The two chapters I chose were EXCELLENT ACADEMIC WRITING MUST BE SERIOUS by Michael Theune and ANYONE CAN TEACH WRITING by Seth Kahn.

In his chapter, Theune laments that academic writing is so unbearably serious, as dry and dead as the falling leaves outside our classroom. The solution he insists to the inherently boring nature of academic writing lies in writing instructors fostering humor in their students’ work. Theune argues not only will an injection of humor make the papers produced more entertaining but writing with humor in mind will also force the students to think about the style of their writing—an aspect that is more or less overlooked in traditional composition classes. Indirectly referencing Wardle’s “You Can Learn to Write in General” chapter, Theune puts forth comedic writing as one way to force students to get away from thinking of a general audience and to start thinking specifically stating, “In comedy, it’s not word choice, but the hunt for the choicest word. And sentences must be tightly woven to serve as the fuse that carries the spark right to an ending that blows readers away. And maybe even enlightens them” (182). Because humor is so rarely found in academic writing currently, Theune explains that it often sticks out like a sore thumb but if we as writing instructors welcome humor into our teaching curriculum that sad fact can begin to change.

In ANYONE CAN TEACH WRITING, Kahn lays out a rather depressing portrait of what it entails to be an adjunct faculty teaching English 101 in America today. He explains the vicious cycle as one where “poorly treated instructors… work in programs without much regard for professional knowledge of the field, which both disempowers the instructors and reinforces the sense that what they do isn’t important” (366). I disagree with his hyperbolic statement of “Under those conditions, the truth of the matter is that nobody can teach writing, at least not well” (364) even though I understand the point he is trying to drive across. Some of the best professors I’ve had have been adjunct and Kahn would have been better served had he instead highlighted how much more difficult it is for adjunct professors to be successful as he does later in the chapter.

Kahn links the disregard for the value of the adjunct faculty that make up more than 70% of general composition instructors as having an inevitable bleed-over into the quality of education that students receive, citing studies that have shown higher instructional budgets lead to higher earning power of the graduates of said institution (367). Herein, lies the most damning implication of Kahn’s chapter, that if having higher instructional budgets has been shown to produce higher earning graduates than why do universities who constantly champion themselves as student centered so fundamentally undermine the same students at their very foundation?

The answer as with anything that does not make sense from a moral standpoint is to look at it from a financial standpoint and we can use WWU as an example. If WWU really cared about giving their students the best chance to improve as writers they would have faculty teaching every English 101 course. I am not saying that our TA’s are not capable instructor but invariably when a job is someone’s sole focus and they are paid fairly for their work the quality of output increases. And of course having faculty teach every English 101 class would be enormously expensive so it is quite out of the question. Kahn while never directly referencing the three chapters we were assigned to read does help to explain why English 101 cannot prepare students for academic writing due to unfair perceptions that lead to unfair treatment of adjunct faculty.