Improving the Writing Ability of UC Students

In regard to your article on the Writing Program at UCLA (June 24), one major problem is that the UC system has not made competent writing a requirement for admission. High school seniors send in their applications in November, and in February they are admitted or rejected on the basis of their grade-point average, SAT and Achievement Test scores and their personal statement. Then, in May, the admittees are tested to see if they know how to write, by taking the Subject A exam. A large percentage fail the exam, and they are required to take one or more remedial courses after enrolling on their campus.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to test the writing ability of the applicants in November or earlier and to make the results one of the criteria for admission? This would have a beneficial domino effect in high schools, grade schools and families, since it would mean that writing would be taken more seriously.

I have tried for years to institute this common-sense reform, but so far the suggestion has been rejected. The main objection seems to be that it would have an adverse effect on affirmative-action admissions. But there are other ways of providing for disadvantaged students.

One last point: Your reporter repeatedly lumps spelling problems with the inability to write well, but they are not the same thing. Many people with a defective spelling gene can write beautifully, and nowadays they can usually hide their deficiency by means of computer spell-check programs.

HENRY ANSGAR KELLY

Professor of English, UCLA

* I am concerned that UCLA’s administration is contemplating the integration of writing instruction into substantive course work. It is my experience at UCLA that professors rarely read, let alone comment upon, undergraduate student papers. This means that writing instruction, if integrated into the current curriculum, will fall to the graduate students.

We have neither the time nor the training to do it. We work very hard to cogently present difficult material in 10-week terms. This is what we are trained to do, and we do an excellent job.

We cannot supplant faculty who are trained to teach writing. Good writing is more than using a dictionary or following the “Elements of Style.” It is the means by which ideas are clearly and cleanly conveyed, regardless of the subject. UCLA shouldn’t cut the writing program. It should expand it fivefold.

JOSEPH W. DOHERTY

Los Angeles