Academic Literacy for Deaf Postsecondary Students through Integrated Reading and Writing Instruction

Based on theoretical findings from the literature on the integration of reading and writing pedagogies used with hearing postsecondary students to advance academic literacy, this article offers a model of instruction for achieving academic literacy in developmental and freshman composition courses composed of deaf students. Academic literacy is viewed as the product of acts of composing in reading and writing which best transpire through reciprocal rather than separate reading and writing activities. Pedagogical practices based on theoretical findings and teacher experience are presented as a model of instruction, exemplified as artifacts in online supplementary materials and juxtaposed with practices used with hearing students. Differences between the practices are seen in accommodations for students who learn visually, the amount of guidance provided and more opportunities for extensive practice.

When Teaching Composition Becomes an Art Through a Futuristic Book-Writing Pedagogy

The author recognizes the importance of Freshman Composition students being equipped with the skills necessary to write effectively for college and beyond. In this chapter, the author shares her story of how a renowned Composition professor forces her to take a self-critical look at what she was doing in her Composition classroom, which compels her to change. For new teachers of Composition or for teachers looking to change, the author shares her newly adopted student-centered-book-writing pedagogy, which puts the focus on the student and creating an environment in which they can write, and write a lot. The author, forced to be honest and change herself, adopted a pedagogy that allows her students a voice and a chance to be honest in their writing through their expression of voice, an asset she recognizes as necessary in this 21st century, especially in our increasingly diversified world of academia. The author shares her student-centered-book-writing-pedagogy.

A World in Crisis

The author, a college composition teacher, recognizes we are living in a time of global crisis, fighting battles on two fronts. On the one hand, we are living in a period that sees us exposed to COVID-19, a pandemic that is threatening lives across the globe with no apparent end in sight. Then we have the social injustice that is racism rearing its vile and ugly head, resulting in the highlighting of the Black Lives Matter movement. Believing that freshman composition teachers are ideally positioned to encourage students to share their views on the crises that we are currently living through, this author uses a student-centered-book-writing pedagogy and asks her students to write a book on what they are burning to tell the world about COVID-19 or the Black Lives Matter movement. In this article, the author shares excerpts of her freshman composition students' writings and briefly discusses her student-centered-book-writing pedagogy.

Making It Work: Developing a Student-Centered Assessment Model for a Large-Scale Information Literacy Program

Information literacy instruction presents a difficult balance between quantity and quality, particularly for large-scale general education courses. This paper discusses the overhaul of the freshman composition instruction program at the University of Maryland Libraries, focusing on the transition from survey assessments to a student-centered and mixedmethods approach using qualitative reflections, rubrics, and the evaluation of student artifacts.

Recognizing the Significant Role of Literature in Teaching College English

Purely based on my experiential knowledge, this article does not engage with the current so-called “academic” scholarship on the topic. It does not present, according to a critic, “empirically-focused and data-driven research” as the majority of traditional writing studies normally do nor does it “approach and theorize writing as a multidimensional practice and object of study” following what is known as a so-called “methodical analysis.” Free from and unpopulated by unnecessarily top-heavy “academic” and “educational” jargons, this new and original experience-based article, that boasts in not being academically derivative and adulterated, argues that College English (or freshman composition) should be as much literature-based as it is currently based on other writing mechanics related to technology and social media, and practiced through what sometimes seems to be only elaborately and long drawn out steps in the writing process with the assessment criteria impractically divided into minor as well as minute differences. The course should be more open and flexible in its syllabus and be taught with a reading of suitable literary materials as a major component and literature-based writing exercises, among, of course, the other interesting topics of contemporary culture.