policies ENGL301 Writing & The Teaching of Writing
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Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 ltorda@bridgew.edu www.leetorda.com On Zoom: https://bridgew.zoom.us/j/3806648927 |
Fall 2021 Open Hours for students (office hours):
MW (in-person or Zoom) 1:30 to 2:30 T (Zoom only) 10:00 to 11:00 R 1:45 to 2:45 (in-person or Zoom) And by appointment Make an appointment, either face to face or on zoom, during office hours or at another time: Let me know you want to meet by adding yourself to my google.doc appointment calendar here: https://goo.gl/3CqLf. If you are meeting me on zoom, I will send you a zoom link for the time you sign up for. |
CLASS UPDATES
Check this space for follow ups on things we talk about in class and/or updates to the syllabus and/or reminders about upcoming projects.
CLASS UPDATE 20 SEPTEMBER 2021
Check out this 7 minute video I made to help folks to understand 1) the late work policy for class; 2) how to understand the "WHAT YOU HAVE TO READ, WATCH, OR LISTEN TO" column on the website; and 3) formatting on Reading Journals or Reader's Notes. I don't mean it to be like a scold. I mean it to be helpful. Also, it's me without a mask! Click here to watch the video
15 September 2021Check out just a few of the other versions of “Why Johnny Can’t” articles. Keep in mind, if I wanted to, I could include three, four, five articles from 2016 on):
“Those of us who have been doomed to read manuscript written in an examination room--whether at a grammar school, a high school, or a college--have found the work of even good scholars disfigured by bad spelling, confusing punctuation, ungrammatical, obscure, ambiguous, or inelegant expressions. Everyone who has had much to do with the graduating classes of our best colleges, has known men who could not write a letter describing their own Commencement without making blunders which would disgrace a boy twelve years old.”
You wanna know who wrote that? It’s a man named Adam Sherman Hill, and he wrote this about students at Harvard University in 1879. Yes, you read that right, 1879.
So if you were wondering when the golden age of literacy in the United States was--and we must assume there was one since literally every single article above suggests that literacy has precipitously declined--it must have been sometime around the Civil War.
And let’s consider another point: he’s talking about the .0001% of super elite, rich white men who went to Harvard. And if he is essentially saying they can’t write for nothing, what does that say about the rest of us slobs? And, further, if things were so bad in 1879 and have, by our long list of articles published since, disintegrated further, how is it even possible that we are even able to communicate with each other?
So what is my point? Let’s move away from Deficit Ideologies I started to make this point at the end of class, and it’s my job to both prove it to you and prepare you for the truth of what I’m saying: maybe it’s not that we are all such lousy writers. Maybe writing is hard. Maybe it takes time to learn. Maybe it takes meaningful opportunities to read and to write, over a very long academic career, to get decent at it. Couldn’t that be why you are all such competent writers at this moment in your career?
Check this space for follow ups on things we talk about in class and/or updates to the syllabus and/or reminders about upcoming projects.
CLASS UPDATE 20 SEPTEMBER 2021
Check out this 7 minute video I made to help folks to understand 1) the late work policy for class; 2) how to understand the "WHAT YOU HAVE TO READ, WATCH, OR LISTEN TO" column on the website; and 3) formatting on Reading Journals or Reader's Notes. I don't mean it to be like a scold. I mean it to be helpful. Also, it's me without a mask! Click here to watch the video
15 September 2021Check out just a few of the other versions of “Why Johnny Can’t” articles. Keep in mind, if I wanted to, I could include three, four, five articles from 2016 on):
- We have an article that originally appeared in 1955 in McClean’s magazine by Rudolph Flesch excoriating parents that their children couldn’t read.
- He was still pretty sure no one could read in this 1985 article in Edweek by Rudolph Flesch that argues that whole language instruction is to blame for our supposed decline into illiteracy.
- There is this 2006 article in Inside Higher Education by Laurence Musgrove that says there is not enough writing infused into the entire college curriculum.
- I found a 2009 article by J. Singleton Jackson that says even graduate students don’t know how to write.
- Here is a 2012 article from The Atlantic that says the same things as the article in 2006 and 2018.
- Here is a 2013 piece from NBC News that says Johnny can’t write and it’s upsetting employers.
- There is this 2017 New York Times article that says kids can’t write because they don’t have enough grammar instruction.
- We have this 2018 article by Matthew Lynch about why college students can’t write essays that blames the embrace of the writing workshop and teachers not requiring enough writing.
“Those of us who have been doomed to read manuscript written in an examination room--whether at a grammar school, a high school, or a college--have found the work of even good scholars disfigured by bad spelling, confusing punctuation, ungrammatical, obscure, ambiguous, or inelegant expressions. Everyone who has had much to do with the graduating classes of our best colleges, has known men who could not write a letter describing their own Commencement without making blunders which would disgrace a boy twelve years old.”
You wanna know who wrote that? It’s a man named Adam Sherman Hill, and he wrote this about students at Harvard University in 1879. Yes, you read that right, 1879.
So if you were wondering when the golden age of literacy in the United States was--and we must assume there was one since literally every single article above suggests that literacy has precipitously declined--it must have been sometime around the Civil War.
And let’s consider another point: he’s talking about the .0001% of super elite, rich white men who went to Harvard. And if he is essentially saying they can’t write for nothing, what does that say about the rest of us slobs? And, further, if things were so bad in 1879 and have, by our long list of articles published since, disintegrated further, how is it even possible that we are even able to communicate with each other?
So what is my point? Let’s move away from Deficit Ideologies I started to make this point at the end of class, and it’s my job to both prove it to you and prepare you for the truth of what I’m saying: maybe it’s not that we are all such lousy writers. Maybe writing is hard. Maybe it takes time to learn. Maybe it takes meaningful opportunities to read and to write, over a very long academic career, to get decent at it. Couldn’t that be why you are all such competent writers at this moment in your career?