A. Beaufort, ,College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction (2007) Utah State University Press,Logan, Utah 242 pp., ISBN 13: 978-0-87421-659-2 (original) (raw)
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Genre, discourse and imagined communities: The learning gains of academic writing learners
The purpose of this paper is to consider how first year, tertiary-level English as an Additional Language (EAL) academic writing programs for adult learners can use emerging understandings about the importance of discourse communities and imagined communities to guide and inform participation in an Academic Writing (AW) program. It asks what learning gains students have from an AW program using discourse-specific generic tasks to engage learners desiring a range of future destinations. More specifically, this paper considers links between academic genres and students’ desired, future imagined communities (Anderson 1983; Kanno & Norton 2003). It does this by incorporating the literacy practices characteristic of those communities into the drafting/redrafting process. The study maintains that a focussed genre approach can impact learners’ imaginings of themselves as members of future discourse communities through reproducing texts similar to the authentic artefacts of those discourse communities (Flowerdew 2000; Hyland 2003, 2005). This paper outlines a situated pedagogical approach, where students report on their improvement across three drafts and assess their learning reflectively. This approach is compatible with research into the value of genre as a way of preparing learners for future discourse communities. A multicultural group of 41 learners enrolled in the degree-level course, Academic Writing, at a tertiary institution in New Zealand took part in a study reflecting on this approach to building awareness of one’s own writing. Focus group interviews with a researcher at the first and final stages of the program, transcribed and analysed using textual analysis methods (Sandelowski, 1995) provided qualitative data. This core data was triangulated with written student reflections on their progress. Key benefits identified include the facts that the chance to produce texts perceived as useful to the students’ immediate futures reflected the overall value of the AW program, and that the process of reproducing them engaged the learners largely because of their focus on their future, imagined communities.
A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to the Contemporary United States (4th ed.), edited by James J. Murphy and Christopher Thais, 2020
In this substantial revision of the 20th-century and 21st centuries chapter for the 4th edition of A Short History of Writing Instruction, we explore recent developments in the field of composition and rhetoric and update the assessments of previous editions. In particular, we consider long-standing debates over the purpose of writing instruction: what should students write about and to what ends? Some have advocated for writing about social issues to prepare students for citizenship in a democracy; others for drawing on personal themes to promote students’ growth as individuals; others for writing about literary texts as a means of enculturation; others for writing that would serve students’ vocational and professional ends. While these views are not completely incompatible, they have vied for dominance at various times, shaping curricular decisions that have affected millions of students. As James A. Berlin recognized, pedagogies are never ideologically neutral, and the history of writing instruction is thus also a history of competing visions of who we as a society imagine ourselves to be.
A New Beginning in College Writing
Journal of Education, 2008
Pedagogies for teaching high school English and college composition often divide between so-called student-centered approaches and their opposite, variously labeled teacher-centered, traditionalist, or product-based. Where students collaborate in the discovery of knowledge, learning is said to be student-centered. Where teachers impose their knowledge on students, as in the "banking model of education" described by Paulo Freire, the teacher-centered approach holds sway. 1 Implied in this distinction is good will on the part of those who take their students' side, and something less than good will on the part of those who impose their authority on them. Because teachers work for students, every instructor should take his or her students' side; every teacher should ask which assignments in which order will foster the best results; every educator should make the classroom a lively place where students learn to think for themselves. The claim that one approach to teaching is more student-centered than another therefore carries a polemical charge. It sets an educational philosophy that favors the advancement of students against another that holds them back. But what if a misunderstanding arose as to what "student-centered" means, and, as a result, a pedagogy passing for progressive actually inhibited progress? What if this misunderstanding unfolded, like the internally consistent logic of a bad dream, and became policy, ruling high school English and college composition programs across America, gaining dominance over the
Developing Writers in Higher Education
2019
For undergraduates following any course of study, it is essential to develop the ability to write effectively. Yet the processes by which students become more capable and ready to meet the challenges of writing for employers, the wider public, and their own purposes remain largely invisible. Developing Writers in Higher Education shows how learning to write for various purposes in multiple disciplines leads college students to new levels of competence. This volume draws on an in-depth study of the writing and experiences of 169 University of Michigan undergraduates, using statistical analysis of 322 surveys, qualitative analysis of 131 interviews, use of corpus linguistics on 94 electronic portfolios and 2,406 pieces of student writing, and case studies of individual students to trace the multiple paths taken by student writers. Topics include student writers’ interaction with feedback; perceptions of genre; the role of disciplinary writing; generality and certainty in student writi...
Student Needs and Strong Composition: The Dialectics of Writing Program Reform
College Composition and Communication, 1997
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A fter forty years of teaching university writing courses, with a half-dozen years as the director of my campus writing program, several terms of office chairing or serving on college and university committees that oversee campus and university writing requirements and credit policies, and more than a quar ter of a century directing a Writing Project site, working with writing teachers at every level of education (and in the meantime publishing essays and textbooks on the teaching of writing), I might reasonably be expected to have some definitive answers to the question of what is college writing. Unfortunately, my years of experience and research have mainly shown me why it is so difficult to answer that question, why the question itself may not be meaningful, and why college writing remains such a problem atic domain for college and university policy makers who would like some authoritative basis for making decisions about such related questions as what counts as college writing as distinct from what constitutes precollege or remedial writing, what dis tinguishes college writing from high school writing, and what students engaged in or completing college writing courses should be expected to know or be able to do.
Teaching Academic Writing I – Theory, Practice, and Research
Course Description This course presents an overview of select theories and approaches to the teaching of writing in college settings (e.g., genre theory, process writing, tutoring, and peer review) with special emphasis on how these can inform students' practice as academic writing tutors, facilitators, and instructors in CIIS' Center for Writing and Scholarship. Students will learn how to assess writing, establish and manage professional relationships with student writers, and design and assess interventions to improve academic literacy at all levels (listening, speaking, reading, writing, critical thinking). Key topics will include: The psychological, developmental, and affective dimensions of academic writing; the socialization of scholars to communities-ofpractice and disciplinary discourses; contrastive (cross-cultural) rhetoric; addressing the needs of diverse populations (such as nonnative writers); and effective response and feedback strategies. The final part of the course will involve students' inquiry into their own identities as writers and scholars, as students reflect on how teaching and tutoring shapes their relationship to the art of writing, reading, and doing scholarship.
Writers in Transition from High School to College: A Collective Case Study
This qualitative case study investigated student perceptions of their writing experiences during the transition from high school to college using interviews with the three participants at intervals during their last semester of high school and first semester of college. All three participants were former students of the researcher and all three attended the same upstate New York high school, going on to attend colleges in New York and two other states. Data were analyzed using the conceptual framework of three principle needs of developing writerstime, response, and choicedescribed by Atwell , , and Murray (1986). The three participants' experiences were unique and specific, showing varying reactions to some of the same class experiences in high school, and/or similar reactions to highly varied instruction in their respective colleges. Findings emphasized the important role of teachers who assign and/or teach writing and confirmed the importance of response and choice in developing and encouraging participants' skill with revision of written work. New issues with equivalence and efficacy of dual enrollment courses in college writing emerged from the unfolding of these three writers' transition stories. The findings suggest that researchers and practitioners should give more attention to the importance of response (by instructor and by peers) to student writing; the training of new teachers in response to writing; and the role played by student choice of writing topics. The study also supported more systematic communication between high school and college writing teachers and teacher educators in order to help public schools design a senior year course in writing that would be a developmentally appropriate and effective bridge between high school and college vi writing, rather than encouraging college-bound writers to take a dual-credit college writing course.
Teaching Writing in the Social Sciences: A Comparison and Critique of Three Models
Across the Disciplines, 2010
This article describes and evaluates three approaches to teaching writing in the social sciences, particularly psychology: an English department-based course for all social science majors; a team-teaching model that embeds writing in core courses in psychology; and a stand-alone course dedicated to teaching writing in psychology, often taken concurrently with other core courses. Using Beaufort's (2007) five knowledge domains of expert writers as a lens through which we view each approach, we describe each model and appraise the success of each in providing what Ding (2008) and Collins, Brown, and Holum (1991) call a cognitive apprenticeship, i.e., an educational experience that makes the thinking and practices of a discipline visible and gives students tools and experiences to help them become insiders in a discourse community. Each of these approaches to teaching social science writing can provide some elements of a good cognitive apprenticeship, but the drawbacks to each make the goal of providing such an apprenticeship elusive because of the constant challenge of developing competent faculty, sustaining faculty commitment, and guaranteeing adequate department resources to support these efforts. Notes [1] We thank Matt Haslam, Beth Hedengren, and Danette Paul for their helpful readings of early drafts. We also thank Elaine Maimon, Nick Carbone, and Michael Pemberton for their insightful advice on how to revise the manuscript.