Preview this article: Literature in the Basic Writing Course: A Bibliographic Survey, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/49/5/collegeenglish11470-1.gif

Two studies investigated the editing strategies used by college basic writing (BW) students as they went about correcting sentence-level errors in controlled editing tasks. One study involved simple word processing, and a second involved an interactive editor that supplemented the word-processing program, giving students feedback on their correction attempts and helping them focus on the errors. In both studies BW students showed two clearly different editing strategies, a consulting strategy in which grammatical rules were consulted and an intuiting strategy in which the sound of the text was assessed for “goodness” in a rather naturalistic way. Students consistently used their intuiting strategies more effectively; however, errors requiring consulting strategies showed a larger improvement after intervention by the interactive editor. Cognitive implications of the editing strategies are discussed in terms of the requisite knowledge involved in successful application of each strategy.

Preview this article: Conflict and Power in the Reader-Responses of Adult Basic Writers, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/49/3/collegeenglish11488-1.gif

Preview this article: What Happens When Basic Writers Come to College?, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/37/3/collegecompositionandcommunication11229-1.gif

Composition studies began to take its contemporary form only in the early 1960s. There is no unbroken theoretical tradition from classical rhetoric to the present, although scholars in composition studies have attempted to reinvent the work of earlier theorists as foundations for their own work.' Perhaps because of this discontinuity in the tradition and because composition studies has been constituted as a field so recently, there is also no dominant theory governing composition studies today. Some theorists seek the universal laws of composition, or at least a universally applicable method for investigating such laws, while others seek to understand discourse in its historical context. Not coincidentally, the period in which composition studies has developed has also been a period of theoretical upheaval in English studies, the parent discipline. Composition theorists have drawn on the contending literary theories of this period as much as on the rhetorical tradition in shaping their own debates. One reason for this influence of literary theory on composition theory is that almost every active scholar in composition studies today holds a degree in English literature, not in composition and rhetoric. This situation is changing as degree programs in composition proliferate, but the majority of faculty who design and teach in these degree programs were themselves trained as literary critics. Much important work in composition studies shows the influence of the scholars' literary training. For example, Mina Shaughnessy has subjected the essays of unsuccessful student writers to a sort of new-critical close-reading. She is thus able to show that the students' tortured sentence structures are actually attempts to make meaning, albeit meaning in an unfamiliar world, the academic. Elaine Maimon has analyzed as literary genres the various kinds of academic discourse, thus uncovering their knowledge-generating conventions. Ann Berthoff has generalized a theory of the poetic imagination, derived primarily from the work of I. A. Richards, to explain all attempts at making meaning in language. Composition specialists have not only used literary training in their own work but also urged on their students a kind of literary close-reading ability as a means to develop the students' own writing. Pedagogy such as that of Peter Elbow and Ken Macrorie assumes that the same critical eye that allows the

Preview this article: Degree of Difficulty in Basic Writing Courses: Insights from the Oral Proficiency Interview Testing Program, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/47/6/collegeenglish13261-1.gif

Preview this article: Computers and Basic Writers, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/36/3/collegecompositionandcommunication11758-1.gif

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.

In the basic writing program at The University of Akron, we have been using peer tutors as facilitators of collaborative learning in the classroom for two years. One day a week, each tutor has a group of six to eight students who are usually working on rough drafts. Recently, when I

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.

Preview this article: Remedial Writing Courses: A Critique and a Proposal, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/45/2/collegeenglish13646-1.gif

Preview this article: Training Teachers of Basic Writing in the Writing Laboratory, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/33/4/collegecompositionandcommunication15832-1.gif

Dear Kyle, Pat and Larry, I think our basic writing curriculum works! After ten weeks of discussing reading and writing about the generative theme of marriage, students have actually begun to use their newly won knowledge and skills for their own purposes. Last night we were reviewing for the final-a test designed, administered and graded by the College English Department-when Louise, one of my students, broke in to say that no test could measure what she had learned over the semester! Another student nodded in agreement. She said, learned about marriage, men, and women. We've learned to write. We've learned about ourselves. Perfect Freirian synthesis! As if that weren't reward enough for one night, Eurena suggested that the class-all womensummarize and publish their knowledge. Then everyone jumped in. Our review of dashes and semicolons was forgotten as the class designed its first publication. It's hard to believe that in September these women had difficulty thinking in terms of a paragraph-now they want a manifesto! I'll keep you posted. Love, Nan

Preface 1. THE CONTEXTS OF TEACHING PERSPECTIVES Richard Fulkerson: Four Philosophies of Composition James Berlin: Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class Edward P.J. Corbett: Rhetoric, the Enabling Discipline Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner: The Problematic of Experience: Redefining Critical Work in Ethnography and Pedagogy TEACHERS Peter Elbow: Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process Donald M. Murray: The Listening Eye: Reflections on the Writing Conference Lad Tobin: Reading Students, Reading Ourselves: Revising the Teacher's Role in the Writing Class Dan Morgan: Ethical Issues Raised by Students' Personal Writing STUDENTS Mina P. Shaughnessy: Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing Vivian Zamel: Strangers in Academia: The Experiences of Faculty and ESL Students Across the Curriculum Todd Taylor: The Persistence of Difference in Networked Classrooms: Non-Negotiable Difference and the African American Student Body LOCATIONS Hephzibah Roskelly: The Risky Business of Group Work Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe: The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class Muriel Harris: Talking in the Middle: Why Writers Need Writing Tutors APPROACHES Min-Zhan Lu: Redefining the Legacy of Mina Shaughnessy: A Critique of the Politics of Linguistic Innocence Mariolina Salvatori: Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition Gary Tate: A Place for Literature in Freshman Composition Carolyn Matalene: Experience as Evidence: Teaching Students to Write Honestly and Knowledgeably about Public Issues 2. THE TEACHING OF WRITING ASSIGNING Mike Rose: Writing Courses: A Critique and a Proposal David Peck, Elizabeth Hoffman, and Mike Rose: A Comment and Response on Remedial Writing Courses Richard L. Larson: The Research Paper in the Writing Course: A Non-Form of Writing Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor: Teaching Argument: A Theory of Types Catherine E. Lamb: Beyond Argument in Feminist Composition RESPONDING AND ASSESSING Brooke K. Horvath: The Components of Written Response: A Practical Synthesis of Current Views David Bartholomae: The Study of Error Jerry Farber: Learning How to Teach: A Progress Report COMPOSING AND REVISING Nancy Sommers: Between the Drafts James A. Reither: Writing and Knowing: Toward Redefining the Writing Process David Bleich: Collaboration and the Pedagogy of Disclosure AUDIENCES Douglas B. Park: The Meanings of Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford: Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy Peter Elbow: Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience STYLES Robert J. Connors: Static Abstractions and Composition Winston Weathers: Teaching Style: A Possible Anatomy Elizabeth D. Rankin: Revitalizing Style: Toward a New Theory and Pedagogy Richard Ohmann: Use Definite, Specific, Concrete Language

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.

Preview this article: Controlled Composition for Basic Writers, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/32/3/collegecompositionandcommunication15900-1.gif

Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth—Century England. Nancy F. Partner. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977. Pp. 289. $18.00. Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Literature; An Exploration. Edited by Don M. Burks. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1978. Pp. xiii + 115. $7.50. Basic Writing: Essays for Teachers, Researchers, Administrators. L. N. Kasden and D. R. Hoeber, editors. Urbana, Illinois: NCTE Publication, 1980. Pp. 185. Justice, Law, and Argument: Essays on Moral and Legal Reasoning. Chaim Perelman. Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980. Pp. xiii & 181. Introduction by Harold J. Berman. Homer and the Oral Tradition. G. S. Kirk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Pp. viii & 223.

In 1976, when was struggling with a bewildering explosion of figures gathered in relation to a study of basic writers, wrote to Mina Shaughnessy. Help, said, I am awash in a sea of uncontrolled variables, error counts, and tests for statistical significance. Now that I've started counting things, can't seem to stop. As always, Mina somehow found time to write back, and she gave me some eminently sensible advice: Cut the list of countable items in half, she said, and then begin to narrow from there. But while you count and categorize, don't forget to listen to what the students are telling you. Her concern was later reiterated in the essay, Basic Writing:

Preview this article: The Content of Basic Writers' Essays, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/31/3/collegecompositionandcommunication15940-1.gif

Preview this article: A Note on Specifying the Mode and Aim of Written Discourse for Basic Writing Students, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/14/2/researchintheteachingofenglish15809-1.gif

Preview this article: Writing Away from Fear: Mina Shaughnessy and the Uses of Authority, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/41/8/collegeenglish13883-1.gif

Preview this article: Oral and Written Discourse of Basic Writers: Similarities and Differences, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/13/2/researchintheteachingofenglish17849-1.gif

Preview this article: Mina Pendo Shaughnessy, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/30/1/collegecompositionandcommunication16253-1.gif

Now if there is anyone in this piece of writing who desires something dearly, it is surely the student writer, who is reaching for poetry and, for all his clumsiness, nearly succeeding. In the years since I first read this paper, the term has become for me and my friends synonymous with a certain kind of student error: the strained metaphor, odd juxtaposition, or honest misconception which inadvertently reveals a fresh perspective on the matter at hand. I will try to demonstrate that the true tasty fruit possesses its own inner logic, that it is a sure sign of a capacity for creative and structured thought, and that this potential is worth cultivating. Mina Shaughnessy begins her ground-breaking book, Errors and Expectations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) by observing that the freshmen in her basic writing class made mistakes in grammar and syntax because no one [had seen] the intelligence of their mistakes or thought to harness that intelligence in the service of learning (p. 5). What I propose is that Shaughnessy's perception applies equally to the errors in tone and diction made by students when writing about literature. In general, tasty fruits are borne in greatest profusion by the papers of students who are bright but not adept at standard English or the standard methods of literary criticism. It was an open-enrollment student who produced the following observation on religion in America:

Preview this article: The Connection of Writing to Reading: A Gloss on the Gospel of Mina Shaughnessy, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/40/3/collegeenglish16102-1.gif

Preview this article: A Program for Basic Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/40/3/collegeenglish16110-1.gif

Preview this article: Measuring Syntactic Growth: Errors and Expectations in Sentence-Combining Practice with College Freshmen, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/12/3/researchintheteachingofenglish17902-1.gif

Preview this article: Texts and Teaching: Basic Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/39/8/collegeenglish16145-1.gif

Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. Mina P. Shaughnessy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Pp. 311. Rhetoric and Composition: A Sourcebook for Teachers. Richard L. Graves. Rochelle Park, N.J.: Hayden Book Company, Inc., 1976. Ethics in Human Communication. Richard L. Johannesen. Columbus, Ohio: Chas. E. Merrill Pub. Co., 1975.

Preview this article: What We Know-and Don't Know-About Remedial Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/29/1/collegecompositionandcommunication16339-1.gif

THE WRITING WORKSHOP of the CUNY community college where I worked is housed in a windowless, reconverted science lab walled with concrete blocks. It has been half dark since the Administration removed lights during the budget crunch. Every day we saw confused students, though there have been fewer since the death of Open Admissions. In the back of the room, horizontally filed, were the worksheets. Since originally appearing in this form, they have been collected into a hot-selling grammar, especially designed for community college students. book represents the principles and practices upon which the workshop was originally founded. Paradoxically, it also lays out the strangulating theory of knowledge upon which remedial writing instruction is often based, a theory which denies students the things they really need to know. hip grammars are seemingly unlike the traditional ones. old grammar books abound with subliminal ideological content presented as mere exercise. Sixth Edition of the Prentice-Hall standard, Handbook for Writers, asks students to locate the clause to be diagrammed above the base line in the sentences: This is a mixed economy toward which both communism and capitalism are moving, and The continent of Africa is now divided into nations, but tribal divisions are more faithfully observed. hip grammars have little of this upfront politicking. Instead, they pretend to survey the nitty gritty details of daily urban life. sentences students get to play with deal a lot with partying, interpersonal relationships, and the neighborhood. Wider topics and wider transferences from the particulars of daily life to the general characteristics of the system we live in are discouraged. And the discouragement masquerades as aid and help to the struggling remedial students. Chapter One of Grass Roots by Sandberg and Fawcett promises help in Getting Started. authors then write that step one in getting started is limiting:

Business and industry spends a great deal of time and money in standardizing office and shop methods, all to promote efficient operations. Yet they give little—if any—thought to one pervasive operation that wastes an unfathomable amount of time and money: written communication. They allow almost any writing approach, as long as something is written. Why? … because they believe that to know how to write an English essay is to know how to communicate on the job. Nothing is further from the truth. Writing in business and industry requires a particular philosophy as well as special writing mechanics that, when combined and standardized, promote efficient communication. This article advances such a philosophy—and some basic writing mechanics—for that standardization.

Preview this article: Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/27/3/collegecompositionandcommunication16563-1.gif

Of graduating seniors, businessmen assume basic writing skills. Graduates of business administration curriculums are assumed to have, additionally, not only basic language competence but also some expertise in report writing. Experience, both in the classroom and with personnel in formal organizations, bears out that neither students nor practitioners have a real grasp of organization, rhetorical techniques, and reader devices. Consumerism in Communication suggests what is being done in the College of Business Administration's undergraduate communications course to prepare students to meet realistically, confidently, and competently the expectations of their employers. Based on both research and experience, the course design pragmatically aims at reducing frustration on the part of employers who are dismayed at the verbal deficiencies of college graduates.