lack of commitment to the profession of teaching is the larger issue. As Zaretsky notes about his own preparation, “In fact, I was not trained to teach at all, but that is another story.” He does not elaborate, but it seems that his experience of no formal teacher training is not uncommon for higher-education faculty. Teaching is a profession that encompasses skill as well as the willingness to engage a dynamic audience. Why is assume that anyone who knows content will be a good teacher?
Although I am no expert on the faculty compensation model of high education, the issue of professional development for professors is one that has been on mind often lately. Earlier this year, in a discussion of the UNE Strategic Plan, my work group noted the emphasis that UNE puts on publication and student course surveys over experimentation and growth to improve teaching practices. All faculty (including adjunct faculty) should have a compensation model that not only rewards those who build their content knowledge through scholarship and research but also those who improve their teaching practice. As an adjunct instructor, I push my students into uncomfortable spaces – challenging ideas about writing and guiding them to use a process to explore complex issues and improve their critical thinking. Why shouldn’t we all do the same for our teaching practice — challenging our usual methods and striving to engage ourselves and our students in a process of growth? I recognize that the situation is more complex than that, but I agree with Zaretsky that higher-ed professionals should play a more active role in addressing the needs of student writers.
