OH how I wish that were true!!!:rolleyes: You would not believe some of the papers I have received from students who assure me they were A or B students in high school. . . the "B" must have been for breathing!

Understandably so.

Universities and other entities do these types of comparisons for a reason. You all typically do them because you need a hobby. ;)

No doubt. And this is probably worse in states where the lowest level of English is labeled "college prep," like a lot of Georgia systems.

I'm sure that some of the kids are unprepared in English, but is there evidence that they are competent in science and math and not in English?

I just haven't seen that many kids who could do advanced math and science who couldn't also write clearly if they applied themselves.

(Not that it was fun for them, but just that if you have logical structure and empirical evidence down, AND you are willing to revise and edit, well, it's not rocket science. So if you really are a rocket scientist. . . Sure it's "hard" compared to what comes naturally to them, but not nearly as "hard" as it would be for the average English major to pop over to Fluid Dynamics. )

Doesn't the free market compensation for English majors vs. hard science majors or engineers kind of bear this out too?

Completely anecdotal but I always found the kids who went to independent prep schools and selective parochial schools were almost always excellent writers. I don't know if that was because the student-teacher ration was much smaller and the prep teachers really focus on students writing well vs just trying to prep the class for the state NCLB, the SAT, or the AP exams. My daughter went to a decent public high school and always took AP and Honors for every subject possible. However she usually had 25-30 classmates, even in AP. When she went to the Page School as a junior, her smallest class had 6 students, her largest had 16. Despite the condensed schedule of the Page School (they had shortened classes when Congress was in session), the teachers were much more demanding and seemed to expect more. Her writing vastly improved.

I think it's really hard to teach writing if the teacher is carrying a large total student load simply because of the time it takes to assess each piece.

If you only have a few kids, you can assign more, grade more, and the students get more opportunities to improve the skill.

ETA: I also think that if every kid in the class is a pretty good writer, so you don't have to devote time to instruction about errors, you can work on writing that is actually good as opposed to writing that's just free from horrible errors or passages of gibberish. What do you think, SWTXBelle?

I don't know about class size or student to teacher ratios, but I do think that I have an answer regarding better writers.

I went to Catholic school from K-12. My high school was a College Prep school. You needed to pass a test to get in. Anyway, we had 4 levels - "college prep", Honors 1 and Honors 2, and AP (seniors only). I was in Honors 1 and 2 classes. In terms of students' writing skills - the honors students were required to do much more writing than the "college prep" kids. We even took a special Study Skills class the first quarter (which helped immensely, and I think that everyone should have benefitted from it).

Anyway, in our English class alone, we had to read and write a paper on one required book a week. We also had mini-term papers every three weeks, a half-term paper, and and a full-term paper. All our tests were written tests, and sometimes we wrote for entire class periods. We also had to write papers every quarter in our science, history, religion, etc., classes.

It was really just practicing. You do it enough, a lot of things become habit (esp. spelling and grammar). Parents can encourage kids to do this at home if the schools aren't requiring it.

Yep, you are on to something here. To see that there is a severe problem with many college students and their preparation for college English classes, you need only look at the number of remedial and freshman English classes that are offered at colleges and universities. The resources being devoted to getting students "up to speed" is amazing, and has turned into a problem for many schools. You would think that as high school graduates who have had to pass certain tests and take certain classes they would be prepared, but you'd be wrong.

It's also worth noting that while all high schools seem to require 4 years of English, upper level math and science courses are usually optional. That does not, however, mean that simply passing 4 years of high school English means you are a good reader or writer. I always got a bit of a chuckle out of native Spanish speakers who took college Spanish thinking it would be an easy "A", not realizing that their native language was not the same as the textbook Spanish they would be studying. I'm sure you know native speakers of English who can't put together a grammatically correct sentence to save their life, or who have difficulty writing well.

As pointed out by other posters, in order to teach writing effectively you have to give the students a chance to write - and rewrite. To develop good literary analysis skills you have to have a chance to engage in discussion, and be given the opportunity to write critically. That's tough to do if you have too many students (which many of my public school counterparts do.) or if you are more worried about teaching the skills to pass some NCLB test - and I realize we are going a bit off topic, but it is interesting.

I think teaching to the NCLB test is vastly overstated as a problem. If you were teaching a good solid curriculum with good methods, the chances that you'd have to teach to the test instead are less likely than a lot of people would have you believe, particularly if kids were on grade level when you got them. (Special education and ESL/ESOL are probably exceptions to this generalization.)

And, if your state chose tests that weren't good measure of the actual curriculum, you have only your state to blame because the states wrote their own NCLB plans. As much as state and local officials like to blame NCLB for everything, a lot of the things that teachers are required to do in the name of NCLB actually aren't required by NCLB. It's just easier for the local guys to blame the feds.

I think the best way to solve the college remediation issue is for most colleges to quit offering remedial services and only actually accept and enroll students who are ready to do the work. Acceptance could be contingent on acceptable placement test results.

Having remedial classes harms the instructional level at the college and maybe surprisingly at the high school level too. It's really hard to have high standards for passing a high school class if colleges in your area routinely accept students who don't meet those standards.

I'm in favor of junior colleges/community colleges for remediation or for additional remedial services offered by high schools to graduates who flunk college placement tests. But letting kids who aren't qualified in and then complaining about it, (I don't mean you SWTXBelle, I mean colleges in Georgia) seems disingenuous when you have the data to know in advance that the kid isn't likely to be college ready.

Seriously? There are colleges that have to offer remedial English classes? We certainly didn't have any of the sort...

I bet your campus does now. It's pretty standard to offer 090 level English and math classes.

Yeah, but your college is HIGHLY selective.

Many schools have writing centers for their undergraduates including all of the highly selective Ivies:
http://www.brown.edu/Student_Services/Writing_Center/
http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/classes/writing.php
http://lsc.sas.cornell.edu/
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/se..._student.shtml
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/
http://writing.upenn.edu/critical/help/
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/writi...er/WCAbout.htm
http://www.yale.edu/bass/AbouttheWritingCenter.html


I would expect to see a writing center at an engineering school but an Ivy?

But I don't think Writing Center necessarily equals a remedial program, does it?

I think Writing Centers just got to be really trendy and they are probably a way of keeping professors from having to read undergraduate drafts but making sure someone is available to read them.

ETA: if you look at the topics for programs offered at the first link, they don't really look remedial. The Cornell link doesn't even seem to offer writing help. It may just be the way I think of remedial programs. The schools I was thinking of require students to take non-credit but tuition classes before they are eligible to take the first credit course in the sequence.

whether its Harvard or Sally Sue School of Suckarse Writers, every school's students have its share of student that cant write for crap. or better yet, can write, but could use the help here and there. Or, are great at creative writing but couldnt do a research paper for their lives.

Its freaking undergrad, not a PHD program. And a college SHOULD supplement student writing skills versus having full on classes. Theres a difference between, "i can write a paper but would like a second set of eyes to check it out" and "i write like i speak on AIM, and rarely use commas, periods and quote marks."

I cant imagine an 18 year old's writing would be perfection upon entering college. They simply havent had the exposure to the style and the works that reflect the style. Even if you HAVE gone to the best schools growing up.

Yeah, but there's currently a big gap between the lack of perfection I think you have in mind and the level that a lot of kids are at at the end of high school.

But I think it shows up in kids' verbal SAT scores too, not to mention the "writing" section which is one third essay and two thirds questions about writing. And I think the colleges just choose to ignore how bad off the kids may be when they admit them.