{"id":315,"date":"2016-11-23T03:31:29","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T03:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/?p=315"},"modified":"2016-11-23T03:31:29","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T03:31:29","slug":"no-not-teaching-composition-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/2016\/11\/23\/no-not-teaching-composition-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"No, We\u2019re Not Teaching Composition \u2018All Wrong\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">M<\/span>y students can\u2019t write a clear sentence to save their lives. It\u2019s my job to help them change that.<\/p>\n<p>I have taught writing for 10 years. Much like Joseph R. Teller, whose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/Are-We-Teaching-Composition\/237969\">October essay<\/a> criticizing how we teach composition riled many a writing instructor, I have &#8220;experimented with different assignments, activities, readings, [and] approaches to commenting on student work.&#8221; But my results have been very different from his. Rather than seeing my students fail repeatedly, I\u2019m seeing more and more of them succeed.<\/p>\n<p>Their success may stem, in part, from a mantra I\u2019ve taken to heart: If students consistently fail at something in my classroom, it\u2019s not their fault. It\u2019s mine.<\/p>\n<p>I teach at a community college in Texas, in a city where almost 20 percent of the citizens live below the poverty line. More than 30 percent of children in the city live in poverty. About 70 percent of my college\u2019s students take classes only part-time, and 73 percent entered this year taking at least one developmental course. Most of them have lived and been educated in a system that has overwhelmingly failed them due to a focus on testing rather than learning. Most have taken time away from education to work, so what writing skills they did possess have probably atrophied.<\/p>\n<p>Teller argued that the three pillars of composition pedagogy \u2014 that courses should &#8220;focus on process, not product,&#8221; that students should write on &#8220;complex issues rather than imitate rhetorical modes,&#8221; and that reading and writing should be combined in the same course \u2014 don\u2019t actually work. But I find they do, and I\u2019m not alone in thinking so.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/No-We-re-Not-Teaching\/238468\">Read the entire post here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My students can\u2019t write a clear sentence to save their lives. It\u2019s my job to help them change that. I have taught writing for 10 years. Much like Joseph R. Teller, whose October essay criticizing how we teach composition riled many a writing instructor, I have &#8220;experimented with different assignments, activities, readings, [and] approaches to&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/2016\/11\/23\/no-not-teaching-composition-wrong\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6854,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6854"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/differencepowerdiscrimination\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}