Teaching Composition Through the Decades

I have been up for hours grading essays for my English composition class.  I have now spent many decades grading essays for English composition classes.  Let me reflect on some of the changes.

Many things that once bothered me now scarcely grab my attention.  Once I spent hours arguing about how effective it is to teach the 5 paragraph model (intro, 3 supporting points, conclusion).  Once I thought that model strangled emerging writers.  Now I'm happy if people can follow that model. 

Once I knew fellow faculty members who deducted major amounts of points if students couldn't/wouldn't follow that model. And once paper requirements were longer than the ones I'm assigning now.  Now I can't imagine assigning an essay of 5+ pages in a first year Composition class.

Once I took off major points for failure to follow MLA formats and standards.  Now I'm mostly happy if students make an attempt.  And the MLA guidelines are much looser.  Of course, now there are more types of outside sources.

I've had students write their thesis statement as an announcement ("This paper will prove ____").  That approach used to drive me crazy.  Now I shrug.  At least they're clear on the purpose of the paper.  And if the paper fulfills the purpose?  I'm deeply happy.

I'm still a stickler for grammar, although I don't fail students for x amount of major errors.  I do predict that we are very close to accepting comma splices as standard usage.  If that happens, I'll be O.K. with that--it makes a certain amount of sense to me.  Fragments seem a much more serious problem.  And subject-verb disagreement is also a major problem to me, although with writers who have a first language other than English, that issue, too, seems less glaring to me.

When I first started teaching in grad school, we adopted a strategy that taught argument as a way to teach writing.  We used the textbook Elements of Argument.  I'm glad to see it's still in print--in its 12th edition, in fact.  We used either the first or second edition, way back in 1988.  Once I would have sworn that teaching writing by way of teaching argument was the best approach.  Now I see it as one of many.

I have had students write in many different modes, and I've known colleagues who would have sworn we should leave the modes approach:  the writing should dictate the mode, not the teacher!  But that motto implies a much more sophisticated student writer than the ones I usually teach.

In many ways, not much has changed in my decades of teaching writing.  But in some ways, it's changed substantially.  Happily, I still enjoy teaching composition, since it's still one of the essential classes, one of the major job opportunities for those of us with graduate degrees in English.