'Gross errors' or 'good English'? The historical legacy of the University of California's Examination in Subject A.

摘要

This dissertation argues for the importance of considering history and theory in discussions of the "problem" of student writing, especially when it is being discussed in relation to testing. I describe and analyze selected episodes from the history of the University of California's Examination in Subject A from its inception in 1898 until 1960. The data used includes committee reports and university correspondences from the papers of the Office of the President and the Subject A department, Academic Senate records, and newspaper articles. My secondary sources include historical and poststructural work in English studies and composition studies. The primary theoretical notions guiding this dissertation are based on Michel Foucault's theories of language, discourse, and human subjectivity and his discussions of discipline, schooling, and the examination.;This dissertation is less interested in the content of the Examination in Subject A than it is in the representations of student writing and student literacy that surround this test. That is, I am interested in "talk" about the test, and in who is served and to what ends when writing is reduced to things that are "testable." I argue that theories of language and the human subject guide all efforts to define, teach, and assess writing, even if such theories are not forefronted. I also argue that the conceptions of writing and student subjectivity in discussions of the Examination in Subject A are problematic and oversimplified; they help create and sustain beliefs both in a reductive view of writing as a set of isolable technical skills that are out there and in a truncated conception of the student subject as an autonomous, rational, unified subject.;Examinations like the Subject A appear to make clear definitions of literacy possible, as they appeal to a standard of what counts as "good English" and good writing. This dissertation studies the discursive effects of the examination's reliance on a truncated definition of writing. I argue that acceptance of an oversimplified definition of "good English" is at least part of what makes possible the treatment of literacy as an individual problem rather than a social one.