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Ways of Speaking and Writing, Teaching and Learning:
Perspectives on Remedial and Developmental Writing

Assignment written for ENGL 522, Dr. Eileen Meagher, June 25, 1998

Academic discourse is often viewed as an elitist form of writing, somehow better than journalistic writing, technical writing, or hypertextual writing. Ong, Tuman, and others have argued the historicity of print literacy (which has its culmination in academic discourse), framing that discourse within a particular line of cultural and economic development (Ong 117-135; Tuman 23-51). As Shirley Brice Heath discovered during her ethnographic studies in the Carolina Piedmonts, many students rarely use the kind of extended, closely argued, linear discourse taught in school in the real world of work and living (310-314). And as Bolter, Tuman, and others have pointed out, online literacy is changing the nature of discourse toward writing that is more associational, relational, multi-vocal, and visual (Bolter 52-61, 223-238; Tuman 54-62, 66, 87-93). Teachers of English must recognize that closely reasoned academic discourse is but one discourse among many. To fail to see academic discourse as the discourse of a social community and to teach it as if it were a "revealed truth" or a standard of excellence is both to marginalize students' cultural heritages and to disempower them from participation in developing literacies.

On the other hand, students entering college need to know how to write within this discourse community. Most college classes demand that students respond in writing that is carefully reasoned and written according to the conventions of standard English. And as Thomas J. Farrell pointed out back in 1978, standard English is valuable as an effective and universal medium for communication (Farrell, "Differentiating" 346-7). In a sense, for the remedial/developmental student (and perhaps for all students) standard English becomes a second language, a language which empowers them within the academic and global communities, and "if students understand why they are being asked to learn something and if the reasons given do not conflict with deeper needs for self-respect and loyalty to their group (whether that be an economic, racial, or ethnic group), they are disposed to learn it (Mina Shaughnessy qtd in Min-Zhan Lu 904 [italics added by Lu]).

During the academic year 1994-5, a group of faculty at Chattanooga State Technical Community College engaged in a project to "create strategies, connections, and materials to integrate instruction in [remedial/developmental courses in] reading, English, mathematics, and study skills" Kuhn, et al. 2). As part of that project, the participants identified key characteristics of remedial and developmental students. Remedial students typically

• believe most people can take a blank sheet of paper and write a perfect essay in one attempt
• frequently write in sentence fragments
• struggle with sentence boundaries, writing many run-on sentences and comma splices holding two sentences together
• have difficulty identifying a thought they wish to convey to their reader
• are not sure how to "prove" that thought to their reader with supporting development
• are terrible spellers, which reduces their choices of vocabulary even further when writing
• struggle with subject/verb agreement
• have problems imposing an organization on their thoughts and, therefore, on their writing. Even time sequence is difficult.
• cannot make generalizations from information given or from life experiences of their own

The following is a typical paragraph by a remedial writer:

Developmental students

• can write a decent paragraph with beginning, middle, and end
• still have some trouble with run-ons and comma splices, but fragments are less common
• still have trouble with generalizations, therefore making thesis creation hard
• have spelling problems
• have trouble writing on any abstract topic
• cannot make connections between ideas in writing
• have some grammar problems: pronoun/antecedent problems, subject-verb agreement, irregular verb forms, use of commas
• poorly organize ideas--spatially, chronologically, or hierarchically
• do not understand the difference between using research as support for ideas and simple summarizing
• are confused about paraphrasing, quoting, and summarizing

The following short essay is typical of developmental writers at Chattanooga State who began in remedial classes:

Many of the weaknesses frequently exhibited by remedial and developmental writers are a consequence of their transcribing everyday speech patterns into writing, their lack of exposure to academic discourse (Farrell, "Differentiating" 348), and their failure to see writing as a thinking process. Many students, particularly those at the remedial level, have low regard for their writing abilities and have difficulty seeing themselves as writers. Others show more confidence but shift responsibility for their writing away from their own efforts and onto some external circumstance: "I have good ideas but can't write or express them well"; "I had a bad teacher who didn't like me"; "I need special help"; "I'm creative and imaginative, though weak in mechanics" (Grego and Thompson 71-2).

Behind most of these attitudes toward writing lie students' fears. Students "talk about their fears that they will make mistakes, not know how to proceed, or appear foolish" (Fredericksen 116). Regardless of their actual abilities, students avoid writing out of "lack of trust, lack of reward for speaking [or writing], (sic) and resistance" (Fredericksen 116) or fear "of being different, of not being liked, of failing" (Fredericksen 117). As a result, teachers of remedial/developmental writers often are required to serve as caregivers as well as instructors, providing a safe house for students to work in (Fredericksen 1155-118, Canagarajah 174; Grego and Thompson 71-74).

Teachers can overcome students' fears of writing by "setting the proper tone, by listening to each student, and by letting it be known that all voices matter" (Fredericksen 117). One possibility is placing students in same-sex or same-race groups to make students feel more comfortable and more free to discuss (Fredericksen 117). Students can also be encouraged to write about transformative experiences because as students become involved in the content of their writing, their voices gain power and expression (Bernstein 123-4). Teachers can also motivate students "by helping them 'find their voice,' that is, to come to believe that they [students] have something valuable to say and to learn to express it with authority" (Fredericksen 115).

Part of the fear students feel toward writing is a consequence of their lack of extended exposure to writing. Many of the characteristics of remedial/developmental writers are a result of their remaining "highly oral and residually oral persons" (Farrell, "Developing Literacy" 30). Characteristics of student writing which reflect orality include generalized statements, the use of abstract concepts like love and justice, arguments based on emotional fervor rather than reasoned judgements, the use of "additive paraphrases" in lieu of careful analysis, and "generalizations which appear to be highly opinionated and subject" which students defend on the basis that "everyone has a right to his or her opinion" (Farrell, "Developing Literacy" 31).

The Academic Assessment Placement Program (AAPP), a holistic scoring rubric used for placing writing students, reflects the basic orality of remedial/developmental students. Remedial writing is characterized as writing which

• does not respond to topic
• lacks development of ideas; may be very short
• [has] limited development of content
• reveals a pattern of errors in mechanics, usage, structure, diction, and punctuation
• uses informal language frequently, conversational tones, and limited vocabulary
• [has] syntax [which] is rudimentary and [is] lacking in variety
• [has] no awareness of thesis
• is generally incoherent and has no discernable pattern of organization

Developmental writing is characterized as writing which

• responds to thesis but does not develop thesis
• attempts thesis which may not be systematically developed
• [has] inconsistent development of content
• may display some errors in mechanics, usage, sentence structure but not a consistent pattern of such errors
• uses informal language occasionally with frequent use of conversational speech patterns

As Shirley Brice Heath points out in Ways with Words, the oral qualities of speech evidenced by some students can be both powerful and linguistically interesting. In Trackton, a small black community which formed part of her ethnographic study, students are accomplished oral performers of stories containing "highly exaggerated compliments" and "wildly exaggerated comparisons" (Heath 166). In Trackton, stories, verbal insults, and playsongs tend toward verbal play which is highly rhythmical, intensely rhyming, and filled with comparisons (Heath 174-184). In the practice of "raising hymns" (Heath 204-11), this verbal play becomes a social exercise where "each member of the congregation [can] be at once creator and performer" (Heath 205). Unfortunately, the demands of academic course work seldom reward this type of verbal facility (Heath 225).

To be successful in college, students must learn the language of college. However, the struggle of students to appropriate this new discourse without losing connections to their roots is not without its problems (Lu 909-10). Teachers should lead students to the awareness of the differences in verbal communication, "to different ways people think and communicate" (Fredericksen 117). Teachers should lead students to understand that academic discourse is not a privileged discourse or inherently "better" than other forms of discourse but only more useful within the academic context. Teachers can also emphasize the relative importance of academic literacy and its place in the social dynamic of academia by providing students opportunities to explore other modes of discourse such as the emerging literacies of hypertext, perhaps through online bulletin boards, by designing assignments which incorporate hypertext or research on the Internet, or through assignments geared toward business and commerce--resumes, advertisements, promotional materials--where the physical layout and graphical design of the text become part of the message of the text. By foregrounding discussions of discourse within specific social and rhetorical situations, students can better appreciate and accept the place of their own ways with words within the social and rhetorical worlds of their communities.

Teachers also can explain to students that writing according to the conventions of standardized English is necessary in the interests of readability (Farrell, "Differentiating" 346) and efficiency (Farrell, "Differentiating" 347). By making a careful distinction between the ways people write and the ways in which they talk, teachers can lead students to understand that, while people in a variety of walks of life may have different speech patterns, they may all use standardized English as a universal form of written communication without losing the regional or social differences inherent in their speech (Farrell, "Differentiating" 347). Helping students realize that differences in voices reflect differences in culture and leading them to appreciate both their own unique language culture and the language culture of others around them can free students from the fear of speaking. Positioning standard written English within the context of academic culture allows students both to recognize the legitimacy of their own speech patterns as social forms of communication and to accept the need for a new and different form of communication within the social atmosphere of the university. Further, this positioning does not prevent students' accommodation of the emerging literacies of hypertext. In fact, students who understand that discourse serves specific social and rhetorical contexts are more likely to adapt to changes in literacy and are more likely to accept that to be successful in the culture of the academic world which they are entering, they must learn to use its language.

English, more than any other language, has evolved as a written language or grapholect. While "German has a vocabulary of about 185,000 words and French fewer than 100,000," the "Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words [for English while] a further half million technical and scientific terms remain uncatalogued" (McCrum, Cran, and MacNeil 19). This may help explain why, as H. L. Mencken said, "Standard English must always strike an American as a bit stilted" (Pinckert 7).

Therefore, teachers should make "students more aware of how writing is different from talking" (Farrell, "Differentiating" 349). In my own classes, I share with my students my own (naive) first awareness of the differences between writing and speaking:

I encourage students to actively model their writing after things which they have read rather than conversation. I read models from authors like Joan Didion, Richard Ford, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Aurora Levins Morales, Richard Rodriguez, Richard Wright, and John Updike. In addition to these admittedly "literary" writers, we discuss newspaper and magazine articles, business writing, and textbook writing, and how all of these are written in styles which are different from everyday speech but serve specific rhetorical purposes appropriate to the society for which they are addressed. In their own writing, students work at replacing conversational phrases like a lot with more formal written constructions like often, much, or many. Instead of using common conversational verbs like run or got coupled with adverbs, and generic nouns and adjectives, students are encouraged to explore more vivid words.

In conversation, most sentences are either simple subject-verb-complement constructions or additives of those linked with and. Dependent clauses are often used as independent statements in conversation. In written works, most sentences are either complex, containing at least one dependent clause, or simple sentences which frequently vary subject-verb-complement order by beginning with prepositional and participial phrases. As the semester progresses, students become more sensitive to the differences between literate and oral patterns of communication. We also discuss the role of dialogue, and how dialogue can re-introduce a feeling of oral communication into a piece of writing.

As students gain experience, their writing improves. And the more students read models of academic discourse and reflect on its differences, the more that they are able to internalize those forms and incorporate them naturally into their own writing (Farrell, "Differentiating" 349).

If writing is a process, it is primarily a process of thinking, and when students who have not fully internalized the conventions of the printed text attempt to write according to the unnatural, closely ordered, linear patterns demanded by the essay (Ong 82-3; Bolter 35-6, 208-10; Tuman 35-40), their tenuous control of the text lapses into patterns with which they are more comfortable, patterns of speech. The situation is not unlike the ESL student who thinks through an essay in his or her native tongue and attempts to translate back into English "on the fly." Invariably, ESL students under those circumstances record their thoughts in English but in the idioms and syntax of their native language. The solution is not drill in grammatical forms and syntax but more exposure to writing (particularly timed writing) until the writer becomes more fluent and is able to think in English.

Debate regarding the necessity for leading students to understand the differences between orality and literacy, and the need for re-evaluating the place and importance of teaching the conventions of English are not new. While this is contrary to common practice in remedial/developmental courses, Thomas J. Farrell argued in 1978 that instruction in the conventions of English should be delayed "until the second or third semester in the sequence of writing courses" after students have written "regularly at some length and in detail" (Farrell, "Developing Literacy" 38). Instead, teachers should focus on teaching students ways for "(1) developing [their] thinking in detail and in a coherent manner and (2) organizing [their] statements so as to anticipate the reader's need to know where one is coming from and going to" (Farrell, "Differentiating" 347). Initial instruction should "stress (1) developing ideas in detail, (2) grouping similar ideas together, (3) presenting ideas in an order that can be readily followed by readers, and (4) generally anticipating the fictional audiences's need to know what one means" (Farrell, "Differentiating" 348).

Farrell begins his classes by leading students in discussions regarding the differences between writing and speaking ("Developing Literacy" 38-9), the need to be self-conscious about an audience for writing ("Developing Literacy" 39), and basic patterns in linear thinking. Students write journals where clarity, detailed development, organization, and variety of subject matter and writing styles are evaluated ("Developing Literacy" 40-1). He emphasizes that students write for a purpose, identifying five basic purposes: "1) telling what happened, 2) giving directions, 3) explaining, 4) convincing others, and 5) summarizing" which he requires that they model ("Developing Literacy" 41). Further exercises involve summary of articles on the nature of language ("Developing Literacy" 42-3), reading and writing about novels that model oral patterns (Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease) ("Developing Literacy" 43-4), discussions of sexism in language ("Developing Literacy" 44-5), "oral-imitations" ("Developing Literacy" 45-7), and sentence combining ("Developing Literacy" 47-50).

Elaine Fredericksen suggests deferring the grading of grammatical errors until later drafts and the inclusion of non-graded assignments, like journals, to help students become comfortable with their writing. She also recommends that, at least on early papers, instructors restrict their comments to noting the positive qualities of the student's text. Rather than attacking faulty thinking in an essay, she recommends asking students leading questions aimed at clarification (118-9). John Dawkins argues that punctuation should be taught as a rhetorical tool, that writers punctuate, not according to a set of conventions, but in order to express "their intended meaning, their intended emphasis" (534). He argues that punctuation is a reflection of "degrees of separation" revealing the relationships between clauses (535), and that "learning to punctuate effectively requires only a little knowledge of grammar, much less than most English teachers will grant" (544). Instead of learning a set of conventional rules, "the student reads and considers his or her intentions and the reader's needs, then decides according to an intended meaning and emphasis" (544). Such approaches ground the conventions of English within the process of making meaning, where they belong.

In my own classes, discussions of the differences between writing and conversation proceed to a discussion of the writing process as a means of managing the disparate and complicated tasks necessitated by writing in an academic setting. Students are taught to model a two-stage, six-step process. In the first stage, students write for their own understanding by gathering details through prewriting, discovering a purpose or organizing principle through focused prewriting, and selecting and organizing details to fit their purpose through a variety of drafting techniques including graphical organizations of an essay and outlining. In the second stage, students write for an audience, first through revising, then through editing, and finally through proofreading. Students learn that the aim in revising is to re-see the essay through the eyes of their intended audience by focusing on rethinking their stated purpose and the details which they have used to support, develop, and explain that purpose. Students learn to see editing as a process of refining meaning, striving for clarity and powerful expression in all the elements of writing: paragraphs, sentences, and words. Finally, students are taught to see proofreading as part of the larger process of correctly formatting a document for "publication,"where the conventions of standard English are on a level with other characteristics of textual format--doublespacing, margin widths, ink color, documentation format, and paragraphing style--important to the appearance and genre of the text, but only marginally important to the meaning of the text. In fact, variations from the norm of standardized English, whether in spelling, grammar, or punctuation, are only important in that they distract the reader's attention from the meaning of the text. Unfortunately, too often by our grading scale and our attitudes, we give the impression that the conventions are the text rather than a medium for conveying the text. Throughout the semester, students are encouraged through short in-class writing assignments to review what they have learned about writing, how their thinking has changed as writers, and how their writing practices have expanded and developed.

The aim in all of this is for students to see themselves, not as non-writers, but as emerging writers, "not basic [or remedial/developmental] writers but writers" (Anokye 103). And this is important for teachers to see as well. As remedial and developmental studies become increasingly marginalized in institutions, disappearing altogether from universities (e.g., Grego and Thompson 62-3; Soliday 86), and relegated to adjunct faculty or outsourced to private industry in community colleges, there is real danger in these students being excluded from academic society. Writing instructors become gatekeepers, whose role is not to lead students to become writers, but to weed out those who "should not be in college anyway" (Soliday 86). Such an attitude reflects the elitism of academic society at its worst, and presumes a foreknowledge about students, their capabilities, and their potentials that cannot be justified.

Such an attitude also supports the "'fix-it station' tempo and mentality" (Soliday 85) sometimes evidenced by writing teachers who focus on "the presence of absence," noting what is grammatically missing from or fractured within a student's text rather than seeing what is of value in the text (Grego and Thompson 69). Part of this concentration on format over form may be due to teachers' own misgivings about the subjectivity of analyzing a student text. Identifying problems in the format of the text are safer because they are objective. In addition, a teacher can identify a problem in format by appending a simple label to the text (e.g., fragment) or a note referring the student to a handbook. Comments which focus on rhetorical matters or matters of thinking require extended explanation. Even a simple comment like "more details" has a range of possible rhetorical meanings (Grego and Thompson 78).

In Ways with Words, Shirley Brice Heath writes of a second-grade class who became "ethnographers or 'detectives' focusing on language, looking for the ways in which language, written and spoken, differed across contexts" (327). The students listened to classroom visitors, who discussed their use of language in their jobs and in their lives, and to radio broadcasts, actively listening for cues regarding language use. Students learned to differentiate between formal and informal speech, and between various dialects (329). They created charts illustrating language practices (330). They focused on the building blocks of language, the ways those building blocks "were put together, and how these varied in accordance with speaker and use in print or speech" (330-1). "Teachers and students began to 'play' language in its many variations as an instrument, sometimes sounding formal or classical, at other times informal or disco-like" (331). Students wrote--lists for home, notes to parents or teachers, school flyers, and birthday and get well cards, and they read--labels for the grocer, school announcements, messages for their parents (331-3).

The children had, by the end of the year, developed a special "metalinguistic" vocabulary and ways of talking about their language and that of others. They could point out different levels of reading beyond those levels traditionally present through reading books; they knew different styles of writing and speaking were used by different individuals on various occasions. They were able to identify and label, and talk about the whys of dialect features, elements of formal and informal style, casual speech. . . . [They] had learned to observe, record, categorize, and analyze ways in which people spoke and the ways in which they used their language for writing and reading. . . . [T]hey had contextualized reading and writing in their community life and in their own daily existence at home and in the school. . . . Perhaps most important, the second-graders now defined themselves as readers and writers [italics added]. (333)

Of the twenty-four students in the class, three-fourths had scored below grade level in first grade, one-fourth after having repeated first-grade (327-8). At the end of the year only two students were reading below grade level, and eight were reading above grade level (333). What can be done with second-graders can also be done with college students. Two other projects demonstrating the "interdependence of orality and literacy" (Anokye 102) are the Studio project at the University of South Carolina and the Enrichment Approach project at City College of New York.

The University of South Carolina Writing Studio, created when basic writing courses were eliminated from the curriculum program, is a small group tutorial where students are nurtured as writers through dialogue with instructors and tutors. As part of this project, students are encouraged to write about the "intellectual history and landscape of their education" (Grego and Thompson 63). Comparing the work of composition instructors (and especially those engaged with remedial/developmental writers) as parallel to the traditional woman's role of nurturer and care-giver, Grego and Thompson argue that success with students is grounded in "the personal and interpersonal mental processes that compositionists . . . engage in with student writers and student-writing" (64). Studio leaders discuss student texts and share ideas as students try to frame their ideas aloud prior to committing words to paper. Student work during Studio sessions is reported to each student's instructor through "Dialogue Sheets," which include the leader's observations and provide space for instructor feedback and direction. What occurs in these group sessions is that comments by student peers which "may seem underdeveloped, dramatic, or lacking in specifics to [group leaders] . . . make sense to the other group members who seem to possess a similar 'bank' or background of experiences from which they make better sense than [group leaders] can of the student's point of view; (sic) of 'where the writer is coming from'" (76). Within this process, group leaders begin to try to articulate for themselves, for the students' instructors, for group peers, and for the student writers

Like the Studio project, the Enrichment Approach project at City College of New York also addresses the needs of remedial/developmental students through supplemental services to mainstreamed students, and, like the Studio project, its success hinges on collaboration between faculty and tutors and students, and on oral approaches to language study (Soliday 86). "By foregrounding students' language experience and the everyday use of language in social contexts as resources for teaching writing, . . . [instructors] try to enhance students' awareness of the complexity of their spoken language and its relationship to written language" (Soliday 87). Students discuss the various aspects of written and spoken language, view films about language, transcribe spoken language and compare it to written langauge. Students examine the language of their individual cultures, using "the unfamiliar language of the academy to describe and analyze familiar aspects of everyday language use and cultural experience" (Soliday 86) in ways reminiscent of the second-grade students in Ways with Words. Students work regularly with teachers and tutors, and in small groups, workshops, and interviews to address students' writing needs (Soliday 88).

What is evident in all of these approaches to the needs of remedial/developmental writers is the need for close and continuous interactions between students and teachers, and extended dialogue on the nature and variety of written and spoken language. As independent programs for remediation are eliminated in colleges and universities, what remains to be seen is whether state and federal governments and school administrations will be willing to provide the resources necessary for such extended interactions. Along with these changes in educational polity are societal changes powered by the rise of technologies and the growth of the Internet and related forms of communication. As those who have participated in online classrooms realize, the increased levels of student interaction in these classes make increasing demands on faculty time and resources similar to those required in working with remedial/developmental students. Communication, community, collaboration, multiple voices, the dethroning of privileged discourse--efforts to reach remedial/developmental students fall in line with what writers like Bolter and Tuman see as principle traits of the new literacy of hypertext and online writing. In preparing students for success in the current academic society, we would be wise to select methods and approaches which can be adapted to the literacies of the next century, if as Tuman predicts, print literacy becomes marginalized in favor of online literacy (Tuman 51, 115).

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___. EN081 syllabus. Chattanooga State Technical Community College. Spring 1998.

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