Many developmental writing courses in colleges focus on teaching students isolated skills, with little emphasis on how such skills are applicable to the actual process of writing. This article focuses on capturing the perspectives of students enrolled in a developmental writing course designed around an explicit process-oriented pedagogy. The…

The process of digital storytelling allows basic writers to take a personal narrative and translate it into a multimodal and multidimensional experience, motivating a diverse group of writers with different learning styles to engage more creatively and meaningfully in the writing process. Digital storytelling has the capacity to contextualize…

Developmental composition courses serve a sizable and growing number of Generation 1.5 students, or long-term U.S. resident language learners, and it is believed that language challenges may be part of Generation 1.5 writers' difficulty in controlling the academic register. The current study investigates possible similarities and differences…

The challenges of teaching writing and encouraging students to write are many. However, one of the most difficult issues to deal with is students' reluctance to write in any language, even their home language. Because of this reluctance, being asked to write in English as a foreign or second language can feel like a double burden. Learners of…

Argues that basic writing students need incremental assignment sequences to experience success in writing and to develop their abilities to write about abstract concepts. Describes a four-part sequence of writing assignments moving from observing to narrowing to generalizing to theorizing. (RS)

The traditional basic writing model (giving students manageable writing tasks like narratives and descriptions of familiar places) has been criticized by both Mike Rose and David Bartholomae, among others, for not moving the basic writer far enough toward the goal of academic writing competence. Rose's schemata are reassuring and helpful to basic…

Describes a method of teaching basic writing to native and nonnative students that emphasizes a regression to the most basic elements of writing. Considers what writing content, rhetorical techniques, grammar exercises, and proofreading methods are most effective for the two groups. (TB)

If personal writing empowers students to hear their own voices and to "see themselves as writers," then personal writing has value for basic writing students, whose voices have tended to be silenced and who see themselves as anything but writers. From hearing their voices in writing, and from identifying multiple sources and rhetorical…

In 1983, Charles County Community College (CCCC) initiated a project to infuse academic information from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences into developmental courses. The reorganization assignments related to 27 topics that promoted academic examination and cultural literacy while at the same time drawing from students' own…

Compares the quality and syntactic complexity of 2 types of essays written by 44 college freshmen in a basic writing course. Essays dealing with group-phenomenon events (intensification) had more words per clause, but received lower quality scores than essays dealing with individually experienced events (initiation). (PAA)

Presents results from a study of eight college freshman to determine differences between revising essays on-screen and on-paper. Eighty-one percent of on-screen changes were above the mechanical or word level, often related to meaning and content. Students working on-screen tended to add more information and recreate paragraphs, but sometimes…

Designed for low-level adult learners, this book contains true stories of 20 men and women who have faced and overcome serious challenges in their lives. The book is intended to inspire and motivate developmental students in basic reading and writing classes. The book can be adapted to different instructional approaches--some teachers may wish to…