Mina Shaughnessy continues to exert powerful influences over Basic Writing practices, discourses and pedagogy thirty-five years after her death: Basic Writing remains in some ways trapped by Shaughnessy's legacy in what Min-Zhan Lu labeled as essentialism, accommodationism and linguistic innocence. High-stakes writing tests, a troubling hallmark…

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)

Although basic writing has become a strong independent field with professionally sanctioned ways of making knowledge, what Stephen North refers to as "lore" still maintains a strong foundation in the field. This lore is often grounded in the belief in a linear paradigm of learning, and is to some degree fostered by traditional conceptions of basic…

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…