Many students who enter college never complete their college
degree requirements. They can meet the college admission requirement
but cannot meet college course requirements in reading
and writing.
Some kids who did well in high school may do poorly in college
because they are deficient in English writing skill.
Many other students do poorly because they expect college
writing to be like high school writing. By the time they realize
their mistake, it may be too late — or too expensive —
for them to catch up.
Mistaken expectations
In the first-year composition classes I teach, probably 20 percent
of recent high school graduates express the mistaken beliefs
that
-
College instructors want students to express their feelings.
-
College English requires them to produce imaginative writing.
-
Correct grammar, punctuation and spelling and use the
of capital letters are unnecessary; readers will know what
they meant.
-
Research means pasting chunks of web pages into a paper.
-
Collaborative projects are fun activities like making
posters or videos.
My students are shocked to find the writing-related college degree
requirements are vastly different from that they expected.
Teach with college in mind
High schools need to teach students the writing skills they need
to fulfill their college degree requirements.
You are setting Caitlin and Josh up to become college dropouts
if you think first semester college English will teach them all
they need to know to make a success of the papers they write in
all their first semester classes.
You can find out what colleges expect by visiting the
online writing labs (often called OWLs) run by colleges and universities.
Since the Owls serve a diverse population in disciplines across
the curriculum, you can be pretty sure their suggestions will
be appropriate to all students, regardless of the programs they
wish to study.
Three sites I recommend are:
OWL
at Purdue University, the granddaddy of all Owls, includes
on its site a section for teachers
of grades 7-12
The
Academic Writing section of the Rice University website
The Doyle
Online Writing Lab at Reed College (Portland, Oregon) includes
a list of writing prompts for a first-year college course
HUM110. If you teach teens, you should take a good look at those
writing topics.
My pamphlet Is Your Teen Ready for College Writing?
is an overview of the writing skills implicit in the typical college
degree requirements. Use the form at the bottom of this page to
get a free copy.
Interact with college in mind
An overlooked but highly important aspect of teaching students
to be ready to meet their college degree requirements is teaching
appropriate use of social communication media: e-mail,
social media sites, blogging, wikis.
When colleges say that students must adapt to different writing
situations, they don't mean just that chemistry lab reports
shouldn't be written in haiku. They expect, for example, that
students know not to use texting shorthand in an e-mail
to an instructor, an online class forum, or a public blog.
Useful sources:
Netiquette
(the web version of Virginia Shea's book)
Etiquette for
student e-mails to an instructor, by a college prof who is also
a former homeschooler.
Incidentally, appropriate
use of social media is high on the list of workplace and college
requirements.
