In this article, the author talks about academic jibberish. Alfie Kohn states that a great deal of academic writing is incomprehensible even to others in the same area of scholarship. Academic Jibberish may score points for the writer but does not help research or practice. The author discusses jibberish as a career strategy that impresses those…

The community college stands as a beacon of democratic, inclusive ideals. Unlike the four year college--where research and advanced degrees are sought--the community college celebrates learning on a personal, heuristic level. And while such unconventional and even seditious practices have been questioned by those who seek to maintain "standards,"…

In this article, the author shares his thoughts on being a "scholarly" teacher. He points out that engaging in scholarly activity, which includes publishing as well as other ways to engage with relevant research, like reviewing and editing for journals, can lead to better teaching. This sort of scholarly commitment allows an instructor to maintain…

In the spring of 2014, John Bragelman accepted an administrative position at a community college in Chicago. He struggled with the decision because it meant leaving the mathematics classroom, a space he calls home. As a critical educator, he had the opportunity to watch his students become critical participators in their communities, readers and…

Writing center workers are agents of change whose practices might reverse the resegregation and new racism occurring in the country. As leaders in the academy who advance a "pedagogy of hope," writing center workers model a practice for bringing about a lasting and abundant multicultural community. Starting with the writing center at the…

For almost three decades of teaching English and writing, the author has learned that despite years of reading and writing instruction and experiences in school, many, if not most, students have misguided, incomplete, or jumbled perceptions of genre, medium, and text. Two dynamics--traditional transmissional approaches to text as well as…

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) represents teachers and researchers of composition and communication in all possible genres, media, contexts, and exigencies; for the purpose of these guidelines, "writers" and "writing" will be all-encompassing, and the term "researcher" will refer to…

This article questions educators' reliance on textbooks through the author's own struggles to come to terms with his ambiguous, sometimes frustrating, relationship with textbooks. Seeing the wide-open white pages on his syllabus and schedule, not filled or structured by a textbook, the author realizes he has an opportunity to reconsider his…

In this article, the author discusses the question of theory as it may pertain to the history of education, with particular attention to the United States. Historians, like everyone else, have little choice regarding the use of theory; to one extent or another they must. The question is how much and to what end. The author aims to consider the…

Transitions in ESL contexts generally refer to those linking words placed between sentences and between paragraphs. Transitions in writing (and in speaking) are helpful; they facilitate coherence and cohesion when used correctly. Understanding them when reading allows us to join the writer in seeing why and how idea B follows idea A. In this…

WeiWei Yang, in her forum piece, raises two main criticisms of the authors' "TQ" article on grammatical complexity: "The study the authors conducted [1] is not capable of answering development-related questions and [2] is mathematically questionable" (Yang, 2013, p. 190). In addition, Yang's article has a third goal that is not explicitly…

In this closing commentary, I first briefly recognize areas that have made the dialogue between the fields of second language (L2) writing and second language acquisition (SLA) difficult in the past. I then offer some comments on the interfaces that are brought to the fore by the contributions gathered in the special issue. The themes explored are…

Recent theoretical and technological developments, including concepts of networking elaborated by Bruno Latour, enable composition studies to take an empiricist turn toward issues of identity. More specifically, these developments help the field more strongly connect the figure of the writing-subject to the experiences of actual writers. In this…

The literature on public writing and community literacy has generally focused on "how" to get students to go public in effective and ethical ways. This article instead addresses a prior concern, the problem of "why" to go public. I argue that students (and Americans generally) are immersed within a cultural ecology of civic disengagement that…

Within composition studies, transfer and rhetorical genre studies have found an especially productive partnership for exploring together whether and in what ways students transfer writing-related knowledge from one context to another. This article continues this synthesis by turning to Anne Freadman's notion of uptake to suggest a more robust…