Why College Student Needs a Composition Class

This proves why teaching writing courses (and any literacy-related for that matter) is still relevant: So that you don't have to prove that you can read and write even if you do supposedly have a college degree, and even if you are governor of a state. In other words, if you were taught the communicative skills (oral and written) necessary to appear educable to the general public--and if you paid attention, went to class, etc. while taking those courses-- you wouldn't have to ink 7 million big ones to prove that you can read or write. Seriously.

P.S.
Happy Birthday, Mom! I love you!

The John McCain As a Freshmen Writing Student?

Steve Krause, a former prof of mine at EMU, has an interesting commentary about John McCain using quotes out of context to bolster his claims about Obama as a shady terrorist. Here's an interesting excerpt from his post. I encourage you to read the whole post though:

Besides the obvious and rather desperate smear McCain is trying here, a tactic that seems especially ugly given that the world economy appears to be ending, what bothers me personally is the bad freshman writing mistake that McCain is making here. I’ve seen plenty of students who take this tactic, cherry-picking quotes in order to make a point no matter what the evidence they are quoting really says. In other words, if McCain was a first year composition student and he handed in a paper about how Obama is a terrorist with this claim about Ayers, I’d probably circle that line “Obama lied about him just being my neighbor” and write something like “What is the full context of this quote, John? Do you really think that was the intent of your source? Is this the full story? It sounds like you’re twisting the words here.”