Ready for College

Before you read:  What skills does a student need to be "ready for college-level work"?  How should colleges deal with students who are not ready for college level work?  Should such students be excluded from college?  Should they be sent to community college first?  Should they be given a time limit for "getting up to speed"?  Should they be allowed to take other courses while they're making up "deficiencies" in reading/writing? 

            This first question is a good way to discuss the goals of a “remedial” English reading and composition class. Students who are ready for college level work, in my opinion, should be familiar with the basic concepts of expository essay writing.  They should be familiar with, and know how to use: introductions with thesis sentences, topic sentences and paragraph structure, the different kinds of support that a writer can use in body paragraphs (facts, examples, personal opinions, etc), and concluding paragraphs.  Students should also be familiar with different kinds of essays, such as descriptive and compare/contrast essays.  College level students should also be able to recognize and correct common errors in their own writing, especially run-on sentences and comma splices.  Students don’t need to have mastered all of these topics, but they should have heard of them before and have practiced them before.

            College level students should also have some experience with pre-writing techniques and should have some ideas what works well for them. 

            As far as reading skills, college students should be able to engage with a text in the various ways that are necessary for college level work: skimming, scanning, taking notes in margins or highlighting main ideas and key points, and summarizing.  They should know that there are rules for referring to texts in their own work, but they don’t need to have mastered this yet either; this is a good skill to practice in freshman English.

I think the “remedial” or basic skills class or series of classes in college is a good way to help these students.  I don’t think any student should ever be excluded from college, as long as they are motivated and able to improve their skills with practice. 

I don’t think that students should be “sent” to a community college to improve basic skills.  As a former community college student and a present community college instructor, some peoples’ view that community colleges are for dumb people or losers is not only insulting but also just plain wrong.  College level work happens at a community college ever hour of every day.  I think state colleges and universities should take care of their own students and have basic skills classes for those students who need them.  All colleges should be invested in their own students’ success.

I don’t think students should have a time limit for “getting up to speed.”  In a perfect world, students would be able to take all the time they need to learn these basic skills, because they are important skills not only for college but also for life and success in the 21^st century.  However, in today’s environment of budget cuts, I can understand when programs put limits on how long a student can take to build the skills necessary.  At Diablo Valley College, for example, a student can only take a class three times, withdrawals and failures included, before they barred from taking that class again.  I think this is unfortunate and should be changed, but that is the world we are living in today.

--Michael K