This essay describes the process and findings of a class size research project at an access institution.

This article, based on a qualitative research study, analyzes the connections between students’ perceptions of power and their varied levels of oral participation in classroom discussion.

This article explores the potential of a song lyrics-based curriculum to encourage the practice of racial literacy in the first-year composition classroom.

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.

The “TYCA Guidelines for Preparing Teachers of English in the Two-Year College” neglects to mention portfolios or eportfolios as a best practice with which two-year faculty should be prepared; the authors argue that eportfolio pedagogy and practice should be part of two-year faculty preparation to best serve both students and faculty at two-year colleges.

This article examines the social and academic barriers international teachers face in the composition classroom and what they have to offer to the teaching of first-year writing.

This article shares findings from a semester-long study about the use of literacy narratives to increase ESL students’ understanding of reading and writing relationships within the developmental writing classroom.

Applied Pedagogies: Strategies for Online Writing Instruction, edited by Daniel Ruefman and Abigail G. Scheg. Boulder: UP of Colorado for Utah State UP, 2016. Print. Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction, edited by Beth L. Hewett and Kevin Eric DePew. Fort Collins: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2015. Print. A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI) by the CCCC Committee on Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction. Conference on College Composition and Communication. Mar. 2013. Web.

This white paper presents current research and makes recommendations on the array of placement practices for writing courses at two-year colleges. Specifically, this white paper(1) identifies the current state of placement practices and trends, (2) offers an overview of placement alternatives, and (3) provides recommendations on placement reform and processes. TYCA encourages two-year college faculty to use this white paper to guide placement reform on their campuses, to be leaders in the field and professional organizations, and to advocate for best practices with policymakers.

This article describes a first-year writing course focused on language diversity and asserts the importance of this focus as a foundation for college writing success and linguistic inclusivity.

An experimental study shows that integrating instruction in writing strategies with support for self-regulation strategies in basic writing classes results in significant gains in both the quality of student writing and in student motivation.

An instructional note on foregrounding rhetoric across the curriculum to convey the rigor of professional and technical writing and assist instructors in claiming pedagogical ethos in a course that spans many disciplines.

This essay outlines a plan for developing a thematic unit on work to better engage career and technical students in the study of literature. Included in the essay are strategies for course structure, pedagogy, and writing assignments.

Pulling data from a year-long case study into a Division II men’s basketball team, this article suggests how threshold concepts as currently conceptualized and implemented in first-year composition pedagogy and curriculum could more directly consider unique forms of literacies student-athletes bring into the classroom.

This article and its five authors investigate how writing programs, writing instructors, and the profession itself engage in the erasure of race—of blackness and brownness specifically—and perhaps most importantly in a hesitancy to address white privilege.

An instructional note on one method of using folktales as texts in the composition classroom to help students gain a basic understanding of agenda and the way objectives and ideologies can shape information.

An instructional note on one method of using folktales as texts in the composition classroom to help students gain a basic understanding of agenda and the way objectives and ideologies can shape information.

Reviewed are: A Rhetoric for Writing Program Administrators, edited by Rita Malenczyk Reviewed by Caitlin Holmes A New Writing Classroom: Listening, Motivation, and Habits of Mind by Patrick Sullivan Reviewed by Panshula Ganeshan

This study reports on student comprehension of plagiarism and plagiarism avoidance before and after the first-year composition course.

Based on research conducted at Wilbur Wright College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, this article explores the strategies, methods, and theoretical frameworks used by English instructors to teach reading-writing connections in developmental and credit-level writing courses.

Reviewed are: Chasing Literacy: Reading and Writing in an Age of Acceleration, by Daniel Keller, Reviewed by Kathleen Alves Retention and Resistance: Writing Instruction and Students Who Leave, by Pegeen Reichert Powell, Reviewed by Christine Rudisel

This article situates the teaching of first- and second-semester college writing courses in relation to current discussions about the Common Core State Standards Initiative, competency-based education, the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing,” the “WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition,” and vertical college writing curricula.

Five two-year-college writer-teachers from different states (California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Wisconsin) present ways that creative writers can make particular contributions to the important and meaningful work of teaching basic skills composition, particularly at institutions of access, and particularly at this time when that work is so crucial.

By growing creative writing courses and programs, community colleges can improve retention while also fostering supportive communities of student and faculty writers.

In this essay, two poets who have taught language learners in the United States and abroad argue for the use of personal writing, preferably poetry from students’ home cultures, as a bridge to writing in academic genres.

In an interview conducted at his office at Lorain County Community College, 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry finalist Bruce Weigl discusses writing pedagogy, veterans’ issues, and his experiences as a two-year college student and as a professor and poet.

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

This article addresses the challenge of teaching voice in the introductory composition classroom, using graphic narrative to make voice visible for students as they identify and rhetorically compose their own voices.

Dianne Fallon responds to Blaauw-Hara’s article in this issue.

This essay provides a brief overview of transfer theory and threshold concepts and discusses how they can be applied to general-education writing courses.

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.

In an effort to better understand how to help students engage more fully with the feedback process, this article examines the role of the writer as solicitor of feedback in composition textbooks, noting that textbooks don’t appear to offer sufficient tools to move students from “Do we have to?” to “Can we, please?” in peer review, and includes pedagogical suggestions that will encourage students to become engaged writers who are able, and willing, to solicit feedback and participate in peer review.

The article provides suggestions for using a grading contract/portfolio approach to assessing writing for introductory composition classes comprised of basic writers.

This article explores students’ responses to a formal self-assessment assignment, situating their views within the context of the texts they produced, identifying connections to scholarship on self reflection, and proposing a rethinking of pedagogical practices around reflective writing.

A pilot study finds that branching, just-in-time curriculum may be of considerable benefit to some basic writing students.

This article offers a pedagogical framework for using rereading as a mechanism for guided, repeated practice with the critical activities of first-year composition.

This article describes working with a deaf student in a basic writing course and explores what teaching deaf students can teach us about composition studies.

Reviewed are: Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy by Anis S. Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff, Reviewed by Kara Poe Alexander Beyond Post process, edited by Sidney I. Dobrin, J. A. Rice, and Michael Vastola, Reviewed by William Duffy Code-Meshing as World English: Pedagogy, Policy, Performance edited by Vershawn Ashanti Young and Aja Y. Martinez, Reviewed by Gregory Shafer Autism Spectrum Disorders in the College Composition Classroom: Making Writing Instruction More Accessible for All Students edited by Val Gerstle and Lynda Walsh, Reviewed by Gary Vaughn

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.

What English Language Teachers Need to Know, Vol. 1: Understanding Learning; Vol. 2: Facilitating Learning, by Denise E. Murray and MaryAnn Christison,Reviewed by Mary Lynn Navarro, Nonnative Speaker English Teachers: Research, Pedagogy, and Professional Growth, by George Braine, Reviewed by Monika Ekiert, In the Heart of Another: Immigrant Women Tell Their Stories, by Susan Philips, Reviewed by Frances Bracken Mejia

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.

This essay offers an example of one course that focuses exclusively on Ebonics as a specific African American linguistic practice and on rhetoric and composition scholarship as the primary topics of investigation.

This article questions our reliance on textbooks through my own struggles to come to terms with my ambiguous, sometimes frustrating, relationship with textbooks.

This essay explores mainstream apprehensions against Appalachian dialect(s), arguing that these dialects/cultures have a misunderstood history and an important role to play in Appalachian composition classrooms.

Although blogs used in the composition classroom have most often been employed as prewriting forums or journals, this article suggests that blogs can also be used effectively as a revision tool in the later stages of writing academic research papers.

There has been a great deal of groundbreaking research done on motivation during the last twenty-five years, and all of it points to the importance of intrinsic motivation.This research has very significant ramifications for teachers of English.

This article traces the history of the five-paragraph theme and the views about it, along with arguing for its elimination in writing instruction in favor of problem-based, “rich-task” writing experiences for students.

This article describes the collaborative process of including library faculty in an online English composition course and the effect on students’ research.

Legos Build the Way to Successful Process Analysis Writing, Michelle Rhodes (New Voice) Native American Elder Stories Make Descriptive Essays Easier, Pamela Tambornino (New Voice) Teaching Writing Style and Revision, Eric Bateman Dialect and Language Analysis Assignment, Amanda Hayes (New Voice) A Scaffolded Essay Assignment on Poetry, Jane Arnold (New Voice)

The third goal of Zen practice, helping others achieve enlightenment, suggests that we should help students learn about their own composing practices and histories as part of their instruction, but we cannot help others until we learn to help ourselves by reflecting on our own processes and histories, becoming enlightened, and liberating ourselves.