I retired from teaching in August, 2018. In the fall semester of that academic year, I taught a section of Basic Writing (now called "Workshop in Composition"), one of the courses I taught in the fall of 1975, my first year at the University of Pittsburgh. This essay is a documentary account of that course, including writing assignments…

If assessment is about improving learning and facilitating better teaching through research and helping students learn what higher education purports to value, then the often-invisible institutional barriers that do not always embrace the ways in which classroom assessment can teach an institution about student learning within individual…

This essay, in letter form, introduces graduate-level study in Basic Writing to practicum students. It situates teaching practices within Basic Writing histories and pedagogies, and invites readers to focus widely, read deeply, and keep writing. Included are lessons from Bernstein's experiences in presenting David Bowie's artistic and cultural…

Against a Racial Real backdrop, I argue for consciously adopting a sociocultural approach to style in linguistically and racially diverse Basic Writing classrooms. To make this argument, I focus on a multilingual writer named Tejada, who reveals how she had internalized a racialized stereotypical discourse about herself as a minority--a discourse…

In the past few years, the number of students placing into developmental or remedial college courses has grown considerably. Research is needed to explore the learning dynamics of underprepared students and to offer insights for practice. However research in the developmental field so far has lacked a scholarly, rigorous approach, and research in…

This article addresses the issue of basic writing, demonstrating how one university's basic writing program acts as a steward of writing. The assumption that basic writers only consume resources rather than contribute to academic excellence is rejected. What links the author responses to this issue is a publication of student writing entitled…

Proficiency with written expression is critical for students' academic success. Unfortunately, writing presents a challenge for both students and teachers. Recent data suggest that many students in U.S. schools fail to meet even the most basic writing standards. And even when students receive effective (i.e., evidence-based) writing instruction,…

This study examined student perspectives about writing by interviewing both typically developing and struggling writers in Grades 2 through 8. The findings revealed a progressive developmental pattern of writing knowledge in which novice writers place more emphasis on the physical product and local meaning, while more experienced writers focus on…

In this description of a learning community for "at-risk" and basic writing students at the University of Wyoming, I outline the reasons our students resist academic writing prior to their entry into college--reasons largely unrelated to typical perceptions of at-risk students as "lazy" or intellectually less capable. For…

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…