Questions whether the benefits of separating basic writers into homogeneous classes continue to outweigh the disadvantages. Proposes that teachers gather data about success rates of current basic writing courses (using "mainstreamed" volunteer basic writers) and revise first-year composition courses to ensure they will respond to a wider range of…

Notes that writing instructors want to resist authoritarian classroom arrangements because they want students to be active in their education and in their lives. Describes efforts to develop a "new model of authority, a new space," using peer group leaders, advanced standing students who facilitated writing groups in a first-year basic writing…

Explains how faculty at Quinnipiac College reconceptualized developmental English and designed a new program that provides additional instructional time within the regular freshman English course. Finds that developmental students are better motivated and achieve growth in reading and writing commensurate with students who had a prior semester of…

Discusses the experiences in working with the basic writing curriculum presented in "Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts: Theory and Methods for a Reading and Writing Course." Discusses reasons for selecting "Facts" as a model for the basic writing program and the rationale for making modifications that renders it more applicable…

The most serious approaches to teaching basic writing in the last 20 years have been framed by the competing metaphors of growth and metaphors of initiation. The growth model pulled attention away from the forms of academic discourse and toward what students could and could not do as writers, and encouraged teachers to respect and work with the…

Unless questions about student performance and student retention can be answered and unless educators are proactive in finding and publicizing such information, basic writing programs cannot determine if what they are doing is working. Hard data, especially from underrepresented groups, is needed to support these programs. At Arizona State…

Focuses on how various literacy narratives portray passages between language worlds. Considers how such passages are relevant to a writing pedagogy. Stresses the relationship between such literacy passages is useful in basic writing contexts. Analyzes two essays written by one student who portrays such a literacy passage. (HB)

Argues that the "failure" of traditional writing instruction is actually its success, protecting the elite and maintaining inequality, which requires mass failure and illiteracy to preserve the unequal hierarchies now in place. Argues that bogus testing should be eliminated, basic writing mainstreamed into an expanded and untracked form of…

Notes that the debate about required composition courses like Basic Writing has taken a new urgency, given recent decisions and inclinations to eliminate such courses at four-year colleges in City University of New York and elsewhere. Revisits that debate (some of which occurred in this same journal in the 1990s) and argues for movement beyond a…

A study investigated whether there were significant differences between male and female basic writers, examining the writing processes and products of 19 male and female college freshmen basic writers in a university and 33 male and female freshmen basic writers in a junior college. Results indicated that both groups of students, male and female…

This book provides students with the kind of extra help they will need to meet the demands of their first-year writing course as well as their other courses. Through its highly visual, student-centered approach, the book teaches basic skills and engages students immediately in the thinking-writing process, guiding them through the writing…

Describes a successful interdepartmental program at a major research-oriented university that melds freshman writing with freshman biology. Extensive, repeated feedback on individual student writing projects from two instructors appears to work synergistically so that student learning is significantly enhanced. Particulars derived from five years…

Describes a method of teaching basic writing to native and nonnative students that emphasizes a regression to the most basic elements of writing. Considers what writing content, rhetorical techniques, grammar exercises, and proofreading methods are most effective for the two groups. (TB)

Describes two different experiments at De Anza College which illustrate coordinated teaching, a concept in which a group of faculty volunteer to work together for better instruction within the context of an existing program, maintaining their usual approaches to teaching a course, but allowing for collegial effort, some common work, and…

The purpose of this study is to determine whether college juniors and seniors view their freshman-writing instruction as beneficial and to assess its impact on the writing they do within their specific disciplines. Although a great deal of theory surrounds the teaching of freshman writing, very little research has been done to assess its…