This came across my RSS feed, and I nodded, agreeing with the report that many students who have been targeted for remedial work in community college may have not been prepared for the kind of work expected of them after high school.
Teachers dug deeper for the source of students’ collegiate struggles. After sharing lesson plans and curricula, they learned that while teachers at both levels called it English, they were teaching entirely different things. High school teachers taught mostly literature, focusing on characters and story lines in many classic works of fiction. Meanwhile, English faculty in the community college were teaching students about argumentation and writing clearly to inform, persuade, and describe—key skills needed to succeed at work, think critically and contribute to their community.