College Composition and Communication
59 articlesFebruary 2024
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How Do We Know It Works? Feedback Loops to Raise the Messy Middle in Online Formative Peer Assessment ↗
Abstract
Qualitative and then quantitative analysis of student review comments assessing peer review instructions found that students needed even more direction and structure than initially given. Specifically, shorter feedback statements—a twenty-one-to forty-word range—can be useful if they provide both evaluative and suggestive comments to guide revision.
February 2022
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A Social-Constructionist Review of Feedback and Revision Research: How Perceptions of Written Feedback Might Influence Understandings of Revision Processes ↗
Abstract
This social-constructionist review of research illuminates the ways in which feedback, reflection, and revision are all inherently relational processes. Research suggests that university students’ perceptions of feedback shape their revision processes, though it appears that their preferred types of feedback may not always lead them to make effective revisions.
February 2021
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Communal Justicing: Writing Assessment, Disciplinary Infrastructure, and the Case for Critical Language Awareness ↗
Abstract
Critical language awareness offers one approach to communaljusticing, an iterative and collective process that can address inequities in the disciplinary infrastructure of Writing Studies. We demonstrate justicing in the field’s pasts, policies, and publications; offer a model of communal revision; and invite readers to become agents of communal justicing.
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Abstract
This article argues composition researchers should make replicating previous research a greater priority because replication is a valuable tool that facilitates invention, collaboration, transparency, and revision, and its overwhelming absence in composition studies narrows the generalizability of writing research. I posit a replication agenda to encourage scholars to replicate and reproduce results by building disciplinary and institutional spaces for the practice to thrive.
June 2019
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Abstract
Forty years ago, Nancy Sommers identified dissonance and the ways in which writers respond to incongruities between “intention and execution” as a core competency of revision. While still a challenge for student writers, dissonance now takes different forms, particularly for advanced student writers who embrace theories of revision but struggle to implement the practices. Unspoken, these experiences of dissonance become internalized as fear-based narratives and scripts that negatively impact student writers. Through in-process reflection, this study surfaces the ways in which students navigate the dissonance by adapting, or rescripting, their fear into a productive element of writing and revision. To better understand the interplay of strategy and struggle, we argue that revision pedagogies for advanced student writers must take the emotional work of revision into consideration
February 2019
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Abstract
In this article, I weave new materialist theories about assemblage, community, agency, and rhetorical responsibility to argue for pedagogies that foreground writing to assemble publics and offer direct rhetorical training in campaign organizing. In describing three student activist campaigns, I demonstrate how this pedagogy challenges students to create socio-material assemblages that entice bodies into collective action—a challenge that demands tactile agility, creative activism, and often metanoic revision.
September 2018
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Abstract
This article offers a genealogy of the deliberative policymaking of the WPA Outcomes Statement 3.0 Revision Task Force. Interviews with Task Force members reveal that the revised statement presents composing, technology, and genre as “boundary objects,” in order to preserve the document’s kairos for as long as possible.
June 2018
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Revision and Reflection: A Study of (Dis)Connections between Writing Knowledge and Writing Practice ↗
Abstract
This essay brings to light new evidence about the relationship between revision and reflective writing in the first-year writing classroom. Based on a robust study of student work, we illuminate a variety of complex relationships between the writing knowledge that students articulate in their reflections—including how they narrate their course progress, approach teacher commentary, and make decisions about their revisions—and the actual writing practices they execute in their revised essays. The essay offers pedagogical innovations that help students use reflective writing in ways that support substantive revision.
September 2013
December 2009
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Abstract
Based on a study of observable changes author-users made to three Wikipedia articles, this article contends that Wikipedia supports notions of revision, collaboration, and authority that writing studies purports to value, while also extending our understanding of the production of knowledge in public spaces. It argues that Wikipedia asks us to reexamine our expectations for the stability of research materials and who should participate in public knowledge making.
June 2009
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Abstract
There has been little discussion of hospitality as a practice in college writing courses. Possible misuses of hospitality as an educational and ethical practice are explored, and three traditional and still tenable modes of hospitality are described and historicized: Homeric, Judeo-Christian, and nomadic. Application of these modes to instructional situations may lead to new and sometimes counter-establishment methods, in terms of course objectives, shared labor of teacher and students, writing assignments, response to writing, and assessment of student work. Perhaps the most radical form is transformative hospitality, which accepts the possibility that host and guest, teacher and students, will all be changed by their encounter, a potentiality that is characterized by risk taking, restlessness, and resistance to educational entrenchments. Traditional hospitality as practiced in writing classrooms does not mark a return to student-centered pedagogies of past decades but does stake out a position that might be considered marginal apropos the current political and educational climate in the United States.
December 2004
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Interchanges: Responses to “Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse: Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program’s Textbook” ↗
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Responses to "Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse:Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program's Textbook" ↗
Abstract
John Hollowell, Michael P. Clark, Steven Mailloux, Christine Ross, Responses to "Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse:Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program's Textbook", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Dec., 2004), pp. 329-334
December 2003
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Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse: Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program’s Textbook ↗
Abstract
This article links failed reform to failed education through a case study of an annual collaborative revision of a program textbook in the Composition Program at the University of California at Irvine. Review of successive editions of the program’s Student Guide to Writing at UCI reveals a progressive retreat from the program’s pedagogical commitments and the reappearance of product-oriented instruction.
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Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse: Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program's Textbook ↗
Abstract
Christine Ross, Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse: Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program's Textbook, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Dec., 2003), pp. 302-329
June 2003
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Introduction Part I: Premises and Foundations 1. Illiteracy at Oxford and Harvard: Reflections on the Inability to Write 2. A Map of Writing in Terms of Audience and Response The Uses of Binary Thinking Part II: The Generative Dimension 4. Freewriting and the Problem of Wheat and Tares 5. Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience 6. Toward a Phenomenology of Freewriting Part III: Speech, Writing, and Voice Part III: Speech, Writing, and Voice 7. The Shifting Relationships Between Speech and Writing 8. Voice in Literature 9. Silence: A Collage 10. What Is Voice in Writing? Part IV: Discourses 11. Reflections on Academic Discourse: How It Relates to Freshmen and Colleagues 12. In Defense of Private Writing 13. The War Between Reading and Writing - and How to End It 14. Your Cheatin' Art: A Collage Part V: Teaching 15. Inviting the Mother Tongue: Beyond Mistakes, Bad English, and Wrong Language 16. High Stakes and Low Stakes in Assigning and Responding to Writing 17. Breathing Life into the Text 18. Using the Collage for Collaborative Writing 19. Getting Along Without Grades - and Getting Along With Them Too 20. Starting the Portfolio Experiment at SUNY Stony Brook Pat Belanoff, co-author 21. Writing an Assessment in the Twenty-First Century: A Utopian View
May 1998
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Abstract
This book undertakes a general framework within which to consider the complex nature of the writing task in English, both as a first, and as a second language. The volume explores varieties of writing, different purposes for learning to write extended text, and cross-cultural variation among second-language writers.The volume overviews textlinguistic research, explores process approaches to writing, discusses writing for professional purposes, and contrastive rhetoric. It proposes a model for text construction as well as a framework for a more general theory of writing. Later chapters, organised around seventy-five themes for writing instruction are devoted to the teaching of writing at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. Writing assessment and other means for responding to writing are also discussed.William Grabe and Robert Kaplan summarise various theoretical strands that have been recently explored by applied linguists and other writing researchers, and draw these strands together into a coherent overview of the nature of written text. Finally they suggest methods for the teaching of writing consistent with the nature, processes and social context of writing.
February 1998
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Abstract
Assignments appear in every chapter. I. EXPLORING CONCEPTS. 1. Seeing Rhetoric Through Media. Overview - Key Terms: Rhetoric, Media, Text. Keeping a Journal. Issues. Genres - Observing and Classifying Texts. Texts as Myths - Reading Takes Place From Within Belief Systems. Jennifer Ditri, Cheerleaders are Athletes, Too! Reading News and Popular Texts - Practice of Critical Reading. 2. Reading Media. Overview - Reading Interactively. Issues. What's a Medium? - Definition and Background of the Term. Learning From the Media. Being a Raymond Williams, Keyword: Consumer. Doing Without Media. Journal Entries: Marci Nowak, Jennifer Ditri, Mark Maxson, Stacey McAfee, Michael Halstead, Meredith Roedel. Clutter and Context - Ways to Deal with Overload. Strategies for Reading S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter, Who Are the Elite? Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, Real Elite. Conventions - Noticing What is Taken for Granted. Conventions in Writing and Writing Classes. Bill McKibben, 7:00 a.m. II. MEDIA AND PURPOSES FOR WRITING. 3. Making Use of Observations - From Prewriting to Drafting. Overview - What Critical Reading of Can Add to the Writing Issues. Writing as Your Medium - Genres and Conventions in Speech and Writing. William Stafford, A Way of Writing. Writing Essays as a Conventional Act - Crossover Between Conventions in Texts and in Writing. Broadcast News, Tom Gives Aaron Some Tips on Reading the Journal Entries: Teri Hurst. How Writers Write - Myth of the Born Writer. George Plimpton, Interview with Ernest Hemingway Karen Kurt Tiel, Note About The Loop Writing Process. Prewriting - Devices for Exploring What You and Your Readers Know. Drafting - Pulling it All Together. Readers' Roles - Text Invites Us to Play Along. Cassandra Amesley, How to Watch Star Trek. Readers' Roles in Essays: Linda Weltner, Joys of Mediocrity Kirkpatrick Sale, Fighting the Darkness Danielle Smith, Publishers' Clearing House. 4. Gathering and Evaluating News and Information. Overview - Confirming Our Basis for Judgment. Issues. Stories in the News - Narratives Which Guide Our Interpretation. Midland County Review, Barcia Joins Conservatives in Fight Against Unfunded Mandates. Sabrina Cantu, It's O.K. to Make Fun of Jesus, If He's Black. How to Search for Information - Search Strategies for News and Information. Stacey Cole, Negativity in the Media. What Counts as News? - Problems with Definitions and Reception. News as Rhetorical. Forms of News. News as Commercial. James Amend, A Spicier, More Racey New Medium. News and Entertainment. Reading the News Comparatively - Earthquake in Japan, as Treated in Several News Media. Problems in News. Keeping Informed - Health Care Reform. Bill Moyers and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Great Health Care Debate. Propaganda. Objectivity and Fairness. Appendix: Transcripts of News Reports on Kobe Earthquake. CBS Evening News. CNN Report. All Things Considered. NPR Morning Edition. 5. Close Attention to Detail: Regarding the Commercial. Overview - Value in Analyzing Unvalued Texts. Issues. Why Ads? - Effective Rhetoric in the Face of Audience Resistance. Collecting Ads - Categories as Part of Making Meaning. How to Read a Commercial - Rhetorical Devices in Print Ads. Tara L. Prainito, Advertising's Enhancements. Analyzing a TV Commercial - Technical Events in Television Commercials. Transcript and Analysis of Midol Commercial. Aaron Kukla, Analysis of a Chevrolet Camaro Ad. Categorizing Commercials. Problems. Ads as Propaganda. Ads and Effects. Dirt - Ambiguities in Boundaries Between Texts. Leslie Savan, Don't Inhale: Tobacco Industry's Attitude-Delivery System. 6. Reading Pictures. Overview - Connections Between Visual and Verbal. Issues. Appeal of Seeing - Reliance on Sight. Pictures and Narratives. How to Read a Picture. Signs, Codes, and Conventions. Visual Images and Descriptive Writing. Problem: Gaze. 7. Entertainment as Information. Overview - What Entertainment Texts Tell Us. Issues. What's Entertainment? - Business or Cultural Context. Entertainment as Play - Reactions to Popular Culture. More Dirt - Transgressions in Entertainment Texts. Why Do They Want You To Play? - Entertainment and Hegemony. Arthur Asa Berger, Genre Migration. Audience's View - Dominant, Resisting, and Negotiating Positions. Problems. Taste. Popular Music. Roches, Mr. Sellack. Violence. Carl M. Cannon, Honey, I Warped the Kids. John Leonard, Why Blame TV? Todd Gitlin, Imagebusters: Hollow Crusade Against TV Violence. Children's Entertainment. David Foster, Sexist? Racist? Violent? Terrence Rafferty, No Pussycat. Science-Fiction. Race and Entertainment Media. Stereotypes. Todd Gitlin, From Inside Prime Time. III. RECONSIDERATIONS. 8. Discovering Contexts and Deeper Purposes. Overview - Critical Thinking About Writing. Issues. Representation and the Natural - Denaturing Natural. Labeling - Cues for Interpretation. Appellation and Ideology. Ideology: Definitions and Illustrations - Three Paradigms: False Consciousness, Any Set of Values and Assumptions, and Specifically Values and Assumptions. Reading Die Hard - Ideology as Reflected in a Popular Text Dominant Ideologies. Reading Texts for Ideology. Lisa Straney, Analysis: Nike Ad. Ideology and Metaphor. Problems. Example of PC - Who Gets to Complain About Political Correctness? Brian E. Albrecht, Team Names Still Stir Controversy. Candy Hamilton, Where a Tomahawk Chop Feels Like a Slur. John K. Wilson, Myth of Correctness. Nostalgia. Further Reading. Bob Garfield, Pizza Hut Has the Crust to Roll Out Incorrect Celebs. 9. Revision: Bringing Drafts to Completion. Overview. Issues. Why Revise? - Raising Your Game. Writing as Conversation. Strategies and Tactics for Revising. Computers and Revision. A Few Tactics for Revision - Leave It Alone Nutshelling Bombing: Impersonation. Shannon Peacock, From Dais-ed and Confused. Eric Nelson, From Words Mean Things and Integrity Matters. Sample Revision: Media in the Courts. Collections of Writing. Portfolios - Draft and Exhibition. Class Publications. 10. Developing Style and Audience Awareness. Overview - Style as Product of Interaction Between Persona, Subject, and Audience. Issues. Some Bad Advice About Style. Style as Ornament. Style as Clarity - E.B. White's Disappearing Author. Reducing Unnecessary Difficulty - Some Practical Advice. Style as Constitutive Or Would You Rather Be a Dog? - Audience as Appellated by the Text. Hegemony and Style. Daniel Zwerdling, Interview with Leslie Savan. Ira Teinowitz, From The Marketing 100: Rich Lalley, Red Dog. Style and Audience. Words, Words, Words. Beverly Gross, What a Bitch! Bad Rhetoric - Some Deceptive or Sloppy Devices. Rush Limbaugh and Rhetoric. Recognizing and Correcting Bad Rhetoric. William Lutz, Doublespeak. 11. Expanding Resources. Overview - Dynamic Media. Issues. Collections as a Basis for Your Own System - Adding Other Media. What to Expect - Electronic Media: Hopeful and Pessimistic Assessments. Electronic - Rhetorical Implications. Search Procedures. Hypertext - Implications of a New Form. Internet as Source of Information: A Test Case - Reactions to Oklahoma City Bombing on the Internet. Cyberporn - Circulation Through of Sloppy Research. Library Material - Searching for More. Some Reservations about the Internet. Herbert J. Gans, Electronic Shut Ins: Some Social Flaws of the Information Superhighway. M. Kadi, Q: How Tall is the Internet? A: Four Inches Tall.
December 1997
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Abstract
[This book] is a must for those committed to voicing the personal conflicts writers experience and to turning those confusing and sometimes dismaying moments into productive sites for questioning textual relations. - Journal of Advanced CompositionIn Getting Restless, Nancy Welch calls for a reconception of what we mean by revision, urging compositionists to rethink long-held beliefs about teacher-student relations and writing practices. Drawing primarily on feminist and psychoanalytic theories, she considers how revision can be redefined not as a process of increasing orientations toward a particular thesis or discourse community, but instead as a process of disorientation: an act of getting restless with received meanings, familiar relationships, and disciplinary or generic boundaries--a practice of intervening in the meanings and identifications of one's text and one's life. Using ethnographic, case-study, and autobiographical research methods, Welch maintains two consistent aims throughout the study: to show how composition teachers can create for themselves and for their students environments that encourage and support revision as restlessness and as a process of intervening in a first draft's thoroughly social meanings and identifications to demonstrate how composition's process legacy is revitalized when we understand that our means to form and change communities- to form and change constructions of authority--are located in revision. In achieving these ends Welch examines three academic sites: a campus writing center, undergraduate writing classrooms, and a summer workshop for K-12 teachers. This book will appeal to a wide audience, including classroom and writing center teachers, historians and theorists in composition and rhetoric, feminist theorists, and those engaged in literacy studies, teacher education, and connections/tensions among teaching, writing, and psychoanalysis.
May 1997
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Abstract
Preview this article: The Genre of the End Comment: Conventions in Teacher Responses to Student Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/48/2/collegecompositionandcommunication3145-1.gif
May 1996
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The Concept of Control in Teacher Response: Defining the Varieties of “Directive” and “Facilitative” Commentary ↗
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December 1995
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Challenging the authority of the Oxford English Dictionary, this study reveals many of the dictionary's inherent prejudices and questions the assumptions behind its continuous revision. It describes how judgemental the task of editing a major dictionary can be.
October 1995
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A historiography of rhetoric in 12 original essays that summarize what has recently been accomplished in the revision of traditional histories of rhetoric and discuss what might be accomplished in the future. Featuring a variety of approaches classical, revisionary, and avant-garde it includes artic
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This accessible and versatile text has been used in college English, creative writing, and composition courses, as well as middle and high school classrooms, college remedial and honors programs, graduate seminars, and teacher training courses. Chapters move through the writing process as students find a focus, choose a genre, develop a draft, and find a voice. Murray is professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
October 1994
May 1994
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Abstract
Learning how to revise may well be the most excruciating part of writing - frequently it is what makes or breaks new writers. Now, in this unique and highly useful book, Jay Woodruff gives some of America's finest contemporary writers an opportunity to talk with passion and professionalism about revision - about the hard work of their writing. Books on writing generally offer prescriptions and proscriptions about this craft so hard to learn instead of evidence. But in A Piece of Work Woodruff's incisive questions guide five writers - Tobias Wolff, Tess Gallagher, Robert Coles, Joyce Carol Oates, and Donald Hall - through specific examples that enable the reader to see how good writing becomes better. From the first draft through various revisions and finally to the printed version of a single piece of each author's work, Woodruff traces the full course of the revision process. While we might prefer to picture all authors as Coleridge, with the perfectly formed lines and stanzas of Kubla Khan emerging from a dream, the truth of the matter is that the development of a final text is often as much a hard-won discovery as it is an initial inspiration. A Piece of Work offers a road map to that discovery.
October 1992
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Abstract
Teachers of writing regularly face the task of advising students about their work-in-progress. The task is problematic because it raises many practical and theoretical issues. Not least is the ethical issue of rights and responsibilities with respect to texts. Researchers recommend that a teacher must somehow make it possible for students to take control of their own writing. A responsible teacher, then, would be a responsive reader, one who helps students identify and solve writing problems but, in the course of suggesting how they might do so, avoids unwittingly appropriating the draft. Responsible students would, in turn, be their own best readers, taking responsibility for solving writing problems of their own making. Therefore, among the many important questions faced by teachers and raised by researchers is how to make comments that respect the differences between a teacher's and a student's responsibility to an emerging text.
February 1990
May 1989
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Abstract
time, encouragement, and craft of two master teachers and writers-are attitudes and skills that extend beyond poetry and fiction writing. To value self-investment, to avoid premature closure, to see revision as discovery, to go beyond the predictable, to risk experimentation, and, above all, to trust your own creative power are necessary for all good writing, whether it is a freshman theme, a poem, a term paper, or a 4 C's paper. Yet in academic writing, except perhaps for the dissertation, these are not integral to the pedagogy. Few of us reward risk-taking that fails with a better grade than polished but pedestrian texts. We are more product-oriented, judging assignments as independent of one another rather than as part of a collective and ongoing body of work. No wonder that students interpret our message as Be careful, not creative!
February 1989
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Abstract
Many current books by and for people in our business encourage the use of peer response groups as a means of enhancing learning. Almost none, however, translates this potentially powerful idea into workable strategies and techniques. Few comment usefully on the difficulties involved in the response group process, or on reasonable goals and outcomes, or even on the activity's deeper intellectual and behavioral implications. Sharing Writing is for teachers who are serious about helping students learn to work in response groups. In addressing both theoretical and practical concerns, Spear provides answers to two essential questions: What can writing teachers do to help students become good peer readers? How do peer response groups contribute to student growth as writers?
October 1988
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Word processors, as teaching machines, are currently caught in something of a backlash. Just a few years ago, we heard they possessed almost magical powers for student writing and writing instruction. Now, before some of us have even had a chance to try them for ourselves, researchers have begun to tell us that computers do not really help student writers much after all. On the contrary, they warn, when students' performances with text editors are judged against their performances with pen and paper, inexperienced writers, those whose typical revising behaviors are actually editing behaviors, continue to edit exclusively and with increased frequency on the word pro-
February 1987
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Writing is written within and for discourse communities, whose values, traditions, and beliefs condition the writer s own values and influence both the process of composition and the products issuing from that process.To understand how writers compose and revise within the business and industry community Broadhead and Freed examine the revision practices of proposal writers in a management-consulting firm. They describe the writers motives and intentions in changing a text. This study provides a firmly based theory of composing and revising that will enable business writers to achieve a balanced perspective by focusing on the ends as well as the means of composingthat is, by focusing on the interplay of product and process.
October 1986
February 1986
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Abstract
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December 1985
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Teaching students writing, reading, and thinking across the curriculum requires the acceptance of a premise, relatively simple on its face, but imbued with substantial promise for reinventing the formidable tradition of making writing the central cog of the intellectual machinery that facilitates learning. The premise is that all teachers in all disciplines should be actively involved in students' writing, reading, and thinking and should not function as mere judges and graders of purportedly finished writings. I expect to be encouraged by the administration of my college to require more writing, revision, and rewriting in courses that I teach in the future, and to expand the audiences for written work to include the class, the writing laboratory, professors in collaborative teaching arrangements, and others. The college will be participating in one of the national writing programs, and we must also assist our students in completing the writing requirements of the testing program that is mandated for all institutions in the state system of higher education. Recognizing that writing is a process and a mode for also helps students to read with more understanding of the structure of language. Writing and reading are connected, interactive processes requiring students to cooperate in the act of learning. Our students need instruction and practice for reading in their subjects. Reading assignments need to go beyond the text to include materials that offer balance, put the subject into perspective, and place it in the context of real-world points of reference for our students. Discipline-based reading helps students to acquire the learning and expected characteristic of the field. Reading also adds to the value of the writing within the subject or discipline by defining and illuminating basic practices, procedures, and values of the field. Reading and related writing in chemistry and other scientific areas are also forms of social behavior that we must teach if students are to be successful thinkers and scholars in the discipline. That is not revolutionary, it is merely practical. I invite my colleagues in the hard sciences to join the enterprise and re-
October 1985
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Preview this article: Applied Word Processing: Notes on Authority, Responsibility, and Revision in a Workshop Model, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/36/3/collegecompositionandcommunication11757-1.gif
October 1984
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Preview this article: Direction and Misdirection in Peer Response, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/35/3/collegecompositionandcommunication14869-1.gif
February 1984
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Response to Richard Gebhardt, "Writing Processes, Revision, and Rhetorical Problems: A Note on Three Recent Articles" ↗
Abstract
Ann E. Berthoff, Response to Richard Gebhardt, "Writing Processes, Revision, and Rhetorical Problems: A Note on Three Recent Articles", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), p. 95
October 1983
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Abstract
It is unfortunate that so many college teachers of writing and composition textbooks describe revision as the process by which a writer merely cleans up the mechanical and stylistic infelicities of an otherwise completed text. This simplistic view presupposes something akin to the three-stage linear model of composing set forth by Rohman and Wlecke in the 1960's.2 Research during the past decade, particularly that of Emig and Sommers, challenges the assumption underlying such a view of revision by demonstrating that revision is not the end of a linear process, but is rather itself a recursive process,3 one which can occur at any point during composing. Recent research also shows that different groups of writers revise in different ways, a finding reflected in, for example, the work of Beach, Bridwell,5 Faigley and Witte,6 Flower,7 and Murray,8 as well as Sommers. Finally, recent research has developed classification systems to explain those revisions. Such efforts appear, for example, in the work of Sommers,9 Bridwell,'o and Faigley and Witte. However much this body of research helps us to understand the results or effects of revision, it does considerably less to help us understand what causes writers to revise. The most promising research on the causes of revision, of course, is that of Flower and Hayes. Reporting on their use of composing-aloud protocols in a case study format,'2 they conclude that when expert writers redefine or clarify the audience and the goals of their texts, they frequently revise.13 This research offers the best hypotheses about the situational or contextual causes of revision. But while Flower and Hayes suggest that the produced so far becomes part of the situational context, they do not adequately explore specific textual cues that may prompt revisions. Indeed, apart from what little can be gleaned from studies which look to errors14 in the text for causes of revision, we know very little about
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May 1983
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Preview this article: Computerized Word-Processing as an Aid to Revision, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/34/2/collegecompositionandcommunication15279-1.gif
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Preview this article: The Word Processor and Revision Strategies, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/34/2/collegecompositionandcommunication15280-1.gif
May 1982
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Preview this article: On Students' Rights to Their Own Texts: A Model of Teacher Response, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/33/2/collegecompositionandcommunication15855-1.gif
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I. A. Richards has said that we begin reading any text with an implicit faith in its coherence, an assumption that its author intended to convey some meaning and made the choices most likely to convey the meaning effectively.' As readers, therefore, we tolerate the writer's manipulation of the way we see the subject that is being addressed. Our tolerance derives from a tacit acceptance of the writer's to make the statements we are reading.2 When reading a textbook, for instance, we assume that its writer knows at least as much about the book's subject as we do, and ideally even more. When we read a newspaper article, we take for granted that the writer has collected all the relevant facts and presented them honestly. In either case, derives partly from what we know about the writer (for instance, professional credentials or public recognition) and partly from what we see in the writer's discourse (the probity of its reasoning, the skill of its construction, its use of references that we may recognize). The sources of writers' authority may be quite various. But whatever the reason for our granting authority, what we are conceding is the author's right to make statements in exactly the way they are made in order to say exactly what the writer wishes to say. The more we know about a writer's skill, the more we have read of that individual's work or heard of his or her reputation, the greater the claim to authority. This claim can be so powerful that we will tolerate writing from that author which appears to be unusually difficult, even obscure or downright confusing. For instance, our having read Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill with pleasure may lead us to work harder at reading Altarwise by Owlight, although we may not understand it readily and may not derive the same pleasure from reading it. As readers, we see this harder material as a problem of interpretation, not a shortcoming of the composer. Writers may, of course, compromise their authority through evident or repeated lapses, but, in general, Lil Brannon is an assistant professor at New York University, co-director of the Expository Writing Program, and coordinator of the Writing Center. She is completing a text entitled Writers Writing. C. H. Knoblauch, also an assistant professor at New York University, is co-director of the Expository Writing Program. He is a co-author of Functional Writing and has just completed a book on eighteenth-century theories of the composing process.
December 1981
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Preview this article: At the Age of Revision (poem), Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/32/4/collegecompositionandcommunication15888-1.gif