This article argues the importance of designing writing placement procedures that support linguistic diversity at community colleges. Using data on community college writing programs and student demographics at an urban community college, it examines prevailing structures of ESL and developmental writing programs at two-year schools and identifies…

Scholars such as Diane Kelly-Riley and Patricia Bizzell have argued that the student writing feature most likely to place a student into a basic writing course is the presence of dialect other than standard academic English. This essay examines how assessment practices can foster students' diverse languages rather than inhibit them. I conducted a…

In this essay I conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of the language surrounding the California State University (CSU) Chancellor's Office latest plan to curb remediation, the Early Start program. I consider Early Start in the context of what I argue is the evolution of three major frameworks for Basic Writing in the CSU: the CSU Chancellor's…

This article examines two course redesigns undertaken to improve student support, learning, and retention in the basic writing program at Oakland University, a doctoral research university in southeast Michigan, where support for developmental writers has fluctuated dramatically between nurture and neglect over the past fifty years. However,…

This article discusses basic writing pedagogy at a two-year tribal college, an institution type that has not been visible in the basic writing literature to date. In many tribal college contexts, socioeconomic challenges, under-resourced K-12 schools, and linguistic diversity all contribute to high student placement rates into…

Basic writing instruction at the University of Pittsburgh is offered through a three-hour writing course, a six-hour reading and writing course, and a voluntary writing workshop. Work in these courses involves students in studying their own writing as they attempt new perspectives and gather new information. (RL)

Describes a weekly vocabulary assignment for college students with poor reading skills and shows how it provides incidental reading and writing benefits. (RL)

Shows how one teacher develops student vocabulary and spelling skills as part of the writing process. (RL)

Offers exercises for teaching basic writing students how to use derivational suffixes. (RL)

Notes that traditional methods of teaching vocabulary development do not reflect the learning patterns of basic writing students. Suggests ways of modifying vocabulary instruction to help remedial students. (RL)

Applies Aristotelian rhetorical theory to the treatment of basic writing problems, noting that classical methods of teaching are still valid--and sometimes used--today. (RL)

Sketches the historical movement from orality to literacy that Walter J. Ong theorizes, applying it to basic writing instruction for open admissions students. Suggests that teachers first concentrate on narrative and rhetoric to develop writing about particularized details, saving sentence control exercises such as sentence combining for…