To what extent should we consider our non-writing instructor colleagues when designing our writing instruction?
Perhaps writing instructors don't really worry about this question. However, I hear non-writing instructors' feedback about their students' poor grammar, spelling, punctuation, tone, organization, and other editing-level issues. It is often their opinion (granted, a potentially less savvy, non-writing instructor opinion) that the students should be obtaining these skills in their writing classes, thereby saving the non-writing instructor the hassle of teaching writing along with another subject (e.g., history, science, psychology, math, etc.).
So my questions are these:
1. SHOULD we be concerned with the needs/desires of our non-writing colleagues?
2. Are we doing students a disservice by not teaching them fundamental skills upon which other people (not just instructors, but potentially future employers) will critique/grade them?
3. If students only take a writing composition course in college, and the writing composition course is not concerned with "micro-level" writing, how/when/where do students learn these skills? Is it our concern at the composition level, or should we just hope that they take a grammar course?
1 comment:
Chalice asks a good question, what about the fundamentals?
A short story:
Once upon a time, in an advertising firm far far away a young woman with a masters degree in communications was given a job as a copy writer. It quickly became apparent that the heroine of our story knew very little about writing. But, she was plucky and insisted that "she knew what she was up to", after all she had the degree and all.
And then she was fired.
The end.
(I thought about putting a troll in, but that would have made it longer.)
The story is true, and an extreme case but the harsh reality is that the fundamentals make a difference. Well, not knowing the fundamentals makes a difference.
Personally, I think the basics are more important than anything else we can teach. After all, isn't mastery just being really good a the fundamental things?
Post a Comment