Recognizing the Métis of Learners with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities in College Composition

This paper was originally presented as part of a panel on métis approaches to college composition at the 2019 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Pittsburgh, PA. It explores the affordances of métis for understanding the adaptive literacy practices of college students with diagnoses of I/DD. Based on findings from a grounded investigation, the author identifies ways composition instructors can utilize métis as a lens for perceiving how students with I/DD reveal "double and divergent" (Dolmage) approaches to classroom literacy.

Book Review: MLA Guide to Undergraduate Research in Literature

Though the Modern Language Association (MLA) is most known for their style guides, the MLA Guide to Undergraduate Research in Literature is part of a small collection of pedagogical treatises the MLA offers for literature and composition instructors, offering entry points to various foundations of most English coursework.

Multimodal Information Literacy in Higher Education

This chapter addresses technology in education, multimodal texts, and information literacy in a STEM research-focused university setting. Students produce multimodal content in first year composition classes, but composition instructors lack the skills required to teach students multimedia technology. Librarians respond to the needs of the faculty and students they support. Library instruction takes place within the composition class (course-integrated or “one-shot” instruction) or in a multimedia classroom at the library. The librarians bring technical skills as well as a grounding in information literacy, and their instruction increases students' written, sonic, visual and data literacy. As a result, students become more savvy content consumers as well as creators.

Teaching Argumentation in Higher Education

This study examines teaching methodologies used by composition instructors in a private university in Kenya where composition is taught to all undergraduate students. The study adopted a qualitative approach in the form of narrative inquiry to explore challenging topics in teaching and learning argumentation, methodological interventions, instructors' use of technology, and to suggest strategies for addressing problem areas. Purposive sampling was adopted, resulting in narratives from three experienced course instructors. Learner-centred approaches were prevalent, especially in addressing challenging topics such as formulation of claims, supporting arguments with evidence, recognising fallacies and appeals, and documentation of sources of information.

Addressing FYC Instructors' Lack of Technological Expertise in Implementing Multimodal Assignments

The chapter argues that teacher training should focus on providing guidelines to instructors on how to use technology and on the skills necessary to implement multimodal assignments. It uses UTEP's first-year writing program as a case study to investigate the multimodal assignments as part of the syllabus given to first-year students. It presents an analysis of interviews with current first-year composition instructors regarding their experience teaching multimodal projects and examines current first-year composition courses and teacher training practices at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) to gauge the effective implementation of multimodal assignments. Finally, it offers recommendations to address the obstacles and lack of expertise of instructors in employing multimodality in the classroom.

“Show Me What You Are Saying”

Visual literacy is a requirement in many college composition programs; yet explicit methods for teaching it are often undefined. This chapter provides a pedagogical resource for composition instructors who seek foundational approaches for teaching visual literacy in the first-year and sophomore writing classroom. The pedagogy includes classroom exercises and assignments which emphasize teaching visual literacy using a combination of mass media (advertisements, magazines, Photojournalism) and popular media (social media, YouTube, music videos, video games, Websites, and screen-based technologies). Such media signify the visual rhetorical environments with which college students engage regularly, but less often consider critically. The author demonstrates a variety of approaches for teaching students to become engaged participants in their own visual meaning making. Sample assignments include a personal narrative photo essay, a visual argument essay, a multimodal research project, and a student-designed Website.

“Nigerian Students in the American ESL Freshman Writing Class: A Site of Resistance and Accommodation”

Two groups of undergraduate students, one composed of 15 Nigerian students studying at a public university in the US and a similar one composed of US-born students from the same university composed short essay drafts in response to the same writing prompt. These essays were read by the researchers and a group of student assistants to assess the differences between the two groups. The Nigerian students wrote longer essays with longer sentences and were more likely to use subordination than were their US counterparts. Both groups then participated in focus groups to discuss their English language education, university experiences, and attitudes toward college writing. The Nigerian students viewed the development of English writing skills as much more important than did their US counterparts but expressed frustration that their instructors in the US tended to dismiss what they saw as more eloquent writing, privileging instead a brief and concise style. The article discusses the results of the study as well as the frustration expressed by the Nigerian students and argues in support of Lee’s (2014) assertion that universities seek to “internationalize” faculty and student recruitment as well as provide better training for first-year composition instructors to equip them with a more sophisticated understanding of the varieties of the English language. The authors suggest that doing so will lead to better outcomes and increased retention for this group of international students.

International Student Academic Support: Academic Support given to Chinese International Students from Teachers

With the large flux of international students attending American universities in order to achieve a higher level of education, it is imperative that these institutions provide sufficient resources to enable them to succeed. The vast majority of these students have had no experience with the western academic system, and they need an academic cultural ambassador to guide them in this setting. The foremost resource in helping these non-native students to navigate academia is the teacher. This study takes a qualitative approach of four case studies of freshman composition instructors of international students in order to develop the perspective of a first line of defense. This research finds many commonalities among the perspectives of these teachers, particularly in how empathic these instructors are towards their non-native students, and it reveals many forms of accommodations that they make in order to help their students succeed. It discovers that from the perspective of these teachers, this particular group of students will only use the resources that they are encouraged to utilize by each individual instructor (even when there are other known services available to them). Furthermore this study calls for more research into the available resources that international students use, more training for teachers who are going to instruct this very diverse population, and it advocates for the development of further resources for the future.

The Collision of Two Lexicons: Librarians, Composition Instructors and the Vocabulary of Source Evaluation

Objective – The study has two aims. The first is to identify words and phrases from information literacy and rhetoric and composition that students used to justify the comparability of two sources. The second is to interpret the effectiveness of students’ application of these evaluative vocabularies and explore the implications for librarians and first-year composition instructors’ collaborations. Methods – A librarian and a first-year composition instructor taught a class on source evaluation using the language of information literacy, composition, and rhetorical analysis (i.e., classical, Aristotelian, rhetorical appeals). Students applied the information learned from the instruction session to help them locate and select two sources of comparable genre and rigor for the purpose of an essay assignment. The authors assessed this writing assignment for students’ evaluative diction to identify how they could improve their understanding of each other’s discourse. Results – The authors’ analysis of the student writing sample exposes struggles in how students understand, apply, and integrate the jargon of information literacy and rhetoric and composition. Assessment shows that students chose the language of rhetoric and composition rather than the language of information literacy, they selected the broadest and/or vaguest terms to evaluate their sources, and they applied circular reasoning when justifying their choices. When introduced to analogous concepts or terms between the two discourses, students cherry-picked the terms that allowed for the easiest, albeit, least-meaningful evaluations. Conclusion – The authors found that their unfamiliarity with each other’s discourse revealed itself in both the class and the student writing. They discovered that these miscommunications affected students’ language use in their written source evaluations. In fact, the authors conclude that this oversight in addressing the subtle differences between the two vocabularies was detrimental to student learning. To improve communication and students’ source evaluation, the authors consider developing a common vocabulary for more consistency between the two lexicons.