European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 13, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 16 the stars and stripes april new York times photo Clear English prose Jeff a freelance writer from conducting writing course at teaching College students to write by Colin Campbell the new York times one of the teachers would usually arrive with some but apparently every one had been too Busy that afternoon to buy that added to their weariness As they sat in a creak floored office in Harvard University freshman and for a minute they considered adjourning rather than talking about their the five teachers decided to and As they traded tales of pedagogy and Clear English the teachers All professional writers rather than academics grew almost i had one recalled Jeff a freelancer from who began a my Mother has been heavily involved with every single member of the California state the teachers ambiguous another Harvard freshman had started an advertisements play an Active part in every americans Boring Bradley said Dorian a freelance Jour 1 dont just Tell them to rewrite i want them to reset meetings like this one though not often among teachers who Are also professional writers have been taking place at More and More Good Liberal arts colleges in the densely academic Northeast and Colleg level writing instruction has been and Over the last five years or so some of the country Best known private which have traditionally excelled at getting students to write have Felt a need to do a better Harvard began hiring professional novelists and other writers in 1978 to reinvigorate its Exposi tory writing program for the program now employs 47 such most part classes Are about a dozen students and freshmen can choose among sections that focus on social studies or the natural As Well As on literature or creative Brown University introduced a program in j981 in which professors can Call on students who Are Good writers to help those who Are Swarthmore in recently inaugurated a similar pro and several other colleges have considered follow ing Many colleges Are already using students As writing tutors on a smaller from Dartmouth to Wesleyan to Yale to George colleges have been engaged in All sorts of expert Many of them courses for to improve student the past decades concerns Over the lacklustre verbal abilities of High school students and the amazingly poor writing of College have encouraged new types of College new courses in new writing clinics and some staffed by and various other attempts to realize a fashionable academic Ideal known As writing across the or learning to write Well in any not just in English the word in its classic the study of persuasive is also enjoying a Many private colleges in the unlike hundreds of state and local colleges have pointedly avoided using the Colleg level rhetoric published in recent which like textbooks in other to teach students the essence of logic and related Anne who runs the writing program at Wesleyan in echoed the thoughts of teachers in Many of the Best Liberal arts colleges when she said she believed in real books rather than people dont read she Lowry a published writer of has earned a modest living for seven years teaching expository writing at he walked into class the other Day and told his students they would be talking about beginnings and endings rather than entries and the earlier name for this segment of the course had been cancelled due to he Pel then coiled himself into a Windsor chair and began a sort of his students were interested in creative and he asked one to read her latest essay it dealt with a Story by Eudora Welty and was written in a style that several students called some said they liked the Way it flowed Between Wel Tys imagery and the essayists others Felt confused the essays first for had declared that life is a As is the and contradictions exist in Harmony alongside each on a Wellborn English majors often suffer from flowery count less other students never bother to but a More troubling said Richard director of har cards expository writing is the student who just Tell me what to do and ill give it to anxious for High grades and impatient to learn the whatever they such students Are regularly frustrated and tend to decide that Good writing is essentially a matter of they also More acc that dozens of courses do not require them to write especially a historian of the reformation who has writ ten two 1 find this very discouraging at he thinks of Good writing As a kind of wrestling with As a reflection of real intellectual attain other teachers of writing share his View but say a lot of their students never get an advantage of professional writers As teachers can be their James chairman of the English department at Georgetown University in washing noted that professors and graduate students in English tended to be literary critics rather than writers or teachers of and As a result were not necessarily better trained to teach writing than anybody Georgetown and Many other colleges have turned in recent years to peer tutors or Utic Grad uate instructors in at such tutors Are paid an hour to help other students tidy up fathom such perennial professorial comments As needs organization and just listen some though impressed with the Thrift and convenience of hiring journalists and students to teach do not see such tactics As Linda co director of the writing program at Yale i just dont feel this is a personal opinion that when youre dealing with the brightest kids in the country they should be getting anything less than really Good writers As Yale prides itself on a kind of smorgasbord of Rhetor ical aids More writing courses than Ever a new writing in the which tries to teach fresh men Clear prose in academic Fields that May involve specialized vocabularies and perhaps a special loyalty to the passive voice writing intensive courses outside the English and Par time tutors at each residential but the use of undergraduate writers elsewhere is professor Tori who developed the writing Fellows program at Brown insisted that students make powerful tutors because they can still remember what it was like when they  write More than 50 writing who earn a semester helping students revise their a Are tutoring More than half of Browns a few colleges have never abandoned the idea that freshmen should take yearlong courses in composition taught by professors in Small and that students should always be encouraged to write revise More and read More exemplary yet even in a period of heightened interest in Clear Many teachers of writing say the pressures of other courses and the habits of other kinds of learning and expression keep squeezing the time devoted to writ writing is now perceived by Many unfortunately and As part of a test taking said Haring Smith of she has meanwhile become associated in student minds with punishment rather than Marius at Harvard said his teachers were surely helping students improve their but he added in sort of pessimistic about our effecting any kind of