Teaching English in the Two-Year College
109 articlesMarch 2025
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Tutoring on Demand! Exploring the Creep of the Higher Education For-Profit Online Tutoring Landscape on College Campuses ↗
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The article explores the prevalence of for-profit tutoring services contracted by four-year and two-year colleges and the perceptions writing center professionals have about for-profit tutoring services. Applying a grounded theory approach, the researchers found five main themes that emerged from an open-ended survey sent to writing studies and writing center listservs in fall 2022. The article concludes with suggestions modeled after not-for-profit tutoring initiatives such as the Western eTutoring Consortium.
December 2024
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In this article, I provide a chronological narrative to my ungrading choices in composition classes as a neurodiverse single mother from a working-class background. I discuss my positionality as a White person committed to justice and my experiences as an “assessment killjoy” (West-Puckett et al.) during the ethical turn in writing studies. From this foundation, I reflect on my attempts to grade more equitably. I discuss my pedagogical goals, which are grounded in intersectional feminist theory (hooks; Royster and Kirsch), standpoint theory (Harding), learning sciences (Hammond; Ross), and a robust model of the writing construct (White et al.), and analyze the consequences of exit portfolios, labor-based contract grading (Inoue), and specifications grading (Nilson) via this integrated framework.
September 2024
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Instructional Note: Making It about XP Instead of Loot: Ungrading and Gameful Learning Design in First-Year Writing ↗
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This essay explores the pedagogical potential of using labor-based grading and gameful learning design in a first-year writing course at an open-access college in the Southeastern United States.
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This article explores the connections between creating an equitable classroom and antiracist assessment. The article attempts to explain the impact of the equitable classroom on student apathy. Additionally, rigid concepts of “failing” under this equitable classroom model are interrogated. Finally, the article provides some insights into the limitations and pitfalls of the equitable classroom design.
May 2024
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Abstract
The majority of first-year writing “is taught by teachers whose educational backgrounds are more likely to be in literature, cultural studies, or creative writing than in rhetoric and composition” (Abraham 78). This disciplinary knowledge gap poses a challenge for FYW faculty to adjust to new shifts in FYW pedagogy. We would expect inhouse faculty development opportunities to help fill these gaps; however, the results of our year-long qualitative study indicate that the lack of shared disciplinary knowledge and the constraints on adjunct faculty make it challenging for faculty without backgrounds in writing studies to adapt their pedagogies. We add to the body of scholarship on professionalization in two-year college writing studies (e.g., Andelora; Griffiths; Jensen et al.; Sullivan; Toth et al., “Distinct”) and argue that addressing this problem will require investing resources in adjunct support; changing hiring practices to prioritize expertise in writing studies; and designing faculty development that focuses on both theory and pedagogy.
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Instructional Note: Working the Whirlwind: SmartArt and Reflection as Introduction to Rhetorical Analysis Research Essays ↗
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This Instructional Note is designed to assist students with using the rhetorical skills they already have as a bridge to writing rhetorical analysis essays.
March 2024
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Effects of Self-Regulated Strategy Instruction in an Accelerated Developmental English Course: A Quasi-experimental Study ↗
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This study examines the effects of a curriculum based on self-regulated strategy instruction in an accelerated developmental education (DE) English course in a community college. Faculty at the college had established a four-week, two-credit compressed course that enabled students to enroll in an eleven-week first-year composition (FYC) course in the same semester, reducing remediation from fifteen weeks to just four weeks. The course focused on writing argumentative essays using sources. The study used a quasi-experimental design with five instructors and sixty-six students to compare the experimental curriculum to a business-as-usual control condition. In the experimental curriculum, students learned strategies for writing using sources, including strategies for critical reading and for planning and revising. In addition to writing and reading strategies, students also learned metacognitive, self-regulation strategies, such as goal setting, task management, and reflection. The study found a large positive effect (ES = .96) of the treatment on quality of an argument essay written using sources. However, no significant effects were found on a summary outline, self-efficacy, or completion of the subsequent FYC course. The study demonstrates the value of strategy instruction in DE English courses; it is the first experimental study of strategy instruction in an accelerated DE course. Further research is needed to evaluate the effects of strategy instruction in corequisite courses and in FYC.
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This Instructional Note provides information on having students create research posters to support oral presentations in their first-year writing classes. Creating digital posters connects to multimodal assignments and provides transferable skills.
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Instructional Note: The Argument-as-Story Exercise: Using Narrative to Foster Confidence and Autonomy in First-Year Writing ↗
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Modifying inclusive creative workshop models for FYW classrooms empowers student engagement and persistence and allows instructors with creative practices to effectively draw on their expertise to guide students’ writing of persuasive argumentative prose.
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Instructional Note: How to Create and Communicate Weekly Check-Ins to Promote Community and Belonging ↗
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This Instructional Note elaborates on how weekly anonymous wellness check-in surveys can be designed and implemented in English courses to support students’ purposeful awareness of their well-being and to create a sense of supportive community in the composition classroom.
December 2023
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Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: How Guided Pathways Has Promoted Workforce Training and Devalued the Humanities ↗
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In minimizing and narrowing students’ opportunities for exploration, discovery, deliberation, and thoughtfulness—the educational gold standard of our nation’s most elite educational institutions—by offering them a rationed education that is designed to facilitate quick completion of a degree or certificate, “redesigning” and Guided Pathways reforms and recommendations have promoted “workforce training” and devalued the humanities.
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We are now a decade into the call for comprehensive community college “redesign” known as Guided Pathways. This introduction provides an overview of the Guided Pathways model and its advocacy arm and reviews critiques of the model in education research and two-year college literacy studies. These reviews contextualize the contents of the special issue.
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In this symposium, seven community college transfer students present their perspectives on Guided Pathways curricular reforms. Drawing on published scholarship and policy documents as well as their own lived experiences, they identify positive aspects of the Guided Pathways model as well as shortcomings in its conceptualization and local implementation.
September 2023
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In this article, we share strategies and data from a study constructed in a faculty learning community using course analytics to design, deliver, and track instructor-student communication—in the form of “nudges”—to improve student success. Although we do not feel comfortable making generalized conclusions from such a small sample, we think our data suggests that many students positively benefited from grade-based nudging. We also think it was extremely important that our nudging interventions focused on all students within the class, not only those who were not doing well. However, we acknowledge that the majority of the instructors said this type of work takes time.
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Instructional Note: Seeing All Students as Writers: Video-Based Discussion Board Strategies for Remote Classrooms ↗
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This article presents a video discussion board assignment designed to foster belonging and academic language practice in a remote classroom. We consider how the assignment supported robust discussion and multimodal composition in Critical Reading and Writing, a course run with synchronous and asynchronous components during the COVID-19 pandemic at a technical college.
May 2023
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This essay explores affordances and limitations of the disciplinary labels that two-year college teachers use to frame our work. Ultimately, it argues that the termliteracy studiesbest reflects the transdisciplinary work we do.
May 2022
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Instructional Note: Redesigning Syllabus Review: Mind Maps as a Tool for Engagement in Writing Courses ↗
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An instructor of undergraduate rhetoric and composition courses creates a mind-mapping activity for syllabus review to engage her students.
December 2021
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Instructional Note: The Heroic Investigator: Modeling a Film and Television Motif for Information Literacy ↗
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This article describes a research assignment for first-year composition students that combines film and television motif analysis and role-playing, thus creating an opportunity for students to write critiques of contemporary institutions.
May 2021
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Increasingly popular, corequisite models include a college-credit course and a support course taken concurrently; to ensure purposeful alignment in the design of such course pairings, one practical suggestion is a curriculum crosswalk.
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This article explores six years of student data to discover why students who appear not to have read a lengthy book are able to execute a successful paper designed around that text.
March 2021
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Feature: Trauma-Informed Writing Pedagogy: Ways to Support Student Writers Affected by Trauma and Traumatic Stress ↗
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This article argues that two principles of a trauma-informed writing pedagogy grounded in clinical scholarship—instructor as buffering role model and psychologically safer classroom spaces—can support students affected by trauma and traumatic stress. Moreover, when these principles are embedded in course structures using concepts central to universal design, they can support all community college writing students facing adversity.
September 2020
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Feature: Neither Here nor There: A Study of Dual Enrollment Students’ Hybrid Identities in First-Year Composition ↗
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This article shares findings from a CCCC-funded grant that focuses on a dual enrollment program in Washington State called Running Start. This model invites high schoolers to take college courses on a college campus. Instructors are frequently advised to treat Running Start participants “as if they were any other college students,” yet as our large-scale survey suggests, these students have complex hybrid identities that warrant greater consideration. Without diluting academic rigor, we call for an enhanced understanding of the “funds of knowledge” (González, Moll, and Amanti) that high schoolers bring to First-Year Composition in the spirit of congruous inclusivity.
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First-year composition faculty have historically cast a skeptical eye on high-school-based dual enrollment FYC. However, when secondary and post-secondary faculty are allowed to build their program together, trusting each other’s expertise and engaging in mutual professional development, enormous value is generated for both sets of faculty and the DE students. This article presents findings, materials, and recommendations from a long-standing successful DE program built on the assumption that college faculty have just as much to learn from their high school colleagues as high school teachers have to learn about teaching college-level writing.
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Feature: Bringing the Community to the Classroom: Using Campus-Wide Collaborations to Foster Belonging for Dual Enrollment Students ↗
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This article describes the experience of three professors teaching dual enrollment BTECH Early College High School students at Queensborough Community College, and our incorporation of departmental and campus-wide collaborative learning experiences as an intervention for student success and engagement. We present our collaborative approach to course design, culminating in the Upstanders Project, a multimodal research-based writing assignment incorporating on-campus cultural and learning resources. We argue that this approach led to an immersive learning experience for dual enrollment students that strengthened their ties to the college community.
December 2019
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Instructional Note: Scaffolding a Librarian into Your Course: An Assessment of a Research-Based Model for Online Instruction ↗
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A course model featuring scaffolded information literacy instruction and connection with a librarian improves online students’ attitudes about library sources and the value of research in the writing process.
September 2019
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Preview this article: Review Essay: Applying the “Teaching for Transfer” Model, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/tetyc/47/1/teachingenglishinthetwo-yearcollege30326-1.gif
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Feature: All Truly Great Thoughts Are Conceived While Walking1”: Academic Inclusion through Multimodal Walkabouts ↗
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This article explores the value of including creative assignments in the composition classroom. Specifically, it demonstrates how a multimodal assignment can help struggling students develop the confidence to succeed on creative assignments and on subsequent more traditional academic assignments.
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Preview this article: Review: Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/tetyc/47/1/teachingenglishinthetwo-yearcollege30327-1.gif
March 2019
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Feature: Where Theory and Praxis Collide: Supporting Student-Led Writing Center Research at Two-Year Colleges ↗
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This article demonstrates the important role that student researchers play in developing two-year college writing center assessment. As part of a tutoring practicum assignment, students from Bristol Community College co-designed a survey that assessed the perceptions of students who do and do not utilize a writing center at their mid-sized community college. Students collected 865 responses between 2014 and 2015. This article provides a road map to developing student-led RAD research through a two-year college writing center and its attendant course; it also shares positive pedagogical and programmatic outcomes from the project.
March 2018
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Feature: Beyond Words on the Page: Using Multimodal Composing to Aid in the Transition to First-Year Writing ↗
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This article reports on a multimodal podcasting unit conducted during a two-week modified summer bridge program for at-risk incoming first-year students. The examples from student work show how teaching a multimodal genre encourages writers to draw from their prior knowledge of standardized genres learned in high school to effectively transition to college composition.
December 2017
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Feature: Playing by (and with) the Rules: Revision as Role-Playing Game in the Introductory Creative Writing Classroom ↗
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Using student poems and reflections collected over several years, the author examines the impact of a role-playing game experience on introductory creative writing students’ openness toward taking risks, revising (and improvising) playfully, and working with limitations or rules. The role-play uses Lars von Trier’s film The Five Obstructions as a model—particularly the diabolical game that unfolds between directors von Trier and Jørgen Leth—and requires students to “remake” a poem of theirs three times according to sets of rules designed specifically for them by the instructor in face-to-face meetings.
March 2017
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This essay and the teaching externship it describes grew out of our attempt to respond to gaps in two-year college English instructor preparation, particularly in basic writing, at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska.
September 2016
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Assessing the Accelerated Learning Program Model for Linguistically Diverse Developmental Writing Students ↗
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This article uses quantitative and qualitative means to assess the impact of an Accelerated Learning Program on the performance and satisfaction of students designated ESL and developmental at a large, urban community college.
May 2016
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Reviewed are: Redesigning Composition for Multilingual Realities, by Jay Jordan, Reviewed by Jessie Casteel, Ben Good, Katherine Highfill, Elizabeth Keating, Rose Pentecost,Nidhi Rajkumar, Rachael Sears, Georgeann Ward, and Maurice WilsonSecuring a Place for Reading in Composition, by Ellen C. Carillo, Reviewed by Ronna Levy
March 2016
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Applying data from surveys and interviews, the authors examine why many experienced two-year college English faculty give up assigning group projects. They then propose a model of group training developed in the field of business management that aims to prevent many of these difficulties—the self-managed work team.
December 2015
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A hybrid assignment, a research-based academic essay paired with a research-based weblog, incorporates elements from both personal and academic writing to challenge students to critically think about how and why they write privately and publically. Students writing into this new model of public discourse can experiment with stance and tone across genres to exercise their abilities as responsible and flexible writers.
May 2015
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Feature: Promoting Teacher Presence: Strategies for Effective and Efficient Feedback to Student Writing Online ↗
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This essay uses the Community of Inquiry model to discuss strategies online writing instructors can use to provide effective feedback to students while intentionally creating a
March 2015
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A Modest Proposal for the 21st Century Peter Dow Adams Computerized Evaluation of Writing: Senseless Savings Eric BatemanKicking the “Fast Assessment” Habit Carolyn Calhoon-DillahuntDr. Test Cracker, Meet John Henry James FreemanA Cautionary Tale Sharon Mitchler
September 2014
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Reviewed are: Collaborative Learning and Writing: Essays on Using Small Groups in Teaching English and Composition, edited by Kathleen M. Hunzer, Reviewed by Signee Lynch Remixing Composition: A History of Multimodal Writing Pedagogy, by Jason Palmeri, Reviewed by Stephanie Vie Communal Modernisms: Teaching Twentieth-Century Literature in the Twenty-First Century Classroom, edited by Emily M. Hinnov, Laurel Harris, and Lauren M. Rosenblum, Reviewed by Mike Piero Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing, by Elizabeth Losh, Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon, Reviewed by Kristen Welch
May 2014
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Using visual rhetoric as a mode of instruction in two-year college composition can have a positive and powerful impact on teaching and learning.
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Feature: Critical Reflection on the Road to Understanding the Holocaust: A Unique Service-Learning Project at a Two-Year College ↗
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The authors argue for a critically reflective model of service-learning by detailing the features of a project in which an ESL reading and developmental writing class interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Kupferberg Holocaust Resource Center and Archives.
March 2014
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This article presents a digital, multimodal reflective essay assignment based on Geoffrey Sirc’s “box logic” that asks students to fill a series of boxes with images, found text, and their own commentary as they critically and creatively engage with their writing experiences through media artifacts, digital technology, and design decisions.
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Reviewed are: RAW (Reading and Writing) New Media, edited by Cheryl E. Ball and James Kalmbach; reviewed by Suanna H. Davis Listening to Our Elders: Working and Writing for Change, edited by Samantha Blackmon, Cristina Kirklighter, and Steve Parks; reviewed by Patricia Wilde How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, by Paul Tough; reviewed by Jeffrey Klausman Redesigning Composition for Multilingual Realities, by Jay Jordan; reviewed by Michelle LaFrance
March 2013
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This article traces the arc of research on two-year college writing programs and looks at implicit patterns of belief that shape discussions of such programs to offer a definition, however tentative, of a model of a two-year college writing program.
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This case study of the authors’ process of curricular innovation, assessment, and redesign provides guidance to colleagues seeking to implement 21st century literacies into their own objectives for first-year composition courses.
December 2012
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Walking and Talking Feminist Rhetorics: Landmark Essays and Controversies, edited by Lindal Buchanan and Kathleen J. Ryan, Reviewed by Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, Green, edited by Brooke Rollins and Lee Bauknight, Reviewed by Beverly Faxon, Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vols. 1 and 2, edited by Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Reviewed by Rebecca Powell, Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, edited by David M. Sheridan and James A. Inman, Reviewed by Vincent D. Robles
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By offering an annotated image of a half-dozen two-year college writing “programs,” this essay seeks to raise awareness of the challenges facing those who promote, work in, work toward, or participate in the development of two-year college writing programs and to consider how the “idea” of a writing program plays out in shaping those challenges.
September 2012
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The Heterogeneous Second-Language Population in US Colleges and the Impact on Writing Program Design ↗
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This article reviews various frameworks for defining second-language learner groups, as described in the literature, and summarizes relevant empirical studies based on these frameworks.
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This article describes the design and implementation of a cross-cultural composition coursewhich was designed to provide opportunities for ESL students and native English-speaking students to learn about cross-cultural literacy practices from each other in a first-year writing context at a community college in the Southwest.
May 2012
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Preview this article: Poem: Modern Romantic, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/tetyc/39/4/teachingenglishinthetwo-yearcollege19716-1.gif