Anyone who agrees, even in part, with the analysis presented in "The Case Against English Comp (As We Know It)" must be wondering what we can do to correct this situation.  Although admitting that we have a problem is a first step, we must not stop there.  Nor should we settle for some easy solution that will be, at best, only a partial remedy and may, at worst, create even worse problems.

The worst non-solution is to eliminate a required course in writing altogether.  We won't labor the point that learning to write reasonably well is important, if not essential, regardless of what one's career is going to be.  Even if one's job involves little or no writing, the ability to communicate moderately well via the written word is an asset for anyone.  Furthermore, reading, writing, and the processing of ideas are so interrelated that we cannot remove any one of them from the educational process without negatively affecting the others.

The argument that a course in academic writing – i.e., English Comp as we know it – would work for more students if we were to improve the teaching of English in the secondary schools is valid.  However, it begs the question.  In the first place, there's considerable evidence that this is not going to happen.  In the second place, as long as colleges have the dual role of providing both academic and vocational education (and apparently this will continue to be true), we will always have large numbers of students with neither the aptitude for nor interest in academic writing.

The most tempting solution is to transform English Comp into a "practical writing" course – one that almost exclusively teaches such things as writing instructions, composing business letters and memos, preparing PowerPoint presentations, and the like.  That may be helpful for some students (certainly for those who will be in utterly non-academic careers all their lives), but it is short-sighted.  People change careers and career goals, or they may advance within their field to a level where more sophisticated writing skills are required.  Indeed, advancement may depend on their having at least the capacity to do more than "practucal" writing.  Furthermore, if all we require in college is "practical writing," we will short-change those individuals who, possibly because they have latent talents, can develop writing ability well beyond the basics covered in "practical writing" courses.  One truism about learning is that much of what we learn may seem utterly useless at the time we learn it but becomes immensely useful later on.  Challenging learning experiences sometimes reveal aptitudes that we didn't know we had.

As in many areas of education, compromise is necessary, and compromise requires tailoring instruction to students' needs and abilities while, at the same time, providing them with challenges to expand upon abilities they already have and to discover some that they didn't know they had.  Compromise means abandoning either-or thinking.  It involves the recognition that "practical writing" and "academic writing" are not mutually exclusive.

One compromise is to group students more or less homogeneously into different writing courses according to their intended fields of concentration.  Students who are headed toward commercial (business) fields would take courses that emphasize memo-writing, business letters, marketing reports, and the like.  Those who are concentrating in technical fields would receive in-depth instruction in technical writing.  Only liberal arts majors would get something like the current English Comp course, with its primary focus on the analytical essays, but it wouldn't hurt to give even these people at least some basic experience in business and technical writing.  Future teachers, especially those who plan to teach junior high and high school, should have experience all types of writing.  Even more importantly, they should learn how to teach writing, perhaps in a separate course taken after they successfully complete the comp course.  Being able to write well is no guarantee that one can teach this skill to others.

Another worthwhile innovation, to be used in tandem with homogeneous grouping, would be to segment students according to measurable writing skills.  Our current practice of putting students who struggle with writing coherent sentences in the same class with those who don't need this basic instruction but require emphasis on, say, paragraph development or organization of ideas is counterproductive.  It's a one-size-fits-all approach by which the level of instruction fits nobody well.  The current practice of merely separating those who need remedial work in basuic grammar from everybody else does not go far enough.  We should also build into this segmentation by skill level the flexibility for those who advance particularly rapidly (or those who can't keep up at the level to which they have been designated) to be switched to the appropriate level.  This may seem to present a logistical nightmare, but it doesn't need to be.  If the writing sample used for placing these students is carefully evaluated, such switching will be rare.  (I base this view on experience with composition program at a community college many years ago, in which, based on writing samples submitted before admission, students were segmented into "advanced," "regular," and "basic" English 101 sections.)

Such differentiation – by field of study and by skill level – must not and should not ignore the truth that certain characteristics are essential for virtually all writing – correctness, clarity, conciseness, coherence, and control (organization).  Regardless of what type of writing the course covers, these key qualities of writing must be taught.  We don't need to teach composition of the analytical essay to get students to learn correct grammar, syntax, and usage.  A course in business or technical writing, properly presented, can convey the necessity for clarity, conciseness, and organization.  If we build our writing courses around these central goals – but allow students the flexibility to do the type of writing that is likely to be of most practical value to them and more closely relates to their aptitudes and interests – English Comp (in its various manifestations) will become meaningful and will not be just something that students endure (and then promptly forget) on their way to a degree.