Composition must be taught at the UA with an eye toward creativity

To Mark Joseph Goldenson:

As a GAT in the University of Arizona English Department, I feel compelled to respond to your well-written but misinformed column, "UA's English Dept. must get back to the basics" (Friday).

While I agree with you that English is a "glorious language," and that we have a "wonderful pool of students on [our] hands," I strongly disagree with your ideas about how basic English should be taught. You recall your high school English class with nostalgia, when Father Becker taught you not to let those pronouns dangle. And we all know that a preposition is something you shouldn't end a sentence with ...

There are some advantages to this 'bottom-up' method of writing instruction. Students do end up learning the rules. They do not try to boldly split infinitives. They do not write no double negatives. They learn from Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style," which you praise so highly, that "non-restrictive clauses are parenthetic, as are similar clauses introduced by conjunctions indicating time or place [and that] commas are therefore needed" (3).

The trouble is, when freshman writers are forced to pick their way through a minefield of rules and regulations whenever they put pen to paper, they often end up paralyzed, blocked, silenced.

Here at the UA, we in the English Department believe in a 'top-down' philosophy of writing instruction. We ask students to write about ideas and issues that they are invested in and care about in order to break through their writer's block. We hope our students will not only learn to write clearly, but to think, question and analyze. We believe that writing is more than a technique and that, as John Clifford, a composition theorist, has written, "Instructors can help students become inquisitive writers by avoiding rigid rules, constant evaluation, and the conventions of 'normal' academic writing." To hell with the rules, evaluations and conventions. Learn to think for yourself!

By Sarah Prineas (letter)
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 12, 1997