Journal of Basic Writing

Volume 21 Issue 1, Spring 2002

 

 

Table of Contents
 

 

Journal of Basic Writing

Abstracts, Volume 21 Issue 1, Spring 2002

 

Scott Stevens

“Nowhere to Go: Basic Writing and the Scapegoating of Civic Failure”
 Mandates to reduce remediation rates at California State University campuses have been heralded publicly by administrators as a return to standards.This article considers the consequences of expelling students who do not complete remediation within one year.Detailing the local options facing disenrolled students, the article proposes that the lack of educational choices is analogous to the institutionalized absence of alternatives for basic writing programs.It also analyzes the contradictory rhetoric of official policy, linking the elitist return to standards to the defunding of public education in California during the 1970s.

 

Charlotte Brammer

“Linguistic Cultural Capital and Basic Writers”
Students who generally end up in basic writing classrooms lack the linguistic cultural capital that would allow them to recognize and use the codes necessary for academic success. Whatever words we use to describe and explain or excuse the failures or non-conforming products written by these students, we cannot ignore their problems. While there is some ambiguity as to what constitutes linguistic cultural capital for the academy, Formal Written English (as defined by Wolfram and Schilling-Estes) seems to be an important part of it. In this article, student essays are used to illustrate the linguistic variations that many basic writing students bring to the academy and then offer some insights from second language acquisition and literacy studies that may help writing specialists enhance pedagogical practice to better serve these students.

 

Hugh English and Lydia Nagle

“Ways of Taking Meaning from Texts: Reading in High School and College”
In this piece, a college professor and a high school teacher analyze and interpret responses to detailed questionnaires about reading practices that they administered in high school and college classrooms.The authors name recurring motifs, offering examples and some brief interpretation of six major motifs which emerged as useable analytical categories. Finding fewer differences between high school and college students than they initially assumed, the authors are lead to discuss how students’ language about reading differs more from some of the most valued “ways of taking meaning from texts” in academic life.They conclude with some brief suggestions for future research and with a discussion of several ways that teachers might “teach” reading differently in order to open up a more varied repertoire of reading practices.In addition to suggesting that teachers could do more to name and to elaborate reading practices in precise terms and in specific contexts, the authors consider such pedagogical strategies such as readerly practices of “marking a text”; sequencing reading practices; and teaching the academic intertextual practices of citation much earlier in schooling.

  

Eileen Biser, Linda Rubel, and Rose Marie Toscano

“Be Careful What You Ask For: When Basic Writers Take the Rhetorical Stage”
An implicit part of a writing teacher’s purpose is to help students find a public voice through writing, encouraging them to become rhetors who take public stances and enact change.Although risk is inherent in any public rhetorical act, when basic writers address those in the mainstream, the risks intensify. These students are challenged not only by the rigors of writing within traditional forms, but also by the burden of persuading from “without.”This essay examines the challenges one basic writer, a deaf student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, confronted when she took on the role of public writer. This student’s attempt to enact change is analyzed for the sake of uncovering the pedagogical implications that teachers of basic writing must consider when educating students to write for the public sphere. 
 

Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk and Marcia Babbitt

“The Power of Academic Learning Communities”

Kingsborough Community College’s Intensive ESL Program, a collaborative,interdisciplinary program, was designed to help entering ESL students acquire proficiency in academic English while at the same time succeeding in credit-bearing college courses.Corollary to this primary goal, other important objectives of this program are to improve the retention and graduation rates of ESL students and to facilitate their integration into the social and academic life of the college as a whole.We have found that students who become part of an active, student-centered learning community have a greater chance of succeeding in college than those who do not.This article will explore the nature and structure of learning community programs and what makes them so effective in contributing to the success of entering college students, ESL and non-ESL alike.

 

Marcia Pally, Helen Katznelson, Hadara Perpignan, and Bella Rubin

“What Is Learned in Sustained-Content Writing Classes Along with Writing?”
What changes occur in students of college writing classes as they learn writing skills? While much research has focused on skills development or on the pedagogical and linguistic factors that promote it, this study looks at changes in personal development and relationships with others. An earlier study of Israeli students in English as a Foreign Language writing courses found significant changes in eight areas of personal development, independent of a variety of teaching methods.The present study, moving to English as a Second Language as well as varying the setting, focuses on one method: Sustained Content-Based Instruction. Once again, there were significant, positive changes in personal growth and relationships, with five areas emerging as common to both studies. These areas pertain to the essential goals of higher education, including learning the meaning of learning and developing critical thinking. The study suggests that Sustained Content-Based instruction may contribute significantly to students’ growth. These findings could have vital bearing on the goals and design of academic writing courses, and on the integration of writing courses for non-native speakers into higher education.