I've always thought it was odd that Dartmouth requires that its students can swim 50 yards before graduation, but not that they can write a coherent analytical essay of a few pages or more. Obviously the two skills aren't directly equivalent, but in my experience there's a much greater need for real writing instruction than any number of swimming lessons.
As a tutor at RWIT (the Student Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technologies) I've seen first hand that the writing prerequisites enforced by the College namely the Writing 2, 3 and 5 classes and First-Year Seminars fail to teach writing well enough to all students. RWIT helps hundreds of students from all grade levels every term, but often the issues are the same: difficulties forming arguments, research problems, trouble with thesis statements, incoherent sentence and paragraph structure, basic grammar deficiencies, etc. All are issues that one or more terms in writing classes should have corrected. Yet many students struggle through assignments for their entire Dartmouth career, and leave without the skills one would expect to receive from a $200,000 education.
The problem starts before anyone gets to Hanover. Many, perhaps most, high school students in this country do not get adequate writing instruction or practice. Even the bright souls accepted at this school who breeze through AP classes and ace their SATs often enter college utterly unprepared for writing at this level. Unfortunately, we cannot just ignore these deficiencies.
That's why the solutions have to start before students arrive on campus. Rather than placing students in writing classes based on SAT scores, all matriculating students should have to complete a pre-enrollment writing evaluation. Such a test could include a combination of questions about writing experience, high school writing samples, timed essays and grammar and style quizzes. An assessment might be time-consuming to undertake and evaluate, but administrators and writing professors could then place students into more appropriate classes and adjust curriculum to account for common issues.
Even once students are correctly placed, the first year writing courses themselves need to be standardized. Too many times I have worked with students on convoluted creative assignments from their Writing 5 or First-Year Seminar professors. The assignment might be a free-form response with no argument, a vague research-summary concoction or a multi-paragraph essay explicitly excluding some combination of thesis statement, conclusion or transitions. With resigned shrugs, students accept that they are getting little out of these bizarre assignments or the negligible feedback they receive.
It's time to focus writing instruction back where it belongs: teaching, writing, commenting, rewriting. Constant practice followed up with specific constructive criticism is the only way to improve. Writing professors might not enjoy this rudimentary focus, but it's best for students, and we can add more teaching assistants to aid with one-on-one essay comments. Whatever investment is required would be worth it.
Finally, Dartmouth should create a system of mandatory on-going writing instruction. To improve writing, students must continue to practice and learn after they leave their first year courses. Unfortunately, many professors, even in classes with multiple essays, decline to provide extensive comments along with their grades. Also, plenty of students in the social or physical sciences evade further instruction by choosing classes that require few written assignments.
The College's response should mimic the P.E. requirement we already have in place, in which students must complete three gym classes before graduation. For a liberal arts college, expository and argumentative writing should be as important as physical fitness. Why not have writing classes on practical subjects from grammar rules to crafting a thesis statement, research strategies to the art of the in-class essay that provide additional on-going teaching, practice and feedback long after students leave their First-Year Seminar? Such a mandatory program would be of tremendous value in preparing students for upper-level classes and the world after graduation.
It's always easier to stick to the status quo in a complex, enduring institution like Dartmouth. Sometimes, though, a cause comes along that's worth attacking full-force. If improving student writing isn't one of those worthwhile efforts, I don't know what is.
