Showing papers in "College Composition and Communication in 1971"

Taboo or Not Taboo.

Abstract: A COLLEAGUE TOLD ME an amusing and sad story concerning a taboo of language. Years ago at college, one of his professors lectured for an hour on the dishonesty of certain dictionary editors who omitted a word from the dictionary because of moral objections. One's personal morality must never get in the way of scholarship, he thundered. When the period was over, a student raised his hand and asked, "But sir, what was the word?" The professor flushed and faltered. "I don't know," he said, "if ... if I can tell you in mixed company." Medical doctors as late as the nineteenth

A Conceptual Rhetoric of the Composition.

Abstract: LET'S ASSUME that the expository paper-the sort of paper most of our students are going to be writing most of the time-has some central, unifying concept to it. Or more realistically, let's assume the instructor wishes there to be some such central concept. It seems to me then that such a concept is analagous to the Topic Sentence of the paragraph, or to the base clause of the sentence-it is the bare necessity of exposition upon which all other structures in some sense depend. But let's go a little bit further. Let's hypothesize a sentence embodying the sort of concept just mentioned, the sentence in its turn serving as the Topic Sentence of a developed, but still rather general paragraph. If we can conceptualize such a structure, we end up, or so it seems to me, conceiving of what ought to be the first paragraph of that sequence of structurally related paragraphs called a composition.

New Sentence Tactics Through Predication.

Abstract: dard written English as an aid to the teaching of written composition; it is becoming increasingly evident that there is an important secondary function imbedded in the system: its ability to include structural variations characteristic of other levels of usage (including dialects) within one systematic description, rather than to dismiss such variations as examples of "non-standard" English

A Transformational Approach to Teaching Composition.

Abstract: position are accustomed to the complaint from parents, employers, and other educators, "Students can't write. They aren't taught grammar anymore." Yet we are aware of the apparent lack of carry-over of knowledge of a grammatical system, whether it be traditional, structural, or transformational, to accuracy in sentence structure or refinement of style, and conclude that "Grammar doesn't help." Transformational grammar, however, instead of largely providing a method of analyzing sentences, as the traditional and structural systems do, approaches grammar through the generation, or building, of sentences. This aspect would seem to hold promise for teachers of composition. If students observe how skilled writers construct sentences-that

Lucy's Dance Lessons and Accountability in English.

Abstract: Charlie expresses his characteristic myopic skepticism. Whereupon Lucy proves her point by behaving, by executing three rudimentary dance-steps. First she extends her right foot, toes pointed, head turned in the same direction. Second, she repeats the same step in obverse, left foot extended, head turned to the left. Finally she brings both feet together, looks straight ahead in a fixity of beady-eyed concentration and, with ostrich-like stiffness, executes a minute, almost imperceptible flexure of both knees. In the last panel of the cartoon, her three-second dance-repertory exhausted, Lucy turns to Charlie (who by this time is glassy-eyed and freaked out) and remarks, "That cost my Dad eleven dollars and fifty cents." On the most obvious level, the cartoon is a gentle putdown on the affluent and doting American parent, usually suburban, who is intent on giving his little monster all the "advantages." On a deeper level, it is a commentary on the American obsession with cost-account-

Slaves, Serfs, or Colleagues--Who Shall Teach College Composition?.

Abstract: I did my graduate work, composition was taught almost exclusively by "slaves." With the exception of a few wives of important faculty and a small number of supervisory personnel, graduate teaching assistants instructed the 200odd sections of freshman composition offered each year. Southern Illinois University has thus opted for one of the two common "solutions" to the "problem" of college composition. It utilizes vaguely supervised graduate teaching assistants to instruct the staggering number of students who, each year, enroll in the freshman composition sequence. It goes almost without saying that the freshman composition sequence has virtually no repute within the English department. The Director of Composition is judged effective and the graduate teaching assistants are regarded as a "good crop" on the basis of the decibel level of student

Composition Tests for Screening Prospective Teachers.

Abstract: Two YEARS AGO, the Teacher Education Committee of the State College of Arkansas decided to require students who plan to become teachers in any discipline to exhibit some evidence of their ability to use the English language acceptably in both its spoken and written forms as one of the requirements for admission to the teacher-training program. This paper is an account of the testing program for written English that was administered for the first time during the 1970-1971 school vear.

The Silent Language.

Abstract: On a Sunday morning a few weeks ago as I was writing this paper I enjoyed the additional task of babysitting while my wife sang at a church. At noon, our middle daughter, Claire, age 3, whined in chewing on an empty ice cream cone she had found, and I realized that she and our oldest daughter, Louly, age 6, were hungry. So I fixed a snack of bologna and V-8 juice to sustain Claire and Louly until my wife got home and fried the chicken. Claire and Louly both comnlained that they would prefer the fried chicken to the bologna and V-8 juice and asked why I didn't go ahead and fry the chicken. I replied that I RDING TO A RUSSIAN STORY, a worker a certain factory pushed a wheelbarthrough th exit gate every afterat qui ting time. Every tim he ed the wheelbarrow throug the e, the guards inspected the wheelo . The wheelbarro w s lways ty so the worker always got through. after many months it was disdidn't know how. Claire then said the

Failing Minority Students: Class, Caste, and Racial Bias in American Colleges.

Abstract: MY SUBJECT ORIGINALLY was black colleges, but of necessity I must discuss colleges in general, for the black college is in almost every way a reflection of the white college. The segregated college was created by whites, dominated by whites, directed by whites, kept poor in quality and low in funds by whites. Black teachers of English have accepted only too completely the outlook and assumptions of the dominant middle class American culture, just as have their white counterparts, so that the Freshman Composition classes in almost any college except the most advanced are likely to be exercises in anger, hatred, frustration, and futility. Freshman Composition courses seldom meet the needs of minority group students, and in fact often destroy these students. I am talking as much about Indians, Puerto-Ricans, Eskimos, Cubans, Mexican-Americans, poor whites, and Cajun French as I am about Blacks. And if the Mungelons, a mixed group in Kentucky, ever break out of the poverty pocket and get to college, our Freshman Composition programs as presently instituted will not meet their needs either.

Sociology Made Easy

Abstract: ANYONE CAN play sociologist nowadays. To prove how easy it is, one manufacturer recently marketed a game called Black and White, a jazzed-up version of Monopoly advertised as "A painless way for middle-class whites to experienceand understand-the frustration of blacks." The designer boasts that the game lets people experience the real "crises" and "tensions" of our time, and he even got suggestions from a group of black militants to make it authentic. You