Journal of Basic Writing

Volume 21 Issue 2, Fall 2002

Stanford Goto, “Basic Writing and Policy Reform: Why We Keep Talking Past Each Other”
Judith Hebb, “Mixed Forms of Academic Discourse: A Continuum of Language Possibility”
Shari Stenberg, “Learning to Change: The Development of a (Basic) Writer and Her Teacher”
Samuel Cohen, “Tinkering Toward WAC Utopia”
Jessica Williams, “Undergraduate Second Language Writers in the Writing Center”
David Miller, “Developmental Writing: Trust, Challenge, and Critical Thinking”
George Otte, “High Schools as Crucibles of College Prep: What More Do We Need to Know?”

Journal of Basic Writing

Abstracts, Volume 21 Issue 2, Fall 2002

Stanford Goto

“Basic Writing and Policy Reform: Why We Keep Talking Past Each Other”

Attacks on basic writing and liberal admissions in the late 1990s highlight a perennial gap between faculty and policy advocates. Each group approaches the “remediation debate” in very different ways.This article explores some of these differences by analyzing spatial/directional metaphors used by individuals in each professional domain to describe notions of access and standards.Advocates in the policy-oriented discourse tend to use vertical metaphors, emphasizing linear mobility and hierarchically organized standards, favoring certain types of quantitative methodologies.Educators engaged in the pedagogical discourse tend to use horizontal metaphors, emphasizing the non-linear negotiation of contextually situated standards, privileging qualitative judgments. But there are ways proponents of basic writing might bridge the methodological gap and introduce horizontal perspectives to the vertical discourse of institutional policy.

Judith Hebb

“Mixed Forms of Academic Discourse: A Continuum of Language Possibility”

“Academic Discourse,” “Hybrid Discourse”—these are contested terms.Recently, scholars in composition studies have begun to question and problematize the issues of writing in academic discourse communities.While scholars are now publishing in alternative discourses, including “mixed” or “hybrid” forms, college students are only beginning to find acceptable spaces for their alternative writing styles in academia.This is especially true for inexperienced writers and those for whom English is a second language. If hybrid discourse were viewed along a continuum of linguistic and cultural possibility instead of according to its proximity to the dichotomies of academic/norm and nonacademic/”other,” the term “hybrid discourse” and the writing it describes could become both useful and valued in the academy.

Shari Stenberg

“Learning to Change: The Development of a (Basic) Writer and Her Teacher”

The piece examines issues of student and teacher development and identity, considering how our metaphors for basic writers often constrain possibilities for teacher learning. So long as we position ourselves as problem-solvers (with the basic writers standing in for the problem), we foreclose potential for changing ourselves in relation to students. By examining my interactions with an African-American, working-class, basic writer, I argue for the importance of attending to the identities students construct for themselves (Gray-Rosendale) and of enacting a two-way dynamic between teacher and student, whereby students and teachers together negotiate their identities, needs, and developmental goals.

Samuel Cohen

“Tinkering Toward WAC Utopia”

Writing Across the Curriculum is growing at a time of perceived crisis in education and perceived strengthening of the forces of globalization. Like composition generally and Basic Writing more specifically, the work WAC does can be influenced for good and ill by these contexts. Faced with a perceived crisis, as Basic Writing was at its birth, WAC could emphasize form in order to prepare students to take their places in the global economy. Instead, WAC should tinker with its existing techniques to promote critical thinking in even the most basic exercises. In doing so, it can help students not only to join the global economy but also to develop into thinkers who might evaluate the world and even consider ways in which they could improve it. In following the lessons of Basic Writing, WAC can offer all involved in the teaching of writing models for more inclusive pedagogies.

David Miller

“Developmental Writing: Trust, Challenge, and Critical Thinking”

This article explores the idea that basic writing students, when positioned in a classroom setting where safety and trust are paramount, will be willing to take risks that, when successful, will lead them into a more positive relationship with their own writing abilities.Success in writing leads to a more open-minded approach wherein they are willing to accept the challenges brought on by the struggle to become critical thinkers capable of functioning effectively in the academy.

George Otte

“High Schools as Crucibles of College Prep: What More Do We Need to Know?”

A departing co-editor's thoughts turn to one thing in particular: the increasing pressure exerted on high schools to ensure adequate preparation for college (and thereby eliminate the need for remediation), pressure exerted above all in the form of state-mandated tests. Hopes of coping with such pressure rest on understanding whence it comes, but also on collaborative ventures between colleges and high schools that are true partnerships, transcending a fixation on state mandates and quick fixes.