Rethinking First Year English as First Year Writing Across the Curriculum

Abstract

David Russell famously used the metaphor of ball handling in sports activities to demonstrate how composition courses oversimplify ideals of writing. To try to teach students to improve their writing by taking a GWSI [General Writing Skills Instruction] course, Russell wrote, something like trying to teach people to improve their ping-pong, jacks, volleyball, basketball, field hockey, and so on by attending a course in general ball using (58). As Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle have also argued, thinking about writing as a general or basic skill often results in forms of writing-instruction that reifies features of writing, such as syntax, mechanics, and process. Downs and Wardle argue, It is often assumed that ‘skills’ or moves such as taking a position, building arguments, developing paragraphs, and writing clear and forceful sentences are ‘general writing skills’ that transfer across all situations (579). The reality, according to Downs and Wardle, is that even if some elements of writing are shared across disciplines, these elements vary radically across disciplines, and therefore can only meaningfully be taught within a discipline (579).