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Although the idea of a writing competency exam is appealing as a way of strengthening a basic skill, such an exam would be selfdefeating and destructive. It is expensive, inefficient to administer, and demoralizing for both students and faculty. It would destroy the English department's effectiveness in helping all students to learn, and cannot ensure competency in writing. Such a goal can only be accomplished by a creative, flexible, highly motivated teaching staff making instruction as individualized as possible toward the goal of writing as a lifelong skill.
Here is the final draft of my position paper. Teachers, Not Testers Although the idea of a writing competency exam is appealing as a way of strengthening a basic skill, such an exam would be selfdefeating and destructive. It is expensive, inefficient to administer, and demoralizing for both students and faculty. It would destroy the English department's effectiveness in helping all students to learn, and cannot ensure competency in writing. Such a goal can only be accomplished by a creative, flexible, highly motivated teaching staff making instruction as individualized as possible toward the goal of writing as a lifelong skill. The competency idea is a tantalizing one, but it raises serious questions. Usually, as in computer literacy, such exams "certify" that students have been trained in some way. But what could we, or should we "certify" in writing? Who would make that decision? What are we prepared to do for the students who fail? What kind of teacher could we hire to read such uninspired essays, or to preside over a competency-test prep course? Generally, what would the mechanization of writing instruction mean to our students and teachers of writing? These and other questions suggest how a competency exam will force us to put our resources into a test rather than into teaching and learning. Of course, a competency exam will reduce the role of the English faculty to that of a "remedial" service, with no realistic expectation that faculty in other departments would take up the responsibility for teaching writing. The impact on new and younger faculty will also be devastating, accentuating just the wrong things: training students to pass an exam, a narrow skill that may have almost nothing to do with the lifelong need to adapt one's capacity to write to a variety of demands and situations. In short, the exam creates an untenable paradox for writing teachers and, by extension, for the college as a whole: what defines "competency for a person who struggles to write a neat, bland essay, compared with someone who says a good deal in a powerful way, but doesn't know some of the testable conventions of grammar? What problem would a competency exam solve? In many ways, such an exam is self-defeating and destructive. You can't make people write well unless you provide a supportive learning environment. Fear, panic, and anxiety do not create good writing. Exams discourage risk and prevent people from tapping into their deepest resources and then sharing them with readers. The real problem with a competency exam is that it will not accomplish the goal of competent writing but, instead, will intimidate both students and teachers. A self-paced course in statistics, with good tutors available, is a workable endeavor. But writing is an unfolding process in which practice must be linked with meaning, motivation, and belief in an audience. Students will not learn to find their own voice for an exam; teachers will not support students attempting risky or new kinds of thinking and writing if they are to be judged on how well their students perform on an exam. The exam undercuts the goal it is intended to achieve. Instead of a competency exam, we need a new writing requirement, and a new commitment among all our faculty to teach writing in every department. We should have a year-long, two-semester writing course, and a writing staff charged not simply with teaching the theoretical (and now machine-correctable) mechanics of writing but also with the task of helping students have their say, and helping teachers in all departments to improve the writing of their students. For perspective, consider the summer writing program for all incoming students at Bard College. Teachers, tutors, and students read, analyze and give feedback on writing. The results have been gratifying: students produce better writing, and teachers are more engaged with their students' ideas and words. The initial program's budget was $192,000. As far as I know, Shakespeare College can't afford that. But neither can we afford the illusion that we will achieve anything useful for our students by spending a little money on an inefficient, demoralizing exam that doesn't test for the skills and wisdom we all hope to inculcate in our students. Competency cannot be achieved through the incompetent teaching an exam will elicit. Instead, we should work for writing competency in a larger perspective of empowering our students to think and write with clarity and force, not only while they are in college, but throughout their lives as members of a democratic society. |