From the Buffalo News...

WRITER’S BLOCK
Students are getting mixed messages about the importance of writing, even as experts predict successful careers will depend upon an ability to do it well.
By Charity Vogel NEWS STAFF REPORTER Updated: 02/03/08 8:56 AM

You can hardly blame teens today if they feel a bit conflicted about writing. After all: they hear a decidedly mixed message about it.
At home and in school, parents and teachers tell them it’s important.
And the SAT, in its new incarnation, requires them to grind out an hour of it – a major section of the intense test, which, at nearly four hours, now surpasses the law school entrance exam in duration. But here’s where it gets tricky.
Many colleges and universities simply disregard that hard-won SAT writing score when deciding who to admit – because they feel SAT essays are not a helpful gauge as to how good at writing an individual student is.
“It’s not that colleges are not looking at writing,” said Ann Marie Moscovic, director of admissions at Canisius College, where the SAT essay score isn’t factored into acceptances or rejections. “It’s that we’re looking at it in a different way than the SAT.” And that’s not all.
Once they get onto a college campus, writing is again stressed to students — but they’re asked to set their high school ideas aside, and approach writing in different ways.
“Our goal is that they are able to communicate effectively, in written communication and in speaking,” said Dr. Scott A. Chadwick, Canisius’ vice president for academic affairs. “The beauty of college is, it’s not just about the skill – it’s about the application.”
Add it all up, and it’s a pretty confusing picture for young people who don’t typically put writing skills at the top of their priority lists to begin with. (And who, in a digital era, may choose to send short bursts of text-messages before doing any other kind of writing.)
“I think I’m maybe an average writer,” admitted Samantha Hawker, 18, who graduated last spring from John F. Kennedy High School in Cheektowaga and who wants to work in forensic science someday. “I could probably be a lot better.”
No doubt about it: Writing factors into the lives of today’s teens in much different ways than it did just a generation or two ago.
In one sense, it’s a dying art. For proof, just ask the composition teachers who face classes of newbie writers in freshman college classrooms, only to find out that they need to teach the basics of grammar and sentence structure before they can go any further.
“For some of these kids, it’s all new,” said Marne Griffin, an assistant professor in the English Department at Hilbert College in Hamburg.
But in another important sense – and whether they realize it or not – writing is now more important to these students than ever before.
Going forward, the jobs and livelihoods these teenagers will have 5 or 10years from now, many experts agreed, will require writing in unprecedented ways — and will depend upon an individual’s ability to do it well.
“No matter what the profession is,” confirmed Dr. Christopher Holoman, provost at Hilbert College, “writing has become critical.”
So no, high school graduates today don’t have to dream about writing the next great American novel. But they do need to write well enough to succeed.
Writing is power
Marne Griffin’s writing classroom, on the second floor of Paczeszny Hall on the Hilbert campus on South Park Avenue, could serve as a microcosm of the whole dilemma.
Her mission, as the teacher, is to get the 21 students in front of her, most of them 18 and 19 years old, to communicate efficiently and effectively with words. Some of the students in the room write moderately well, a few very well; but most need some training or review in the basics.
Which is what, on a recent Wednesday afternoon, she was schooling them in.
“This is NOT the same thing as an e-mail, or a text message,” narrated Griffin, a petite, energetic woman, as she paced in front of the rows of seats. “How often do I see you guys text-messaging? That’s not the same thing as writing a paper for me. It doesn’t translate. Different audiences.”
This particular morning, Griffin feels like the class is lukewarm, so she starts quizzing them about how they believe writing will factor into their futures.
“How many of you,” she asks, “think that beyond college you will have writing as part of your career?”
A lot of hands go up. Griffin stops, nods her head, and smiles.
“Absolutely,” she says. “Absolutely! Writing gives you power.”
One student in the class who needs no convincing of that is Gus Clarke.
At 18, Clarke has already learned that he can control his future if he can command the English language. A graduate of Seneca Comprehensive High School in Buffalo, Clarke spent several months during his senior year writing at least 10 essays that he used to apply for scholarships so that he could afford to attend Hilbert.
It took a long time, rewriting and polishing those essays with the help of his mother, a graduate of Syracuse University who has long stressed to him the importance of writing.
“Naturally, I’m not a very good writer,” said Clarke.
But, in the end it worked. Clarke landed four scholarships, totaling an amount that covers nearly all his college costs at Hilbert, where he dorms.
Now, Clarke takes Griffin’s class, in an effort to absorb even more writing skills, so he can succeed at a career in criminal justice.
“You have to know how to write,” he said. “If you don’t, the future is not there for you.”
Back to basics
Experts agree with him. At many colleges and universities, writing is being required of all entering freshmen in special courses targeted to building their language skills. Many schools also employ broad-ranging, writingcentered approaches designed to ensure that students write in all their classes, not just English ones, and no matter what their major.
At Hilbert, that means entering students land in an English 101 course or an even more basic “Fundamentals of English” course that grounds them in the basics of writing — from structuring a paragraph to identifying the parts of speech. As the students progress, they learn argumentation and higher-level skills.
“We’re actually seeing the beginning of a split in incoming students,” said Holoman, the provost. “As a group, incoming students write better than they did eight or nine years ago. But there is also a sizable group that is not prepared for college writing – and those students seem to be increasing.”
Thus, basics like grammar and sentence construction can’t be taken for granted, even at the college level, he said.
“It’s not just Hilbert or Medaille; it’s Oberlin and Swarthmore and Holyoke,” said Holoman, who said the problem is discussed a good deal at higher-education conferences. “All of us are seeing students not as prepared as we would like – and all of us are having to offer more sections of remedial English.”
At Canisius, Chadwick, the vice president, said that most students begin in one of four entry-level writing courses as freshmen. They then move through more writing courses as they continue at the college, and they also encounter writing in other ways.
“There are writing components in every course we have. Students learn to write, and they also learn to write in their disciplines,” he said. “In higher education we call it ‘writing across the curriculum.’ ”
Nationally, this type of approach is widespread, said a spokesman at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
The 21st century work force, said Barmak Nassirian, will be “all about writing and numeracy.”
“You have to be able to articulate thoughts, in words,” said Nassirian, associate executive director of the association, located in Washington, D.C. “And you have to be numerate: You have to have the basics of mathematics down. With those two ingredients, everything is possible.”
“Without them,” he said, “it’s hard to see how a collegiate career could work.”
At Hilbert, Holoman put it this way: “It doesn’t make sense to train students in some narrow package of job skills, when that job will be obsolete in 10 years, or they will have changed jobs.”
Mixed messages
Before they can get to college, though, students need to pass muster on the SAT.
And that’s where many of them get frustrated.
Because the newly revised exam, now in its third year, includes a lengthy writing segment which tests their ability to improve sentences and paragraphs through multiple-choice question sequences. It also requires them to write an essay in 25 minutes.
However, many students are told outright by their high school teachers and guidance counselors that the SAT essay score will not count for much when it comes to college acceptances.
“I was told by my counselor that it was something new on the SAT, so it wouldn’t really be counted all that much,” said Clarke, the Hilbert freshman.
Experts on the SAT test concurred that students received mixed messages about the importance of the writing part, as well as about how to tackle it.
Nancy Berger at Upgrade Academics Inc., a tutoring and SATprep agency in Williamsville, said that many students approach the writing component as if it’s an assignment in English class. That can actually hurt their chances of scoring well, she said.
“It’s completely different from how they teach writing in high school,” she said, of the SAT essay and the way it’s graded. “That approach just doesn’t work.”
The SAT essay segment requires students to draft, in pencil and in longhand script, the first draft of a complete essay on an assigned subject. Essays are graded on a scale of 1 to 6 points by two professional teachers employed by the College Board. Colleges see both the score the student receives and a downloadable pdf image of the student’s written essay.
Because the time is so short on the exam, students need to walk in with concrete ideas of what they can write about, even before they see the essay question, Berger said.
She said students also need to realize they won’t be able to revise and polish their essays the way they are taught in high school.
“They have very specific things they want to see,” said Berger, a former English teacher, of the SAT graders.
But, she said, regardless of whether the SAT essay score counts toward college admission, preparing for the SAT – all of its components – can be a positive experience for a student.
“It really does improve a student’s writing,” she said. “And the colleges — they see it. It’s on your transcript. It may not be part of their official process of admission, but — it’s there.”

Newsletter or Blog? No, Both!

So this blog might be creating some kind of a conflict of interest with the Newsletter, especially since both will be incorporated into the WAC website. Hence, maybe we should consider what kind of content we want in each before we really start updating this Blog seriously. My suggestions are as follows: 1) Updates to the workshop schedule, 2) Meeting Notes from Wednesdays, 3) Impressions from the Workshops; formal and informal, 4) profiles of one of the workshop faculty at some steady interval, 5) posts incorporating news articles, op-ed, etc., that would be of interest to the WAC community.

What do you think Julie? Rest of you?

Nice job

Never having written on a blog before, I don't understand really what the protocol is. I'll learn, though, and I think this is a great idea. I'm also impressed by how fast the BMCC WFs can go from suggestion (from Melis at about 11:00 a.m. Wednesday) to creation (by Michal about two hours later) to actual hereness (thanks, Julie). So here we go. Hope it isn't a waste of time. It may be a good way to keep the news updated.

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