For almost 40 years, our university's first year writing program has included a shared outcome: "Students will appreciate the capacity of writing to change oneself and the world." This outcome, unlike our more typical composition goals concerning writing processes, rhetorical acumen, and critical research abilities, had never been…

Through surveys and focus group conversations, we studied students' experiences with instruction in writing-intensive (WI) courses at our urban R1 university and their awareness of and attitudes about linguistic diversity. Specifically, we have explored discrepancies between students' experiences with languaging, language judgment, and our…

Recent attention on ChatGPT, a prominent AI language model, highlights its potential in assisting EFL writing. Although ChatGPT's capabilities involve grammar correction, vocabulary enrichment and sentence structuring, its full potential alongside human scaffolding in EFL writing classrooms remains unexplored. This study aims to fill this gap by…

This study aims to understand how bilingual college students constructed literacy spaces across their lives rather than an in-school/out-of-school dichotomy. Drawing on Lefebvre's (1991) spatial triad as a lens to examine the participants' spatial literacy practices, the findings show that some participants repurposed planned spaces into literacy…

There is valuable scholarship on the importance of teaching narratives in the FYC classroom, but none does so through the frame of vulnerability. This paper explores, through an IRB approved case study, how composition teachers can best guide students to write powerful and well-crafted personal narratives to ignite students' own voices, histories,…

In order to better understand how play can be used as a learning tool to teach students in college writing courses, this dissertation examines how play is used in the undergraduate college writing classroom. Using a qualitative case study and narrative inquiry, instructors and students in the University of Minnesota's (UMN) Writing Studies…

This study examines the impact of writing instruction on Spanish heritage language (SHL) learners' attitudes towards digital stories (DS) and self-efficacy beliefs with regard to academic writing, multiliteracies, and computer abilities. Two types of writing instruction--a traditional curriculum centered around genres and a multiliteracies…

Hybrid project-based learning effectively develops academic writing skills in preparation for a gradual return to face-to-face instruction after a two-year pandemic triggered by Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Since this hybrid project-based learning initiative is a pioneering effort, it is essential to reflect on the program's successes and…

This discussion article presents practices for designing more supportive and individualized writing tasks for adolescent and young adult students. The practices emerged from a synthesis of findings from a prior study in which we asked 79 undergraduates to talk about moments from their writing histories that made them feel proud of their writing.

The United States is undergoing unprecedented religious change, including an increasing diversity of religious tradition, rapid disaffiliation from conventional religious institutions, and a rise in syncretic and sometimes corporatized spiritualties. Given the speed and scope of these changes, all of which affect our students, rhetoric and writing…

This dissertation investigates the experiences of multilingual writers in a writing center at a major research university based in the United States. It includes interviews with the writers and with the tutors who serve multilingual writers, to understand if these writers are getting what they need in the writing center to be successful in their…

This study explores the implications of critical affective literacy through digital storytelling projects produced by first-year college writing students. The goal was to examine college students' affective and emotional responses to social justice issues, such as racial profiling, educational inequality, and animal protection, through the lens of…

Dynamic assessment (DA) integrates assessment and instruction between the instructor and learners. It emphasizes the learning process. DA was introduced to 24 undergraduates and 9 graduate students in two academic writing courses in Taiwan. The analysis of the pre- and post-tests, writing portfolios, observations, and interviews reached the…

Educators consistently identify student motivation as a top concern, particularly during the transition to college, but often feel helpless to influence it. Some assume that students are simply motivated or not. Others are daunted by trying to shape an unobservable psychological phenomenon. "Invisible Forces" provides a framework for…

While a plethora of studies have been conducted on corrective feedback in L2 writing, praise as feedback has received less attention in L2 writing despite its well-acknowledged motivating functions in education and psychology (For economy of expression, the word "praise" will be used consistently throughout this paper to denote…