ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Using Reflection to Promote Students' Writing Process Awareness
Author: Amicucci, Ann N.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Instruction,Writing Processes,Reflective Teaching,Writing Assignments,Writing Improvement,Writing (Composition),Reflection,College Freshmen,English Instruction,College English,Higher Education

In this article, I demonstrate how the use of reflective writing assignments in first-year composition facilitated students' understanding of their own writing process strategies. I first discuss the theoretical roots from which reflective practice among student writers grows. Next, I employ my students' voices to demonstrate that reflection allowed these students to become aware of and to make decisions about their own writing processes. Finally, I offer tips for teachers who wish to bring reflective writing into their classrooms.
Writing Assessment: Emotions, Feelings, and Teachers
Author: Caswell, Nicole
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Environment,Writing Tests,Teaching Methods,Writing Evaluation,Writing Instruction,Writing (Composition),Writing Teachers,Scholarship,College English,English Instruction,Higher Education,Portfolio Assessment

For my purposes, I approach writing assessment as more than just grading or responding to a set of student papers within a classroom context. Instead, I look at writing assessment as a complex act that links to teaching and learning, that affects the educational environment and students, that acknowledges the consequences of the assessment, and that reflects what the assessor values and how to get to that value. Beginning with an overview of emotion and feelings and moving to an overview of writing assessment as an emotional practice, this article shifts to discuss how emotions and feelings relate to writing assessment. Then, I focus on ways scholars could use emotions and feelings to further theorize writing assessment work--mostly to understand how emotions shape decisions. Through this theorizing, I hope to move away from the &quot;what&quot; teachers do during the act of assessing student writing, to the &quot;why&quot;. My aim is to provide a vehicle for getting at the emotional aspects of why. (Contains 3 tables.)
Oral Interpretation of Literature: Readers' Theater
Author: Kennedy, Joan
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Cognitive Processes,Experiential Learning,Teaching Methods,Creativity,Theaters,Classification,Oral Interpretation,Reading,Writing Instruction,Writing (Composition),College English,English Instruction,Higher Education,Theater Arts

The pedagogical principle of experiential learning embodied in the oral interpretation of literature through Readers' Theater provides an avenue to accomplish a seemingly daunting task. Students' participation in reading, interpreting, discussing, writing, assessing, and performing their own creative responses to a literary work promotes a learning activity that leaves an indelible mark on their educational process as they explore complex and abstract levels of thinking--in real time, no less. The activity entices students out of the virtual world of technology to explore a tangible sphere of performance. The thought processes that the activity demands cover the gamut of Bloom's taxonomy of skills, which defines levels of intellectual behavior important to learning. The synthesis and evaluation elements at the top of the taxonomy demand creative behavior. Anderson and Krathwohl's revision of the taxonomy--remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating--also places creativity at the top of the hierarchy of skills.
Shooting Straight about Paragraphs: They Are Not What We Say They Are
Author: DeLotto, Jeffrey
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Instruction,Literary Criticism,Scholarship,Paragraph Composition,Rhetoric,Writing (Composition),Definitions,English Instruction,College English,Higher Education,Sentences,Prose

I propose that we think about what a paragraph is by considering its "function," what it does in a piece of writing, whether in a popular novel, a newspaper article, an e-mail, a business report, or a lofty piece of literary criticism. We might think about a paragraph as a "rhetorical dwelling."
Thomas Merton Goes to Class: Pedagogy on the Borders of the Short Story
Author: Callaghan, Michael J.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Poets,Literary Genres,Higher Education,Instruction,Writing (Composition),Authors,Writing Instruction

Our thesis is more finely tuned to Thomas Merton (1915-68) the writer, more specifically, the poet/artist/writer and thinker. These are the components of the "Merton" voice. Merton senses the quality of innocence as the "sine qua non" of the poet or writer's vocation: "His art depends on an ingrained innocence which he would lose in business, in politics, or in too organized a form of academic life" ("Raids" 156). Simply put: Merton would lose his voice in some work; he would find a way to use his prophetic voice in others. Clearly then, knowing well the ways of the world, its newness and its sins as they touched him personally, Merton claims the monastery as his megaphone, as providing and sustaining that innocence he so explicitly requires as necessary for clear thinking and good writing, clear communication. However, "Conjectures" marks a turn, a change in Merton's voice in this neatly thought-through process. (Contains 1 note.)
Inviting "Millennials" to Be Voices for Social Justice in Their Creative Writings
Author: Berzsenyi, Christyne
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Social Justice,Student Attitudes,Mass Media,Creative Writing,Age Groups,Generational Differences,Influence of Technology,Workshops,English Instruction,College English,Higher Education,Writing Instruction,Writing (Composition)

The historical transition from the 20th Century to the 21st has sparked a boom in identifying names and classifying characteristics of the young American adults and teens coming of age at that time. Though there is much discrepancy about the starting birth year and the life span parameters of "Generation Y", generalizing descriptions abound in an effort to capture their influential "historical location"--context, opportunities, and experiences that members of this group share, particularly in their formative years. Defining qualities that are largely agreed upon among researchers include an inclination for "digital media, their confidence and optimism, and their orientation towards collaboration" (Donnison). Most pertinent here are Donnison's ideas about what could be a truly transformational pedagogy: empowering students to be reflective, critical, and ethical community activists and advocates of social justice. Donnison presents educators with the task of looking beyond students' generational attributes to encourage greater critical, productive, and creative application of their technological proficiency. The aim is to achieve a genuine empowerment and self-determination that is absent from the writings of Millennial authors. The challenges are to disrupt students' absorption in emotionally-vacant, dehumanized violent narratives, permeating their mass media culture, and invite them to creatively re-vision their "real" worlds.
Music in the First-Year Writing Classroom
Author: Strovas, Scott
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Music,Singing,College English,Freshman Composition,Writing Assignments,Writing Instruction,Listening Skills,Writing Skills,Student Motivation,Teaching Methods

"Primary research counts, but we don't teach it." This was the sentiment, if these were not the actual words, of Lynee Lewis Gaillet in her critique of the traditional composition curriculum at the spring 2011 annual meeting of the College English Association in St. Petersburg. Gaillet proposes an alternative to furthering students' sometimes unnecessary reliance on secondary research. In her own course, she sends students not into library stacks or electronic databases to begin their writing projects, but rather to special collections and archives. Her approach teaches students sincerity, originality, and independence in their writing. By situating her course within primary source investigation, Gaillet aspires to train "scholars who have something original, interesting, and pointed to add to academic conversations." This article briefly outlines a music-based writing curriculum and presents the first assignment of the course. The author also demonstrates how he teaches the skill of "active listening" early in the semester. He analyzes two performances of a single song to show how different musical settings can influence the interpretation of a song's lyrics and meaning. Although the curriculum presented is non-traditional, it satisfies the objectives of a traditional college introductory writing course, namely to apply critical thinking and sound logic in arguing a position, and does so using a topic that most students find interesting and enjoyable. (Contains 7 notes.)
Promoting Research in an Undergraduate Shakespeare Course
Author: Fike, Matthew A.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: College English,Student Research,Student Projects,Research Papers (Students),Undergraduate Students,College Faculty

This essay concerns the methods I use in my 300-level Shakespeare course at Winthrop University to foster research worthy of frequent conference presentation and occasional publication. In short, my approach is to provide suitable topics and to require multiple stages in the composition and research process. The results, I have discovered, are sometimes phenomenal and clearly superior to the work students did when I first taught the course at Winthrop. I begin, therefore, by contrasting the first version of my Shakespeare course with my more recent efforts.
The Big Question: Curriculum Reform, Assessment and the Survival of the English Major
Author: Luangphinith, Seri I.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Curriculum Development,Educational Change,Majors (Students),Rhetoric,Writing (Composition),College Faculty,Higher Education,College English,English Instruction

This essay has been one of the hardest professionally to write as it documents some very personal and professional soul-searching that involved myself, many of my colleagues, and the students in our department over the span of four years. When I first presented our initial reform attempts at the 2010 CEA in San Antonio, much of this paper was simply about our new major which emerged as a result of assessing our failing program and negotiating the politics of reforming the English Major. We were proud to have rolled out a new version of the English major that seemed in better standing with the national trend towards student-centered learning. But since then, a number of local and national developments have lent urgency for further reflection and even more drastic changes to the "way we do business." This essay will lay bare the emotionally challenging and often convoluted process by which one small program in a rural community in the Hawaiian Islands is continually having to re-invent itself at a critical time when there seems to be a cadre of setbacks and pressures, both internal and external, that will inevitably impact the future viability of literary studies as we know it.
Deceptively Simple: Writing's Answer to the Mobius Strip
Author: Kraver, Jeraldine R.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Literacy,College English,Writing Instruction,English Instruction,Higher Education,Writing (Composition),Writing Teachers,Content Area Writing,Writing Across the Curriculum,Writing Assignments

Integrating writing instruction into the content-area classroom poses a variety of challenges for instructors at all levels. Beyond the need to embrace a new skill set involving writing instruction, there is the resistance of students (and faculty) who find a disconnection between content-area and literacy learning. Developing a method for engaging reticent (sometimes even antagonistic) students in discipline-specific writing is simpler than one might imagine if we privilege less the literacy product and more the literacy learner--if we, in short, begin from the student's perspective. In teaching writing, I do just that with what I reductively call the "Stick Student." I think of the Stick Student as writing's answer to the Mobius Strip, a tool deceptive in its elegant simplicity.
Stop Me If You've Heard This: Dialectical Negations and Program Development Discourses
Author: Brown, Danika M.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Theory Practice Relationship,Program Development,Critical Theory,Academic Discourse,Rhetoric,College Faculty,Higher Education,Writing (Composition),Writing Instruction

This article narrates the experience of rhetoric and composition faculty developing a graduate program at a growing state university in south Texas. The narrative emphasizes the contextual constraints that required &quot;institutional critique&quot; and rhetorical negotiations. The second part of the article argues for a critical stance on how we talk about program development more generally. I use critical theory to engage the contradictions inherent in institutional work and in our own discourses, in order to argue that while we navigate institutional constraints, we must remain &quot;dialectically ambivalent&quot; about the larger implications of the work we do. (Contains 1 note.)
Redefining the Writing Center with Ecocomposition
Author: Devet, Bonnie D.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Educational Environment,Figurative Language,Writing (Composition),Laboratories,Writing Instruction,College English,Higher Education,College Faculty,College Students

Writing centers are like organisms, performing in and living in an educational environment: evolving, altering, adapting. Given this organic quality, a key way to understand how writing centers handle the teaching of writing is to examine them through the lens of ecocomposition. Focusing on the organic nature of writing, ecocompositionists borrow the concept of ecology as a central metaphor, seeing writers and their environments as dynamically intertwined. Student writers, then, are part of a web of connections. Woven into the theory of ecocomposition are perceptions and ideas that explain the work of writing centers today. This paper applies to centers each of ecocompostion's pivotal concepts--interrelationship, place, and voice--in order to provide new insight into the nature of centers as they help students and to show that centers are not colonialists, they are not outsiders, and they are very capable of adding to Composition Studies.
The Summer Institute for Writing Center Directors and Professionals: A Narrative Bibliography
Author: Babcock, Rebecca
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Doctoral Dissertations,Journal Articles,Laboratories,Communities of Practice,Writing (Composition),Mentors,Scholarship,Professional Development,Workshops,Tutors,College English,Writing Instruction,Higher Education

Since 2003, the International Writing Centers Association has held a Summer Institute for Writing Center Directors and Professionals. Encouragement of scholarship, writing, and publication are important aspects of the institute. We have compiled a bibliography of scholarly works emerging from the first seven institutes. These works include web publications, peer-reviewed journal articles, conference presentations, dissertations, and one book. The entry for each work is followed by a narrative by the author or authors describing the influence of the Summer Institute, how they conceived and developed the work, and how they met their collaborators. Through these narratives we see that the IWCA Summer Institute offers a model for seeding an active community of practice that brings people together from diverse institutions, giving them new perspectives on their work through mentoring, collaboration, and the development of professional friendships. For many, this also results in development of a professional and scholarly identity more deeply connected to writing centers and their attendant fields. We also speculate on the meaning of identified publication patterns and make suggestions for future endeavors. (Contains 6 notes.)
The &quot;Kairotic&quot; Moment: Pragmatic Revision of Basic Writing Instruction at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
Author: Webb-Sunderhaus, Sara
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Basic Writing,Universities,Higher Education,Writing Instruction,Administrators,School Holding Power,Graduation Rate,Learner Engagement

This profile articulates the authors' response to a statewide mandate to eliminate &quot;remedial&quot; writing instruction at four-year public universities, including their own. The profile describes the difficulties the authors faced in responding to this initiative, given the context of their regional comprehensive university and its specific challenges with retention and student success, and discusses their revision of the university's writing program. The changes the authors made--eliminating a non-credit basic writing course and creating a credit-bearing basic writing course; instituting guided self-placement; and developing a flexible, WPA-outcomes based writing curriculum--have led to improved satisfaction, success, and retention rates among basic writers at their institution. (Contains 9 notes.)
Rekindling Longwood University's Rhetoric and Professional Writing Concentration and Minor, 2007-2010
Author: Welch, Kristen Dayle
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Instruction,Feedback (Response),Rhetoric,Technical Writing,Higher Education,Advertising,College English,English Instruction,Writing Skills,Workshops

The challenges of redesigning and reviving Longwood University's Rhetoric and Professional Writing program involved skills in collaboration, negotiation, and advertisement. While unexpected obstacles arose, taking an honest look at the existing program design and working to maintain the focus on rhetoric helped to circumvent failure. Finally, student involvement, student feedback, and the use of online resources became key elements in bringing a weak program to life. (Contains 4 notes.)
Balancing Act: Student Valuation and Cultural Studies Composition Textbooks
Author: Rendleman, Eliot
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing (Composition),Textbooks,Scholarship,Rhetoric,Critical Thinking,Outcomes of Education

Composition scholars have contributed many theoretical analyses that WPAs and teachers might apply to first-year composition textbooks in order to make informed decisions about book adoption and implementation. As they offer critiques of the ideological effects of FYC books, many of these studies call composition textbooks "tools" without exploring the implications of textbook "qua" tool. The following essay addresses this unexamined area by developing a theory of "valuation," a linguistic and rhetorical process of assigning worth to students and textbook instructional apparatuses as student-readers might engage with the texts. An analysis of valuation by WPAs and teachers has the potential to foster the empowerment of students, the instruction of critical thinking and writing, the autonomy of new teachers, and the coherence of local writing programs.
Com"position": Ecocomposition, Aristotle, and the First-Year Writing Course
Author: Moe, Peter Wayne
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Discourse Communities,Illiteracy,Figurative Language,Rhetoric,Freshman Composition,Courts,Writing Instruction,Higher Education,Literacy,Academic Discourse,Writing (Composition)

I see a parallel between the illiteracy I witnessed while working in the court system and the challenges facing first-year writers at the university. In both cases, problems arise due to unfamiliarity with the discourse community into which one enters. In response, because much of the language governing composition and rhetoric is rife with place and journey metaphors (note the metaphor I just used of entering "into" a community, suggesting it is a place), I posit that ecocomposition theory may provide a fresh lens through which to view classical rhetoric. After providing a read of Aristotle's "Rhetoric" focusing on issues of place and ecology, I offer how such theory, which I playfully term "EcoStotle," might be applicable to a first-year composition course. The benefit to this approach to classical rhetoric and ecocomposition is that it is grounded in argumentation, thereby promoting literacy for our students, whatever discourse community they enter. (Contains 9 notes.)
Authorial Intent in the Composition Classroom
Author: Barnard, Ian
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Writing Instruction,Critical Theory,Textbooks,Writing (Composition),Epistemology,Feedback (Response),College Faculty,Higher Education

This article examines the disjunction between, on the one hand, critical theory's critique of the privileging of authorial intent in protocols of textual interpretation, and, on the other hand, continued obeisance to authorial intent in composition textbooks and pedagogy. By unpacking the implications of this disjunction, I show the limitations that the reification of authorial intent creates for composition pedagogy and student writing. I conclude by suggesting how bracketing authorial intent in the composition classroom might enhance composition pedagogy and student writing, while also challenging fundamental epistemologies of the field. (Contains 15 notes.)
Utilizing Strategic Assessment to Support FYC Curricular Revision at Murray State University
Author: Walker, Paul
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Curriculum Design,Freshman Composition,Critical Reading,Higher Education,College English,English Instruction,Writing (Composition),Writing Instruction,College Faculty,Writing Ability,Expertise,Academic Discourse,Comparative Analysis

The first-year composition requirement at Murray State University was revised in 2008 from a 6-credit-hour, two-semester sequence to a 4-credit-hour, one-semester course. The revision overtly emphasizes critical reading, writing, and inquiry, while addressing the realities of the institution's resources for teaching first-year composition. This profile describes the reasons behind the revision and the process of its implementation, contextualizing the change within the background of the university and burgeoning writing program. The methods and results of an assessment of the revised course in comparison to the previous course sequence are outlined in depth, along with how the assessment guides the instruction, administration, and future assessment of writing at the university. (Contains 4 notes and 1 table.)
The Technology Coach: Implementing Instructional Technology in Kean University's ESL Program
Author: Snyder, Sharon C.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Adjunct Faculty,Educational Technology,Courseware,English (Second Language),Second Language Learning,Second Language Instruction,Teaching Methods,Literacy,Profiles,College Faculty,Teacher Attitudes,Models,Part Time Faculty

Faculty involved in implementing a grant to incorporate technology into post-secondary ESL teaching and learning describe the coaching model they used to do this. The authors explain how they drew from principles of literacy coaching to develop and implement their model; describe their experiences in working with coachees; discuss technology plans, including instructional software and lessons; and reflect on the successes and challenges experienced by the faculty and students. The profile includes applications for faculty professional development in higher education, with implications that are especially meaningful for programs predominantly staffed by part-time and adjunct faculty. (Contains 1 note and 1 figure.)