Considers the circumstances under which "basic writing" emerged both as a college course and as a field of study. Aims to map the "strange context" of discourses that have composed basic writing and to determine the strategic function of each of these discourses, including David Bartholomae's recent call for undoing basic…

This essay responds to Jane Danielewicz's and Peter Elbow's recent piece on contract grading in "College Composition and Communication" (December 2009). I discuss the similarities of their approach to my own contract process, finding that we share a quantitative/performative method for grading. I also explore our differences. While they guarantee…

This study of 118 students who placed into basic skills sections of College English suggests that students' self-beliefs may be a particularly important predictor of success in weak writers in first-semester courses. Two types of writing self-efficacy scales--a writing tasks/skills scale and an approach-to-writing scale--were developed to follow…

This study examined the relationships between first semester participation in a community college developmental writing course and persistence and goal attainment. The study examined whether developmental writing course participants completed more of their credits, enrolled for more semesters, and completed degree/certificates and/or transferred…

Contends that developmental writing students' self confidence improves when they understand their learning styles. Outlines how the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is used to pinpoint students' learning styles and how to help students work "their way." (PA)

Offers a method to help writing students generate ideas and collect their thoughts: (1) giving students 10 minutes to freewrite about being stranded on a desert island; (2) writing one page on a thesis statement; and (3) having students "talk through" their papers in small groups. (PA)

Describes how struggle and conflict are constructive for writers. Examines why this view of conflict had rhetorical power historically for theorists. Explores how and why this view persists among basic writing teachers in the 1990s. (HB)

Describes two writing assignments for basic writers (synthesizing influences from Mike Rose and David Bartholomae) in which students perform complex thinking and writing tasks while writing about their own experiences and those of fictional characters similar to themselves. (SR)

Notes that personal writing continues to proliferate, especially in freshman composition and basic writing courses. Argues that overemphasis on personal writing, on finding a "voice," may become exclusionary rather than liberating. Argues that it is crucial to teach students how to read, react to, and write about anything beyond the…

Investigates the contradictory terminological investments within the charges against Mina Shaughnessy's scholarship (i.e., "essentialism,""accommodationism," and lack of "materialist praxis") from poststructuralist, feminist, and Marxist quarters. Maintains, through close readings of Shaughnessy's texts, that the…

Explores how insights of the 1970s are being lost, namely, those about why and how the academy thinks about basic writing and students deemed "illiterate" or "remedial." Examines a discourse that the author calls Basic Writing and how it has marginalized basic writing courses, teachers, and students. (TB)

This article explores the particular challenges and possibilities of service learning pedagogy for basic writers. Because a number of scholars of service learning and basic writing (Adler-Kassner, Arca, and Kraemer) are concerned primarily with developing underprepared students' academic literacies, I investigated how the students in a service…

This paper describes some aspects of essays produced by students who as writers in the United States would commonly be called "basic writers." The paper focuses primarily on the grammatical subjects in these essays and offers a view of how closely grammatical structure typical in speech correspond to those typical in writing. It reports…

Describes a statement of guidelines and goals developed for Boise State University's (BSU) basic writing course. Includes an account of local conditions at BSU, a copy of the statement itself with commentary on its seven competencies, a description of how the document was developed through a collaborative process, and the effects of that…

Presents a developmental perspective on text construction, understood as managing information within and across sentence boundaries. Claims that the systematicity in non-standard constructions in basic writer's texts reflects student awareness of three obligatory areas of information management in texts: topic management, reference tracking, and…