Writing skills are vital to college and career success; therefore, students who do not succeed in writing will likely struggle in their subsequent coursework. Latino male college students are the most at-risk group. Following a single case study approach, this qualitative study examines the writing perceptions of three Latino males in their…

This research studied the variables that affected a student's self-perception and success in first-year composition at a community college. The study utilized a quantitative research method to analyze the Research Question. Quantitative data was collected from a northern California community college using a seven-point Likert-scale. The Research…

This paper will give a step-by-step demonstration on how to create MP4 files to video-grade undergraduate writing assignments. The process of using prepared rubrics to guide video and audio feedback will be presented and examples shown. This assessment method provides students with personalized video-feedback as a re-usable learning object. The…

This paper contends that modern compositionist courses have successfully met the goal of training students to become socially productive citizens by teaching them to be proficient "readers" who critically examine the sources and dissemination of knowledge, but that the field has fallen short of its goal of training students to actively…

An investigation of the various ways the term "topos" is used in classical rhetoric reveals the limited range of invention strategies offered by academic discourse pedagogy. Donald Bartholmae's work on basic writing addresses the relationship of the commonplace to topical invention within academic discourse. Investigation of the history…

Commonly thought to mean "an essay for school," composition courses in colleges and universities aspire to teach first-year college students to write academic prose. For institutional purposes, composition classes are considered service courses, preparing students to write those kinds of papers they will be asked to write in their major…

Even a quick tour through the professional literature of composition and rhetoric reveals that the profession has failed to bring about any real change in first-year college composition. The truth is that today the political and material conditions of first-year composition programs are not much different from that they were over a half century…

Students enrolled in composition classes may provide the answer to the dilemma of coming up with a writing topic: work--the "four letter word." Most, if not all, students have already become part of the labor force. The theme of "work" is naturally successful because it centers around a topic students know well, something that…

An instructor of freshman composition at Ohio University always teaches a section on music in her courses because freshmen jump at the chance to discuss a part of their youth culture that they readily identify with. The problem, however, has been how to incorporate rap music successfully into these discussions with a classroom full of white…

Writing and reading in hypertext environments have more similarities with incompetent student research writing than the model of research writing that dominates the freshman composition enterprise. The research paper becomes a rite of passage and capstone writing experience, taxing the student writer's skills of organization and deft manipulation…

Much existing historiography is either based too exclusively on the evidence of old textbooks or concerned too narrowly with theory or the epistemological assumptions underlying theory. Those who study the history of composition in this century need both to consult such new sources of information as course materials, student papers, and oral…

Three studies examined the effectiveness of teaching an unfamiliar prose form using prose modeling (duplicating defining characteristics of a model text using different content). First, English department instructors at four universities were surveyed and of the 70 who responded, 76% stated that they did use modeling in their classrooms. In the…

The personal essay does not rely on the straight, even rows of a carefully laid out vegetable garden, on strings pulled tight to connect beginnings to ends. Instead it meanders, pulls from here and there, thinks out loud, asks questions, and proceeds leisurely through disconnections to make connections, as an ever-changing flower garden in which…

This paper looks at an idea that the fundamental "social" purpose of college composition is not to expand but to contract students' capacities to function in and transform their world. The paper manifests interest in this conception of composition for intellectual, historical, and political reasons--historically, it addresses the…

Most educators' ideas about academic discourse and critical thinking are confined by social constructionist assumptions. Working with historical texts, in such a way that these texts empower students to imagine alternative futures, opens up the freshman writing course to three-dimensional critical thinking. Freshmen at one particular college must…