Intro to first-year college struggles

I am currently in a first-year English composition and it isn’t all what you think it is. I struggled going from high school to college English like most students but more of how I never really read a book before college. Throughout my high school experience, I read between 2 and 4 books if even that. Not reading and then coming into a first-year composition makes it even harder. I didn’t understand a lot of what was happening and to be honest it’s still a struggle to this day, but I’ve figured out how to handle it. With how my first-year experience is going, we have done a lot of work with John Pekins and his work has helped me realize that reading a book and having communication with my professor can increase the ways of my learning ability in my first-year English composition.

In the article “A Community College Professor Reflects on First-Year Composition,” John Pekins is effective in his argument of showing professors the struggle of students in first-year composition classes. In my opinion, he has created this chapter to persuade his beliefs of his first-year composition classes in his eyes. He shows us that he has talked to multiple colleagues to prove that reading less causes less comprehension throughout the first-year English composition class for students. Pekins took polls from his own students of how often they read which comes back as a low score.

Pekins organizes his chapter by introducing his classes and carrying on with his concern of first-year composition class. He adds in his research of polls he has taken and his communication with his former colleagues to enhance what he believes. Pekins continues with how basic English classes have been for students and teachers to not be prepared for their new experience in a first-year composition class. He articulates his concerns and beliefs on how reading a book will help students and teachers. He moves on to project his worries on how technology has changed and doesn’t help students in the long run. 

Pekins major section has to be how his concerns of technology and not reading for students is the hardest way to get through a first-year composition student doesn’t help the professors. He provides examples to show how his concerns are true. He takes to his previous colleagues and asks them multiple questions on how they teach, how much they read, and how much they make their students read. He states, “I find this point reinforced…” (233) to show that he took the time to go and talk to them. He takes polls on how much and how regular his students read which turns out to not be as much as he thought, “I have polled my classes…” (232). These examples make him more effective based on his life experience. He has been doing the same things for the past eighteen years and wants change throughout the program and with what he has provided he will find the change he is looking for. 

Pekins uses his polls and conversations with his colleagues to support his argument throughout his paper. His polls were a mixture of qualitative and quantitative while his conversations with his colleagues was completely qualitative. His data comes from his both sides of his poll and conversations for first-year students. They are reliable because of his works cited page. The people Pekin talked to have many published works which also contribute to Pekins work. Pekins draws a conclusion from specific data by showing the less that students read the less prepared they are for first-year writing composition classes. The conclusion is reasonably based on how a decline in reading shows a decline of comprehension in first-year English composition students. Within Pekins conclusion he does not cause a misleading or overreaching conclusion. Pekins conclusions are very logical based off of the data he presents. While reading this chapter he is trying to reach out to his different audiences which can be difficult to pinpoint right away. 

Pekins gives us two different audiences to look at. The primary audience is the professors and the secondary are the students. In the introduction, Pekins creates a common ground by the students not meeting a college expectation and are very unfamiliar with the level of work expected from the professor. He uses this to show how professors are expecting too much from the unfamiliar student. His goal throughout the chapter is that he wants to establish a firm foundation for the students, “helps bring their dreams to reality”. Bringing their dreams to reality is found by finding their voice when writing. When Pekins moves from one claim to another, he uses effective transitions by connecting his last few sentences from the previous paragraph to what he is trying to say in the next paragraph. His overall structure of this paper was pretty well and does give the readers information as to what it’s like in a first-year composition, how students and teachers could improve in their reading skills and what professors could do to help the students in situations. 

Pekins uses his tone to show professors how strongly he feels about this topic. He shows them how serious the problem with students not reading actually is. Within his tone Pekins uses jargon to provide how he feels about the topic. Pekins creates a student teacher relationship throughout his chapter to help other professors teach their students in their first-year composition classes. He treats his readers as ongoing inquiry to continue his developing data to prove how students need to spend more time reading than on technology. 

Pekins concludes his argument with telling the professors how they could help make what they teach more effective. He wants professors to take from this paper how they could bring a better understanding to students through their assessments and their teaching disciplines. Pekins ends his chapter with a restatement of main points to allow the readers to know what is needed from them. He shortens what he states throughout the chapter to make it easier to understand what professors could do to help their students in achieving their goals of passing the first-year English composition. He then wishes everyone success in their first year classes and hopes this paper helps them achieve their goals.