My dentist understands first-year writing as remedial instruc-tion in language
The foundation is everything because when you are taught the basic in elementary school and middle school, there should not be a problem moving forward. Schools should have well prepared teachers within the first years of schools.
It’s also easy to blame colleges for not meeting the literacyneeds of the populace. Ironically, many state-supported univer-sities are no longer able to offer remedial courses for studentswho may need some additional help to succeed in college, in partbecause state legislatures, ready to trim university budgets, do notwant to pay for courses that may limit a student’s ability to finisha bachelor’s degree in four years. So the courses that have oftenhelped students prepare for the rigor of academic writing and thesophistication of writing informed by knowledge of rhetorical prin-ciples are actually being cut even as the public continues to declarethat literacy is in decline.Rather than thinking of writing instruction as a form of triage,inoculation, or clinical diagnostic generated to protect the middleclass from the ravages of illiteracy, we benefit from thinking ofwriting instruction as a means of helping students improve theirabilities to engage in public discourse in all its varied forms. Whatwriting teachers have known for generations is that writing is notan end in itself—it is a method of invention that gives shape to ourview of the world and empowers us to engage in discourse with ourfellow humans. There are few things more important than that.There is no literacy crisis. Instead, the concept of literacy contin-ues to become more complex as we expect people to know howto produce and understand texts in multiple forms, whether writ-ten, visual, or otherwise. Like all human institutions, education isinherently flawed, and teachers, students, parents and others mustalways consider ways and initiatives to improve literacy education.Further ReadingFor more about the study of literacy in the United States, seeDeborah Brandt’s Literacy in American Lives (Cambridge UniversityPress), which offers several case studies of how Americans gainliteracy by what Brandt calls sponsors of literacy, people or thingsthat control individuals’ access to literacy instruction. Additionally,see the New London Group’s Multiliteracies (Routledge). The NewLondon Group, a group of ten scholars, acknowledges that tech-nology plays a significant role in how literacy expectations haveshifted.For more on how writing scholars are thinking about the transfer
Why is the government cutting budgets in the universities for the courses that help students to prepare for a rigor of academic writing? Did they not interesting in literary courses or they think it won't be necessary to put a lot money while other subject like science and technology are there?
The field of writing studies has developed many excellent strat-egies for teaching composition that encourage students to reflecton their own writing processes, to interact with other readers andwriters, and to produce complex texts in media beyond alphabeticwriting.
is the idea of coming up with new strategies to kind of save the writing crisis did really help because with all the tools that are in place for students to be good at writing, but still we facing grammar problem and weak vocabulary. I think back in the days, there are few strategies, technology was not as developed as right now still some people were good at writing and they still teaching how to write. Will there be a solution in the future with new technologies coming ?