Reading Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions by Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle made me think about my first year composition class I took at here at Kean. It was a amalgamation of about 20 students (the actual number eludes me, it was in fall 2014) whose major were all over the spectrum: Undecided, education majors, science majors, English majors (me). Looking back now my Professor had to teach a comprehensive composition course to prepare all of us to, how Downs and Wardle phrase it, write across the university.
I hate to sound like a broken record player, but I’ve mentioned this in a previous post (second to last paragraph). To have a singular professor introduce incoming freshman to a “universal” writing that students can use across multiple fields of study, all in a semester or two, while juggling a million other concepts: genre, rhetoric (broad concept but bare with me), language, literacy, authority, etc. is an almost impossible task. Reading more and more into this field just solidifies my stance on the writing courses dependent on the field of study. intro to (enter field of study)Writing: Biology, history, psychology, math, political science.
Depending on the Professor skill set, they might not be qualified to teach skills for other fields. Downs/Wardle mention this, “FYC teachers trained in English studies and working in English departments realize academic writing as the genres and content mediating English studies for example, literary and rhetorical analyses… These instructors are unlikely to be involved in, familiar with, or able to teach the specialized discourses used to mediate other activities within disciplinary systems across the university. In effect, the flavor of the purportedly universal academic discourse taught in FYC is typically humanities-based and more specifically English studies-based” (556).
First year composition classes are the foundation for all students regardless of their chosen field of study. How foolish to leave such an important task to one or two semesters and to one professor who is overwhelmed with several voices who cant seem to agree.
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