During the first week of Freshman comp, before I have done any instruction, I give students thirty to forty minutes to write an in-class essay. This semester (Fall of 97), the assignment was:

The assignment has two primary purposes -- revalidating our placement exams and giving me a sense of what the students do and do not know about writing. Primarily, I look at sentence structure, the thesis sentence, paragraphing, and the student's sense of details. Having done this for more than twenty years, I can't say that I'm ever disappointed by what I find. In fact, more of my students are arriving with a better grasp of writing fundamentals. I am, however, disturbed by how, in my view, many of my students have been cheated. Consider the following "essay," submitted by a student this semester, and reproduced with his permission.

This student has a very accurate sense of his writing abilities. Perhaps, one of these days, I will have the time to put a whole set of these papers here on the net so that an "essay" like this could be seen in the context of all the essays wriiten for the assignment. This student has a good sense of basic sentence structure.The misspelling of "know" and "where" bother me. Business English and Business Communications courses flourish at the college level in part because employers do not appreciate the inability to spell such common words. Did his high school teachers simply ignore this problem?
     What really bothers me about the essay, however, are its egocentrism, its paragraph structure, and the relative lack of details. My students have to go on to write essays about diesel engines, forestry, dental hygiene, plastics, etc. Many of my incoming students gave me essays in which they attempted to make a point about religion, writing, capitalism, etc. They did not center their essays on themselves. But then, this student was, as he says, allowed to write about whatever he wanted. Now, however, he finds himself behind his classmates.
      Two paragraphs do not make an essay. Although this student's paragraphs are, as they should be, about two different topics, there is no introduction, no clear thesis, and no real conclusion. The distinction between the paragraphs, moreover, is rather simplistic: back in high school vs. now in college. Compared to many members of the class, this student has A LOT to learn about organizing an essay. On the other hand, he is ahead of half of the class -- they handed in an "essay" that consisted of a single paragraph.
     "[F]ive to eight papers" is the only detail that this writer gives us. That is, I should note, better than what some of the students were able to produce. But it's not much. What courses were the papers for? What were some of them about? What comments did the teacher make? What grades did he get? [A "pretty good" grade is not a very specific detail.] The topics about which he could have written were intentionally broad because, in my experience, students who have been well taught automatically find some way to get to details. Some students, for example, mentioned specific web sites or listservers. Others, who chose to write about religion, discussed specific rituals, beliefs, etc.
     Although I have been suggesting that this student has a lot of catching up to do, what strikes me most in what he wrote is his statement, "I still feel like I do not know how to write." I may be wrong, but the high school writing that this student describes sounds very much like what many high school teachers on NCTE-Talk (the listserver of the National Council of Teachers of English) pride themselves on doing. They take pride in letting students write on topics that the students choose. They take pride in giving positive reinforcement ("pretty good grades"). They argue against teaching the "five-paragraph essay," claiming that it cramps students' creativity. And they claim that their approach makes their students better, more confident writers.
      I recently posed a question on the list-server about teaching organization. Only one person responded. That is not much response compared to the sixty or more responses that are evoked by questions about reading topics, about teaching specific works of literature, etc. Are high school teachers interested in teaching students how to organize an essay? Obviously some are, and they are doing a good job. Their students are also in my class. And they will have an easy time in my class (and in other college classes), thanks to their high school teachers.