English 101?

I have the misfortune of being enrolled in a first year university technical report writing class (designed for science and engineering students) this semester. Some medical programs that I applied to required 2 English courses, and being a last minute addition to my schedule, this class was the only one that would fit into my schedule. Granted, the “guarantee” of an A+ is comforting, I still cringe having to sit through 3 hours of torture each week. I also cringe at the fact that I’m a fourth year student in a first year class.

Why torture? First of all, the professor, whom is no doubt a smart woman, teaches the class as though it is filled with kindergarten students. Think: Mrs. Doubtfire, looks and all. Second, the material that is being taught is ridiculous. I tutored an applied grade 11 English student, and I was teaching him the same things that I was “learning” in class. What’s wrong with this picture?

• My student is in grade 11
• The majority of the students are in first year university, and have passed an advanced level grade 11 English course
• We’re learning the same stuff!

I am absolutely shocked that students do not know what a run-on sentence is (one student actually asked), how to paraphrase a text, the difference between it’s and its, what a coma splice is, or even simple verb conjugations. Even more bewildering are our in-class worksheets that we complete each week. They are composed of sentences that previous students have written, and they are filled with errors. We have to correct the errors. For example:

“The fact of how electricity can be produced by a simple coil and magnet.”

Here’s another great one:

“In the world of computers, keeping track of and storing information is essential so being able to store and retrieve this information in a fast and efficient manner is a crucial part of programming.”

Can you find the errors??

Marvelous. Or, ridiculous? I wonder what these students learned in high school! Now, I am no English major myself, but I do think I know where to put a period in a sentence to avoid a run-on sentence and so I don’t keep going on and on about nothing in order to make a point clearly. I kid   In my high school English experience, there was a minimal focus on grammar, and a greater focus on short stories, Shakespeare, and some famous literary works. While I think these other components are important, perhaps a bit more emphasis should be placed on English grammar. There is a reason why grade 12 (OAC, in my dinosaur-aged case) English is a prerequisite for all university courses. Perhaps because universities expect students to know how to write a proper sentence!

While the course is useful in the technical report writing aspect, it is practically absurd that a large portion of the course is devoted to basic grammar. If students already had proper writing skills, there would be a greater potential to learn more useful information.  These proper writing could even be knowledge on proper sentence form. It is a shame to waste $500 on a university course to learn grammar rules that have been taught (and should have been learned) all throughout grade school. Alas, I may be expecting too much from first year university students. Who knows.