A Curve In The Road

Preface: This will also serve as my "Memo #2" post.

This past week I've been researching some secondary sources. I found a few and as I read through them I discovered some common themes. First off, part of the "gap" between high school and college is the type of writing that is being emphasized. A couple of the articles focused on the lack of research papers that are done in high school verses college. Not only were students unprepared for the research portion of the paper but also the length of a college level paper. Part of the problem here was that students were not reading enough non-fiction material. Also, students primarily used the internet for their research but did not know how to find credible sources. Thus the issue of the dreaded Wikipedia citations.  Many students have never used a scholarly journal until they get to the college level.

Another article talked about a pre-test that was given to college freshman to assess the types and frequency of writing instruction they received in high school. The most common, frequent writing assignments included literary analysis, analytical essays and lab reports (Beil & Knight 6). Moreover, the writing that is often expected in college, criticizing a written argument, defining a problem and posing a solution, and analyzing the needs of a writing audience was not found to be assigned in high school often (Beil & Knight 7).

Studies showed that more than one million high school graduates take remedial college courses, in addition to this insanely high number for colleges, "state governments spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars each year on remedial writing instruction for their employees" (Fitzhugh 2).  Therefore, the initial gap has now widened to include employers, not only colleges.

So here are the list of problems; where does the blame lie? Not the teachers! Believe it or not the teachers want to teach writing but they have a rather large hinderance often known as The Standardized Test. Teachers have to spend a lot of time teaching to the test and the writing that the test uses, which is completely different from college writing. Time constraints are a big issue for them. Will Fitzhugh notes that if teachers assigned all of their students a 20 page research paper, they would need to read over 3000 pages (3). As a future teacher, I can tell you 3000 pages of reading is impossible to do effectively. I think this is definitely something to strongly consider. College professors do not have the same capacity of students that high school teachers do.

I could go on and on with all the information I came across but these are some important points to note. I think my next job will be to look further into why there is so much of a difference in the types of writing students do in high school verses what they are expected to do in college. This seemed like it was a common theme.

More to come...


Works Cited:

Beil, Cheryl, and Melinda A. Knight. "Understanding The Gap Between High School And College Writing." Assessment Update 19.6 (2007): 6-8. Academic Search Complete. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. Fitzhugh, Will. "Meaningful Work: How The History Research Paper Prepares Students For College And Life." American Educator 35.4 (2012): 32-34. ERIC. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. 
Fanetti, Susan, Kathy M. Bushrow and David L. DeWeese. "Closing the Gap between High School Writing Instruction and College Writing Expectations" The English Journal, Vol. 99, No. 4 (March 2010) , pp. 77-83. Web 26 Mar. 2014.