Remedial Writing Courses: A Critique and a Proposal

Abstract

Many of our attempts to help college remedialI writers, attempts that are often well-intentioned and seemingly commonsensical, may, in fact, be ineffective, even counterproductive, for these attempts reduce, fragment, and possibly misrepresent the composing process. I believe we may be limiting growth in writing in five not unrelated ways. 1) Our remedial courses are self-contained; that is, they have little conceptual or practical connection to the larger academic writing environment in which our students find themselves. 2) The writing topics assigned in these courses-while meant to be personally relevant and motivating and, in their simplicity, to assist in the removal of error-in fact might not motivate and might not contribute to the production of a correct academic prose. 3) The writing teacher's vigilance for error most likely conveys to students a very restricted model of the composing process. 4) Our notion of basic skills has become so narrow that we attempt to separate the intimately related processes of reading and thinking from writing. 5) In some of our attempts to reform staid curricula we have inadvertently undercut the expressive and exploratory possibilities of academic writing and have perceived fundamental discourse strategies and structures as restricting rather than enhancing the production and comprehension of prose. At various places in my speculations I will offer potential solutions to the

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