AVW Newstime Comedy: Junior Composition Course Clearly Designed for Middle Schoolers

Eight weeks into the semester, it has become abundantly clear to Professor D.J. Gardener and his Writing and Rhetoric II class that the course was originally designed to teach young children basic grammar skills. This was made even more apparent on Monday when the class met in Ellis 104 and the students in their early 20s learned, supposedly for the first time, what commas are.Prof. Gardener says he is aware of the problem, but is just as inexplicably required to teach the course as his students are inexplicably required to take it.“You’ve never experienced a true disbelieving blank stare until you ask a room full of college students if they’ve ever heard of a semi-colon.”The course textbook is McGraw-Hill’s “Language Arts and You!” Most copies have been defaced with drawings of male genital and Green Day lyrics. Units include such topics as “The Basic Four Paragraph Essay,” “Common Types of Poetry” and “When to Use Hyphens.”Students say the class will soon be moving on from grammar and will finish out the semester by reading and annotating To Kill a Mockingbird.This article was written by Jesse Bethea. Follow Newstime on Twitter: @AVWNewstime