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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 24, 1986)
J At VUKS M CHKNET NKWSWKKI Marfcetafato commodity Richard Frye (seated> leads a New York University writing workshop identified through the assessment test— enroll in a special writing course, the one I teach, which no one ever calls remedial They write and rewrite every week and attend a weekly half-hour tutorial session with their instructor At least one-fourth of t he freshmun class could benefit from such a course, but because it is an intenBive-care operation, it is limited to the neediest Thosestudentswhodo prove most in need of writing help are not a predictable lot They are not all (or even mostly > black and Hispanic students admitted on some sort of affirmative-action discount pass They are not all farm-bred aggies or ice-bound jocks or digitally programmed engineers The only safe generalization is that a significant percentage are foreign-born students who have not yet worked all the kinks out of a tough new language. There are, in short, no scapegoats among these students, no easily isolated groups to muke one feel that writ ing woes are limited The students are per fectly bright, hard-working young people from nice families and good schools, who have earned their admission to a selective university and will probably lead successful lives. They just don’t write very well. Do* »nd don't*: The main reason iH that they were never taught to write well—and that is not a blanket indictment of elemen tary- and secondary-school teachers. Writ ing takes time, and time is what teachers don’t have. My students, 24 of them, write erhaps three pages twice each week: a first Iraft and a revision, both of which I readand correct A typical high-school teacher who assigned that much writing would be look ing at more than 700 pages a week Partly because of the time limitations, high-school teaching often presents writing in terms of rules and formulas, handy refer enceslike t imetables designed toyield "cor rect" answers Students have told me, for instance, thut previous teachers instructed them never to begin a sentence with "and” or"but"and that they should write conclud ing paragraphs that are virtually identical to their introductory para graphs. Such rules, at best, may lead to decriminalized prose, free from major gram matical and stylistic trans gressions. But (yes, buflthey do not always have much to do with good writing. In fact, they may inhibit good writing. 'Cmmm splice’: As a novice, I often lack the authoritative buzzwords that might cow a student into submission. Terms like "comma splice” and "dangling participle” tend to work because they soundofficial.even ifthe stu dent doesn’t know exactly what they mean. At times, however, I encounter gram matically "legal” passages that are so tortured, or word choices so bizarre, that my diagnostic vocabulary fails me when the student asks why I want him to make a certain change. What can I say—because it sounds dumb? Because no one will know what he’s trying to say? Because it reeks of that special aroma found in student writ ing? In effect, 1 end up relying on the plea of the crafty suitor: trust me. Students seem never to have been ex posed to writing as an art form rather than a science. They look for answers, not guid ance in a process. If I tell a student, for example, that it doesn’t bother me if he starts a sentence with "but,” he may pro test, then look confused, then shrug. The Learning how to deliver the product: Williams working with student Damien Chin-On ■■■» ■ iw in