I revisit the so-called Illinois Decision of 1955, which eliminated basic writing from the University of Illinois Rhetoric Program and caused a chain of similar programmatic actions on other campuses nationwide. I contend that reviewing and archiving the Illinois Decision as a locally specific act with multiple actors besides WPA Charles Roberts…

While a thematic approach to teaching is not a novel idea, the specific needs of the developmental writer and a diverse student body can find the continuity of a theme especially beneficial, and the theme of fear has proven particularly successful. The typical developmental composition course at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University includes a…

Dominant perspectives of basic writers' self-sponsored literacies tend to overlook the important roles such activities can play in literate development. Drawn from texts, interviews, and participant-observations collected during a five-year study, this article continues the examination of the relationship between one writer's curricular and…

Many victims of childhood maltreatment experience difficulties in school and with academic performance. This article reviews the evidence on the connection between childhood maltreatment and school performance and presents an evaluation of a unique program established by Children's Services in Lorain County, Ohio. Since 2001, the School Success…

Many students experience difficulty in acquiring basic writing skills and educators need to efficiently address those deficits by implementing an intervention with a high likelihood for success. The current article demonstrates the utility of using a brief experimental analysis (BEA) to identify a letter-formation intervention for a second-grade…

The current economic and political environment has increased the pressure on higher education to deliver education that is cost-effective, standardized, and accessible. Summer bridge programs have traditionally been one of the economical ways to increase the access and retention of non-traditional, first-generation, or at-risk students. Retention…

For more than two decades the California State University (CSU) has been trying unsuccessfully to "reduce the need for remediation" on its campuses, primarily through initiatives aimed at high schools. This article examines a basic writing reform project, San Francisco State's Integrated Reading/Writing Program, in the context of the…

This study examined the relative contributions of measures of Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) cognitive abilities in explaining writing achievement. Drawing from samples that covered the age range of 7 to 18 years, simultaneous multiple regression was used to regress scores from the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III; Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001) that…

This study of 118 students who placed into basic skills sections of College English suggests that students' self-beliefs may be a particularly important predictor of success in weak writers in first-semester courses. Two types of writing self-efficacy scales--a writing tasks/skills scale and an approach-to-writing scale--were developed to follow…

Developmental writing programs often include a small number of students who seem unable to respond to instruction and to acquire sufficient writing skills to move on. Many common writing difficulties reflect ambivalence about expression. A core issue is that expression is related to trust in the anticipated response to what is expressed. An…

This article explores the particular challenges and possibilities of service learning pedagogy for basic writers. Because a number of scholars of service learning and basic writing (Adler-Kassner, Arca, and Kraemer) are concerned primarily with developing underprepared students' academic literacies, I investigated how the students in a service…

The findings of two studies with students doing research with the Internet about topics in science are reported. The focus is on students' methods of text production when using external web-based information and their learning outcomes. In a first exploratory study, the computer-based text production of 45 students was analysed using log files.…

We examined the effects of in-class writing instruction, practice, peer review, and feedback on writing skills of undergraduates enrolled in a general psychology course. We rated writing for grammar, writing style, mechanics, and American Psychological Association referencing style. Significant differences emerged on the 4 writing skill domains (p…

Discusses the implications of considering different writing components (lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical) separately, in an effort to avoid problems of writing evaluation. Proposes that instead of "balancing" these components, teachers should separate them in working to establish curricula for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students. (MM)

Like most composition courses at large state universities, basic writing classes at the University of Minnesota are primarily taught by graduate teaching students. Graduate students and basic writers share a similar position in the university, sitting on the boundaries of the scholarly communities in which they eventually hope to participate. As…