Background/Context: Twenty percent of first-year students in public 4-year institutions and 42% of first-year students in public 2-year institutions in the United States enroll in remedial courses. Yet despite widespread remediation across U.S. colleges and universities, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about how remedial courses develop…

Basic writing has played a large role in the history and institutional identity of the City University of New York (CUNY). From the Open Admissions era of Mina Shaughnessy to the present day, "remedial courses" at CUNY have been revised in response to different colleges' missions, curricular initiatives, university policies, and public…

Describes a revised developmental study skills course offering integrated instruction in critical thinking, reading, and writing strategies. Daily journal writing, reading lessons, library research, and a final oral and written report led to higher motivation, comprehension, and thinking levels than experienced by previous years' students. (DMM)

Describes a Kingsborough Community College program that pairs an experimental sociology course with a speech and English class to help ethnically diverse students develop needed reading and writing skills, while improving their self-concept by noting parallels between their cultures and the dominant culture. Reviews course content and goals. (DMM)