Composition Classroom Research Articles

International Teaching Assistants in the Composition Classroom: From World Englishes to Translingualism and Beyond

ABSTRACTAlthough a significant body of research exists on Nonnative English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs) of composition, research on International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) of composition is rather limited. Few studies explore the training of composition ITAs or their experiences and professional identities, leaving open the question of how ITAs are influenced by discourses that frame native speakers as ideal English teachers and by alternative discourses that intend to empower NNESTs. Through focus groups, interviews, and short questionnaires, this study investigates the experiences of ITAs who teach composition at a large Midwestern university. The participants discuss their linguistic insecurities, their strengths and successes, and the role of World Englishes in shaping their professional identities and practice. The results of the study are discussed in the broader context of internationalization of higher education and in reference to translingualism and other alternative approaches to composition. Also discussed are implications for ITA training and preparation.

Student Response to a Corequisite Pilot Program: A Retrospective

This retrospective article presents the results of a pilot study on student perceptions of a corequisite model for devel- opmental writing. Qualitative survey data was collected at the beginning, middle, and end of Fall 2013 at a large public university in central Texas. A total of 21 students participated in this study. Eleven students who were near the cut-off for the placement exam were enrolled in a first-semester composition course with other students who placed directly into first-semester composition. These 11 students also agreed to meet outside of the composition classroom at a set time for the corequisite course. Another ten students who were near the cut-off for the placement exam were placed in a tra- ditional 16-week developmental writing course that served as a control. Responses were analyzed using coding practices outlined by Saldaña (2009), including initial coding, categorizing, and theming. Themes that emerged in the responses of students enrolled in the traditional 16-week developmental writing course included the following: (a) this course is pointless/a waste, (b) mismatch between placement and self-perception, and (c) transferability. Themes that emerged in the responses of students enrolled in the corequisite model included the following: (a) a lot is riding on success in the corequisite composition course, (b) unsure/nervous about expectations, and (c) improved self-efficacy at the end of the course. The major implication of this study is the importance of including student voices in the implementation of models for developmental education.

Framing Wearing: Genre, Embodiment, and Exploring Wearable Technology in the Composition Classroom

Abstract This article provides a framework based on the bi-definitional nature of “wearing” as a means to explore how wearable technology can be taught and better understood in the composition classroom. Wearing can be defined in relation to material objects being worn, as well as the state of being mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. This article explains how the deployment of wearable technology in the composition classroom can benefit from the complex definition of wearing through complementary theory, specifically genre theory and embodiment, which allows us to see the dynamic nature of wearables. Additionally, this article offers a week-by-week pedagogical schedule of a unit embracing a wearing framework in the first-year composition classroom. Understanding the full nature of wearing involves paying special attention to the implications from the use of wearable technology.

Active Learning for an Online Composition Classroom: Blogging As an Enhancement of Online Curriculum

Active learning and online education have become important aspects of knowledge delivery. Nevertheless, little research exists on how active learning techniques can be implemented in an online environment. Deliberate equivalence of methods and materials for onsite and online delivery mechanisms is often seen as a strong point in favor of a particular program. Online environment, however, demands adjustments. Blogging is one way to implement active learning techniques in a virtual classroom. The case study that involved 25 college composition students demonstrates that blogging overcomes the asynchronous nature of online classes and results in improved attitudes toward writing as it shows real-world application of the skills acquired in a classroom and makes students see writing as presentation of self.

Teaching textual awareness with DocuScope: Using corpus-driven tools and reflection to support students’ written decision-making

Abstract We present an overview of DocuScope Classroom, a corpus-based technology-enhanced learning tool designed to support students' reflection exercises in composition classrooms. We discuss the rationale for using the tool and the learning objectives it can be used to accomplish - both of which are rooted in an attempt to make students more critically aware and adaptive in their rhetorical style as they write in new genres. Finally, we walk through the pedagogical interventions that we have designed for this tool within a university writing program context.

Beyond Student as User: Rhetoric, Multimodality, and User-Centered Design

Abstract User-centered design (UCD) as a concept has begun to enter composition studies, particularly through scholar-teachers of technical communication. We question further incorporation—specifically, the collision course of industry-driven language such as “efficiency” and “expediency” and the potential positioning of students as “users” in the composition classroom. We argue that this positioning places us in unproductive opposition to multimodal composition. Rather than a wholesale incorporation of UCD into the composition classroom, we outline a “theory + play” approach that combines scholarship in rhetoric, speculative design, and multimodal composition. This approach, we argue, better aligns with the political and social investments of Johnson’s (1998) theory of user-centered technology, in which our students are critical makers and engaged citizens in the public sphere.

Spanish Composition Errors from a Combined Classroom of Heritage (L1) and Non-heritage (L2) Learners: A Comparative Case Study

In a world of declining institutional budgets, decreasing student enrollments in departments that until now may have had the luxury of separate composition classrooms for heritage and non-heritage students, not to mention individual student schedule limitations, the steady increase in enrollment of L1 or heritage students in composition classrooms which were before primarily geared toward L2 learners has created a new reality and the urgency to rethink the organization, sequence, and emphasis placed on topics and structures in the classroom. The purpose of this case study was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of L1 and L2 student composition error data collected from a sample of fifteen students enrolled in a Spanish Composition (SPAN 302) class at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC). Specific objectives for this project were to determine from the data collected: 1) the frequencies with which L1 and L2 student participants committed word- and sentence-level errors in their compositions; 2) how error frequencies compare between L1 and L2 students over a semester’s time, and in particular, with the writing of a series of five different compositions, each targeting a more advanced level of writing proficiency; and 3) how knowledge of both similarities and differences between these two groups might be applied to enhance the author’s current pedagogical model that could work for future students from both groups in a single classroom.

Digital Writing, Multimodality, and Learning Transfer: Crafting Connections between Composition and Online Composing

Abstract Most university students have a wealth of prior writing experience from writing in digital spaces before entering their first writing class, and much of this prior experience includes making meaning using multiple modes of communication. However, these students may not perceive their digital and multimodal writing as connected to classroom practice. Because of this, they may have a challenging time using writing knowledge learned in digital spaces to help with their academic writing. This study uses survey and interview data gathered from first-year university students to help better understand what prior digital and multimodal writing experiences students have as well as how students perceive the connections between these experiences and their own classroom practice. The author suggests ways to help students see connections between their varied writing experiences in order to facilitate learning transfer between their prior digital and multimodal experiences, their experiences in the composition classroom, and their experiences in other contexts.

Shared Passions, Shared Compositions: Online Fandom Communities and Affinity Groups as Sites for Public Writing Pedagogy

Abstract This article explores the rhetorical behaviors and attendant compositions of fandoms across spaces to make pedagogical suggestions for the incorporation of fandom activities into the writing classrooms. I look at fandoms as a representative for online communities and/or affinity groups, to examine how shared identities and experiences are constructed within online spaces specifically through the creation and circulation of multimodal compositions. Ultimately, I propose a new way of positioning public writing and expanding its potential role in the composition classroom. Building upon work on public writing arguing for the incorporation of the mundane into public writing pedagogy and scholarship in writing studies, rhetoric, and digital media studies on fandoms, I argue that we can turn to the everyday compositional practices and rhetorical engagements of online communities and affinity groups as sites of public writing pedagogy. In short, we can locate new publics for public writing.

Engineering Beowulf: World-building in a multimodal composition classroom

This article provides a research-driven pedagogical perspective on world-building, drawing upon the author’s experiences teaching Beowulf in a multimodal composition course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. World-building and multimodal pedagogy may combine smoothly in first-year college composition courses to simultaneously introduce students to medieval literature and communications concepts. For many students, such courses are their only required exposure to either field; by using world-building techniques, instructors may create an inclusive and student-centered course, one that does not force a choice between literary study and learning practices of compositional rhetoric.

Feature: Understanding Classroom Silence: How Students’ Perceptions of Power Influence Participation in Discussion-Based Composition Classrooms

This article, based on a qualitative research study, analyzes the connections between students’ perceptions of power and their varied levels of oral participation in classroom discussion.

Playing Out Social Action: Game-Based Learning and Visual Rhetorical Analysis

Playing Out Social Action:Game-Based Learning and Visual Rhetorical Analysis Lauren MaLone (bio) and BreMen Vance (bio) Introduction In our role as writing instructors of required composition classrooms at our particular land-grant university—Iowa State—we have substantial freedom in the selection of content for our courses. We have both found ourselves using materials that deal with content related to social justice, current events, global issues, and controversies for a variety of pedagogical reasons, but the learning objectives of our courses that revolve around helping our students develop communication skills are best served when our students see communication as meaningful action. At the headwaters of rhetorical views about genre over the past decades, Carolyn R. Miller's explanation of genre is a great example of how we can think about the conventions we are teaching as enabling our students to act. She argues that genre is "a classification based in rhetorical practice . . . and organized around situated actions" (155). This action-centered view privileges the purpose of communication instead of the form of the communication. When we select readers and assignments for our students each semester, we have the opportunity, and obligation, to consider the types of voices we are privileging, and the types of action we are promoting. An additional challenge that we face when assigning texts in a composition classroom is that the ideas in the texts can become separated from, and secondary to, the goals of the course. We bring in provocative and insightful writers, only to have our students quickly move on to the next task. Of course, we can have them respond to the authors, but that may leave some of our students in the position of writing to satisfy us that they have read. We do not really need our students to tell us what the reading was about because we read the texts too. Instead, we hope to find ways to have our students engage the ideas and perspectives represented by the texts. We are aware that many of our students struggle with thinking outside their own perspective—or, at least, they are often resistant to change. We want our students to see the existence, variety, and importance of diverse perspectives as well as why differing views of the world persist. We are not alone.Betty Jeanne Taylor and others argue that "As institutions of higher education become more diverse, there is a heightened obligation to implement [End Page 21] educational programs that prioritize reflective learning about self as well as learning about perspectives other than one's own" (231), and we agree. However, researchers such as Lynn Leonard and others explain that "The word 'diversity' is politically charged, and biases and preconceptions will precede students' . . . acceptance of diversity as a legitimate area of scholarship" (56). If we as instructors want to bring these conversations into the classroom, then it is important that we set up an environment where students have tools to explore these concepts without becoming prematurely recalcitrant. Giving students a chance to explore social issues in our courses requires us to think through ways of inviting students to explore and understand. Crucial for us in this respect is the world of games. Within a game, instructors can address these (sometimes delicate) issues while students have a chance to consider seriously new or unfamiliar perspectives. Within our game in particular, we present multiple scenarios that require visual analysis, all of which include issues of social justice and inclusion. In doing so, we demonstrate how teacher-made instructional materials can employ invitational rhetoric to encourage a receptive stance from students that will enable a better understanding of the diversity of perspectives as well as a deeper understanding of rhetorical theory. Inviting Perspectives As teachers, we often become focused on the use of rhetorical theory to teach students how to write, and justifiably so. However, we need to remember that rhetorical theory offers more than basic tools for analyzing and producing essays. Our goal is to educate, but we must still carefully consider our own contexts in using the classroom to communicate ideas. We use rhetorical theory to discuss a whole range of communicative acts. In fact, our own activities in the...

From Otherization to Collaboration in the English Composition Classroom: A Look at the Effectiveness of Teacher-Student Collaboration

From Otherization to Collaboration in the English Composition Classroom: A Look at the Effectiveness of Teacher-Student Collaboration

Feature: Race Talk in the Composition Classroom: Narrative Song Lyrics as Texts for Racial Literacy

This article explores the potential of a song lyrics-based curriculum to encourage the practice of racial literacy in the first-year composition classroom.

Cripping Time in the College Composition Classroom

This article shares findings from a qualitative study on the experiences of students with disabilities in college-level writing and writing-intensive classrooms. I argue that normative conceptions of time and production can negatively constrain student performance, and I offer the concept of crip time (borrowed from disability theorists and disability activists) as an alternative pedagogical framework.

Offering a First-year Composition Classroom for Veterans and Cadets: A Learning-Community Model Case Study

This article discusses my university’s creation of first-year-composition courses designed with a learning community or cohort approach for student-veterans, service-members, and cadets desiring this model. At my locale , neither the standard sections of Composition I nor II had been created to provide a military population with a common student community, customized readings, flexible attendance policies, and seamless communication with university veteran services that might better facilitate the transition to college for some student-veterans. Thus, as writing program administrator, I piloted linked composition courses for a service-member, veteran, and ROTC learning community, with the latter course also enrolling a nontraditional-student population. In a year-long study, I investigated the impact of enrolling military-affiliated students in linked courses within a traditional classroom to interact under a continuing instructor, engage with military-based readings, and opt to write about their military backgrounds. In presenting patterns that emerged, I argue that these experimental learning-community courses, contingent upon some local factors, supported many military-affiliated students’ engagement with first-year composition, as well as facilitated their transition to academia, through a loosely-structured, cohort model promoting aspects of students’ common but broadly-defined identities.

The Contribution of Lexical Diversity to College‐Level Writing

This article reports on a study that investigated the extent to which lexical frequency and lexical diversity contribute to writing proficiency scores on monolingual English‐speaking writers’ and advanced multilingual writers’ academic compositions. The data consist of essays composed by 104 multilingual English learners enrolled in advanced second language writing courses at various intensive English programs and 68 monolingual English‐speaking university students in a first‐year composition course. Three independent raters evaluated the essays according to the TOEFL iBT independent writing rubric. Results from a binary logistic regression reveal that lexical diversity has a significantly greater impact on writing score than lexical frequency. Post hoc analyses show that lexical frequency has only a moderate relationship to lexical diversity, suggesting that diversity of mid‐frequency vocabulary may be more important to writing proficiency than the use of more sophisticated terms that occur less frequently in natural language. Implications for practice suggest that it is not enough to simply teach vocabulary words in the second language composition classroom, but also to guide learners in how to employ these words in a varied manner in their writing.

Freshman Composition as a Precariat Enterprise

Drawing from recent work in the areas of economics and sociology, this article applies theories of precarity and the precariat, terms that denote the marginalized status of contingent workers, to the composition classroom. Reviewing the economic and social conditions precipitating workforce casualization, the article argues that theories of precarity support the efforts of scholars in composition studies thinking beyond the concept of social class and toward models of solidarity. Building upon the work of these scholars, the article advocates attention to the shared precarity of students and proposes methods of enhancing solidarity at the university.

EXPRESSING VOICE IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: MULTIWRITING HAIKU PEDAGOGY IN THE EFL CONTEXT 

One of the crucial perspectives in the teaching of second language (L2) writing is to develop voice (Iida, 2010; Paltridge et al., 2009). While scholars have discussed the significance of teaching voice from theoretical viewpoints, there is scant reporting on how to teach the concept and how to train L2 writers to express their own thoughts in the target language in the composition classroom. The aim of this article is to discuss how L2 writers can develop their voice through poetry writing in the L2 composition classroom. After describing the concept of voice and the feature of multiwriting, this article will explore the potential of multiwriting haiku pedagogy as a way to develop and express voice in the EFL freshman college writing classroom. It will also present a step-by-step approach for multiwriting haiku in the EFL classroom and then illustrate how Japanese EFL writers express voice and articulate self in the poetic text with the pedagogical guidelines.

Rhetorical Choices in Facebook Discourse: Constructing Voice and Persona

Abstract This study addresses the need for attention to conflicts surrounding voice in composition studies in conjunction with recent research demonstrating the rhetorically complex array of writing moves in which social network users participate. Together, these areas of inquiry present a need for research into social network users’ rhetorical awareness of writing practices. The article presents a study of one first-year college student’s Facebook activity. I analyze Facebook screenshots and interview data to describe the participant’s construction of voice in writing and of a persona on the social network site. Findings reveal that the participant has gained literacy in Facebook as a secondary Discourse as evidenced by her rhetorical awareness in Facebook activity. The participant demonstrated a sophisticated awareness of rhetorical functions within Facebook by hiding her personal opinion, crafting a persona characterized by non-mainstream interests, and paying attention to readers’ behavior to distribute content they found interesting at times they were most likely to engage with it. I conclude the article by discussing applications for the first-year composition classroom that can be drawn from the study findings and from students’ existing writing practices on social network sites.