Re: Tutor Qualifications/synthetic frosh courses

[Betty Shiffman <bshiffman@uky.campus.mci.net>]

Lynell,

I was printing out Frankie Condon's post as I scrolled ahead to read new
messages and came to yours.  I plan to share his experiences with my English
colleagues at Spalding.  They have had in place a similar course for about
five years, I believe.  It's called Comprehension, Criticism, and
Communication designed as a course in textual and cultural critique, with
lots of emphasis on class discussion and writing intensive.

But it doesn't seem to be working as it was intended.  In fact, some of the
teachers of the course (interdisciplinary, of course) barely pretend any
more that it's a writing course.  And too many of those who do insist on
writing are like the business professor who regularly sends his students to
the WC before each paper is due, primarily to eradicate I or we or you,
contractions, and so on from their papers.  As limited as his approach is,
at least he has students writing a great deal.

We're currently in the throes of rethinking the general education
requirements (isn't everyone?), and this course has been targeted by many of
the faculty as one that needs to be dropped.  Unfortunately, we only a
one-semester fy writing course which is inadequate for preparing our
students (whose profile is very similar to UL's students).  I don't want the
course dropped if we can't replace it with another comp course.

Bottom line from here:  Unless the institution (faculty and acdministration)
is willing to provide substantial training and support (that means time,
too), it won't work.  I'd progress very slowly down that road.

btw, did you know that Transy has something similar instead of freshman
comp?  They call it freshman orientation (or did--my information is at least
four years old), and it's taught as an interdisciplinary course with a core
of common texts and a reading list that expands to include the professor's
particular discipline.  They have done quite a bit of professional training
in teaching writing and each course is supposed to incorporate the process
approach, multiple drafts, peer review, etc.  

I'd be interested in hearing what your plan looks like.

Betty

At 11:44 AM 2/26/97 -0600, you wrote:
>
>
>The post from Frankie Condon about the "foundations" courses was intriuing to
>me because it brought up some of the difficulties associated with the
>problems of teaching writing in a "synthetic" or "intedisciplinary" frosh
>"experience" type class where students are given cross-disciplinary exposure
>(ouch! that sounds painful!) and expected to do a lot of writing in the
>meantime as a way to gain competency/experience/credit for their academic
>writing requirement.  We are exploring this kind of progam for fall 98 at
>concordia and I am both excited but worried about how the writing component
>translates when the responsibility for writing is dispersed across the
>curriculum.  I know that Sherrie Gradin and a crew from PSU/Linfield explored
>this in their CCCC's presentation last year, but I'm wondering about how to
>advise the committee charged with creating an "experience" course as to how
>to manage the freshman writing component of it, and by extension if it's
>advisable to get the writing center involved in some significant, defined
>way.
>
>Thanks!
>
>Lynnell Edwards
>Concordia University, Portland
>
>