Channing Cass transferred to SMU in the fall of 2006 from the University of Oklahoma.

A senior English major, Cass always considered herself a strong writer and reader until enrolling in Professor Beth Newman’s poetry class.

Cass said that Newman returned the class’ first writing assignment with a note attached to her paper calling her a poor writer who should never have made it so far as an English major.

“She said my writing was under-par for an English major and she didn’t see how I could be successful in the major,” Cass said.

If Cass is a senior and majoring in English, then her situation raises a more serious issue: Are freshmen prepared for college-level writing?

SMU’s Rhetoric Director Jo Goyne believes incoming freshmen are more prepared for college-level writing than they have been in the past.

“In the 10 years that I have been the director here, I believe the SAT scores of incoming freshmen have gone up, which would lead us in some ways to believe freshman are more prepared,” she said.

But Goyne said rhetoric is still necessary because incoming students are not analytically prepared to write papers. Rhetoric is a first-year, two-semester, writing program that all incoming students must take.

“In our rhetoric classes we’re asking students to think on their own rather than simply agreeing with sources as they would in high school,” she said.

Department of Anthropology Professor Carolyn Smith-Morris said many freshmen are good writers but few students come to SMU willing or able to learn critical writing skills.

Many students tend to accept their texts as factual and unbiased and ignore the assumptions of the authors, she said.

“Through their college courses, most students are exposed to multiple and sometimes conflicting perspectives, and so they learn to be more critical about everything they learn, read and hear,” Smith-Morris said.

Two years ago the Division of Journalism at SMU added the course Writing and Editing for Journalists because faculty members believed that students coming in after two semesters of rhetoric were still unprepared for the rigorous reporting classes they would have to take. The course emphasizes grammar, punctuation and learning Associated Press style.

Studies showing whether high school writers are prepared for college writing are difficult to assess, according to Laurence Musgrove on the Web site insidehighered.com.

Musgrove is an associate professor of English and foreign languages at Saint Xavier University in Chicago.

According to Musgrove, it is hard to categorize what constitutes a good writer.

His Web site refers to a 1986 study in College Composition and Communication by Robert J. Connors and Andrea A. Lunsford.

Connors and Lunsford discovered that college freshmen are still committing approximately the same number of formal errors per 100 words as they were before World War I.

The key to improving writing, according to Cass, is organization and practice.

She also believes students have the skills necessary to succeed in writing, but if teachers are not open to various writing styles and do not offer ways to improve writing, then their styles will not change.

SMJU freshman Eugenia Bollmann said that in high school she thought she was a strong writer, but after coming to SMU she felt otherwise.

“In high school my teacher was pretty open to our writing styles and here the teacher pretty much had her way and that was it,” Bollmann said.

“In high school my teacher liked my writing style and would always compliment me, but here I was the worst writer in the class,” she added.

Bollmann believes the key to successful writing is the ability to a unique style.

“A good writer should be able to write uniquely but still write clearly and to the point while delivering the idea that is asked by the professor,” she said.

Goyne says reading is the key to writing well.

“It seems students who are less prepared read less, so I think there’s a direct correlation between reading and writing well,” she said. “Writers generally tend to be good readers and readers tend to be good writers.”

To help struggling writers, Goyne says the Writing Center and the Altsuhler Learning Enhancement Center on campus are available to help students improve their writing.

She also said rhetoric faculty are at liberty to cancel class to have one-on-one meeting times with students to discuss their writing.

“We’re determined to prepare students for writing in the university,” she said.

To help high school seniors prepare for college writing, Goyne also suggests reading on a regular basis so students can get an ear for what sounds right.