PAB: History of First-Year Composition

Word cluster with various words describing writing, the writing process, and content-specific words regarding writing.

WPA Wordcloud from https://deduvick.wordpress.com/

 

Coxwell-Teague, Deborah and Ronald F. Lunsford. “Setting the Table: Composition in the Last Half of the   Twentieth Century.” First-Year Composition From Theory to Practice. Anderson, South Carolina: Parlor Press, 2014. PDF. xiii-xxvii.

             In the introduction to their text, First-Year Composition From Theory to Practice, Coxwell-Teague and Lunsford explore the “moments” that they found most helpful in the current development and amalgamation of college writing. These moments include the inception of a composition course all the way to the current manner in which the teaching of composition may change in the future. According to the authors, composition got its start at Harvard, where in 1874 a written entrance exam was implemented. Due to perceived weaknesses in the quality of writing, a composition course was added in 1885. However, this was meant to be a temporary fix. In quoting Connors, the author states the original purpose was to fix “what some saw as the “illiteracy of American boys”” (xiii). Despite the intended temporariness of this course, composition courses spread to other institutions within fifteen years. The main focus of these courses remained the same from the 1880’s to the middle of the twentieth century: the focus on grammar, sentence mechanics, and essay structure. However, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, linguists began to rail against this reductiveness. With the formation of the NTCE (National Council of Teachers of English) in 1911, writing teachers found a forum for expressing their interests and ideas about first-year teaching. According to the authors, “In the 1947 meeting of NCTE, a small group of teachers formed an interest group around the teaching of freshman composition and communication” (xiv). Other important moments in composition and writing studies include the Dartmouth Conference in the 1960’s (focusing on the role of literature in the classroom), the “Students Rights” movement in the 1970’s (a push by linguists for students to adopt their own language;revisited again the 1990’s),  the Summer Rhetoric Seminars and NEH Composition/Rhetoric Seminars of the 1970’s and 1980’s (focusing on composition pedagogy), and the New London Group at the beginning of the 21st century (a sociological and education-based approach to writing). What these different movements show is a concerted worldwide effort to improve upon first-year writing: its purpose, scope, and pedagogy.

              This source is the introduction for this text and really provides a useful overview of how first-year writing and college composition grew and developed over time. It works well with my other source since it adds more information and focuses on different movements that contributed to the creation and alterations of first-year writing courses. The objective nature of this source provides a solid framework over the forces influencing first-year writing today. The inclusion of more recent developments in the scholarship and focus of first-year writing paint the picture of an ever-evolving subfield, while also showing the difficulties the field experiences.

              Since I am studying first-year writing within composition studies, this source really added to my understanding of the history of this subgenre and its original purpose. I was surprised to see that first-year writing requirements have been around since the late 19th century, especially considering that most of the scholarship I’ve encountered makes FYCs out to be a much newer addition to the academy.  I can also see where Fulkerson’s assertion regarding how often the focus of composition courses change every ten years, though the shift to “preparation for “the” academic discourse community” (654) appears to harken back to the original purpose of composition programs in the first half of the twentieth century.

Crowley, Sharon. “Composition in the University.” Composition in the University Historical and Polemical Essays.Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh, 1998. Print. 1-18.

In the introduction to Composition in the University Historical and Polemical Essays , Crowley outlines the history of composition studies at the university level, including First-Year Composition, as it relates to the English discipline before ultimately making the argument against the universal composition requirement due to its problematic nature within the English Department scholarly hierarchy. By first situating the chapter within the interdependent, though strained, relationship between literary studies and composition, Crowley addresses the status of first-year composition within English Departments (its beginnings at Harvard in the late nineteenth century), including how its teaching became relegated to graduate students and adjunct faculty in the 1950’s and 1960’s due to the rise in post-war enrollment; however, currently, at universities and colleges across the nation, FYC is taught by a combination of full-time faculty, adjunct faculty, and graduate students, depending on the size and scope of individual programs. Overall,  according to Crowley, “By any measure, required first-year composition uses enormous resources and takes up large chunks of student and teacher time. Despite this, university faculty do not write or talk much about composition, unless it is to complain about the lack of student literacy” (1). In terms of curriculum and influence, the curriculum tends to be impacted by forces outside of composition studies, such as university/college administration and even other departments with the expectation that FYC should teach students how to write for all disciplines. Ultimately, Crowley is against the idea of the universal requirement of the composition course as it provides “full-time faculty with a firm institutional base from which to operate an academic empire” (18). It is Crowley’s hope that composition specialists, in asserting composition as a field, will not follow the same pattern.

This source helps provide aspects of the conversation surrounding composition studies and first-year writing, in particular. The information regarding the forces affecting composition helped to situate the precarious nature of this field, especially for the subgenre of first-year writing. This source also provides a different vantage point in which first-year composition is situated (should it be included in composition studies?) by including the rivalry and interdependence between composition and literature in terms of the hierarchy between the two. Though there is a slightly biased-sounding tone in regards to composition being taught by adjuncts due to first-year writing scholarship not being taken seriously, this source does highlight the struggle composition studies faces. Ultimately, the goal seems to be to expose the difficulties of this field, despite the fact that it is indispensable and aids in the continued existence of English Departments.

Within the subgenre of first-year composition, this chapter provides perspective in understanding the maligned nature of composition courses. Understanding how the composition course was meant to “produce an educated person” (9), this explains why so much is asked of first-year writing. This restrictive attitude is similar in idea of Newman’s idealized university, where only the best collude. In terms of my own research regarding first-year writing/composition courses, this source added the necessary depth of understanding the scholarship of the field and its growth as a discipline.

 

Work Cited

Fulkerson, Richard. “Composition at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.” College Composition and Communication 56.4 (2005): 654-87. Web. 15 September 2016.

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One response to “ PAB: History of First-Year Composition ”

  1. Chrinstine says:

    Hello there! This blog post couldn’t be written much better!
    Looking at this post reminds me of my previous roommate!
    He always kept talking about this. I will forward this article to him.

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