Journal of Basic Writing

 

Volume 22 Issue 1, Spring 2003

Table of Contents

 

Journal of Basic Writing

 

Abstracts for volume 22 Issue 1, Spring 2003

 

Sallyanne H. Fitzgerald

 “Serving Basic Writers:  One Community College’s Mission Statements”

 Various factors combined to move a California community College towards creating a mission statement for all their English courses and within that context, one for their basic writing courses. The context for the creation of the mission statement includes a commitment to basic writing as a legal mandate, but its final version is unique to the particular context of this college.

 

Loretta S. Gray and Paula Heuser

“Nonacademic Professionals’ Perception of Usage Errors”

To test whether nonacademic professionals’ attitudes towards usage errors have changed in twenty years, we conducted a small-scale survey similar to one conducted by Maxine Hairston in 1981. The results differ from those of the earlier study, indicating a trend for respondents to find errors less bothersome than the respondents did twenty years ago. However, the results support the claim made by Hairston and other researchers that many of the errors found most bothersome are dialect features. We conclude this report by discussing the implications as well as the limitations of our findings.

 

James Kenkel and Robert Yates

“A Developmental Perspective on the Relationship between Grammar and Text”

This article presents a developmental perspective on text construction, understood as managing information within and across sentence boundaries.  The article claims that the systematicity in non-standard constructions in basic writers’ texts reflects student awareness of three obligatory areas of information management in texts:  topic management, reference tracking, and maintenance of given-new information chains.  A taxonomy is presented that describes these obligations, shows how developing writers innovate to meet them, and compares these constructions to those of mature writers.  The categories in the taxonomy are not traditional but instead describe textual functions relating to information management.  Because these non-standard constructions are principled, explicit instruction is necessary to help students perceive that such constructions are not appropriate for academic writing.

 

Tom Reynolds and Patty Fillipi

“Refocus through Involvement:  (Re)Writing the Curricular Documents of the University of Minnesota-General College Basic Writing Program”

This essay recounts the process of writing guiding curricular documents for the University of Minnesota – General College’s basic writing program.  The first part of the essay describes how this was a community-building process that involved a wide group of instructors and others connected to the program.  The second part includes the opening statement, as well as the goals and principles of the program, from the document.

 

Karen S. Uehling

“Creating a Statement of Guidelines and Goals for Boise State University’s Basic Writing Course: Content and Development”

This essay describes a statement of guidelines and goals developed for Boise State University’s (BSU) basic writing course. The essay includes an account of local conditions at BSU, a copy of the statement itself with commentary on its seven competencies, a description of how the document was developed through a collaborative process, and the effects of that development.

 

Laura Gray-Rosendale, Loyola K. Bird, Judith F. Bullock

“Rethinking the Basic Writing Frontier: Native American Students’ Challenge to Our Histories”

The authors contend that Native American students have too often been marginalized in Basic Writing research. Asking why this may have been the case, they call attention to the discipline’s unwitting allegiance to images of “territory,” “mapping,” and “Western frontierism.” They also note that since much early research on Basic Writing has emanated from East Coast institutions, Basic Writers of the Southwestern United States have perhaps understandably received far too little attention. Contending that this lack of research may potentially result in a further “othering” of Native students, they note that we must work against 1) a somewhat narrow, even racist conception of who Basic Writers might be, 2) the continued invisibility of Native American students as well as our collective lack of knowledge about how the cultural functions of tribal life impact writing skills, and 3) the unspoken mythology in our scholarship that the Basic Writer is largely an urban phenomenon—the student who can be heroically rescued from violence, crime, and poverty rather than the student who risks losing tribal and cultural affiliations by coming from the reservation and assimilating to the university environment. In response, each of the authors speaks of her own experiences working with Native Basic Writing students from Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, making assertions about what can be learned from these experiences. The article concludes with tentative suggestions for future research concerning Native American students and Basic Writing.