Lives and Literacy: Autobiography in Freshman Composition

Abstract

STUDENT WRITING IN FRESHMAN COMPOSITION is alive and fresh when students write about their real and immediate problems, that is, when they write in the first person and draw on material from their own lives. Writing from personal experience is particularly effective for marginal students, providing them with motivation, confidence, and a greater opportunity for success than traditional writing assignments. In the face of declining SAT scores in language aptitude and outcries from every sector that Johnny and Janie can't write, we might expect a growth of interest and experimentation in personal forms of However, exactly the contrary is true: English instructors are turning away from personal writing and reverting to rhetorical approaches to composition. This seems a paradox: the level of student writing has declined, yet an approach which has provided motivation, encouragement, and success for unskilled writers is being abandoned. The indicators of this trend are several, as I discovered while trying to find a text of first-person writing for my classes. The anthology I have been using is dated, but I have found no adequate substitute among the textbooks published in the past two years. Though a few collections of first-person writing are available, the choice is much more limited than it was five years ago, and for various reasons the current texts are unsatisfactory for my students. In the course of investigating this dearth of choices, I spoke with the English text editor of a major publishing house. He explained that those anthologies of personal writing published in the last few years had not sold well; his house therefore plans to publish no more of them. Furthermore, he said, last year one of their most popular rhetorical anthologies was up for revision, and when asked to suggest changes, teachers who had used the book sent back a strong and clear message: Cut back on the personal writing. Other publishers with whom I corresponded about this situation have confirmed this trend. Since publishers, like other businessmen, are engaged in making profits, not pedagogy, they produce whhat they think instructors, not students, will like. Publishers follow the market; they do not lead it, and for this they are to be thanked. After all, this