Having a higher level of digital literacy can contribute to students' better outcomes in first-year composition. However, some underprepared and financially disenfranchised students may not have digital literacy skills nor own a portable computing device, such as a tablet, to engage their coursework. This three-year, mixed methods study of 292…

In spite of a host of scholarship pertaining to response and the contexts that surround our response practices, few have studied how everyday classroom texts may inform students' interpretations of teachers' written feedback on their writing. This article examines the results from case studies of six students across two first-year composition…

Prior to being a graduate communication center consultant, the author taught first-year composition for two years. As a teacher, she focused heavily on using various forms of communication as tools for learning, modeling effective communication strategies in the classroom, and learning collaboratively. While serving as a graduate consultant the…

Writing skills are vital to college and career success; therefore, students who do not succeed in writing will likely struggle in their subsequent coursework. Latino male college students are the most at-risk group. Following a single case study approach, this qualitative study examines the writing perceptions of three Latino males in their…

While some studies suggest that teachers' written comments help students transfer writing skills across contexts (Wardle, 2007), the literature on feedback's role in the transfer process has yet to be fully explored. Research has indicated that feedback that is intentional, specific, and reflective benefits students' writing growth and the…

This study explored ESL students' comments on teacher's written corrective feedback in a freshman composition class to find out whether they thought positively about the feedback and how they perceived the power relationship with the teacher. The study followed a qualitative design. Thirteen ESL students were asked to comment on the teacher's…

This paper considers the relevance and application of Writing About Writing (WAW) (Downs & Wardle, 2007; Wardle, 2009) and Threshold Concepts of Writing (TCW) (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015) in the Australian higher education context. These approaches to literacy and writing curriculum development have been developed in the United States…

It has been twenty-seven years since a small group of faculty at the Community College of Baltimore County, faced with the discovery that two-thirds of students placed in our upper-level basic writing course never passed first year composition, began the development of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP), one of the earliest corequisite…

This study investigates syntactic modifiers as part of the request speech act within email messages and builds on studies of L2 pragmatics within computer-mediated communication to identify how modifications affect perceived politeness. Enrolled in first-year composition courses, the participants formed two groups: English L1 (EL1) students (n=32)…

This qualitative case study describes some of the issues faced by incoming first-generation college students at a private, 4-year institution in the northwest. Using constructs drawn from social cognitive theory and social cognitive career theory, it explores how high-impact practices such as learning communities, writing-intensive courses, and…

The problem addressed in this study was the absence of a clearly defined pathway to Composition I for Hispanic non-native English-speaking students (HNNESS) testing below college level English at the study site. The purpose of the study was to identify an optimal pre-college English pathway for HNNESS using the college assessment of basic skills…

Until recently, second language writers were typically separated from their peers in mainstream composition courses. However, as the field considers the possibility of integrating second language writers into mainstream composition classrooms, important questions arise. For instance, how are teachers of First Year Composition (FYC) prepared for…

This article describes the pilot year of a new model for information literacy instruction in first-year composition classes at the University of New Mexico. The flipped classroom model, the Association of College and Research Libraries "Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education," and challenges to library staffing sparked…

Positioned within our field's work on supporting transfer of writing-related knowledge through careful course design, this article describes the development of a pedagogical intervention designed to help students identify knowledge gaps and pose questions about rhetoric and genre. Below, I tell the story of a 2012 teacher research study that…

As cultural and racial demographics continue to diversify across college campuses, the First Year Composition (FYC) classroom becomes a site wherein faculty can engage in transformative pedagogical strategies to maximize ways in which students' culturally diverse backgrounds can influence their rhetorical strategies in meaningful ways. However, a…