A glossy black-and-white Audrey Hepburn hangs from above while Lea Maurer’s eyes glaze over in front of her IBM laptop. She rocks in her chair while tapping a foot under the desk in her Spaulding single. Her head tilts to the side, supported by her hand, while the other idly scrolls up and down the paper she hasn’t opened since last week.
Lea is a freshman Speech and Hearing Science major, but right now the only thing she’s worried about is how to stretch her first college English paper from three to five pages. She studies the quotes and contemplates whether or not they’re too long, rereads what she’s written, searches for more material; minimize Word, Mozilla Firefox, uh oh, Facebook.
By scoring a 580 or higher on her SAT verbal, Lea was placed in English 102, which will likely be the last formal writing instruction she’ll ever see. For some students a single semester of composition is ample, but will it be enough for Lea?
English 102, or the 101/201 combo, are a requirement for all students who fall short of a 730 verbal score. Dance major? Math major? Aerospace engineering? Think you’re exempt? Think again, and welcome to English 101! Your teacher this semester will likely be a 26-year-old graduate student who probably hasmore than one hair color and whose interests lie more on their dissertations.
These dedicated TAs are here to teach you invaluable lessons that should (if properly given and properly received) keep you writing A-papers for the rest of your days. That is, at least, the intentions of a program like the University at Buffalo’s composition program.
Mili Clark is the Director of Composition and Teaching Fellows, who, with the help of her assistant Barbara Cole, organizes and oversees all composition teachers and classes. They create a uniform syllabus, evaluate students’ progress, and train their TAs in a special graduate class—English 599: Practicum in Teaching. Here, gradute students will learn to address all the issues that come up in a typical composition class.
Clark and Cole have faith in their TAs who, Cole says, “ are incredibly hard-working” and, “hold themselves to a high standard.” But the results of evaluations are undeniable upon examination of the Fall 2006 program assessment charts. The charts show that the lowest percentages of students, in nearly every category (thesis development, paragraphing, grammar and sentence structure, and examples/source materials used) fall into “needs strong improvement” section, and the highest percentages fall under “starts and remains average.”
Recent UB graduate Becky Roth is a former English 102 enrollee turned University of Pittsburg graduate student. Roth, also a Speech and Hearing Science major, was satisfied with the skills she acquired in her 102 class, but she admits, “…it probably wouldn’t have hurt to take another writing course.” While only in her first year at Pittsburg, it may be too early to tell whether her writing abilities are on par with her classmates, but in retrospect, she wishes she had received more instruction on grammar and vocabulary, “…things that would have helped me on the GRE.”
At a university where professors and TAs spend a great deal of their time trying to get published, and students that spend a great deal of time putting off writing assignments, is it possible for the average student to gain the skills to produce what is commonly referred to as “college level writing”?
True—not everybody is born with equal ability, and many students come to UB from poorly funded, inner-city high schools that don’t have the assets to prepare them for college writing. Mark Buell is an adjunct instructor who works in the Learning Center. He also devotes portions of his time to the Center for Academic Development Services, or the CADS Lab. Buell admits, “I’ve had students who have never written an essay.”
That’s where Linda Zilgme comes in. Zilgme is the Tutorial Coordinator at the CADS Lab, and basically heads the program. According to Zilgme, the lab offers nearly 90 tutors, and a dozen that specifically work with writing. Their writing tutors help students organize their thoughts and improve their overall writing process. Because of their efforts, our Equal Opportunity Program (EOP), according to Zilgme, is ranked amongst the top four in the nation.
The CADS Lab is big, but not equipped for the entire student body. So how does a university adjust for the under-privileged writing novice as well as a graduate from a renowned private school? There are actually numerous resources available for students of all needs. So numerous, in fact, that it becomes nearly impossible to believe that a student sincerely devoted to their schoolwork could fail.
Finding help with writing at UB is even easier than finding fast food in the Commons. Ready? Grab a highlighter:
The CADS Lab, located on the lower level of the Capen Library at 46 Capen, offers tutoring services for everyone from EOP and Academic Challenge and Enrichment (ACE) students, to Acker Scholars. If these programs aren’t familiar and just look like a spoonful of alphabet soup, there’s always the Blake Center in Ellicott (167 Millard Fillmore Academic Center), the tutoring lab on the tenth floor of Goodyear Hall on South Campus, the Jones Center in Governors, and The Writing Place (217 Baldy Hall). Active athletes can also visit the Student-Athlete Tutorial Program in 169 Alumni Arena. All tutors in these services are trained, and many are certified.
And, of course, there are always those professors who state their offices hours after every class hoping for someone to ask them how to format an argument and how to correctly use a comma, or perhaps an MLA citation.
For those 101/201 and 102 students who do seek the help they need, another impediment to success may surface in the semesters to come, one that is not easy to resolve. Most 101, 201, 102 TAs are veteran English majors and are generally limited to the knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and critical analysis they learned while taking English courses. But what good is being able to critically analyze a text for an Aerospace Engineer? Engineers and English majors write different kinds of papers, albeit using the same grammar and punctuation, but they need different kinds of training that the typical English 101 TA is not equipped to teach.
Furthermore, professors have enough to think about between classes, publishing, and their own lives, so that they can’t afford to lose sleep over worrying how to teach writing basics.
Mili Clark has proposed a solution that she says will never be realized, though it would easily solve this problem—every major field could require students to take a junior-level writing course, where the specific needs of that major are exclusively addressed. This means, Clark says, each department would have to hire another professor for that purpose—money that few departments are ready to dish out.
It may seem like there is a brick wall around every corner. Maybe the system is inherently flawed. A university can make every effort to help students learn to write (short of an intravenous injection of basic writing skills), but they can’t drag those students into The Writing Place, or the CADS Lab, or their TAs office for help. It is enough to know that these resources are available and waiting for students who choose to use them.
Jon Sham is a senior English major and Features writer for Generation.
