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In the 1980s, the LIU Brooklyn English Department offered three
courses—developmental, first-year composition, and research
writing—respectively numbered 15, 16, and 17. In 1990, in recognition of an
increase in underprepared students and inadequate reading instruction both in
the existing composition courses and elsewhere on campus, a 12-credit,
thematically rich, basic reading and writing sequence was created, inspired by
David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky’s oft-cited book, Facts,
Counterfacts, and Artifacts. Adapting their Pittsburgh-University model to
the LIU Brooklyn campus, the first course took “other voices” as its theme, and
used the then newly republished Our Nig: Sketches from the Life of a
Free Black, by Harriet Wilson, and In a Different Voice:
Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Carol Gilligan’s pioneering
study of women’s psychological and moral development, as a portal to and from
our students’ diverse voices.
Approved by the LIU Brooklyn Faculty Senate in 1990, the new program
replaced English 15 and nine credits of developmental reading instruction
taught in another department with two six-credit reading and writing courses
(English 13 and 14). The courses had broad themes of identity and environment,
respectively, and elaborate standard syllabi that instructors had to teach for
at least one semester, along with custom readers and four to five whole texts.
External reviewers from the Council of Writing Program Administrators said in
1993 that our program, rather than merely reproducing Pittsburgh’s, had forged
a new “LIU model.” We had consciously appropriated the theory and method
outlined by Bartholomae and Petrosky to meet the needs of our more ethnically and
racially diverse, working-class, first-generation college students.
To launch the program
meant hiring literally dozens of new part-time faculty, many from nearby
doctoral programs, to staff both course sections and a four-hour workshop
attached to the course to immerse underprepared students in reading and
writing. The workshop not only extended the hours that students spent in class
from six to ten per week but also became a conduit for prospective teachers to
gain experience and often go on to teach the course themselves. This
influx of new teachers into the department helped build a sense of community
and dialogue as we strove to implement the new courses, along with a new
philosophy and a challenging set of methods. Faculty development workshops with
thirty or forty instructors became forums for genuinely lively discussions
about the theory and practice of teaching writing, and many workshop and course
instructors went on to enroll in our MA program and/or become veteran teachers
in the First Year Writing Program, some on full-time, tenure-track or
non-tenure track lines, others as committed part-time teachers.
Throughout that decade,
the main focus of curriculum development was on English 13 and 14; English 16
remained more or less static with the exception of introducing the portfolio
system of evaluation, which eventually became a requirement for all the courses
except the research paper course, English 17. While there was some innovative
work in course design in English 16 and 17 over the years, it was piecemeal,
the result of individual instructors’ participation in campus-wide Pew and NEH
grants for faculty development rather than systematic program revision.
In the spring of 2000, after years of discussion and planning, the
LIU Brooklyn Faculty Senate approved a revised core curriculum that resulted in
the elimination of English 17 and the creation of Core Seminar 50, an
interdisciplinary course taught by faculty cohorts across the disciplines.
[Note: Effective Fall 2018, Core Seminar 50 is no longer required.] This major
restructuring of the core also specified the creation of a fully staffed
Writing Across the Curriculum Program and writing-intensive requirements in the
major. At the same time, unrelated changes in the Writing Program decreased the
cohesiveness and integrity of the composition sequence. These changes included
a campus-level administrative decision to allow students to register for 14 as
well as 13*, the elimination of the workshop, a reduction of credits students
received from six to three (although the six-hour class period and workload for
faculty remain in effect), a decrease in the number of adjunct instructors,
greater stability among both part- and full-time faculty, and a rapid turnover
of directors from 1998 to 2006.
By then, when we met in portfolio groups at the end of the
semester, it was clear that we weren’t all teaching the same course, meeting
the same standards, or achieving the same goals. There was diminishing
comparability across classes, a necessity for service courses, often with as
many as twenty sections running concurrently. After several years of discussion
in committee and in the department, which made clear that faculty saw any
standardized themes or course content as an infringement of academic freedom, the
Writing Program Committee proposed a set of curriculum guidelines that
articulate the mission, philosophy and goals, and outcomes of each course.
These are the statements of purpose and delineations of goals and methods that
form the basis of the program today. They represent not only a clearer
conception of the specific goals and outcomes of each level of instruction but
also how each course feeds into the next one, and how the composition sequence
as a whole prepares students for core literature and writing-intensive courses
and the demands of academic writing in general.
Additionally, in response to a perception across campus that
instruction in research skills had fallen through the cracks of the new core
approved in 2000, we aim with our current guidelines to integrate research
instruction into the composition sequence, culminating in the production of a
research essay in English 16. Although this new requirement in English 16 is
the most substantive change to the writing courses with respect to research,
the new guidelines also provide for a gradual introduction in English 13 and 14
of associated skills of summary, paraphrase, quotation, and documentation of
sources drawn on to support a thesis. With the support of library faculty, we
have embarked on a new library partnership in which two library visits are
mandatory for all English 16 classes to support the research essay. Eventually,
we will also require one visit for English 14 classes to introduce library use
and research skills in a meaningful way early on; and English 13 and 14
instructors are encouraged to arrange visits on their own.
If there is an overarching philosophy of the Writing Program, it
is eclectic and utilitarian rather than fastened on any one method or theory of
communication, language, or instruction. However, there are some agreed upon,
underlying principles that guide us:
(1) language acquisition, production, and reception are socially
and culturally rooted in primary and secondary discourses that account for wide
variations of dialect and competence that may bear on academic performance and
require us as teachers
·
to respect linguistic
differences and the close relationship between language and identity; and
·
to foster students’
ability to gain competence in multiple secondary discourses;
(2)
writing is a process that unfolds over
·
multiple drafts, best
enabled by rich responses from teachers, peers, tutors, and other readers, and
·
over time in personal
growth and educational, work, and life experience;
(3)
reading and writing are interconnected;**
(4) reading and writing are tools for inquiry, learning, thinking, and
communicating;
(5) knowledge and practice of grammar, syntax, and conventions are integral to
writing instruction but not necessarily indicative of student’s capacity or
talent; and
(6) learning to read and write texts in electronic environments is an essential
aspect of literacy in the 21st century.
* Initially, students who placed into basic reading and writing were required
to enroll in English 13. The program was conceived as a 12-credit sequence to
give students maximum opportunities to develop college-level literacy skills.
Students who did exceptionally well in 13 were invited to take a 14 exemption
exam (for which they retook the placement test and were placed “blind” along
with incoming students into 14 or 16; they could not be demoted even if they
placed into 13). English 13 students may still take the exemption exam but the
majority of first-year students now place into 14.
** In 2009, in recognition of the need among many LIU-Brooklyn students for
intensive focus on reading skills and the crucial role of reading in academic
success, we embarked on a multi-year study of reading proficiency to develop
“best practices” in reading instruction.
.
