Ability Grouping in Media Writing and the Gap in Mechanical Skills

Abstract

Journalism teachers and professionals have long agreed that competence in English grammar and Associated Press style is essential for success in journalism. Particularly since the boom in journalism enrollments from the 1970s through the mid1980s, journalism teachers and professionals have worried that students were not well-prepared in basic skills (Stone, 1990). For example, Williams' (1983) survey of teachers in 125 journalism programs found that students' basic lack of English skills was the teachers' greatest frustration. Auman's (1995) survey of 164 daily and weekly newspaper editors concluded that working with words, which included competence in grammar, punctuation and spelling, was the most important quality editors sought in hiring new copy editors and was the quality in which new hires were most often deficient. Auman (1995, p. 13) also noted a 1990 American Society of Newspaper Editors' report, which concluded that newspaper editors most frequently looked for skills, spelling and knowledge of the when hiring new reporters and copy editors, and noted that new hires received low marks on these qualities from the editors who hired them. Background Journalism programs have coped with students' lack of mastery of the language in various ways. For instance. several programs have required students to pass tests of basic mechanical proficiency as a condition for enrollment in journalism writing courses. In 1978, Adams reported that the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas had tabled a proposal to require students to pass an English proficiency test before enrolling in the school and to require those who failed the test to complete a remedial English course before they could retake the proficiency test. Adams noted that controversy arose when some faculty critics worried that the proficiency test would be biased against minority and international students and would not measure real writing ability while supporters of the test thought it might relieve the J-school faculty of the need to run remedial English courses within courses designed to teach newswriting and reporting(p. 27). In the course of hashing out whether to implement the test, the Kansas faculty surveyed journalism programs that enrolled 500 or more majors and found that 26 percent of the schools required transfer students to pass a proficiency test for admission to their journalism programs. 23 percent of the schools required pre-journalism students to pass an entrance exam, and 47 percent of the schools used entrance exams only as diagnostic, not admission, tools. Half of the schools surveyed believed entrance exams should be required and should be given during the students' freshman or sophomore years. Adams coneluded, The general attitude was that proficiency tests are most useful as indicators of weaknesses which need to be worked at rather than as a means of exclusion (p. 30). At about the same time as Kansas was deciding not to implement its proficiency test, Ryan and Truitt (1978) reported that the West Virginia program was administering a diagnostic English test. Students who failed the test enrolled in a department-supervised writing lab where they worked on mechanical skills necessary to retake and pass the test required for admission to journalism. Ryan and Truitt also reported that more than 90 percent of the West Virginia students required to enroll in the writing-skills lab agreed it improved their mechanical skills. Hynes (1978), however, reported that California State Universitv, Fullerton, students, who were assigned to complete remedial work after failing a proficiency test required for admission to specific writing courses, expressed mixed support for the test and remedial work. But Hynes noted that facu]tilty believed the combination of testing and remedial work allowed them to teach writing courses at a higher level than they had before. Other journalism programs have coped with students' mechanical deficiencies bv standardizing the teaching and content of all sections of basic writing courses. …