Yancey+and+College+Readiness

Yancey's article does magnify the gap between high school and college literacy standards. and although she doesn't propose a solid answer for these issues, she does highlight some concerns I also have as an educator. Speaking from experience, one of the tougher challenges my own students have faced lies in applying critical thinking to their writing. They are able to identify an argument, state two opposing sides of that argument, but they seem to fall to pieces when it comes to taking a more critical or closer perspective. This would embrace the success of the first three of the seven criteria proposed by Washington State's requirement of defining critical thinking, while the final four (evidence evaluation, recognition of fundamental functions, assessment, and potential conclusions) seem to fall short. Yancey's research also states that although student writers receive high marks on writing portfolios overall, their abilities to express critical thought remained relatively low. The question of how instructor's encourage critical thinking is one of the bigger challenges in any writing cirriculum. I do agree with Carter that is is often assumed that students enter college with critical thinking skills. I suppose this makes me curious as to how critical thinking had been previously defined for these students and what sort of writing were they doing in secondary education to hone this skill.