By Written Q and A with David Abner, assistant attorney general for the state of Kentucky and part-time instructor at Bluegrass Technical and Community College in Leestown, KY.
JM: I hope your course went well in the fall, and if you are teaching this spring, that it's going well, too.
DA: The fall course did go well. A good group of students, perhaps the best I have encountered since beginning my teaching at the local community college. I am currently teaching English 101 again (and will teach another English 101 class in the late summer).
JM: Did your students get any benefit from any of the exercises in the Writing Guide?
DA: After only one class it’s difficult to tell how much benefit they received, but, yes, I think it has. I used exercises from your manual for the first 6 class periods and I think this assisted the students in becoming more comfortable in writing in general and in writing argument papers.
JM: If so, what did you notice? Did the stress on concreteness produce papers that were less vague? How did active verb exercises work out for them?
DA: I did notice a much better use of detail (concrete nouns), which I had not seen in previous classes. I noticed less of an increase in the use of strong, active verbs, but the students were all aware of what should be in the papers and made corrections when we were able to discuss the papers beforehand.
JM: If you have a moment to explain where the Guide worked and where it fell short, I would appreciate knowing that.
DA: I’m still using a separate argument text, but I may transition completely to your manual and put even more emphasis on the writing of clear sentences and well-organized paragraphs. I try to make the students better writers than they were when they entered my class. I have no political or philosophical agenda in class. And I still whole-heartedly agree with your prescient observation that students most often do not lack the ability to argue but instead lack the tools to present those arguments in a written form.