I think the direct response to the question, “What is the End of Composition?” for students in college is when that final paper is turned into class or when the final exam is completed at the end of the semester. Unfortunately, in reality, this concept of dismissing classes at the end of every semester is the perception that many students approach their educations with, especially when they are freshmen. I personally do not believe as teachers and instructors of composition that there is an end to composition. I think that composition not only as a class but as a value is not a linear process but a circular one. For instructors, we live and breath rhetoric and composition all of the time.
But how do we transfer composition skills to our students so that by the end of the semester they will be effective and critical writers? I personally think that it is a step by step process. And that process is filled with trial and tribulations. As instructors, if we become invested in the students who are willing to learn, then hopefully they will be able to use grammar, rhetoric, and critical thinking skills across the disciplines. I believe that if there is a supposedly end to composition, then the application of those skills would be it.
In conclusion, I like to think that for students, who will have to write papers, evaluate sources, or develop a effective thesis for their papers in other classes, will be involved with composition all of the time. Because for those students who really learn composition, the end of composition at the end of the semester does not really end, it is only the beginning.
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2 comments:
You make a good point about students and their sometimes antithetical approach to higher education. They pay for the classes, and yet they seem to only want to fulfill the minimum requirements. Classes are not disposable commodities. Maybe this prevalence of antipathy is the result of public schooling, the professors, the students, or society at large. Composition has the unique problem of being something that everyone needs to (and must)take. The skills learned in composition should be what you said: transferable skills that will have reverberating consequences throughout a student's education, career, and life. Students, however, can sometimes treat composition classes like the most banal of requirements; they lump it under "required BS, another hoop to jump through, etc." Perhaps a more consciously interdisciplinary method of teaching composition might go a long way in alleviating some of these attitudes.
Val (Dr. Rice's 5060 class)
It's no surprise that students brush off composition classes. They are, after all, required, and required is such a dirty word. Maybe one of the ends to teaching composition, then, is to get students to see composition as a necessity, not a requirement. The students need to know how to compose because it's a relevant part of their daily lives. Composition pulls at a portion of the human psyche--the need to be heard and understood. If we can make clear to the students the importance of composition, maybe they'll absorb that much more of the material ... but breaking through a wall of apathy is always harder in practice than in theory.
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