English Update March 9, 2007

College Composition and Communication. February 2007.

Writing..... Teaching..... “A majority of college students do not speak, write or read their own language well. Graduate instructors who direct master’s essays and doctoral dissertations are shocked at the extent to which they must become teachers of ‘hospital’ English. Yet we are aware that many of the candidates for higher degrees are already engaged in part-time teaching of freshman English. If they cannot recognize and correct their own egregious errors, what is happening to the end-products of their teaching?” Report of the Commission on the Humanities, 1964, p. 138. CCC (Feb. 07), 319.

Curriculum..... Society..... “Can you be ghetto without living in the ghetto?” KE Campbell. CCC (Feb. 07), 343.

Language..... Jargon..... “In order to maintain a strong-strong relationship, the CCI must consistently review what, and for whom, it is brokering. As educators, we have a unique perspective to witness and evaluate the relationship occurring in a local educationally based LMI such as the CCI.” M Pennell. CCC (Feb. 07), 370.

Curriculum..... Literacy..... We need to communicate with local community-based literacy providers. M Pennell. CCC (Feb. 07), 345-384.

Writing..... Issue..... People in the disciplines do not learn to write in their disciplines by any direct instruction, but by accumulating experience within the discipline. People outside the disciplines think their writing instruction is generalizable to all disciplines. M Carter. CCC (Feb. 07), 385.

Writing Across the Curriculum..... Disciplines have “meta genres,” forms of writing peculiar to the discipline. Professors in the disciplines should define these “meta genres” for their students. M Carter. CCC (Feb. 07), 385-418.

Writing/Speaking..... Forums..... “ ‘Indirect exclusions’ function tacitly through discursive norms and practices that prescribe particular ways of interacting in public forums.” WM Simmons and JT Grabill. CCC (Feb. 07), 420.

Writing/Speaking..... Issues..... The key to participating as a citizen when dealing with complex, technical issues is the ability to formulate the right questions. WM Simmons and JT Grabill. CCC (Feb. 07), 440.

Writing/Speaking..... Issues..... In order to participate in the decision-making process, we must learn how as non-experts to get the knowledge we need, usually through cooperation with others. WM Simmons and JT Grabill. CCC (Feb. 07), 419-448.

Writing..... Teaching..... “Disconnect” between how scholars see the teaching of writing and how we are teaching the students in front of us every day.” CR Farris. CCC (Feb. 07), 465.

Writing..... Personal..... We are emphasizing personal writing as a way of developing understanding of the diversity in the people around us. But never forget we are teaching writing and our goals include the skills of writing. PP Marzluf. CCC (Feb. 07), 465-469.

Reading..... Problems..... Discussing student reading at the college level is like discussing the weather—everyone complains about it, but nobody does anything about it. They don’t read assigned material. They think the teacher will cover it in lectures anyway. DA Jolliffe. CCC (Feb. 07), 470-471.

Reading..... How To..... “But by the time students come to college, it’s been a long time since students have had any instructor say to them, ‘Okay, let’s work on how to read this text.’ ” DA Jolliffe. CCC (Feb. 07), 473.

Reading..... Assignments..... “In a workshop I conducted recently, a very good high school teacher claimed that ‘the days of simply saying to your students, 'Read this for Friday' are long gone.’ ” DA Jolliffe. CCC (Feb. 07), 493.

Reading..... Attitude..... “Students bring to the classroom a notion of reading that is solitary, escapist and pleasurable; instructors expect interrogation and demonstration.” M Helmens. Qtd. in DA Jolliffe. CCC (Feb. 07), 482.

Reading..... Questioning..... Kathleen Yancey in Teaching Literature as Reflective Practice…addresses directly the lament with which I began this review essay: it’s not that students can’t read she says, ‘if by read we mean respond to a prescriptive set of instructions’; it’s that ‘they haven’t been asked to guide their own reading, to make their own questions.’” DA Jolliffe. CCC (Feb. 07), 485.

Reading..... Previews..... Daniels and Zemelman: Students create study guides to parts of textbooks Students read sections of the textbook and then teach the material to other students. DA Jolliffe. CCC (Feb. 07), 490.

Reading..... Comprehension..... Students should read other books in addition to their textbooks. DA Jolliffe. CCC (Feb. 07), 492. [I add, look up topics and questions on the Internet.]