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Monday, December 18, 1967
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Wesleyan’s Freshmen English Student Might
—Benefit From A Pn^ram Such As This
Air Force Pilots Prove
"Age of Adventure” NOT Yet Passed
Collegians three Midwestern
universities have apparently
proved that they can learn to
write simply by sitting down
and reading a book.
Not just any book, but one a
college professor has just pub
lished that may revolutionize
freshman English at the col
legiate level.
Its author. Dr, Fred L. Berg-
mann, head of DePauw Uni
versity’s English department,
believes that “Freshman com
position, which most of us see
in college, is fuzzy, helter,
skelter writing.” With a grant
from the U. S. Office of Edu
cation, he tried a quasi-scien-
tific approach. Bergmann calls
it programmed paragraph rhe
toric. Sounds stuffy and tech
nical, but freshmen at DePauw,
Kalamazoo College and Ohio
Wesleyan University proved it’s
not.
“No piece of writing will be
any better than the paragraphs
that go into it,” Bergmann
reasoned. So in his program
he set out to teach students
how to write good super para
graphs — generally no longer
than a page. Since Bergmann’s
premise was to teach his com
position by self-instruction, he
knitted together 124 pages of
exercises dealing with the
“hows” of writing.
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He started with the simplest
elements of writing and pro
ceeded to the more difficult.
For an opener he asks his young
students to write a paragraph
about their careers. When it’s
finished they go back and pick
our the topic sentence, indicate
spots where they meandered in
their thoughts, and finally show
examples of how they hung their
s tory together. This self-eval-
uation, Bergman believes,
starts the students on their way.
Shortly they start evaluating
paragraphs from the Yale Re
view, the Scientific American,
Atlantic Monthly and other
sources. They register their
responses in multiple choice
questions and then turn the page
to learn whether they were
right. The process depends
on the learner pyramiding his
knowledge as he goes, testing
himself on the alternatives of
fered in the book.
In all three schools the book
was used in lieu of conventional
lectures on composition. A
program pre-test and post-test
educed these results: At Ohio
Wesleyan, where a 9-point
grading scale was used, pre
test scores averaged 4.3 for
2 0 students. The post-test
result was 6.65. Thirteen stu
dents showed 2.0 points or bet
ter improvement; none de-
c lined. In fact. Professor Doro
thy Whitted said she had the
best set of final essays she had
ever had from a freshman sec
tion.
At DePauw, where two
classes used the book, “Para
graph Rhetoric,” the average
gain on a 100-point scale was
15 points (from 74-89) in one
class, and a full grade point
in the other. Results were less
decisive at Kalamazoo. Eleven
of 19 students showed improve
ment, five remained the same
and three showed negative im
provement.
Main objection to the pro
gram was what one professor
called students’ objectives
about the impersonal and me
chanical nature of the work.”
In today’s comguterized
world of mass - produced,
labor - saving devices, it often
seems that the individual has
been lost in the shuffle. Many
believe the age of adventure
passed witn no new worlds left
to conquer.
Local Air Force Recruiting
Sergeant J. D. Wright dis
agrees. According to him,
challenge and adventure are
still available to the Air Force
pilot.
Today’s modern airplanes
are, of course, a far cry from
those of yesteryear. They are
bigger, faster, and demand
much more from their pilots.
Yet, the horizon still beckons
the bold and the unique thrill
that comes when man and ma
chine are aloft above the clouds
is unchanged.
“Pilots are a breed of man
apart from the crowd,” Sgt,
Wright stated. "They’re the
pioneers of our time, direct
descendants of the explorers
and adventurers of years gone
by.”
Qualifications for Air Force
pilot training remain high.
Those who would qualify must
be four year college graduates,
under 26 1/2 years old, and
in excellent health. The es
sential ingredient for would-
be pilots, however, remains
the age old desire of man to
be master of his element.
Applications are now being
accepted by Sgt. Wright at the
Air Force Recruiting Office,
138 Western Ave., Telephone
442-2718.
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