SWA #1

Problems and Solutions with College Students’ Writing

In professor Skube’s passage, he has several concerns for today’s college students. All of his concerns; vocabulary, sentence structure, abilities to write at a high school level, and grammar, are all originated from the assumption that students do not read near enough and because the students do not read they are less able to understand the language when they do read. In the passage, Skube makes it clear that “students are hard-pressed to string together coherent sentences” and even be able to tell the difference between different parts of speech. All of these things show in the conversations with the students and in their writing.
In spite of all the inabilities in composition of college school students, these students got A’s and their GPA’s above a 3.5 in high school. Skube’s belief is that the students graduating from high school are not college material and in many cases not even good high school material. There is more and more emphasis on exit exams and SAT scores now because of the inability to trust GPA’s. These scores show more familiarity with the language as well as quickness to understand what is being portrayed through a passage and vocabulary.
In my experience as a student, I think professor Skube’s point is fairly accurate. Most students in high school do not learn how to read and write at a college level by the time they graduate. I myself did better in the class and had a better GPA than my SAT scores. The requirements for writing in college are not emphasized a great deal in high school and students do not read unless it is forced upon them. When students in my classes have been asked to define a word in a sentence, if it was not a commonly used word in the hallways of school they did not know the definition or even where to start with defining the word. Students should have been taught more strategies of reading and writing to be able to understand concepts and not just glance over words on a page.
In professor Hagstettes’ passage, he explains the concepts of aggressive reading. These concepts could be directed towards professor Skube’s targeted students in several ways and help them understand how to read and what they are reading. The biggest piece to understanding how to read is to not passively read, but to focus on truly absorbing the material. This is mainly confirming that the student understand everything they have read and followed the author through the entire material. Hagstette states to “never simply read right past elements you do not fully understand….your job as an aggressive reader is to decode the vocabulary and allusions you encounter.” I think this could be the biggest help to Skube’s targeted students as well as the initiative to question the material and challenge a writer’s argument so you better understand the underlying point the writer tries to make.
Skube’s passage is basically pointing out the problems of college students’ ability to have college level conversations, write college level papers, and use extensive vocabulary. Hagstettes’s view on how to help students read and write better is to aggressively read. Sit down with a book and understand it, do not just passively read it and take it for what it looks like. Take a dictionary and look up what you do not understand. Challenge everything and dig deeper into the message that is being sent through the passage you are reading.