Unlearning and Relearning: A Guide to College Composition

The idea for Unlearning and Relearning, A Guide to College Composition, emanated from several conversations between two English composition instructors, John Tiech and John Isaacs, in their shared Waynesburg University office. After noticing a steady decline in sentence structure proficiency (fragments, comma splices, run-on sentences), narrative perspective, and purposeful writing, the authors could not find a textbook that addressed perhaps the most pressing, immediate need of first year college students-- finding their own voices. Unlearning and Relearning was written for students who, after four high school years of synthesizing and researching the works of others, feel distanced from their own essays, as if little, except for a grade, is at stake for them when they write. Some of these students have been told that they should never use the pronoun "I." Some have forgotten basic grammar rules since they have not been taught grammar since grade school. This text addresses student misconceptions and gaps in learning from grade school to college so that students may unlearn and relearn in order to transition to university thinking and writing. Equally, this book has been written for university instructors who recognize fundamental skills that their students have forgotten and fallacies students may have about the writing process. The chapter sequence will aid instructors in facilitating what needs to be unlearned, relearned, and newly learned in order to help students comprehend the power and possibilities of their own words. With this purpose of restoring power and purpose to the student writer, many first-year student essays--some works in progress, some finished--have been included in this text in order to promote discussion about, quite simply, "What's working, what's not working, and why?" The encouragement of a workshop type setting and peer review―of immediate and personal feedback of student essays―will help students comprehend what is at stake for them with each word they write.