scholarly journals Helping Students Gain A Better Understanding of Writing

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Ulmer
Keyword(s):  
Writing Skills ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Writing Studies ◽  
College Writing ◽  
First Year ◽  
College Level ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
The Third ◽  
Two Year College ◽  
Course Sequence

<p>The primary purpose of this study is to develop a curriculum for first-year writing that can be taught at the two-year college to help students transfer writing skills to courses taken afterwards. The second chapter aims to define what transfer is and identify a few different approaches to teach for transfer, which led to the discovery of the Writing about Writing pedagogy as developed by Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle. This research was influenced heavily by Anne Beaufort’s <em>College Writing and Beyond </em>as well. Following this, the third chapter examines the nature of the two-year college that makes it uniquely difficult to teach for longer term transfer of writing skills. Finally, chapter four features a review of the Writing about Writing pedagogy and textbook, which leads to development of a course sequence for use at a two-year college. This study supports the implementation of an introduction to writing studies course sequence at the two-year college level to aid in the transfer of writing skills. </p>

scholarly journals Authenticity and the Rhetoric of “Selling” on Social Media: A Role-writing Assignment Set

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica McCaughey
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Role Playing ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Writing Studies ◽  
Professional Writing ◽  
First Year ◽  
Transfer Of Knowledge ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
Writing Assignment

Rooted in a hybrid, themed, first-year writing course titled Please Like Us: Selling with Social Media and drawing on the disciplines of business, marketing, and writing studies, the two sequenced assignments explored here rely upon role-playing and “role-writing” for specific outside professional audiences. A semester-long blog project serves as a jumping off point for a researched, multi-disciplinary social media marketing proposal, providing students with the chance to examine social media in both rhetorical and professional terms. The accompanying article explores these assignments in the context of “authenticity” and with an eye toward not only principles of writing pedagogy, but also the transfer of knowledge and process between academic and professional writing.

scholarly journals What Can Students Tell Us about “Skill Building” in Canadian Writing Studies?

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 314-322
Author(s):  
Christopher Eaton
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Research ◽  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Writing Studies ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Teachers ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Writing Class ◽  
The One ◽  
Skill Building

This paper comes from narrative research that I did with ten former students who reflected on their experiences with writing both in a first-year writing class and beyond. As the participants and I worked together, it became clear that there was the tension between the way they described process and skill building in writing pedagogy. They emphasized that process and scaffolding were integral to their learning, but they equally emphasized the one-off, skills-oriented components of our work. Many conversations in Canadian writing studies have focused on dismantling or resisting the skills narrative, but the tension in the participants’ responses prompted me to think about this differently. The paper explores the tension between skills and process to argue that perhaps skill building has its place in our contexts, and that we as writing teachers and scholars must think about it differently in order to articulate the value of the work that we do. If we can use the skills-oriented components of our courses to open spaces to discuss the less quantifiable elements of our work that often get overlooked (i.e., scaffolding), then we may put ourselves in a better position to advocate for increased resources and funding.

The Fourth Element: Integrating Transfer Talk Into Teaching For Transfer

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Lund
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Learning ◽  
Writing Studies ◽  
First Year ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
Opportunities To Learn ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Concept Transfer ◽  
Writing Transfer ◽  
Writing Knowledge

In Writing Studies, one of the most debated topics is whether or not we can teach students to engage in writing transfer. In order to help students, we must engage them in learning about transfer as often as possible, especially in their first-year writing (FYW) courses, with teaching- for-transfer-specific pedagogies, like the widely known Teaching for Transfer (TFT) (Yancey et al. 2014). However, there are some elements that have yet to be fully developed in their research, like the role of collaborative learning. With this thesis, I argue for the integration of a new concept, Transfer Talk (TT) (Nowacek et al. 2019), into the TFT curriculum as the fourth element. Scholars who use TT strategies suggest that students should collaborate with their peers to consider their prior writing knowledge and build a shared understanding of what writing knowledge looks like. By integrating TT into the TFT curriculum as the fourth element, we will provide students with more opportunities to learn about transfer in the hopes that they will be more successful when transferring writing knowledge in future composing situations, both in and out of school.

scholarly journals Reflecting on Assessment: Strategies and Tools for Measuring the Impact of a Canadian WAC Program

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 107-132
Author(s):  
Michael Kaler ◽  
Tyler Evans-Tokaryk
Keyword(s):  
Writing Pedagogy ◽  
Writing Development ◽  
Writing Studies ◽  
Program Assessment ◽  
Development Project ◽  
First Year ◽  
Writing Program ◽  
Assessment Strategies ◽  
The Impact

This paper provides an overview of the process and tools we have developed for assessing the impact of writing development projects carried out in a wide variety of courses at our university. It begins with an overview of writing studies in Canada to provide context for our approach to writing instruction and writing program assessment. It then offers a case study of a specific writing development project in a large first-year humanities course, a detailed explanation of the methods we used to measure the efficacy of that project, and an exposition of the way in which this assessment was used to drive reflection on the project and enhancement of it. The paper concludes with summary of the lessons we have learned regarding writing program assessment that navigates between creating a standardized process and responding to the unique needs of multiple projects, as well as a discussion of the benefits of such assessment for writing pedagogy research.

scholarly journals My life as a writing professor and research librarian: The ideas that bridge the gap

2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
George Koors
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Information Literacy ◽  
First Year ◽  
College Level ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
American University ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Time To Learn ◽  
Over Time

When I got into libraries, I looked forward to more one-on-one time with students. I had been a teacher at the college level for some time, and when I got a job as reference coordinator at American University, I saw an opportunity to have both large-group and one-on-one time with students.I staff a public-facing research desk, am embedded in first-year writing courses as their librarian, and teach first-year writing as a professor in the literature department. It is a wonderful balance, but it has taken time to learn how these identities interact. Over time, they have merged. This essay looks at that, and at some of the language I have used to understand that bridge between these roles. I hope to lightly tie this language to aspects of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.

Second-Language-Writing Skills

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-160
Author(s):  
Sarah DeCapua
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Writing Students ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Self Assessments

In this quantitative inquiry, instead of gathering data to answer a research question, the author developed a research question based on the data she gathered. As the author explored the answers the Chinese international students in her first-year writing seminar course provided on a second language background skills assessment, she became curious about what their answers revealed about their identities. Data collected consisted of 165 English skills assessments completed by her second language writing students over four semesters, from Fall 2018 to Spring 2020. The skills assessed were speaking, listening, reading, writing, and grammar. Partial results indicated that the students assessed their speaking, listening, reading, and grammar skills as average; they assessed their writing skills as poor. The author explored the possible reasons behind the students' self-assessments and how the students' identities were expressed through their answers.

scholarly journals The Research Prospectus in First-Year Writing (and Beyond)

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol L Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
College Level ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Major Research ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
High School Writing ◽  
Writing Research ◽  
Research Questions

This paper discusses a first-year writing research prospectus prompt designed to support first-year undergraduate students transitioning from high school writing—which often focuses on summary and synthesis—to college-level writing. In college, “research papers” often require knowledge production: developing research questions that address gaps in existing scholarship. My prospectus prompt offers a scaffolded structure for writers embarking on such college-level projects, and it also offers a tool to facilitate writing transfer, with the goal of enabling students to develop major research projects independently in other classes. It does so in two ways. First, it labels the components of major research projects (e.g. objects of study, research questions about those objects of study, and the theoretical frameworks used to analyze objects of study). Second, it provides a process for approaching research projects, including showing students how to develop research questions and how to move beyond summarizing and synthesizing other scholars.

Reinventing the university: EUI as writing initiative

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-88
Author(s):  
Catherine Prendergast
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Writing Studies ◽  
First Year ◽  
Research Writing ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
The Core ◽  
Writing Course ◽  
The University

This article reports on the multi-year collaboration between the Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI) at the University of Illinois and the University's Rhetoric Program, a required first-year writing course. I argue that this collaboration was successful in large part because the goals of writing programmes in American higher education settings – teaching the process of research, inviting students to see themselves as producers of knowledge and fostering collaboration between peers – are highly consonant with principles of EUI. Indeed, my own history with EUI reflects the parallel commitment of Writing Studies and the methods and goals of EUI. I suggest that EUI can serve as a powerful model for universities if they seek to place undergraduate student research writing at the core of their mission.

Composition, English, and the University

PMLA ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Ferguson Carr
Keyword(s):  
College Education ◽  
Professional Life ◽  
First Year ◽  
English Department ◽  
College Level ◽  
First Year Writing ◽  
American University ◽  
College English ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University

The role composition plays in the contemporary American university, particularly in relation to the english department, has changed from the days when composition was not an expertise but a duty. Initiated on the college level in the 1870s, as John Brereton has argued, at a time much like our own, when the American college was “in danger of becoming irrelevant to a rapidly changing nation” (3), composition consolidated the many kinds of writing done in the courses (and in the extracurriculum) of universities into a required academic subject, positioned at the threshold of college education. It was charged with preparing students for the rigors of college study and for citizenship and professional life. For many generations of college English teachers, composition was an expected part of the job: everyone, whatever their specialty, taught first-year writing.

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