The Teaching of Freshman English: History and Therapy

Abstract

This book, the report of the Dartmouth Study of Student Writing and one of the Carnegie Series in American Education, is a history and critique of the course known familiarly in American colleges and universities as Freshman English or Freshman Composition. It was prepared by Kitzhaber while he was a member of the faculty at Dartmouth College and director of a Carnegie Foundation grant to study the teaching of writing. He is at present professor of English at the University of Oregon and president of the National Council of Teachers of English. The book has five chapters in all, and three appendixes: (i) an analysis of the arguments for and against exempting students from the course, (2) a bibliography for teachers of freshman English, and (3) two specimens of failing themes. The first two chapters are an analysis of the freshmanEnglish course as it can be generally defined in the nation's colleges and as it specifically operates at Dartmouth College. The middle chapter concerns itself with trends, the directions and movements that characterize the course and the panaceas that have been offered to cure its ills. The fourth chapter is an analysis of the of college students after their freshman The final chapter contains twenty-one recommendations for improving the course, some dealing with administration and teaching, some with curriculum and teacherpreparation, some with writing after the freshman year. All told, the book is a solid and necessary document, written with knowledge and purpose. Kitzhaber begins with a list of the questions he hopes to answer: