This study was conducted to obtain empirical data to inform policy decisions about exempting incoming students from a first-year composition (FYC) course on the basis of Advanced Placement (AP) English exam scores.

This position statement was inspired by the “Position Statement on Graduate Students in Writing Center Administration” (endorsed by the International Writing Center Association on November 17, 2001). A purpose of the document, to borrow language from the graduate student position statement, is to “[suggest] an ideal set of conditions,” and it is written with the “intention of improving working conditions” within the two-year college writing center. Ultimately, though, its main purpose is to help community college writing centers establish a collective argument in defense of what we do.

Research Article| January 01 2006 Writing and Citizenship: Using Blogs to Teach First-Year Composition Charles Tryon Charles Tryon Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2006) 6 (1): 128–132. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-6-1-128 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Charles Tryon; Writing and Citizenship: Using Blogs to Teach First-Year Composition. Pedagogy 1 January 2006; 6 (1): 128–132. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-6-1-128 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2006 Duke University Press2006 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: From the Classroom You do not currently have access to this content.

Despite the widespread acceptance of many kinds of nonliterary texts for first-year writing courses, primary scientific communication (PSC) remains largely absent. Objections to including PSC, especially that it is not rhetorically appropriate or sufficiently rich, do not hold. We argue for including PSC and give some practical suggestions for developing courses and designing assignments using PSC

This essay reports on the first two years of the Stanford Study of Writing, a five-year longitudinal study aimed at describing as accurately as possible all the kinds of writing students perform during their college years. Based on an early finding about the importance students attach to their out-of-class or self-sponsored writing and subsequent interviews with study participants, we argue that student writing is increasingly linked to theories and practices of performance. To illustrate the complex relationships between early college writing and performance, we explore the work of two study participants who are also coauthors of this essay.

Reviewed are Situating Composition: Composition Studies and the Politics of Location, by Lisa Ede; Self-Development and College Writing, by Nick Tingle; and The End of Composition Studies, by David W. Smit.

This essay discusses the emergence of whiteness studies in the study of English rhetoric and composition in the U.S. History of whiteness studies; Function and definition of whiteness in the U.S.; Role of race in different U.S. cultural logics; Relationship of whiteness studies with teaching composition.

Today’s students are arriving on college campuses with little knowledge of grammar and usage, so instructors may need to employ alternate strategies of games and electronic activities to provide the practice such students need.

The application of Edward P. J. Corbett’s prose style chart to three exemplary first–year essays reveals that there is an identifiable, hence teachable, exemplary first-year writing style.

Using sample student analyses of online paper mill Web sites, student survey responses, and existing scholarship on plagiarism, authorship, and intellectual property, this article examines how the consumerist rhetoric of the online paper mills construes academic writing as a commodity for sale, and why such rhetoric appeals to students in first-year composition, whose cultural disconnect from the academic system of authorship increasingly leads them to patronize these sites.

This essay frames the connections between punk principles and writing theory in order to re-form what the author emphasizes in his own composition classroom, in particular the do-it-yourself ethic, a sense of passion and fearlessness, the agency to attack institutions, and the seeking of pleasure.

In recent years a number of studies have limned the generic features of the instructor end comment on student texts. This study complements these large-scale analyses by examining from a rhetorical perspective two end comments, written by a first-year composition instructor, and by evaluating how the comments reflect and resist elements of two schemes that classify teacher response.

This article examines the ideological assumptions and practical consequences of recent state and federal attempts to standardize writing instruction at the secondary level, and it suggests alternative forms of assessment and classroom research available to teachers of composition in high school and college.

Can we expect students to craft papers that exude energy and insight when they have been subjected to twelve years of carefully orchestrated official writing?

This essay offers a historical explanation for the place of reader-response theory in English studies. Reader-response was a part of two movements: the (elitist) theory boom of the 1970s and the (populist) political movements of the 1960s and 1970s. If the theory boom was to remain elitist, it had to deauthorize reader-response. If reader-response was to remain populist, it had to consent to and participate in that deauthorization. In the 1980s reader-response was popular among compositionists, even as it began to lose currency among theorists. Later, however, compositionists professionalized themselves by deemphasizing, or even ignoring, reading. Now, as the profession again considers including explicit instruction in reading in the introductory writing course, the thinkers who could help us most have faded from the discussion.

“The first thing I want to say to you who are students is that you cannot afford to think of being here to receive an education: you will do much better to think of being here to claim one. ” —Adrienne Rich (1979, p. 231) It may seem odd to begin a discussion of academic research by quoting Adrienne Rich’s well-known 1977 speech, “Claiming an Education. ” But, if one substitutes “research ” for “an education, ” the sentiment more or less de-scribes the situation faced by most first-year students assigned research in com-position. Completing the monumental academic “Research Paper ” in first-year writing courses is considered a rite of passage for students in many universities (including my own, Auburn University), and is one often performed with grim resignation and uncertain purpose by many of those involved (Schwegler & Shamoon, 1982). Such was the case when I began teaching English Composi-tion II, a second-semester, first-year writing course that makes up one of sev-eral humanities core courses within Auburn’s curriculum. These core courses, including a two-semester sequence of composition, are mandated by our state articulation agreement, and many curricular guidelines are predetermined by that agreement. Our department has molded this curriculum somewhat, but any innovations must be implemented cautiously and creatively. Drawing on previous WAC research about disciplinary writing as well as classical rhetoric and critical pedagogy, I will describe my response to this mandate, theorizing a new critical space for WAC, one that promotes students ’ civic engagement while they are researching an academic discipline. Operating at the nexus of rhetoric, critical theory, and WAC scholarship, I will discuss ways that a criti-cal WAC pedagogy encourages students ’ investment in their own research and encourages students to become responsible “citizen-experts ” within their com-munities. Though the purpose of Auburn’s research paper in English Composi-tion II is to prepare students for academic research, I also strive to include a strong critical component, highlighting moral and ethical concerns within academic discourse much like that described by John Pennington and Robert Boyer (2003), wherein students are conscious of the responsibility they have

The article describes the dynamics of freshman composition classes for medium-security inmates at the Saginaw Correctional Facility which were linked to parallel classes at Saginaw Valley State University, supported by SVSU student-tutors, and enhanced by collaboratively produced publications of student writing. It presents excerpts from inmates’ essays that tell their stories, explore their relationships, and portray their prison world and discusses the impact of writing on inmates enrolled in the linked composition classes.

This article discusses a service-learning project for an English Composition class, focusing on the theme of incarcerated women. Through class projects, which included a book drive and research for the group Prison Watch, the students and teacher learned to negotiate the tricky demands of audience and worked to develop a new model of successful service learning.

Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key is the print version of the multimodal address that former CCCC Chair Kathleen Yancey gave at the 2004 CCCC convention. Discussing the myriad forms and purposes that writing can take today, she asks us to re-examine our beliefs about what writing is and how it should be taught.

Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers: Writing Instruction in the Managed University exposes the poor working conditions of contingent composition faculty and explores practical alternatives to the unfair labor practices that are all too common on campuses today. Editors Marc Bousquet, Tony Scott, and Leo Parascondola bring together diverse perspectives from pragmatism to historical materialism to provide a perceptive and engaging examination of the nature, extent, and economics of the managed labor problem in composition instructiona field in which as much as ninety-three percent of all classes are taught by graduate students, adjuncts, and other disposable teachers. These instructors enjoy few benefits, meager wages, little or no participation in departmental governance, and none of the rewards and protections that encourage innovation and research. And it is from this disenfranchised position that literacy workers are expected to provide some of the core instruction in nearly everyone's higher education experience. Twenty-six contributors explore a range of real-world solutions to managerial domination of the composition workplace, from traditional academic unionism to ensemble movement activism and the pragmatic rhetoric, accommodations, and resistances practiced by teachers in their daily lives.Contributors are Leann Bertoncini, Marc Bousquet, Christopher Carter, Christopher Ferry, David Downing, Amanda Godley, Robin Truth Goodman, Bill Hendricks, Walter Jacobsohn, Ruth Kiefson, Paul Lauter, Donald Lazere, Eric Marshall, Randy Martin, Richard Ohmann, Leo Parascondola, Steve Parks, Gary Rhoades, Eileen Schell, Tony Scott, William Thelin, Jennifer Seibel Trainor, Donna Strickland, William Vaughn, Ray Watkins, and Katherine Wills.

This article describes how readers from a graduate program in anthropology evaluated student writing in a general education course. Readers voiced the concerns of their discipline when they focused on the stance writers assumed and how they made value judgments.

Over the past thirty years, has flowered as a discipline in the academy. Doctoral programs in abound, and its position in the pantheon of academic fields seems assured. There is plenty of work in composition. But what is the nature of that work now, and what should it be? James Slevin asks such probing, primary questions in Introducing English, an overdue assessment of the state of by one of its most respected practitioners. Too often, Slevin claims, representations of take the form of promoting the field and its specialists, rather than explaining the fundamental work of and its important consequences. In thirteen thematically and methodologically linked essays, Slevin argues toward a view of the discipline as a set of activities, not as an enclosed field of knowledge. Such a view broadens the meaning of the work of to include teaching and learning, a two-way process, creating alliances across conventional educational boundaries, even beyond educational institutions. Slevin traces how emerged for him not as a vehicle for improving student writing, but rather as a way of working collaboratively with students to interpret educational practices and work for educational reform. He demonstrates the kind of classroom practice - in reading accounts of the Anglicization of Pocahontas - that reveals the social and cultural consequences of language and language education. For good or ill, writes Slevin, composition has always been at the center of the reproduction of social inequality, or of the resistance to that process. He asks those in the discipline to consider such history in the reading and writing they ask students to do and the reasons they give for asking them to do it. A much-anthologized essay by E. B. White from The New Yorker is the site for an examination of genre as social institution, introducing the ways in which the discourses of the academy can be understood as both obstacle and opportunity. Ultimately, Introducing English is concerned with the importance of writing and the teaching of writing to the core values of higher education. Composition is always a metonym for something else Slevin concludes. Usually, it has figured the impossibility of the student body - their lacks that require supplement, their ill-health that requires remedy. Introducing English introduces a new figure - a two-way process of inquiry - that better serves the intellectual culture of the university. Chapters on writing across the curriculum, university management, and faculty assessment (the tenure system) put this new model to practical, innovative use. Introducing English will be necessary reading for all those who work with composition, as well as those engaged in learning theory, critical theory, and education reform.

Implementing deracination and the D.I.S.—components of a developing critical thinking pedagogy termed decritique—offer a more critically reflective alternative to classroom peer-review activities that mistakenly focus on a “notion of caring"

While most service-learning courses at the college level establish a hierarchical connection between mentor and student, the service-learning program at Los Angeles City College encourages a reciprocal relationship in which mentor and mentee benefit from each other. First-year composition students are paired with intermediate ESL composition students in a semester-long program.

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We argue against the metaphor of the “level playing field” and its natural coercive power; in so doing, we call for an end to the invisibility that the debate over accommodations has imposed on learning disabilities in the past decade. A literature review of LD in composition shows how this invisibility has manifested itself in our field through limited professional discussion of LD. In response, we propose not a level playing field but a new playing field altogether, a visible one that actively promotes alternative assistance for student writers with LD in first-year composition programs. We seek to show how the LD and composition fields could create a powerful partnership by serving students with LD through the principle of the liberal theory of distributive justice.

Research Article| January 01 2004 Starting Somewhere Better: Revisiting Multiculturalism in First-Year Composition E. Shelley Reid E. Shelley Reid Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2004) 4 (1): 65–92. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-4-1-65 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation E. Shelley Reid; Starting Somewhere Better: Revisiting Multiculturalism in First-Year Composition. Pedagogy 1 January 2004; 4 (1): 65–92. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-4-1-65 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2004 Duke University Press2004 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.

This article suggests ways of writing a truly effective cover letter, an extremely important document in the search for a job. First, features gleaned from 13 model letters in technical writing textbooks yield figures on the number of words, sentences, and paragraphs per letter, plus the average number of words per sentence and paragraph, information helpful to those with little or no knowledge of how to write a strong cover letter. Second, the article surveys what the textbook writers offer as advice about the rhetorical principles that should be employed in composing cover letters. One piece of advice given by almost all of the experts is that writers should try to exude an energetic attitude, yet these same authorities do not delineate just how to display such a posture in the letters themselves. Third, examination of the letters reveals that one way that experts insert verve into cover letters is to use verbals, particularly gerunds, participles, and infinitives. In fact, 92.58% of the sentences in the 13 model letters have some type of verbal in them. The advantage of employing verbals is that while they are used for other parts of speech, they still retain the residue of action in their meaning. Fourth, the article describes the results of a survey to determine the acceptance of such constructions in the minds of two sets of readers: first-year writing students and third-year technical writing students. In both groups, more than 75% of the students preferred a paragraph with verbals in it over a paragraph devoid of verbals. Finally, the article suggests “sentence combining” as a procedure for teaching technical writing students how to combine basic sentences into verbals to garner variety and economy, one of the hallmarks of technical writing.

Reviewed are: Rehearsing New Roles: How College Students Develop as Writers, by Lee Ann Carroll, and Misunderstanding the Assignment: Teenage Students, College Writing, and the Pains of Growth, by Doug Hunt.

In the first-year composition research class, a disproportionate pedagogical focus is placed on the use of the library, rather than on the more difficult and integral problems of how to read, interpret, and analyze information the library offers, how to translate and synthesize this into knowledge, and how to produce a research product worthy of the genre.

This article describes a first-year composition project in which the students assumed the role of historians, visiting the site of a riot and examining archival documents few researchers have ever studied.

The project Andrea Greenbaum attempts in EmancipatoryMovements in Composition is both worthwhile and ambitious. The project is worthwhile because introducing newcomers, particularly graduate students, to the multiple disciplines that have been incorporated into critical pedagogy in the last decade can be daunting, and there is certainly room in the field for text that names and organizes them. The project is ambitious because it attempts to do this in mere one hundred pages, with additional pages devoted to an appended syllabus, notes, and citations. Greenbaum opens her book with personal narrative of the Passover story, drawing from it the lesson that human beings need to experience oppression-even if it is relived only mythically-in order to understand our social responsibility to counter and resist those forces that seek to dominate, repress, and disempower individuals (xi), setting the polemical tone she maintains through the rest of the work. She organizes the book around what she identifies as four key approaches to critical pedagogy for the writing classroom: neosophistic rhetoric, cultural studies, feminist studies, and postcolonial studies, examining each for what they offer writing teachers seeking to enact critical pedagogy in their classrooms. Her first two chapters offer brief historical development of sophistic and cultural studies approaches. Greenbaum begins with the reclamation of sophistic rhetoric, drawing particularly on Susan Jarratt, Thomas Kent, John Poulakos, Sharon Crowley, and handful of others. She proposes that this neosophistic contributes to rhetoric of possibility by drawing attention to the indeterminacy of language, an empowering shift from logos privileged in Western philosophy to mythos that invites disruptive stoof the frontier is reconstrued as collabo ative zone of cultur l and linguistic contact, a historical moment of meeting, clashing, and cooperating ulticultura encounters (66).

Via a Speak Aloud and Write protocol methodology, this study investigated the characteristics of the wording formulation process of a select group of 7 African American students in freshman composition who claimed nonstandard features were active at least 30% to 40% of the time while they composed their papers. Control of rhetorical context was established in terms of tone (formal), purpose (to explain or argue), audience (English instructor), and the time-place context (“simultaneously” spoken-written at one sit-ting). Two Speak Aloud and Write transcripts per participant were analyzed for grammatical and “pronunciation-related” nonstandard feature dynamics in reference to consequences on the page, given the requirements of freshman composition. Findings indicate complex dynamics at work in the form of 7 feature dynamic patterns and 19 variations, with particularly marked activity in relation to a consonant cluster reduction feature and to specific verbal nonconcord features. Also, students who shared feature dynamics pattern characteristics generally shared literacy background characteristics.

After considering complaints of boredom as a significant factor in our classrooms, the second part of this article analyzes the responses of thirty-two first-year writing students to questions about boredom.

Reviews briefly the literature associated with the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s "Students’ Right to Their Own Language" statement. Explores the status of standard English at community colleges in Michigan, as expressed in first–year composition course objectives and descriptions. Considers the history of the standard written English objective at Delta College, a community college in mid–Michigan.

Illustrates how significant numbers of college students are "lost": they are unsituated in academic space. Suggests a rigorous exploration of the changing academic space outside of school offices and off campuses. Presents 4 assignments that provide a conceptual place (a topic) while also prompting students to make meaning out of the people–places that constitute their daily lives.

I begin with an analogy: teaching research-based argumentation and critique in composition studies is like learning how to perform hip-hop music. My analogy's focus on argumentation does not exclude traditional methods of argumentative pedagogy based on models like Stephen Toulmin's complex hierarchies or the Aristotelian triad of deliberative (offering advice), forensic (taking a side in a debate, often a legal or controversial matter), and epideictic (a speech of praise or blame appealing to an already won-over audience) discourse. Instead, I pose the analogy as a first step towards developing alternative or additional ways to engage composition students with the argumentative essay. In choosing hip-hop as a model for the composition essay, I attempt to draw upon a dominant form of contemporary culture familiar to the majority of students I encounter in my classrooms. Does a relationship between hip-hop and com-

Two scenes emerge as I revisit this piece: first, the excitement of the early-eighties Montana State University WAC/WC/FYC collaborations, and, second, the array of WC/WAC configurations that now enrich our campuses. This piece grew out of a "How can we do all that with these paltiy resources?" moment in Bozeman, Montana, a moment that John Bean, John Ramage, and Jack Folsom seized and renamed "an opportunity for conceptual blockbusting." They made us believe, and out of some wonderfully nave questions about writers, texts, instructors, and pedagogies came a revamped FYC program, a WAG program, and a writing center that functioned as the hub for campus writing. This pivotal activity remains for me a model of thoughtful, collaborative risk taking, one that I hope continues to inform the ways we in writing centers work with our present theoretical, political, and pedagogical possibilities.

Using a variety of common forms from first-year composition, this paper examines the purposes of CCCC, transformative experiences at professional conferences, and the elements of my literacy autobiography. I then argue for recognition of the knowledge-building role of writing programs in two-year colleges and for a “write to work” principle, calling for full pay for all who teach required writing courses. Originally, this manuscript was a speech integrated with a PowerPoint® presentation using more than 100 slides (text, photographs, and music), which cannot be fully represented here.