Explores the idea that basic writing students, when positioned in a classroom setting where safety and trust are paramount, will be willing to take risks. Notes that successful risks will lead students into a more positive relationship with their own writing abilities. Concludes that success in writing leads to a more open-minded approach which…

Recounts the process of writing guiding curricular documents for the University of Minnesota - General College's basic writing program. Describes how this was a community-building process that involved a wide group of instructors and others connected to the program. Includes the opening statement, as well as the goals and principles of the…

Advances the idea of using the workshop format for basic writers' development as writers. Finds that workshops generate conversations and discussions that encourage social, political, and economic awareness to help basic writers discover who and where they are in society. (PA)

Describes the problems some basic writing students have had generating ideas for writing in response to timed essay tests. Proposes a technique based on the classical notion of the "topoi," which enables students to generate ideas and equips them for participation in the social and political dialogs they encounter in higher education.…

Examines the challenges one basic writer, a deaf student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, confronted when she took on the role of public writer. Analyzes the student's attempt to enact change for the sake of uncovering the pedagogical implications that teachers of basic writing must consider when educating students to write for the public…

Offers a review of research on remedial/developmental writers, focusing on studies related to revising strategies, the development of writing abilities, spoken language, rhetorical context, semantic abbreviation in writing, composing processes, writer's block, and thought and language. (DMM)

Argues that basic writing teachers should think of their students as seekers who are coming from different places and going different directions, each carrying different burdens and needing different tools. Presents a series of writing assignments using the process approach to writing. (RS)

Demonstrates that students who attempt graphically to represent their own writing process increase their involvement and self-awareness while validating their new writing behaviors and come to understand their role in managing the unique complexities of their own composing process. (SR)

Examines the basic writing course described in D. Bartholomae and A. Petrosky's "Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts" from the perspective of four gender-typed categories: "masculinists,""feminists,""androgenous," and "undifferentiated." Suggests that teachers define themselves, give shape to their…

Charts a brief history of the teaching of basic writing, suggesting that fieldwork has been shaped by three overarching metaphors--growth, initiation, and conflict. Argues that recent views of the basic writing classroom as a "contact zone" fail to offer a compelling view of public discourse as a forum expressing and negotiating cultural…

Demonstrates how an issue of the "Journal of Basic Writing," published in 1980 as a memorial for theorist Mina Shaughnessy, resembles structurally the funeral orations of Ancient Greece. Divides the issue into three parts: praise, lament, and consolation. Discusses political implications of the issue. (HB)

Presents the results of a questionnaire which asked students to distinguish the most helpful instructional factors and activities aiding their writing progress. Concludes that the student's voice is his/her most accessible tool for progress, that acceptance of the student's voice is crucial, and that the speaking-writing connection is the most…

Presents annotations of 179 writing textbooks (new texts or new editions of previously published texts) having a 1993 copyright date. Includes developmental and ESL writing texts, first-year writing texts, advanced writing texts, special texts, and professional texts. (RS)

Describes the sharing of authority that occurred during a collaboratively taught course for basic writing students, supported by real-time computer exchanges. Discusses the computer classroom, curriculum, assignments, collaborative teaching, and student responses to the course. (SR)

Considers Mina Shaughnessy's metaphor likening the experience of basic writers to that of "uncultured natives" under European colonization. Advocates decolonizing the classroom by devising a pedagogy of voice in a dialogized space that is continually reconstructed from different locations and identities. (HB)