Threshold concept theory can identify transformative concepts in disciplinary communities of practice, making it a useful framework pedagogically for scholars of academic literacies. Although researchers have studied how to teach thres hold concepts and how students have taken up theseconcepts in learning to write, few have looked at two aspects that are particularly important for students placed into basic writing: threshold concepts of reading and questions of learning transfer.Taking an epistemological approach to disciplinary literacies, I used case study research to trace the changing reading and writing practices of Bruce, a basic writing and first-generation college student, during his first year of college as he moved from a basic reading course into biochemis-try. Bruce leveraged audience awareness to write rhetorically and to comprehend difficult texts written for professional biochemistry researchers. Findings show that audience awareness is a threshold concept of reading, one that transforms academic literacy practices and that furthersidentity in disciplinary communities of practice. These findings support the teaching of audience awareness in secondary and postsecondary classrooms, but they also demand that we recognize the additional work basic writing students, like Bruce, must do to establish agency in a system that has labeled them underprepared.

Four case studies of proficient undergraduate writers from working-class backgrounds were conducted in the context of a course preparing sophomore and junior students to be tutors for first-year basic writers. It was found that, in contrast to much of the theorizing by and about working-class academics that emphasizes loss, a stronger theme in these students’ narratives of growing academic literacy was gaming. Students explained their experiences in ways that suggested a greater degree of agency, an awareness of themselves as writers in a contact zone, and a stance of tricking teachers on the way to producing acceptable texts. These findings suggest that writing in the contact zone of the classroom may require a double-voicedness that need not always be heard by instructors but is nevertheless important to students.

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This study investigates the relationship between the oral and written language of one college-level basic-writing student who is a speaker of Vernacular Black English. One possible explanation for basic-writing students’ difficulties in writing is that they may inappropriately use features from their oral language in their written language. We found in this study that neither VBE patterns in the student’s oral language nor other features of orality which previous research has identified primarily account for his writing problems. For other such students, future research will need to explore 1) whether or not the use of oral, or the lack of literate, features account for problems in writing, and 2) the nature of other, as yet unidentified, features of orality and literacy.

The case study approach was used to describe the revision strategies used by eight twelfth grade writers as they wrote compositions for two audiences: their teachers and their peers. The sample consisted of four writers who had previously been classified as basic and four who had been classified as competent according to scores that they achieved on holistically scored pieces of writing for a teacher audience. The data included responses gathered during interviews with the subjects and with their previous teachers of English, multiple drafts of compositions produced by each writer for each audience, and audio tapes of the subjects' verbal protocols as they composed aloud. The findings indicated that (a) the basic writers made more revisions for the teacher audience, while the competent writers made more revisions for the peer audience; (b) the competent writers made a wider range of revisions according to the points, levels, types and purposes of revision that were established prior to the collection of the data; and (c) the competent writers were able to revise in extended episodes in which one revision was cued by, and related to, an earlier revision, while the basic writers made isolated revisions. Although there were differences in the revision patterns of the different groups of writers, the basic writers demonstrated that they possessed the same revision strategies as the competent writers, though they used those strategies in different ways. The verbal protocols of the basic writers suggested that their limited use of some of the revision strategies that they possessed resulted from the constraints under which they were operating. The most significant of those constraints seemed to be the difficulties that the basic writers had with the actual production of text and the basic writers' view of composing as a two-draft procedure with revision taking place only during the second draft. It was suggested by the investigator that students need opportunities to write for a variety of audiences other than their teachers and that teachers can facilitate successful revision in students' writing by providing students with information about the revision strategies that they possess but use too infrequently.

Teachers who are trained in a fiveweek intensive writing project can improve students' composition skills better than teachers who are not trained to teach writing. That is the finding of an evaluation of the Gateway Writing Project, an inservice program involving eight suburban school districts in St. Louis County, Missouri, and funded by ESEA IV-G The program focuses on training secondary English, language arts, and elementary teachers, identified by their districts, in a five-week summer institute to improve students' composition skills. These trained teachers return to their school districts to teach other teachers the following school year. An evaluation of the project's impact on junior high and middle school students measured students' growth in writing and changes in teacher attitudes. The evaluation revealed the program had a significant impact on changing teachers' attitudes toward writing and on the writing performance of junior high and middle school students. By the completion of the five-week institute, participants demonstrated increased knowledge about research in the teaching of writing, about various approaches to the teaching of writing, and about the evaluation of writing. Each participant read selections by Moffett, Macrorie, Elbow, Britton, Cooper, O'Hare, Diederich, and Shaughnessy from a bibliography prepared for the institute. All participants kept a reading journal of their reactions to these authors and their ideas. Each participant also wrote several papers, then selected one paper for publication. All participants belonged to an editing group which met at least twice a week to read rough drafts of writing assignments. Two methods of evaluation of writing were taught: an holistic scoring approach and an error analysis technique. Approximately one-third of the summer institute was used for the participants to take a turn in presenting an effective teaching of writing approach which was supported either by research or review of the literature and developed through an appropriate writing assignment with printed materials suitable for the junior high/middle school students.

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