MLA Guide to Remedial Writing

Philadelphia, Pa.—One-third of college students need remedial coursework, teaching associate John Dunn told the crowd at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association (MLA) late last year.

Dunn, who hangs his hat at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, gleaned his statistics from the U. S. Department of Education. The situation is even more critical in the Golden State.

“Fifty percent of California State University students need remediation,” Kimberly Costino, an associate professor at CSU-San Bernadino, told the audience during the same seminar that Dunn addressed. “Seventy percent of CSU-San Bernadino students need remediation.”

“CSU-San Bernadino serves the Hispanic community,” Costino explained.

In 1997, the system’s chancellor issued a directive to reduce remediation by 10 percent by 2007. “It’s not going to happen,” Costino reported at the December 2006 gathering of English professors from around the country.

To Costino, money is part of the reason why college students arrive on campus lacking basic skills. “Of course they come from underfunded schools,” she said, but admitted, “Most of them have never been asked to write more than an eight-sentence paragraph.”

They may not increase that rate exponentially once they get in Costino’s classroom. She sees “composition as a discipline” and “literacy as an ongoing process contingent on socio-economic factors,” rather than “writing as a skill, composition as a course.”
“Generally speaking, my professional interests include literacy and composition studies and how these fields intersect with cultural studies, ethnic studies, critical race studies, and feminist studies,” she writes on her university web site. “More specifically, I am interested in representations of literacy in American culture, the politics of language and access to higher education, the relationship between language and identity and how these issues apply to writing classrooms at all levels.”

On ratemyprofessor.com, two-thirds of her three anonymous reviews are
positive. “Straightforward,” wrote one reviewer, “you’ll learn a lot but she’s not an easy grader.”

“Professor Costino is so cool and I liked going to class,” wrote another reviewer.
“She was good in her office hours too.”

Then there was the critic. “That wasn’t an English class I took, it was a research class on gangs!” read that review. “I got SICK of it.”

“We were suppose to do verbs and all that stuff,” the reviewer explained, perhaps inadvertently showing why such instruction was necessary. “She told us that she is doing that kind of research herself bcz [sic] she wants to write a book.”

“Seemed more like she has students do the research for her,” the student observed. “Liberal agendas are constantly crammed down your throat!”

Having seen Costino in action, I can actually see how the entire trio of reviews is accurate. She is a nice lady whose concern for her students is apparent.

Moreover, whether you agree with what she is saying or not, she expresses herself clearly and articulately, but that’s just it. Her agenda, to take a worn-out word, goes well beyond the language arts.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.