What do professors really say about college writing?

Brockman, E., Taylor, M., Kreth, M., & Crawford, M. K. (2011). What do professors really say about college writing? English Journal, 100(3), 75-81.

This article was directed to high school English composition teachers, especially those who are currently teaching graduating seniors who are college bound. Here, the results from focus groups with 14 faculty members from across disciplines in several academic units at Central Michigan University (where the authors are English professors and English teacher educators) are shared. Faculty members were asked to talk about college writing: what kinds of writing they assigned, perceived student strengths and weaknesses, what counts in various disciplines as “good” writing, and strategies they used to help students become good writers.

These focus groups could easily have degenerated into negative sessions in which professors bemoaned and ridiculed the current state of their students’ writing and placed blame upon the high school teachers for not preparing student adequately and on the students for lacking the necessary skills and motivation to become intellectually strong writers. Such discussions occur all the time among faculty members, and they certainly do on the campus where I teach. The discussions in this article were not entirely positive; in particular, these Central Michigan faculty members did not feel that students were willing to take risks or to take on intellectually challenging writing. Still, it is to the credit of the focus group facilitators that the discussion seems (at least from this account) to have taken the high road and not resorted to excessive negativity and blaming. The tack the authors take (and conclude with) is that high school teachers would do well to look more closely at the kinds of writing college professors expect, and then to show high school students examples, and give them practice with feedback, in doing the kinds of writing (critical analyses and research-based writing) that they will be doing in college. The authors take a dig at the five-paragraph essay that gets so much attention in many high schools, and in assessment measures. The professors in these focus groups never mentioned the five-paragraph essay.

Though the article was interesting, especially the excerpted quotes from the professors, I found myself wanting more. I wanted to look more closely at some of the actual assignments the professors were talking about (perhaps a later work for these authors?). I wanted to see more excerpts from the focus group transcripts (perhaps another article in a more research-based journal?). A few little things also piqued my curiosity but were not detailed. I’d like to know more about Central Michigan students. Is this a select student population? If so, the faculty concerns will have another flavor than they will in open-access universities that take almost all comers, like my university. Also, it was interesting that the one college at this university that had no focus group participants was their science and technology college (though the health professions college was represented). Why not? This occurrence was documented (though not in so many words) but not addressed. Do science faculty members not assign writing? Or do they for some reason not think it is worth their time to address writing issues? It may not mean anything important, but I nevertheless found it curious.