Preparing for the Next Course

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As students and faculty scramble to finish up the current quarter and the current course, both might be interested in what comes next. At CSULA, students must satisfactorily complete ENGL 101 to satisfy the written communications requirement of general education (GE), or receive transfer credit for an equivalent course. Students must also complete ENGL 102, which while not technically part of GE is an additional writing course required of all students.

Many of our first-year students, however, are required to take courses before they are eligible to take ENGL 101. These courses, ENGL 095 and ENGL 096, are developmental courses designed to ready under-prepared students for the challenges of ENGL 101. Rather than think of these courses, though, as separate and independent, it makes more sense to think of them as part of course sequences. Students, therefore, satisfy their GE written communications requirement by taking: a one-quarter composition course (ENGL 101), a two-quarter composition course (ENGL 096-101), or a three-quarter composition course (ENGL 095-096-101).

For most students, then, their composition course in Winter will simply be an extension of their Fall course. Since the primary objectives of ENGL 095 are focus, fluency, and rhetorical awareness, Winter term 096 instructors can expect their students to be capable in these areas. Since the primary objectives of ENGL 096 are the same as 095 plus the ability to engage critically with texts, Winter term 101 instructors can expect their students to be capable in these areas.

ENGL 102 instructors, however, cannot generalize about their students’ preparation. Students in ENGL 102 might have taken ENGL 095, 096 and 101, or 096 and 101, or only 101 at CSULA. They might have received AP credit for ENGL 101 and therefore not taken any composition at CSULA. They might be transfer students coming from an institution where they might have taken one, two, or even three lower division composition courses, but are required to take ENGL 102 because none of their courses articulate to CSULA’s ENGL 102. Ideally, students starting ENGL 102 should possess the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve all of the “outcomes” listed under “Outcomes for ENGL 101” (see below). These outcomes are taken directly from the Writing Program Administrators’ “Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition.” Experienced ENGL 102 instructors know, however, that there will be wide variation in the readiness of their students. The primary objective of ENGL 102 is to provide more advanced practice in writing and to introduce students to basic research methodologies, but the reality is that some students are not sufficiently prepared for “more advanced practice.”

Finally, students currently enrolled in ENGL 102 have further university writing requirements on their horizon. To graduate, students are not only required to complete ENGL 101 and ENGL 102 (or receive transfer credit for equivalent courses), they must also pass the Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE), and complete an upper division writing course in their major. So while our work ends with ENGL 102, our efforts to prepare students for success will hopefully continue to support them throughout their academic career.

Outcomes for ENGL 101: The WPA Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition

Rhetorical Knowledge

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Focus on a purpose
• Respond to the needs of different audiences
• Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations
• Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation
• Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality
• Understand how genres shape reading and writing
• Write in several genres

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating
• Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources
• Integrate their own ideas with those of others
• Understand the relationships among language, knowledge, and power

Processes

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text
• Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proof-reading
• Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and re-thinking to revise their work
• Understand the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
• Learn to critique their own and others' works
• Learn to balance the advantages of relying on others with the responsibility of doing their part
• Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences

Knowledge of Conventions

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Learn common formats for different kinds of texts
• Develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics
• Practice appropriate means of documenting their work
• Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Teaching Grammar and Style

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The place of grammar instruction in the composition classroom was the topic of our most recent Composition Conversation. One might ask, “Place?” and assume that direct instruction in grammar either has no place or not only has a place, but a central place, in the writing classroom. These perspectives mirror, in fact, the research on grammar and writing instruction which has been vexingly mixed, starting with the 1963 Braddock report frequently cited as the beginning of the revolt against grammar instruction. For the participants, however, the important question was not whether grammar and style should be taught, but how best to teach it. All agreed that the most successful approaches worked directly from the student’s own writing. What also emerged was an emphasis on seeing grammar and style as rhetorical, part of a writer’s ethos, less a question of correctness and more a question of effectiveness.

Virtually all participants incorporated grammar “lessons” in their composition courses. Some instructors provided “grammar reviews” near the beginning of the term, with the emphases of the review drawn from an examination of the students’ writing. Some scheduled “mini-lessons” prior to peer review sessions, instructing peer reviewers to then be on the lookout for specific kinds of grammar or style problems. Most instructors had a ready store of mini-lessons upon which to draw depending on the specific needs of the class. These mini-lessons—comma splices, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, and the tense system in English were a few mentioned—worked best when clearly related to the students’ own writing. “Problem sentence” handouts, with one “problem” sentence drawn from each student’s essay, were commonly used and held to be generally engaging and effective. Some instructors also cautioned about the dangers of too much technical terminology, which tends to confuse students while providing no real benefit. We, the English teachers, might be fascinated with the pleonastic pronoun, but knowing what one is has probably never helped any student become a more effective writer.

Helping students become more effective writers is, of course, the purpose of college composition courses, and that for participants explains the place of grammar and style instruction. Referring to the work of Peter Elbow, one participant noted that “error” is both the least important and the most important aspect of our writing. It is least important in comparison to the global and rhetorical aspects of our writing that really signify its quality. It is most important in that to some readers the presence of error will simply disqualify us from participating in the discourse.

Elbow’s comment places the writer’s choice at the center of writing and connects grammar and style to some of the key rhetorical concepts developed in the composition classroom. As Aristotle noted, correctness and style directly affects our ethos—the image of ourselves, our character, our trustworthiness, our qualifications to speak—that we wish to present to readers. Correctness, clarity, appropriateness, and ornament were the qualities of style identified by Cicero, and while we might not focus much on ornament, we certainly focus a great deal on the first three. Finally, if the ultimate aim is to participate in the discourse, then attention to grammar and style will help students make the choices necessary to signal their belonging in an academic discourse community.

Emphasizing Choice

A rhetorical approach to grammar and style shifts the emphasis from “rules” to “choice” with a writer’s choices determined by considerations such as purpose, audience, and genre. Even grammatical error can be a rhetorical choice, as evidenced by proliferation of sentence fragments in young-adult fiction. A sentence fragment is certainly still a grammatical error, but in certain contexts rhetorical effect trumps grammatical correctness.

The key of course is helping students make informed choices and recognize the consequences of those choices. By making choices instead of following rules, the writer exercises independence but also accepts responsibility.

Grammar in the Classroom

Here are a few of the approaches mentioned by participants:

• Mini-lessons tied to peer review
• “Problem Sentence” handouts, with samples drawn from student essays
• “User tours” of a handbook —help students find help for their specific concerns
• “Read aloud” strategies to call attention to clarity problems and sentence boundary issues
• Another “read aloud” strategy is to have students use a screen reader on their computer to read back their essays to them

Purpose, Audience, Genre

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The rhetorical turn in writing instruction has placed renewed emphasis on rhetoric and the rhetorical situation or context of writing. When students write, they participate in a community of readers and writers engaged in thinking, reading, discussing and writing about shared issues, ideas, and concepts. To be effective in this community, the writer must learn to be aware of the rhetorical situation. What do I want to accomplish with my writing? To whom am I appealing and what are their needs? What expectations of the audience must I satisfy or risk going unheard? These questions focus the writer’s attention on purpose, audience, and genre.

Purpose

The purpose of any piece of writing can be determined by the writer asking the simple question: “What am I trying to accomplish with this piece of writing?” The question might be simple, but the answer isn’t always. For example, a social worker writes an observation report to describe something. The purpose might be thought of as “describing X.” What the social worker wants to “accomplish,” however, is less obvious. The case worker might be trying to warn superiors about a potentially dangerous situation. In short, purpose involves understanding our own motives in writing.

Similarly, students must think beyond the mechanical particulars of the writing assignment. Wanting an ‘A’ has probably never helped anyone write a paper. One place to begin is to consider the instructor’s purpose in making the assignment. What does the instructor want me to learn? What kind of knowledge does the instructor want me to demonstrate? Furthermore, students might consider what “effect” they want to produce on their readers.

Audience

As experienced writers know, we must always imagine our audience. Even when we are writing with a specific reader in mind, that “reader” is really more our imagined version of that person than an actual person. Students are often very reluctant to imagine their audience, and often mistakenly assume that the instructor is their audience. A better place to start would be to assume that the audience is everyone in the class, some of whom will share the writer’s beliefs and ideas, and some of whom will not; some of whom will be as familiar with the text or with certain ideas, and some of whom will not.

Some assignments might specify hypothetical readers that students are supposed to address. Who are these readers? What do they know about the topic? What do they need to know? What are they likely to believe about this topic? Thinking about questions such as these will help a writer imagine and effectively appeal to his or her audience.

Genre

To speak of the "genre" of a piece of writing is to identify a set of conventions that should be followed. Knowing the genre of the writing and therefore knowing the associated conventions of the form can greatly simplify the writer's task.
As with purpose and audience, the genre of a piece of writing is sometimes very specific, and this is especially true in certain disciplines. A lab report in engineering must adhere to a very specific set of format and content rules, as must one in biology, though to a slightly different set of rules. Helping students recognize the different genres of writing and their associated conventions is key to helping them become effective and independent writers.

Thinking about Audience

Imagine you are going to send an email describing your activities over the last twelve months to six recipients: your best friend, your brother, your mother, your eighty-five year old English aunt, the chair of your department, and the director of a prestigious grant foundation. Would you send the same message to each recipient? Would you include the same activities? Would you describe them in the same way? Would you use the same language and style in each?

Thinking about Genre

In introductory writing classes instructors might not even be aware that their assignments call for knowledge or even mastery of a genre: the college essay, which is itself a genre. The college essay is usually an argument supported by certain permissible kinds of evidence with an introduction articulating a thesis, body paragraphs developing and supporting that thesis, and a conclusion summarizing the argument and/or suggesting the next step in the process. Some of us are probably also not aware that some “common rules” about writing are conventions of specific genres and not universal. For example, most writers are taught to avoid the passive voice, but this convention is mostly associated with genres like the college essay. Scientific procedural writing, for example, requires the use of the passive voice.

Peer Review Reviewed

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While long a staple of the composition classroom, the recent Composition Conversation on peer review revealed a range of opinions about when and how it should be incorporated, as well as what it brought to the classroom. For example, ENGL 101 and 102 instructors saw peer response as an essential part of invention. One instructor described how students would give oral presentations on their research topics and arguments early in the research process. The resulting discussion would help writers focus their research and anticipate counter-claims and the rest of the class would benefit as well from the opportunity to learn about other people’s interests and thinking.

This initial discussion focused attention on the key benefits of peer response:

1. Writers benefit from early intervention in the process.
2. Readers benefit from exposure to other ways of thinking.
3. All benefit from being part of a community of writers and readers.

These benefits also, of course, define the composition classroom. The differences that emerged in discussion can be traced to whether one emphasizes the benefit to the writer or whether one emphasizes the benefit to the reader and community.
Out of the discussion emerged the following common concerns.

When? All agreed that early intervention was best, but most participants also believed that peer review prior to students receiving their first instructor-commented paper was “meaningless.”

How many? Pairs or groups of three were the most common configurations for peer review. Some instructors created peer review groups based on common essay topics, while some attempted to group students with a range of abilities (“low” student with a “high” student and so on). Some instructors preferred to let students find their own partners or groups, perhaps only asking students to work with different partners later.

How often? In general, most agreed that peer review or some kind of peer response should be part of every assignment. Instructors might try different kinds of peer response throughout the quarter. Students might peer review in pairs on an early assignment. They might later work in small groups with peer review worksheets. Later they might work in small groups with scoring guides.

How involved? On this question there was the greatest variation. While students might be familiar with the idea of peer review and even comfortable with it, they still need direction and guidance. Minimally, everyone agreed that instructors needed to communicate “ground rules” prior to peer review: what kinds of response were appropriate and what were inappropriate. Some instructors gave students written instructions for peer review during a prior class meeting. Others “trained” students to become better reviewers by having students look at sample essays and providing them with “tutor” training materials. Most used worksheets to focus the responses of reviewers. Some tailored peer review worksheets to specific assignments, while others used generic worksheets that focused the reviewer on rhetorical questions.

Eventually, two key questions emerged. How much control should an instructor exert over the peer review process? And what do we as instructors hope to realize from peer review? Unsurprisingly, the answer to the second question helps to determine how one answers the first.

Core Questions to Consider about Peer Review

• What do I think is most important about peer review? The quality of feedback the writer receives? Or the conversation about writing and the topic that might emerge?
• How much control do I want to exert over the process? Do I want to dictate who works with whom? Do I want to specify in detail what reviewers are supposed to do?
• How much am I willing to trust the reviewers? Do I feel the need to “train” them as reviewers? Do I feel the need to review their comments?

Staying Focused on Peer Review

In general, instructors felt that peer review should be a regular part of the composition classroom, but some noted how then it risked becoming routine. Instructors mentioned the following strategies for keeping students committed to peer review:

• If peer review is the last activity of the day, make sure students know that no one will be allowed to leave early.
• Tell students that if they finish early, they can use the remaining time to begin revising their essays.
• Have students vote on their favorite peer reviewer for the quarter.

Peer Review and Scoring Guides

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Scoring guides can ensure consistency in grading practices and transparency in the grading process by serving as a shared understanding of both the requirements of an assignment and the expectations of the instructor. Made available to students early in the term the scoring guide helps students understand what is expected of them and how they will be evaluated. But a scoring guide is not merely a convenience for students and teachers. It represents the expectations of the discourse community towards which students are moving. True members don’t merely join, they define what it means to belong.

While we might want to believe that once we distribute the scoring guide for a course and perhaps discuss it in class, students will know what to expect and perform accordingly, the reality is very different. As experienced writing teachers know, inexperienced writers (and sometimes experienced writers too!) often struggle to see problems in their own writing, though, they are usually able to see the same problems in other people’s writing.

This inability to see the log in our own eye is the basis for peer review and forms the foundation for an effective class activity that uses small groups to peer review essays, an activity commonly known as read around groups, or RAGs. The innovation is that the peer review groups are first subjected to the “norming” process familiar to holistic scorers and then are asked to score or grade the anonymous essays that they read. Here’s an overview of the process:

1. On the first day, students are “normed” using the scoring guide and sample essays that represent the range of the scoring guide.
2. On the second day, students are placed in small groups (three or four students per group).
3. Each group collects the essay drafts written by the group members and passes them to another group.
4. Each group member then reads each essay and assigns it a score or grade based on the scoring guide. Each group member is also encouraged to take brief notes that justify the score or grade assigned.
5. When each member in the group has read each essay, the group discusses each essay and the score or grade it should be given.
6. After the score or grade has been assigned, the group passes its essays to the next group, receives a new set of essays, and repeats steps 3 and 4.
   

This combined peer review/scoring guide “norming” activity usually requires parts of two class periods and many variations are possible. Students might be asked to bring multiple copies of their draft to facilitate group reading. The groups might read the essays aloud. Group scores and comments might be recorded and returned to the writer. Instead of scoring or grading, the group might vote on the best essay in each set, justifying their choice by referring to specific language in the scoring guide.

While students might focus on the voting and scoring, as any participant in holistic scoring knows the real benefit is the discussion of how writing is valued. The scoring guide provides students with language to talk about what makes writing interesting and effective. As they apply this language to the writing of others, the silent work of incorporation moves them closer to the academic discourse community.


What is a RAG?
A Read-Around Group (RAG) is a small-group activity commonly used in composition classes. Students in small groups read and respond to drafts of one another’s essays. Besides gaining feedback on their own writing, students gain insight into the assignment and learn useful strategies from other writers.

Helpful Hints

• Have students identify their papers with their initials or a code instead of with their name.
  
• Have each group select a group member to serve as note-taker.
  
• Give the groups a specific task to perform; don’t overload them with multiple tasks.
  
• Set time limits for the reading and stick to them.
  
• Consider having the groups read the papers aloud. (You will need to plan for the added noise.)
  
• Consider how comfortable you are with having students score, grade, or select the best paper. If you are uncomfortable with these tasks, consider having students select papers that best exemplify specific criteria in the scoring guide.
  
• Be sure to allow enough time for a whole class discussion.
  

Revisiting Conferencing

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The most recent “Composition Conversation” focused on conferencing. Participants discussed not so much the advantages of conferencing but the realities of it. The benefits of writing conferences have been known for years, and most teachers of writing have been trained to incorporate them in their course design. The problem most instructors encounter, however, is the difficulty of maintaining a conferencing model given increasingly larger composition classes.

Out of the conversation emerged a list of common conferencing practices used by the participants themselves or known to be used by other instructors. Participants noted that class size and workload tempered the use of conferences and if used how they were implemented. Some instructors, for example, conducted conferences only with those writers with the most serious problems. Others began with writers with the most serious problems and saw other students only if time permitted. Some had cancelled classes and set up conference times, but all acknowledged that these “conference days” were difficult at best and grueling at worst for instructors with 60-80 writing students.

Generally, the timing of conferences fell into common patterns. In developmental classes instructors wanted to set up conferences both early and late in the term. Early conferences established rapport and enabled the instructor to make clear his or her expectations. Late conferences allowed for more focused work on specific writing issues, especially at the level of sentences and paragraphs. In ENGL 101 and ENGL 102, the use of conferences has been made difficult by class sizes greater than 25. The result is most ENGL 101 and ENGL 102 instructors either use only one conference per quarter usually around the middle of the term, or none at all. Some instructors make conferences optional, a practice which certainly cuts down on the numbers.

Given the realities of class sizes and workload, participants also discussed alternative strategies to conferencing. One participant suggested the use of audio. Students record themselves reading their papers and the instructor records his or her comments in response. This practice, made increasingly easy through the use of digital sound files, recreates the personal and human aspect of conferencing, which is arguably one of its most important benefits.

Another strategy involves placing students with similar writing issues in small groups. These group conferences save time by allowing the instructor to work with more than one student on similar problems. A related strategy is to combine conferencing with peer review groups. The instructor meets with two or three students alternating between setting tasks for some students while working directly with others. These “multi-tasking” sessions, while efficient, were generally conceded to be very taxing on the instructor.

Finally, participants discussed the importance of having a focused conference. All agreed that conferences are most successful when focused on a few key issues and when students set the agenda. Some instructors have students write down their goal(s) for a conference, what it is that they want to accomplish. Others have students write specific questions on their draft to which the instructor replies either on the draft or in conference.

The next Composition Conversation will be on Tuesday, November 3 on the topic of “Peer Review and Scoring Guides.”

Types of Conferencing

Most teachers of writing are familiar with the traditional writing conference. Other kinds of conferencing discussed at the Composition Conversation include:

Small group conferencing—the teacher meets with small groups of students who share similar writing issues.

Journaling or Student-Initiated Questions—students keep a journal about their writing and/or ask specific questions to which the instructor responds. Instead of a journal, instructors also use the essay draft to exchange questions and responses.

Computer-Mediated Strategies—Email, Blackboard chats and other computer-mediated strategies were discussed as was the use of audio recordings, but for the most part these strategies were merely digital or internet-enabled versions of existing practices.

Conferencing Strategies

1. Set reasonable goals. Avoid trying to discuss everything.
2. Have students bring two copies of their essay; while you read one copy, they can take notes on the other.
3. Expect students to set the agenda of the conference.
4. Have students do something in the conference, such as revising a sentence, or reformulating a thesis.
5. Ask students to prepare a set of questions, or give them a list of questions that they must answer before the conference.

Assessment and Scoring Guides

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Beloved of accrediting bodies, scoring guides (or rubrics as they are sometimes called) are all the rage. A well-designed scoring guide can streamline the grading process by making clear to both the instructor and students what constitutes different levels of work. Scoring guides can ensure consistency in grading practices and transparency in the grading process by serving as a shared understanding of both the requirements of a project and the expectations of the instructor.


What exactly is a scoring guide? Briefly, it is a set of scoring guidelines for evaluating student work. The scoring guide indicates both the criteria that will be used to judge the work and distinguishes between different levels of performance. By identifying the criteria to be used to judge the work, a good scoring guide clearly ariculates the instructor's expectations. And by distinguishing between different levels of performance a good scoring guide helps students determine how to meet those expectations. And when a scoring guide is shared with students early in the process, students become better judges of the quality of their own work and in peer review the work of others. The scoring guide also provides the instructor with language to give feedback on the quality of work.


All four composition courses at CSULA have scoring guides. The ENGL 095 and 096 scoring guides are used for evaluating end-of-the-quarter portfolios, while the ENGL 101 and ENGL 102 scoring guides are used for assigning grades to individual essays.

095 and 096 Scoring Guides

Since grades for ENGL 095 and ENGL 096 are determined by the student’s portfolio scores, the scoring guides for these courses represent not simply an instructor’s idiosyncratic do’s and don’ts, but program and university expectations. Most experienced 095 and 096 instructors distribute the course scoring guide to students, spend class time reading and interpreting it, organize “norming” sessions to help students apply it, and use language from the scoring guide in their comments on student writing.

This last point is perhaps the most unappreciated, but possibly the most important. After having spent some time in class discussing the scoring guide, an instructor might note on an 096 student’s draft that at present it does “not respond to the text at all (see ‘3’ score),” or that it “consists mostly of generalizations without support (see ‘3’ score).” The scoring guide gives both student and instructor a shared language of assessment, which the instructor can invoke in his or her comments.

101 and 102 Scoring Guides

Assigning grades to individual essays is not an objective activity and yet it is also not purely subjective and idiosyncratic. Experienced teachers of writing tend to apply similar criteria and arrive at similar assessments and grader consistency is improved when a common scoring guide is used. The scoring guides for ENGL 101 and ENGL 102 ensure that students in different classes with different instructors will receive comparable grades for comparable work.

As in ENGL 095 and 096, the scoring guide is most effective when it is made available to students early in the course, is the subject of class discussion, and is specifically referred to in instructor comments.

Using Scoring Guides

• Make the scoring guide available to students, preferably early in the term
  
• Devote class time to discussing the scoring guide
  
• Provide students with sample essays that exemplify the scoring guide
  
• Consider “norming” students by having them read and score sample student essays (or each other’s essays) as part of an extended peer review
  
• Refer to the specific language of the scoring guide when commenting on student essays
  

Recap of Composition Conversation: Responding to Student Writing (Oct 7, 2009)

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Last week a small (but select!) group of writing instructors met in the English Department Seminar room for the first “Composition Conversation.” The topic was responding to student writing and faculty discussed the type and timing of their responses to student writing and shared ideas about managing workload. The conversation revealed general agreement about the basic underlying principles (see below), but also a diversity of approaches used to achieve those ends.

The first distinction that emerged was between responses that attempted to help students revise and develop drafts and those concerned with assessment. This distinction has a long history in composition pedagogy, with the emphasis both in theory and practice on responding to early drafts to facilitate effective revision. Ideally, teachers read drafts and offer immediate feedback, which writers use to improve the effectiveness of their drafts. The reality, however, is complicated by a range of factors.

First, discussion participants noted the tendency to “slip into marking” grammar errors and other local issues and thereby lose track of the larger, global and rhetorical issues that were probably of greater importance (see below for a discussion of this problem). Second, participants called attention to the problem of class size. While it is possible (and advisable) to comment with some frequency on early and intermediate drafts in an ENGL 095 or ENGL 096 class of fifteen to nineteen students, instructors struggle to continue this practice in ENGL 101 or ENGL 102 with class sizes of 27 or 28. In these larger classes, the instructor’s response to student writing tends to come at the end of the process as a final assessment of the student’s work. As everyone acknowledged, it is unclear how effective these “final comments” are in helping students become better writers.

Instructors offered several strategies for making final comments effective. One instructor avoids handing back essays at the end of class and instead sets aside class time during which students are required to read through their commented-upon drafts and are encouraged to ask questions about the comments. Another instructor suggested that we could make more explicit our expectations (as teachers) that the comments on one essay be “carried forward” to the next writing assignment. A third instructor shared her strategy of using different color ink for different kinds of comments, a practice that helps students see the different ways in which readers respond to their texts.

Besides making sure that students read and understand our comments, participants also discussed strategies for easing the workload. First, instructors noted the importance of avoiding excessive marking, a time-consuming process that produces very limited results. Second, instructors reiterated the importance of peer review and peer responses as appropriate and effective interventions in the writing process. Third, some instructors shared their use of checklists and rubrics to simplify commenting and evaluation. Finally, some instructors discussed an in-class activity that trained students to become the “graders.” Both the use of rubrics and the use of peer groups to assess student writing are topics of their own and so will be treated in subsequent articles.

The next Composition Conversation will be on Tuesday, October 20 on the topic of “Conferencing.”

Basic Principles for Responding to Student Writing

1. Students benefit more from responses to “in-progress” writing than from responses to “finished” writing.
2. Students benefit more from responses that focus on form and content than from responses that focus on mechanics.
3. Instructor comments (ideally) should help students understand their weaknesses and strengths as writers.
4. “Marking” grammar, style and other mechanical problems should be limited to only a portion of the essay and carried out with the aim of moving students towards independence (i.e. helping students become better editors and proofreaders of their own work).
5. Instructors should be prepared to respond differently to student writing depending on the timing of the intervention. Early responses should be facilitative, helping students to discover their own solutions. Later responses might become more directive if students are unable to respond effectively to earlier guidance. Final responses can be evaluative, but should still focus on what the writer can do to improve the draft, even if there will be no opportunity to revise.

Making Reading Explicit

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Most composition instructors agree that many first-year students need help with reading and the statistics back them up. About 90% of first-year CSULA students are required to take the English Placement Test (EPT) and only about 10% of them score above 151 (the “cut score”) on the reading section. In the CSU system, well more than half of all test-takers score below 151 in reading. While we, as teachers of English and teachers of writing, might feel (correctly) that reading is the responsibility of all departments and courses, the university looks to the English Department to provide leadership in literacy education. But given the level of writing skills in our composition classes, how can we find time to teach reading too?

Experienced instructors already know the answer: we are already teaching reading, at least minimally by modeling for our students the practices and strategies of good readers. What many of us might not be doing is making explicit our assumptions and practices. As writing teachers we probably don’t think twice about talking with students about strategies for developing an argument, and yet we probably rarely discuss with students how we approach a text for the first time, or how we skim a text looking for clues about its organization, or how we decide what to write in the margins as we read. All of us bring to our reading a wealth of expertise that we could make explicit for our students to help them become better readers.

Talking About Reading

What do good readers do? First, they read frequently and for a variety of purposes, including pleasure. Second, they are active readers who seek for ways to understand a text. They read with purpose and attempt to understand the writer’s purpose in writing. And good readers recognize that just as writing requires revision, reading requires re-reading.

If we had to summarize these practices, we might begin by saying that

• Good readers preview the reading by reviewing the table of contents, chapter titles, headings and subheadings. They attempt to understand how the text is organized before they start reading.
  
• Good readers identify a purpose for reading: Why am I reading? What do I hope to get from the reading (information, ideas, pleasure)? How will I know when I’ve accomplished my purpose?
  
• Good readers place the reading in context. When was it written? By whom? For what purpose? What genre does it belong to and what conventions are associated with that genre?
  
• Good readers read quickly but are prepared to re-read. Does the writer always use topic sentences? Are paragraphs mostly filled with different kinds of evidence all supporting the same claim? Can parts be skipped or quickly skimmed?
  
• Good readers engage with the text, ask questions of the text, agree with it, disagree with it, relate it to other readings, and note when it confuses them.
  
• Good readers are able to summarize the text and frequently will reflect on the experience of reading. What is its main point? What was most/least effective about it? What problems did I encounter while reading?
  

By making explicit our reading expertise we can help students become more effective readers.

What Do Good Readers Do?

1. Read for a variety of reasons including (or especially) pleasure
   
2. Read at different speeds and intensities: skim, scan, or study depending on need
   
3. Read actively carrying on a conversation with the text
   
4. Read with an awareness of the text’s genre and associated conventions
   

What Do Good Readers Note About A Text?

1. Table of contents, chapter titles, index, introduction, headings, subheadings, and any other hint of global organization
   
2. The genre of the text (i.e. narrative, academic essay, and so on)
   
3. Thesis, topic sentences, transitions and other focusing devices that help identify the writer’s preferred method of local organization
   
4. Biographical information about the author, time, place and purpose of writing, and any other information that might help contextualize the text
   

Summary of 2009 Report on Placement and Retention

Printer friendly version: http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/comp/SummaryOf2009ReportOnPlacementAndRetention.pdf


At the beginning of 2009, the Department of English at CSULA initiated a statistical review of its developmental writing program (i.e. “remedial” writing courses). The need for this review was suggested by several factors, including “high” pass rates for ENGL 095 and ENGL 096, little data on the effectiveness of ENGL 100, and questions about the efficacy of the EPT in placing students in their first writing course.

The high pass rates in ENGL 095 and ENGL 096 can be interpreted in a variety of ways. For example, the current placement mechanism might be placing students too low. Such a downward shift of the placement criteria appeals to the extreme budget environment of 2009.

The findings of this study, however, disproved this and other assumptions. While the pass rates in ENGL 095 and ENGL 096 might be “high” (bearing in mind that “high” and “low” are relative terms based on no known standard), short-term and long-term measures of student performance suggest that the current placement mechanism effectively places developmental students, that these students are effectively “remediated,” and that this “remedial” population not only performs at levels comparable to the non-remedial population but is more likely to stay at the university.

The purpose of the developmental writing courses (ENGL 095, ENGL 096, and ENGL 100) is to prepare students to be successful in ENGL 101. Ultimately, of course, the goal is larger, the aim of all writing courses being to help students succeed at the university. Student performance in ENGL 101 provides an appropriate measure of the first goal, and student two-year retention provides a measure of the second goal. By both measures the developmental writing program has been successful.
First, developmental writing courses are effectively preparing students for success in ENGL 101. Students placed in ENGL 095 eventually earn grades in ENGL 101 that are comparable to the grades earned by students placed directly into ENGL 101. Students placed in ENGL 096 eventually earn grades in ENGL 101 that are slightly below the average for the course. In general, these two findings suggest that grades earned in ENGL 101 directly correlates to time spent in developmental writing courses.

Second, students enrolled in developmental writing courses are more likely to stay at the university than students not enrolled in such courses. Some possible explanations include the smaller class size of developmental writing courses, which foster greater student engagement, as well as the connection between developmental writing courses and academic support services such as the University Writing Center.
Furthermore, ENGL 100 not only effectively helps developmental students bypass developmental writing courses, but appears also to have a significant effect on student retention. Students enrolled in ENGL 100 are 12% more likely to stay at the university regardless of their performance in ENGL 101.

In short, the developmental writing program effectively prepares students for success at the university. Our goal for this and upcoming years is to build on these successes.

The entire report can be downloaded from
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/Report-CompProgram2009-Rev-090905.pdf

The slides from a Powerpoint presentation of this report made to the composition faculty at CSULA (September 25, 2009) can be downloaded from
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/Report-CompProgram2009-Powerpoint.pdf

Data Highlights

Average (Eventual) Grade in ENGL 101 for Students Placed

Directly in 101	2.95
in ENGL 101 with ENGL 100	2.70
in ENGL 096	2.51
in ENGL 095	2.80

Percentage of Students Still Enrolled at the University after Two Years (2-yr Retention) (based on 2005-2006 data) Placed

in ENGL 101 and earned B or higher	70%
in ENGL 101 and earned B- or lower	38%
in ENGL 096 and earned a CR	70%
in ENGL 096 and earned an NC	26%
in ENGL 095 and earned a CR	68%
in ENGL 095 and earned an NC	33%

Percentage of Students Still Enrolled at the University after Two Years (2-yr Retention) (based on 2005-2006 data)

All Students	61%
Exempt from EPT	57%
Placed in ENGL 101	58%
Placed in ENGL 101/100	66%
Placed in ENGL 096	60%
Placed in ENGL 095	62%

To Diagnose Or Not To Diagnose

Printer friendly version: http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/comp/ToDiagnoseOrNotToDiagnose.pdf

Diagnostic essays are common in composition classrooms and programs. The idea behind them is simple: identify the strengths and weaknesses of individual writers as early as possible and use that knowledge to provide meaningful individual instruction and to shape the pace and curriculum of the course. Generally, diagnostic essay topics are brief and “content-free,” allowing students to generate text without any prior knowledge or specific experience. Some instructors have students write for as little as 20 minutes while others might devote an entire class period to the activity.

Experienced instructors know that early information about individual students is key to providing instruction that will help students develop into mature and effective writers. They also know that in the short-term (i.e. from quarter to quarter or even from year to year) those strengths and weaknesses are relatively easy to predict. Many students will have difficulty balancing the competing demands of focus and development. Some will write short, focused essays that seem to say in one paragraph everything the writer thinks needs to be said. Others will write with striking detail but little control over the coherence of a paragraph, or well-developed paragraphs that are ineffectively tied together into a discourse-level whole. Many will come hobbled with the “crutches” of what Buddy Roberts has called “meatball writing instruction” (c.f. the television series M*A*S*H)—quick-fixes like the five-paragraph essay, or “power writing” or the “hamburger paragraph.” And yes, there really is something called the hamburger paragraph—look it up if you don’t believe me. Often the instructor already knows the “diagnoses” that a diagnostic essay might provide.

Also, some instructors find the very idea of “diagnosis” anathema to education. While the word itself might have benign roots, its modern use is almost wholly associated with identifying problems, whether it be locating the source of an elevated T cell count or pinpointing a misfiring spark plug. This emphasis on unhealthiness and malfunction connects our diagnoses as writing instructors to the deficit model of education—students come to us to be fixed, purged of their bad habits and bad ideas, faulty thinking and comma splices. Besides philosophical squeamishness, however, there is the very real problem of what is being measured by a timed writing exercise. All writing courses in the composition program at CSULA emphasize the process of writing, specifically the importance of planning, drafting, and meaningful revision. Students are not merely given the opportunity to revise, they are required to revise, and assessment recognizes that these revised products are works in progress. Given this focus, what exactly is being diagnosed by a brief “content-free” on-demand essay?

Each instructor needs to consider his or her needs in deciding whether to have students write a diagnostic essay. Ultimately, whether one calls it a diagnostic essay or not, what the instructor needs is a sense of where the students are, and what each student needs is early and meaningful feedback.

Thinking about using a diagnostic essay? Consider these suggestions:

1. Give students a choice of topics—the purpose of a diagnostic is to determine what students can and cannot do.
2. Provide topics that connect to the reading, theme, or other topics in the course.
3. Include with the topics a brief outline of your expectations.
4. Allow students enough time to plan and draft their response.
5. Consider providing time at the end for students to reflect on their response. Ask them to read their drafts and then explain briefly what they might do differently or, if they had more time, what they might do to improve their essays.
6. Consider allowing students to revise the draft as one of the assignments in the course.
7. As the above list makes clear, it is best to make the diagnostic essay part of the course.