Revisiting the Past

As I’ve mentioned on my website (www.celinski.net, see The Academic Word), I used to live my life in the academic world. While I was attending graduate school, I taught English at Kent State University. Mostly I taught freshman English I and II (usually numbered something like English 101 and 102 at most schools, although KSU used 10001 and 10002). I also taught some sections of business writing (20001), a sophomore-level course required for business majors.

The last semester I taught was Fall 1995. By the time I finished with my teaching stint, I was pretty burned out on the experience:  its low pay, lack of appreciation, and dearth of career prospects. Nevertheless, in the time since then, my mind has wandered back to that slice of my life. There are some things I miss about teaching college level courses:  the relative freedom of the daily schedule, the control I had in the classroom, the rare but fantastic “teaching high,” the feeling that I was “making a difference” – at least sometimes.

I’ve also started to think about how I would do things differently now. When I began teaching, I was essentially fresh out of undergraduate school – all I had was a semester of grad school and an inadequate pedagogy class to prepare me. I had no real world (i.e., non-academic) experience to guide me. After I left grad school, I worked for a temporary agency for a couple years, which exposed me to a number of work environments. One of those jobs turned into my first permanent job, in the sales office of a steel processing facility. And finally, I did freelance editing work, which finally led to my current gig as an editor, researcher and writer for a business research firm. As a result of these experiences, I now have a much better idea of what would be truly helpful to my students in the courses I used to teach.

To start with, I want to think about the introduction to English that most college students get:  the dreaded, required English 101 (a.k.a. English I, Eng 10001, etc.). If I were to teach English 101 again, here is what I would do differently:

1. Punctuation, Grammar & Other Sentence Level Errors

While important, I’d let go of the more esoteric points of punctuation and grammar, because in the working world, these things just don’t matter. I’d also find some way to simplify the discussion of sentence types. I’d encourage my students to write in a simple style (i.e., more Hemmingway than Faulkner). Not only is a simpler style easier to master, but it is also more effective in business environment. Note that I am not advocating for my students to produce simplistic texts. Rather, I want them to produce texts that are clear, clean and easy-to-follow.

1. Rhetorical Strategies – Traditional, from English 101 Textbooks

When I started teaching, the fashion was to teach traditional rhetorical strategies (e.g., description, comparison/contrast, instructions, argumentation) one a time. After learning a strategy, students would write an entire essay using just that one strategy. This, of course, is artificial and hard to do. Very rarely does any piece of successful writing use only one strategy. In addition, this approach subverts effective writing technique – as a writer, you pick your strategies to enhance your message, rather than pick a strategy and try find a message to fit within it.

As my teaching career progressed, there was a reaction against this original approach. This new approach asked students to read long, complex essays, and write amorphous, “thinking’ replies, which were supposed to get them in touch with how to think and how to work their way into writing on a topic. This tactic was overwhelming and failed to teach basic structure of any kind. Students ended up frustrated and perplexed, because they couldn’t really understand what kind of texts they were supposed to be producing (neither could I, for that matter).

Were I to teach again, I would strike a middle ground. I’d teach the traditional rhetorical strategies, but rather than ask students to write entire essays based on each, I’d have them practice each strategy via shorter passages (a paragraph or two). Equally important, I’d emphasize the reasons to use each approach, depending on the intended purpose of the passage. I’d also make sure that students understood how to combine strategies. To learn this, students would examine essays (e.g., from newspapers, magazines, business texts, and other accessible sources) to analyze what strategies are being used for what purpose.

1. Rhetorical Strategies – Essay-Wide

Almost all pieces of writing, except for specialized pieces such as instructions, are basically argumentation. In other words, the writer intends to prove the validity of his or her main point. The abilities to recognize the tactics that writers use and to use such tactics themselves are key for students’ success in undergraduate school and beyond. Thus, in a way similar to the exercise in point #2 above, students would examine different media to analyze how writers use various strategies to prove their points. The emphasis here would be on the global approach to the argument in a piece – what is the main point, and how is it supported throughout the piece? I also think it is important for students to be able to practice this skill on a variety of media, including newspaper and magazine articles, advertising (print, TV, Internet) and other sources such as company websites and Internet blogs, among others. Ultimately, students would begin to be able to make use of these strategies in their own writing.

1. Writing in the Working World

Although usually the subject of Business or Technical Writing Courses, I would start to address this topic in English 101. At the very least, I would teach students how to write a resume and cover letter. Other topics might include memos and business letters of various types, as well as reports and executive summaries. In addition, I would cover how writing styles vary in the different academic disciplines, based on what sorts of majors appeared in my classes.

As far as teaching the resume and cover letter, I might create a character for the students to write about, especially since freshman do not often have much work experience. I would provide details about the character’s background (both relevant and not), and the students would use these to write a resume and cover letter(s).

1. Subject Matter of Student Essays

I would encourage students to write about subjects that interest them. At the same time, I want to avoid “confessional” essays, in which students tell me way too much about their personal lives. I think the second teaching trend in point #2 above had the right idea – that is, encouraging students to engage with other texts and ideas. However, students need accessible material, at least to start with. Thus, I would have students engage with the types of texts and media I’ve been talking about so far. I might also try to pique students’ interest by having them write reviews of CDs, books, TV shows and concerts.

1. Performance and Evaluation of Research, especially on the Internet

While this is usually the main subject for English 102, I think students need an introduction to the performance and evaluation of research in 101. It is crucial to teach students to evaluate what they find – especially on the Internet – so that they can assess is validity and usefulness. Furthermore, an introduction to research would dovetail nicely with an extended discussion of plagiarism.