Something's been percolating in my head for several years now, and things came to a boil this summer: Journalism and mass communication college students need to improve their writing, and J-school college professors have to step in to help make it happen.
Middle and high school language arts classes are in the rear-view mirror. A job search looms. English academics say one thing; professionals in the media biz say something else about how to get students to make their subjects and verbs agree.
Sexy stuff, huh? Well it's been that kind of summer for me., culminating with the journalism/mass comm's academic association's convention. There's a lot of excellent sharing of successes and challenges and ideas that goes on there--I always come away with ideas percolating, and then try really hard not to forget it all by the third week of fall semester.
There's a lot of support for what we're going at Columbia College Chicago; go here if you'd like to hear more about it, check out this column I wrote for AOL's Money College site.
On the more academic side, here's an article I wrote on the topic for a journal of the aforementioned group, the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Grammar Challenge: New Concerns, a New Approach.
