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.