The tradition and history of FYC courses is discussed in great depth in Robert Conner’s “Composition-Rhetoric, Background, Theory, and Practice.” Within this piece, Conner discusses Harvard’s shift to including a first-year composition course to showcase, “- a growing awareness of the importance of linguistic class distinctions in the United States, poor showings in written assignments by Harvard undergraduates, a desire to demonstrate that Harvard had the highest standards and deserved its leadership position-” (686). Students were evaluated based upon their ability to perform certain genre conventions associated with academic writing, such as fashioning a clear thesis, incorporating research, and having “error free” writing (689).
While Conner’s asserts that the rationale for this was to make writing more aligned with the hard sciences and mathematics, he also makes a clear distinction that through these three methods of evaluation, instructors were able to discern what is “good writing” and what is not.
Good Writing, Gone Bad
For students to be considered “good writers” they needed to be able to articulate their ideas into a clear, concise, argument that could be easily understood. Looking at a section from Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing: “If there’s one writing quality that Nuts and Bolts emphasizes more than any other; it’s clarity. Being clear in your thoughts and your words-saying what you actually intend to say, and doing it in such a way that your reader understands you –is your highest duty as an expository writer, more important than beauty of elegance or even originality. Without clarity you’re not really communicating, just going through the motions. (22)”
Author Ian Barnard has questioned the idea of what clarity is and how such concepts manifest? In what context is clarity defined and who gets to define such ideas? This can also be directly related to audience, both created and imagined, for students within composition courses are often instructed to “imagine audience X” and construct an argument that meets the expectations of this audience.
Bad Prompts
Looking at some of the prompts (writing assignments) within Irene Clark’s Concepts in Composition and Joseph Harris Rewriting, many assignments ask students to other students or scholars in the field. At the portfolio readings last year, I happen to stumble upon a lot of prompts that asked “Imagine you have been placed on a committee in your town and are debating whether X novel should be read in high school classrooms.” This prompt came up time and time again in norming sessions and instructors remarked on how students repeatedly relied on surface web sources, used personal narrative (like I am currently doing here), or used “non” academic language. If students fell into any of these categories, their essays would be seen as having “bad writing”