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…

Through an examination of literature in the fields of Basic Writing and developmental education, this essay provides some historical perspective and examines the prevalent discourses on the use of computer-mediated technologies in the basic writing classroom. The author uses Bertram Bruce's (1997) framework of various "stances" on…

This article involves an examination of public discourse surrounding "Ayers v. Fordice," one of the most prominent desegregation cases in higher education, in an attempt to explore how such discourse affects our understandings of basic writing programming in the state of Mississippi, but also more globally. Archived local newspaper…

Herrington & Curtis (2000), building on Goldblatt's (1995) idea of the "sponsoring institution," (p. 48) showed students' need for a personal sense of connection with a "sponsoring discourse" when writing in the academy. As Herrington and Curtis, as well as Goldblatt point out, these "sponsoring discourses" often come from outside the academy.…

Examines two debates within the basic writing community (the reaction against Min Zhan Lu's early theoretical work and the recent acrimonious debate regarding Ira Shor's defense of mainstreaming) showing how they reflect conflicting models of the basic writing field, with "critical" discourse challenging the conventions and authority of…

This paper describes some aspects of essays produced by students who as writers in the United States would commonly be called "basic writers." The paper focuses primarily on the grammatical subjects in these essays and offers a view of how closely grammatical structure typical in speech correspond to those typical in writing. It reports…

Considers the changing definition of "academic discourse" in basic writing instruction. Focuses on preparing students for success in school. Refines positions sketched in an earlier essay. Asserts that new forms of academic discourse mix traditional academic with non-academic discourses, reflecting the profound cultural mixing occurring in the…

Describes a method by which teachers can introduce students to meaning and text through application of Mikhail Bakhtin's discourse theories. Explains that students are encouraged to reject common understandings of good writing. Identifies "daffy" definition exercises, newspaper editorial comparisons, and other activities that help…

Traces scholarly constructions of basic writers' identities. Asks what those students who are labeled basic writers are accomplishing in their speech and writing. Offers a speculative model for analyzing basic writing student discourse. Uses that model to examine the language used in a basic writing classroom. Reviews the implications of such work…

Examines phonological transfer in developmental student writing (spelling or word configurations that represent what the writer hears). Examines two discourse features--"by strings" and "topic/comment" sentence structures. Analyzes a developmental writing African American student's essay, demonstrating the power and tension in…

More than ten years have passed since the widely publicized debate about personal and academic writing that played out in the 1990s between Peter Elbow and David Bartholomae. But the question of the relative merits of these two different types of writing for student writers continues to be an issue of concern for teachers of composition,…

A study focused attention on the academic personas acquired by two AAVE-oriented (African American Vernacular English) beginning writers as reflected by their speech in informal settings and the style they employed in academic tasks. The study explores the degree to which literacy experiences (home and school) affect students' lives. It was guided…

Language interference (which was originally posited in ESL theory) involves ways in which language learners draw upon previous language experiences to fill holes in their knowledge of a second language they are learning. Since the 1970s, language interference has been a part of the pedagogy of basic writing, concerning itself with ways that basic…

Compares the quality and syntactic complexity of 2 types of essays written by 44 college freshmen in a basic writing course. Essays dealing with group-phenomenon events (intensification) had more words per clause, but received lower quality scores than essays dealing with individually experienced events (initiation). (PAA)

This article examines writing conference discourse in one English as a Second Language (ESL) basic composition course. The study is based on a 25,000-word corpus of 10 writing conference interactions between the instructor and seven students. Through a microlevel analysis, the authors demonstrate how and to what degree the writing conference can…