Editor:

I think that the debate about Freshman Composition needs to be shifted. I have no doubt that the program, and its instructors, have the best of intentions. I think, however, that it may be time to re-evaluate the program's goals and its priorities. I am concerned by the attitude expressed in Phyllis Ryder's letter ("Teaching composition a campus wide job," April 11) toward the importance of grammar. Ryder sees grammar as a surface feature. Grammar is not the last step in the process of writing. It is the foundation around which writing is formed. I would compare grammar to a phone line: If the connection is bad, even the best ideas can be reduced to gibberish.

Most respondents to Alexander's original column ("Make students competent writers," April 9) have stated, correctly, that Freshman Composition cannot be expected to make students good writers by itself. It is, however, well within the scope of a one-year program to provide students with all of the tools they need to write, including an in-depth knowledge of the rules of grammar. While each department can teach its students how to write appropriately for their fields, I doubt that any department would encourage students to use inexact and ambiguous language. Freshman Composition need not drill students in grammar, but it should highlight errors and imprecisions, and teach students why grammatical correctness is important. In my own experience as an honors preceptor and as an English major, I have seen a large number of students who know how to formulate ideas, but who do not know how to cogently present those ideas. While I do not expect all students to have perfect grammar, I would expect better than I found, in most cases. These students may have been poorly served in high school and junior high, I admit. Nevertheless, someone must teach them grammar, and the Freshman Composition program seems perfectly positioned to do so.

What can be done? Requiring a certain level of grammatical proficiency of students by the end of the Freshman Composition process might be a start. If the program, and the university, is not only expected but demanded this proficiency, the need to address or ignore grammar problems in higher level courses would vanish, and those courses would be improved. Perhaps the UDWPE (Upper Division Writing Proficiency Exam) is not enough. Perhaps a basic writing proficiency examination, given after Freshman Composition, testing grammatical skills, might not be out of order. It can only improve students' writing.

David Ainsworth
English and mathematics senior