I know this may sound harsh, but I don’t expect all students to succeed in the classroom. It isn’t always the students’ fault if they don’t succeed. Sometimes they have outside things that happen to them that make it impossible to devote the needed time to their writing. This happens.

I expect from the basic writing student to be just like any other student: willing to learn, willing to do the work, and willing to be there in the classroom. I do realize that there is one exception with basic writing students. They have been told their writing isn’t good enough. To be told that something as personal is writing isn’t good enough is a hard blow. I understand that they are angry, upset, and/or frustrated. Like I said in my earlier post, teachers and students have a relationship that requires work. Students should expect to do that work in order to improve. Shaughnessy says on 293, “The BW student merely comes to them [problems with writing] later than most and must therefore work harder and faster to solve them”.

I do expect to see improvement from students, but I do not expect to see it overnight. As Shaughnessy says, “Some lessons bear immediate fruit, some fall by the way, and others lie dormant until one day the student bursts out in an ‘I see!’ or produces a piece of writing that moves him, seemingly overnight, to a new plane of competence”. (276) I think it is going to take work and perseverance from the student and patience from the teacher to reach this goal.

Shaughnessy, Mina. Errors and Expectations. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.