For the MLA, the topic of teaching first-year classes, particularly composition courses, is a critical issue, as evidenced by the many panels dedicated to the topic of first-year instruction at the 2015 MLA Conference.
With regards to entry level composition classes, one challenge arises from the fact that written communication is rapidly evolving with technology. So while a composition class dedicated solely to academic writing may have sufficed even five years ago, now students must also to learn to write for the web. Professors and instructors too must adapt with the times and learn to teach new styles of writing.
Dr. Jessica Beth Yood, a professor at Lehman College at CUNY, described some of the challenges her institution faces with regards to undergraduate writing courses. She told Diverse that the number of students taking such classes has increased dramatically, even as the university has asked instructors to compress the time spent on each course.
With her first-year writing classes, she said she often has less than a semester to help her students establish proficiency in academic and web-specific writing. As a result, writing is taught through online classes or “hybrid” classes, in which students send her their work, she critiques it and sends it back.
But compared to the traditional liberal arts format of face-to-face discussions of literature and textual analysis, Yood said, the new methodology “doesn’t work as well.”
Instead, she says that traditional freshman writing courses and composition courses are worth “fighting for.” “Because they may be the place where the questions around thinking become manifested,” she said. “[Students can] experiment with asking themselves ‘how do I think about things,’ without having to codify it yet.”
