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.

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.

This Instructional Note, grounded in Latin American cultural values, offers “wise practices” for instructors to connect lived experiences to course curriculum, encourage authentic voice and “home language practices,” and treat students as extended family to reduce academic isolation.

In the fall of 2018, the First-Year Composition program at North Central Texas College (NCTC) initiated what informally became known as the Textbook Project. Our goal was to provide our community college students with innovative, imaginative, and inspiring classroom experiences that paralleled the high-impact opportunities their peers were afforded at four-year universities. The Textbook Project encompassed five key features: an NCTC-specific textbook, a campus-wide common read, resources for faculty and students in our college’s LMS, a college-wide lecture series, and funding for faculty professional development. Five years later, the project’s emphasis on continuity through collaboration has revitalized the department through faculty engagement and increased student success.

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.

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.

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.

This essay seeks to add to existing conversations about the role of first-year composition (FYC) in relation to students’ subsequent literacy experiences. Using data from an open-ended survey of former students five years after they completed FYC, in which they describe their current reading and writing practices and reflect on how these practices connect (or fail to connect) to what they recall from FYC, this article positions the findings within the context of scholarship on WAW and TFT and ultimately calls for increased attention to the situated nature of writing as part of the FYC curriculum at two-year colleges.

Students entering first-year composition often discover self-inquiry for the first time, enabling them to examine their identities when opportunities are created to do so. The experiences of two traditional first-year college students are examined to better understand the power that writing instructors and writing courses hold.

This article reports on the working conditions of one hundred faculty who teach first-year composition at two-year colleges across the US.

The Instructional Note provides a multistage drawing-to-read activity that is intended to support students’ development of process-oriented, active, engaged, and mindful reading habits.

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.

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Lexical analysis with concordancing software offers faculty a simple tool for analyzing reflective texts in first-year composition courses.

This instructional note contains a prompt and a set of step-by-step classroom instructions for introducing first-year writers to the functions and scholarly activities of professional associations.

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.

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.

This article locates and describes different versions of dual credit for first-year composition as they occur across Oregon and concludes with recommendations, a call for financial transparency in the funding of dual credit in Oregon, and an invitation to researchers in other states to map dual credit in their own states.

Over 1.4 million high school students enroll in college-credit-bearing courses yearly, and 80% of that instruction occurs on secondary campuses under the tutelage of high school teachers (US Dept. of Education). Since First-Year Writing remains a common choice among enrollees, Concurrent Enrollment (CE) classrooms present a unique space for inquiry and collaboration into the quality and rigor of CE writing instruction. This study investigates CE writing instructors’ definitions of “rigor” in the college writing classroom and explores the training and support provided to CE writing instructors representing two- and four-year higher education institutions in Ohio. Findings suggest that on-going discipline-specific professional development can lead to definitions of rigor in high school writing spaces that align to postsecondary standards. This study also demonstrates that disparity exists in instructor preparation and support, especially in regard to discipline-specific training that could help close gaps in writing instruction.

In our analysis of seventy-five FYC writing assignment prompts, we identify common elements and offer pedagogical suggestions so faculty can use assignment sheets as rhetorical tools to introduce students to writing studies’ threshold concepts.

This paper argues that instructors should prioritize the teaching of peer review. The authors have encouraged collaborative peer review by making it the most important work of their first-year writing course.

Despite community college teachers teaching nearly 50 percent of all first-year composition, our experiences and hands-on knowledge are not viewed as scholarly contributions to writing studies. The scholarship of writing studies needs to be expanded through redefining what constitutes scholarly work as well as providing mentoring to two-year faculty who possess critical knowledge on composition and pedagogy.

This article explores the use of the work narrative to engage students, particularly FLI (first-generation and low-income) students.

Profile writing enables nursing students to draw a connection between first-year composition and nursing through the genre’s emphasis on descriptive details and understanding the individual.

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

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.

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

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 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.

Books reviewed: Naming What We Know:Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies First-Year Composition: From Theory to Practice

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 describes a statewide integrated developmental and first-year writing program that uses multiple measures placement data about college readiness to inform curriculum and faculty development.

This research examines the experiences of six incoming students at a public university in Northern California to investigate their rationale for self-placement into first-year composition and their perceptions of their choices at different points throughout their first semester of college.

Through genre awareness, first-year writing students compose a book review to practice habits of mind.

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.

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.

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

Reviewed are: Vernacular Eloquence: What Speech Can Bring to Writing, by Peter Elbow, Reviewed by Patrick Sullivan, and by Annie Del Principe and Holly Hassel, with a Response from Peter Elbow From Form to Meaning: Freshman Composition and the Long Sixties, 1957–1974, by David Flitalicing, Reviewed by Chris Warnick Agency in the Age of Peer Production, by Quentin D. Vieregge, Kyle D. Stedman, Taylor Joy Mitchell, and Joseph M. Moxley, Reviewed by Sean Barnette Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act, by Rebecca S. Nowacek, Reviewed by Deanna Mascle How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, by Stanley Fish; Several Short Sentences about Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg, Reviewed by Peter Wayne Moe

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

The author presents findings from a research study that examines the use of a racial literacy approach to teaching first-year composition.

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.

This article explicates the benefits of linking writing center consultant training with first-year composition and provides readers with guidance for engaging in such a collaboration.

Writing in and about Wikipedia encourages students to think about the outcomes of their writing and, by extension, changes the student/teacher relationship in pedagogically useful ways.

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.

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.