Review of Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, Edited by David M. Sheridan and James A. Inman

While writing center directors will certainly want to read Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, a new collection edited by David M. Sheridan and James Inman, this book is equally important for writing program administrators, WAC (writing the curriculum) directors, and other academic professionals charged with composition pedagogy.University Writing Cente

Locating the Center: Exploring the Roles of In-Class Tutors in First Year Composition Classrooms

In “Diplomatic Relations: Peer Tutors in the Writing Classroom,” Teagan Decker contends that “one of the most crucial” things that defines a writing center is “the relationship it has with those who assign the writing in the first place” (17). Decker’s contention, that looking to the other can clarify the self, poses important questions that every writing center, and writing program for that matter, should ask itself: who are we and what do we do? Essentially, we conducted this study to answer these questions. As these things are wont to do, our initial questions led to other, more specific questions: how do/should CI composition faculty view our in-class tutors (ICT)? What expectations do we have for each other? Do the Writing Center and the composition department have an understanding of the authority of the ICT within the classroom space?University Writing Cente

English-language writing instruction in Poland: Adapting to the local EFL context

This paper is intended to foster reflection about the development of a locally-suitable approach to English-language writing instruction in Poland. In order to provide background information to contextualize a subsequent discussion of English-language writing, the paper starts with a brief overview of the history of L2 writing instruction, including an overview of the four most influential approaches to teaching ESL composition in the U.S. from 1945–1990: Controlled Composition, Current-Traditional Rhetoric, the Process Approach, and English for Academic Purposes. This is followed by a discussion of the concept of a „needs analysis,” where it is noted that needs analysis is complex in foreign language contexts such as Poland, where students may not have obvious, immediate needs for writing in English after graduation. The notion of needs analysis is illustrated with an example drawn from the English Institute at the University of Łódź. The needs analysis indicated that some students of English had negative attitudes and/or anxiety towards writing in English, but some had positive attitudes based on previous experiences with creative and expressive writing. Additionally, it was determined that students needed to learn many skills for writing academic papers that they had not learned in secondary school and that require extensive instruction and practice. Based on the needs analysis, it was determined that the purposes of a new writing course for first-year English majors should be to foster and develop positive attitudes toward writing and to support students’ academic work. The assignments and activities for the course are described. Additionally, a description is provided of the possible purposes that Polish students in general might have for writing in English, the goals that instructors might pursue in assigning writing, and the types of writing teachers might assign. Recommendations are provided for responding to student writing

The Balancing Act: Creating New Academic Support in Writing While Honoring The Old

In 2009, our university launched a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program in response to an accreditation core requirement to focus a universitywide initiative on student learning, often referred to as the Quality Enhancement Plan. The campus committee that envisioned and documented this plan, which fortifies students’ writing skills in their future professions and disciplines, requires all undergraduate students to complete five writing-intensive courses, including the two courses in the composition sequence and two program-required, content-area courses in their major prior to graduation.University Writing Cente

First-year composition and transfer: a quantitative study

The present study investigated the effect of writing pedagogy on transfer by examining the effect of pedagogical orientation (WAC/WID or ‘traditional’) on content-area grades. Participants were 1,052 undergraduates from 17 schools throughout the United States. Hypothesis was that the WAC/WID orientation would lead to higher transfer levels as measured by participants’ higher content-area performance. Composition grades were collected in year one; content-area grades where collected in year two. Propensity scores were calculated to stratify the groups and minimize selection bias of writing-class assignment, thereby allowing quasi-causal inference. An ANOVA was performed on the resulting 2-by-5 stratified data. Results indicated that students who completed the WAC/WID composition classes received significantly higher content grades than those in the ‘traditional’ writing classes. The results confirmed the hypothesis

Dialoging A Successful Pedagogy for Embedded Tutors

Over the past three years, Rider University’s Student Success Center Writing Lab has implemented an embedded tutor program for composition courses. Tutors attend class, participate in class discussions, facilitate writing workshops in class, and hold drop-in hours for students (in addition to tutors’ Writing Lab hours). The Embedded Tutor (ET) program, facilitated by Jenny Scudder (who is also the Writing Lab Director), has been successful in helping students complete skills-based courses and connect to academic support services. Initial assessment of the ET program supports the inclusion of the tutor in a skills-based course. While an ET’s training is similar to a tutor who works solely in the Writing Lab, there are key additions that are vital to the tutors’—and the program’s—succesUniversity Writing Cente

The relationship between first and second language composition writing

This paper explores the ways in which the transfer of assumptions from L1 writing can sometimes help the process of writing in L2. In learning a second language writing skill,learners have two primary sources to construct a second language system: knowledge and skills from the first language and input from the second language. The present study was conducted to investigate the relative impact of first language literacy skills on second language writing ability. To carry out the research, sixty EFL students from Tabriz Islamic Azad University were chosen and divided into two groups. After being sure about the groups’ homogeneity, they were given two topics to write about: the first group wrote in English about the topics, the second group was asked to write in Persian about the same topics and then translate their writing into English. The data were analyzed by using a t-test and other subsequent analysis. The results may help the teachers to reevaluate their views about the role of first language in second language teaching and they must consider both inter-lingual transfer and intra-lingual input in their analysis of second language literacy development

Narrative writing, reading and cognitive processes in middle childhood: what are the links?

This study investigated the relationship between measures of reading and writing, and explored whether cognitive measures known to be related to reading ability were also associated with writing performance in middle childhood. Sixty-Four children, aged between 8 years 9 months and 11 years 9 months, took part in a battery of writing, reading, and cognitive ability tasks. Reading fluency emerged as having a strong relationship to written language performance, after controlling for age and verbal reasoning. While children with reading difficulties were weak at spelling accuracy, they were otherwise found to produce written compositions of similar quality to typical readers. Boys produced less written text than girls, but did not demonstrate weaker written language abilities. Collectively the results demonstrate that writing skills can be separated into transcription and composition processes, and highlight the need for further research on the relationship between reading fluency and children’s writing

Changing Hearts and Minds

A composition colleague, one with whom I regularly talk about teaching and writing, sends a student to the writing center with these words written across the top of the page: ”Your ideas are acceptable but your writing is marginal.” (Welch 51) Recently, a writing center friend told about coming up behind a group of fellow faculty members gathered around a bulletin board. From a distance she could see her name on the recently posted list of nominations for the outstanding teacher award. Next to her name, someone had drawn several large question marks. As she drew nearer to the group, she heard her colleagues question her eligibility. Even though she had recently earned tenure and regularly taught courses for graduate and undergraduate students, the fact that she also worked with students in the writing center placed her outside the circle of those regarded as teachers eligible for awards. (Grimm 524)University Writing Cente

Suppressing visual feedback in written composition: Effects on processing demands and coordination of the writing processes

The goal of this experiment was to investigate the role of visual feedback during written composition. Effects of suppression of visual feedback were analysed both on processing demands and on on-line coordination of low-level execution processes and of high-level conceptual and linguistic processes. Writers composed a text and copied it either with or without visual feedback. Processing demands of the writing processes were evaluated with reaction times to secondary auditory probes that were analysed according to whether participants were handwriting (in a composing and a copying tasks) or engaged in high level processes (when pausing in a composing task). Suppression of visual feedback increased reaction times interference (secondary reaction time minus baseline reaction time) during handwriting in the copying task and not during pauses in the composing task. This suggests that suppression of visual feedback affected processing demands of only execution processes and not those of high-level conceptual and linguistic processes. This is confirmed by analysis of quality of the texts produced by participants that were little, if any, affected by the suppression of visual feedback. Results also indicate that the increase in processing demands of execution related to suppression of visual feedback affected on-line coordination of the writing processes. Indeed, when visual feedback was suppressed, reaction time interferences associated to handwriting were not reliable different in the copying task and in the composing task but were significantly different in the composition task, RT interference associated to handwriting being lower in the copying task than in the composition task. When visual feedback was suppressed, writers activated step-by-step execution processes and high-level writing processes, whereas they concurrently activated these writing processes when composing with visual feedback