State/Local The Battalion Friday, Nov. 18, 1988 Page 3 . vs- ? >4 : - :Tt*> '•;i .■ r'Xi■ °£/Vc; id huge re they are w fora ve tha one’s a]> : andsfr 11-coat 1 leaders harg^' rain? No ’Olympu send out nd Isi* j we do 1 d we P aiidcoi 111 igain h the nes the So' 1 anoth e[ nated' die ho lf: he« 7A e , 0 Tt)0 %( Teaching assistant: Students see English class as apprenticeship Filled classes limit options for students By Susan Stubing Staff Writer Everyone knows the poor girl who woke up early to register for next semester’s classes, only to find every class she needed full except for basket weaving and underwater needlepoint. It’s not that too few classes are offered to accommodate the stu dent body, Assistant Registrar Willis Ritchey said, but that cer tain classes are always in heavier demand than others. “There are those classes that consistently fill up first every se mester, and those that fill up quickly and surprise us,” Ritchey said. He said Speech Commu nications 103, Speech Commu nications 301 and English 403 usually fill up first. Ritchey said it is difficult to de termine from semester to semes ter which other classes will be in highest demand. “We had one BANA (business analysis) class fill up the first day of senior registration this year,” he said. “The professor called that day to close the class, and it was already full.” After the first day of registra tion, 2,743 students were regis tered, Ritchey said, 565 of whom had enrolled early. Athletes, University shuttle bus drivers, student workers and stu dents in the Texas Rehabilitation program are among those who may register early. Classes for the spring semester are filling up as expected, Ritchey said. As of 8 a.m. Thursday, 19,015 students had preregis tered, and 229 of the 6,711 classes were full. If a class or section that a stu dent needs to take is dosed, Ritchey said, the student must go to the department the course is listed under and ask to have the class size limit raised. “Each department has a desig nated person or persons who is authorized to raise limits,” Ritchey said. “They send us the names of these people and we keep a record of them. We cannot add a student to a class if the pro fessor’s name on the card is not in our records.” Individual departments have different criteria for granting raise limits, Ritchey said, and dif ferent numbers of people who have authorized signatures. The psychology department, for example, gives each professor an authorized signature and the authority to raise his own class size. In the undergraduate business school, however, approval must be granted in each department, and then the dean must sign the form. Curtis Schatte, associate pro fessor of English, said he tries to reserve several spaces in each En glish class to avoid raise-limit problems. “I reserve a couple of slots and open them up to graduating se niors first,” he said. “But if a se nior has not requested a raise lim its by 3 p.m. of the first day of class, I throw it open to anyone.” The Department of Speech Communication and Theater Arts, however, does not accept raise limits so easily. To be added to a full theater or speech class, the student must be a graduating senior, Giovanne Turincio, a stu dent worker in the department, said. The student must prove he is ? ;raduating by presenting a letter rom his or her department of major study to the speech and theater department. Only then will raising limits even be consid ered, Turincio said. Students who have an ap proved raise limits card must take the card to the registration center in Room 120 of the Pavilion to have the class added to their schedules. By Steven Merritt Reporter Most students see freshman En glish as an apprenticeship, said Rick Evans, a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of English. Evans was the featured speaker Thursday in a colloquium sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts. The colloquium, “What Our Stu dents Understand About Freshman English and Why: An Ethnography of Three Freshman Classes,” re vealed the results of a study Evans conducted this summer on three freshman English classes. Evans said that he compiled the results after attending 50 percent of class meetings, conducting student interviews and distributing question naires to the classes. “My first question involved how students understand the concept of freshman English,” Evans said. “The second was to ask why they under stand it that way. I wanted to find out if their understanding was an as- [ )ect of material culture or part of a ived experience.” Evans said that the students sur veyed varied in ethnic and socioeco nomic backgrounds, and they all generally agreed that taking English 103 or its equivalent should be an academic requirement. “The students believed that a con nection existed between success in college and success in life,” Evans said. “They saw success in freshman English as a key to their future ad vancement in college as well as in li fe.” Students considered the class a performance course, Evans said. He said they saw required reading and writing as performative acts, learn ing only how to perform instead of learning about the experience itself. Evans said that he asked students to provide a synonym for the word teacher and received such responses as “lecturer,” “instructor” and even “maestro.” “The maestro response is my fa vorite,” Evans said. “The use of the orchestra metaphor is appropriate in this situation. The maestro is the instructor telling the orchestra how to play.” Evans added that the responses created different levels in how the students regarded the teacher syno nym. They ranged from “supporter” or “guide” to the more intimate “f- riend” or “guardian.” Ev&ns said that the primary tea cher metaphor received from the re sponses was that of a giver of infor mation. The most popular student metaphor was to that of an appren tice, or someone who learns some skill by taking lessons from a master. He added that in an apprentice situ ation, the student has faith in know ing that the instructor knows how to write, and this faith gives the student direction. Evans also explored students’ atti tudes on reading, dividing responses into three areas: story reading, school reading and “popcorn” or “trash” reading. “Students found story reading to be engaging and enjoyable —they even identified with the characters,” Evans said. “School reading was seen as always forced, usually involving textbooks. Students felt that certain information had to be gained from the reading, associating the task with testing and evaluation.” Evans said “popcorn” or “trash” reading was considered a time filler, and many didn’t consider it reading at all. “Progression through school showed increases and decreases in each, with most increases coming in school reading,” Evans said. “Successful school reading involved grades. Students felt that success in volved less reading for a higher grade. “The subject of why these stu dents responded the way they did fascinates me,” Evans said. “They as sociated both school reading and writing with performance instead of communication, considering other types of reading less valuable.” Evans said that he is disappointed that students see the classes merely as performance courses. But he said he is pleased to see that students still see some reading as a pleasurable act, even though they may regard it as less valuable. New agreement seeks to halt dumping of plastic garbage into Gulf of Mexico GALVESTON (AP) — A new international agreement that takes effect Dec. 31 should halt the routine dumping of plastic garbage into the Gulf of Mexico, government and marine indus try experts and environmentalists said Thursday. “Marine debris is perhaps the most visible pol lution in the Gulf of Mexico,” Kathy O’Hara, di rector of the marine debris database for the Cen ter for Environmental Education, said. “Basically that’s what marine industries have been doing for centuries. Marine debris is just a fancy term for garbage.” A provision in an international agreement known as MARPOL, an acronym for “Maritime Pollution,” goes into effect at the end of the year, making it illegal for any plastic items to be dis charged into the Gulf of Mexico within 200 miles of shore. The provision, called “Annex 5,” also bars dis charge of any floating debris within 25 miles of the Gulf of Mexico coast and paper and glass within 12 miles. Violators can be assessed civil penalties of up to $25,000 per day per incident. Criminal penal ties of up to $50,000 and five years in prison could be sought for blatant violators, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Joel Whitehead said at a sym posium on environmental quality in the gulf. “Annex 5 is something very sweeping,” he said. “It does nothing less than to change 4,000 years of maritime tradition. Mariners have al ways dumped their trash at sea. To change it sud denly on the December 31 when this goes into ef fect is going to be something difficult to do. “We do not expect the whole world to change, but we do expect ports and ships to show they are taking steps to show they are going to change.” The agreement, ratified by the Senate a year ago, also applies to oil rigs in the gulf, pleasure boaters and to U.S.-flagged ships. Nancy Stehle, deputy director for the environ ment for the U.S. Navy, said the Navy was caught by surprise by the bdn on plastics but is embark ing on a program to separate plastics from other trash on all of its vessels. “The Navy is serious about its commitment to the environment,” she said. William Bettenberg, associate director for off shore minerals management in the U.S. Minerals Management Service, said he has been encour aged by a significant reduction of trash traced to more than 3,700 oil platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico. “The ultimate goal is to control wastes before they even reach the beaches,” he said. “The fact of the matter is there will never be enough po licemen on the beat to catch someone throwing a foam cup overboard. The key to cleaning up de bris in the Gulf of Mexico is public education.” Mens and Ladies Texas A&M Watches $32 5 ° Diamonds -shop now at Texas Coin Exchange for the best selection of loose diamonds. We never have a sale. 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