The Basic Writing Program was begun in 1992. Its goal is to ensure that all students enrolling in English Composition I are well prepared enough to be able to succeed in the course.
To this end, it has developed a three-pronged approach:
• A developmental writing curriculum based on the most current research available
• An assessment program to identify which incoming students need the assistance of the program
• A faculty training program consisting of annual workshops for faculty involved in teaching in the Basic Writing Program and weekly staff meetings during the semester.
For more information, contact Rick Branscomb, Coordinator, Basic Writing Program. Office, Library 02, Phone 542-6142.
The Basic Writing Curriculum
Introduction
Research in the past twenty to twenty-five years, confirmed by our own observations of our students, has provided us with a fairly clear picture of what a Basic Writer is. While there are a number of important exceptions to any of the following generalizations, we know that a Basic Writer is someone who:
Has an enormous difficulty in initiating and sustaining writing. In effect, she suffers from "Writer's Block." On any given task, she will produce from one tenth to perhaps one fourth the amount of writing an experienced writer will.
Has no idea or only a vague (and often incorrect) idea of what a writer does, how a writer behaves. Believes in the myth of the "born writer" or the "inspired writer." Is frustrated by "rules" of writing: learned, unlearned, and half-learned.
Comes from an oral-based background and thus is simply unfamiliar with the forms and conventions of academic, literate writing. Has read very little and written even less extended discourse. Is not intellectually deficient but, because of inexperience in literate habits of thought and expression, tends to come to college operating at lower cognitive levels
Tends to be a "dead-level reasoner"; that is, thinks mostly in generalities (most common) or only in specifics (less common), without seeing the relationship between them.
In her written products, will make a large number of errors in syntax and usage, and these errors will differ in sometimes startling ways from the errors made by more experienced writers. Punctuation, capitalization, and spelling may appear to be random. Spelling errors may account for one-third of all errors, and as the writer gains more experience and confidence and tries more cognitively complex tasks in writing, the number of errors will temporarily increase, and spelling errors may account for up to one half of all errors. In some cases may be learning disabled.
Is usually a one-draft writer (see #2 above). Thinks of revision as punishment for failure to get it right the first time. Sees revision, if at all, as correcting spelling, perhaps, and copying the rough draft over in ink.
Basic Writing at Salem State
The Basic Writing program is based on the best research available and is continuously evolving.
It recognizes the complexity of the writing problems our students have, the cognitive and affective dimensions of the inability to write well, and the diversity of both the causes and the manifestations of this inability. In general, it uses a conference/workshop instructional format, emphasizes instruction and support rather than criticism and failure, teaches a writing process that works, and builds from a holistic, top-down model of cognitive development using carefully sequenced writing assignments.
The Conference/Workshop
The conference/workshop method of writing instruction is designed to provide the greatest amount of flexibility and individual attention for the students. It involves one-to-one tutoring in the classroom, and should be supported by additional tutoring in a laboratory component. It allows the course to be conducted as a developmental rather than remedial course, a course which meets the student at exactly his level and proceeds to the next level of writing development. Course instruction is entirely through individual conferences between the writer and instructor on the writer's work as it's in progress. Since writing is a process to be learned rather than a body of facts to be comprehended and retained, there are no lectures and no workbook exercises--just massive amounts of writing and frequent intervention by the instructor in the process. In class, students are writing both before their conference and after, hence the term "workshop."
In order for the conference method to work, the instructor must have internalized a hierarchy of qualities to look for in the writing of the student before her. The program uses the hierarchy put forth by Roger Garrison and found to produce significantly better writers in a three-year study conducted by the Los Angeles County Community College District.
1. Content--Information
2. Organization
3. Individual sentences
4. Words (diction and spelling) and punctuation
In conference, the instructor comments on only one aspect of the paper being read, the aspect highest in the hierarchy. Until that problem is solved, there's little value in commenting on other flaws the paper may have.
In recent years the conference/workshop has been felicitously modified to allow for peer response and collaborative learning.
Emphasizes Instruction and Support Rather Than Criticism and Failure
This aspect of an effective writing program should be self-evident, but in practice it it is usually not. Red marks on papers, harsh comments in the margins, a thoroughgoing emphasis on what's wrong with a piece of writing, subtle or overt signals to the student that something is "wrong" with him because he has difficulty in writing, remarks that these students don't belong in college because they aren't prepared to do the work we expect of them--all these and more are manifestations of a negative approach to teaching. We must analyze each student's strengths and build on those strengths, using instruction to increase their skills. We can't make the mistake of expecting them to know how to write before they take our course.
Most research confirms that the affective component of not being able to write is as crucial as the cognitive component, unlike many other college courses. Very often, students taking Basic Writing have been taught to fail, have been expected to fail, and believe they are failures. This lack of confidence in their ability to write turns into writer's block, further reinforcing their sense of failure. Support and positive reinforcement is essential in this program.
A Writing Process That Works
The most basic of basics in learning how to write (or how to do anything, for that matter) is the process--the steps, attitudes, and behaviors that allow one to start, sustain, and finish the task. When the task is writing, the process that will allow one to complete the task is called "The Writing Process." In no uncertain terms, the writing process is basic.
Most Basic Writers, however, are one-draft writers, doing no planning before writing, doing no substantive (i.e., real) revision, inappropriately conceiving of revision as copyediting, unable to identify most of their errors, and overwhelmed by the prospect of correcting the errors they can identify. This is a truncated, bankrupt version of a process. They need to be let in on the secret successful writers have independently discovered and most high school English teachers have kept from them: writing is a process, long and recursive and occasionally messy. To overcome their fear and trembling before the blank page, they need to learn functional heuristic procedures for generating written information. To give them the confidence to succeed, they need to learn how to write messy and confused discovery drafts. To let them communicate their ideas to others, they need to learn the arduous and lengthy process of revising. To be sure their message comes through static-free, they need to learn how to correct their own mistakes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
A successful writing process consists of steps, some recursive and some strictly linear:
1. Prewriting (finding a topic, gathering information)
2. The rough discovery draft
3. Revising
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4. Editing
5. Proofreading
The first three are recursive, that is, they happen in no fixed order, often are repeated, and sometimes occur simultaneously. The final two are part of the "going public" stage and ideally should be kept separate. In order to get our writing students over this fear of putting pen to paper, we encourage them to draft freely, without regard for grammar, spelling, or punctuation, and to deal with those mechanical matters in a separate proofreading step after the composition of the paper is finished.
Teaching these subprocesses, making them explicitly known, is the core of a Basic Writing course.
A Holistic, Top-down Model of Learning
Working from a top-down model of learning means Basic Writers should begin with large concepts--the whole piece of writing--and work their way down, through the week and through the semester, to the smaller details of writing, such as grammatical concepts and punctuation. This is important for Basic Writing students, for most of them come to college with holistic thinking processes--they see the forest but can't distinguish the trees. We build on that strength while gradually teaching them to perceive details.
They do not learn by building up from small details to large concepts. They do not learn by first learning to spell, then learning to identify nouns and verbs and dangling modifiers, then writing short sentences, then complex sentences, then paragraphs, etc. They learn by writing meaningful whole essays from day one and concentrating on one smaller skill at a time within the context of meaningful writing situations. They learn how to spell their own words, punctuate their own sentences, develop their own paragraphs, and organize their own essays--all while writing.
Conclusion
To repeat the intial caveat: these are all generalizations. They hold in most instances, but there are exceptions. We have seen poor writers full of confidence, convinced they're excellent; we have seen Basic Writers who are bottom-up learners; we have ourselves occasionally written something with little revision; We have seen Basic Writers who make almost no mistakes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. The program must be individualized as much as possible.
Technology and Basic Writing
Some sections of Basic Writing use the English Department’s Computer Classroom and its network of computers for the composition of student essays and a variety of other pedagogical functions.
Writing Assessment and Course Placement
The assessment and proper placement of writing students at the beginning of their careers is essential for their later success in college. Our earlier practice of designating certain sections of Composition I as special and reserving them for students whose SAT Verbal scores are below a certain cutoff point did not serve the students it was supposed to serve.
First, the SAT Verbal score is nototriously inaccurate in identifying Basic Writers, emphasizing as it does the proofreading stage of the writing process at the expense of the other stages. Thus, an examination of a student's whole writing process is required to make a decision about her ability to undertake college level writing. For this, a portfolio of the student's writing is ideal but impossible to obtain; the next most accurate indicator is a writing sample. With properly designed and administered writing samples and evaluation by readers trained in holistic scoring, reliability ratings of over 80% may be achieved. We propose the following procedure for the assessment of writing skills of incoming freshmen and accurate placement of them.
Second, the expectation is that at the end of one semester, students thus placed into these special sections of Composition I will be ready to enroll in and succeed in Composition II. This is clearly unrealistic, for no one course, regardless of what special conditions are created for it, can accomplish two or more semesters of progress in one semester with this population.
Third, students who write poorly in college may be broadly grouped into two categories: native speakers of English for whom academic prose is unfamiliar, and students for whom English is a second language who simply need to learn English.
The current assessment and placement policy is as follows: Each student wishing to enroll in Composition I must first produce a writing sample. This sample will be given in group testing sessions at strategic times before the beginning of each semester, and it will be evaluated by a team of readers trained in holistic scoring. The possible outcomes of the assessment will be
1. referral to the ESL program,
2. referral to the Basic Writing course, or
3. admission into Composition I.
No student will be permitted to enroll in Composition I, or be permitted to remain if already enrolled, without producing a writing sample of adequate quality for admission into the course. The sample is administered in group sessions during the summer (or intersession). The Assessment Team, made up of members of the English Department faculty who are most involved in English Composition I and II, is responsible for designing the test, writing the prompts, seeking input from the department and the college community in determining the evaluation criteria to be used, overseeing the administration of each testing session, continually training themselves to be reliable readers, and evaluating the samples. Samples are scored on a scale of 1-6 by two readers; samples whose scores differ by 2 or more points will be read by a third reader. Students whose samples receive a combined score of 4 or less will be referred to Basic Writing.