Editor:

I am grateful to Christopher Alexander ("Make students competent writers," April 9) for raising questions about the composition program at the UA, and I would like, in return, to clarify some misconceptions about teaching writing.

Alexander states persuasively that teaching students writing should be a high priority for the university, but he mistakenly assumes that this task should be delegated only to first-year composition. Professors at all levels must recognize that there is no such thing as a "generic academic essay." Though we in composition can teach some general traits about writing, different disciplines have different expectations about the level of intimacy/objectivity, the types of evidence and the format of work in their fields. Therefore, professors have a responsibility to clarify why their field values the aspects of writing they do. We cannot expect students to identify these values unless we provide models and analyze the rhetoric of our fields with them.

I also wonder why Alexander's friend, the tennis instructor, feels that he should grade based on a different standard than English teachers: he says, "If I had to grade them on a serious English basis, they'd get ripped to shreds." We send students mixed messages if the only place where teachers carefully evaluate arguments, comment on arrangement, or give advice about presentation is English classes. If we value these aspects of writing, we all need to uphold them.

On the other hand, Alexander criticizes the composition program for grading on broader criteria than grammatical correctness, but I find this practice valuable. Studies in composition have proven that teaching grammar drills does nothing to improve student writing; teaching a process of drafting, revising, and editing does. (Grammatical correctness falls into this final stage, and we are not "forbidden" to teach it.) Yes, grammatical correctness is important when one presents a finished work to readers, but surely even Alexander would agree that a grammatically correct paper that says nothing is less valuable than a mechanically flawed essay that addresses complex and sophisticated questions. Teaching composition, for me, means teaching that the real heart of writing is what writers say, how well they engage their readers, and how well they incorporate conflicting viewpoints. Only after students have developed the content of their essays, do I encourage them to anticipate their readers' response to surface features. Writing is much more complex than knowing "comma splices and dangling modifiers."

I invite Alexander to visit my composition classes, to read the extensive comments I give, and to speak to my students to determine whether his claims about the composition program are accurate or if, in fact, he made the very error he complains that we teach - generalization.

Phyllis Mentzell Ryder
English Ph.D. candidate