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…

The author argues that significant inroads in the destigmatization of basic writing courses and students can be made when students are asked to choose not only which FYW course they believe best meets their needs (directed self-placement, or DSP) but also to choose from among a variety of courses (including corequisite courses, particularly those…

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…

This essay extends arguments made by Gray-Rosendale in two earlier essays published within the Journal of Basic Writing (1999 and 2006), ones that focused on how basic writers' identities were being constructed in our scholarship. She traced developments in various approaches--developmentalist and grammar-based models (1970s), academic discourse…

This essay considers the critical need for pre-service and in-service basic writing faculty to define and enact a professional identity, specifically within the context of faculty development and graduate course settings. The essay describes a graduate course in teaching basic writing offered primarily online with four in-person weekend workshops.…

This essay provides a profile of an interdisciplinary master's program whose curriculum supports current and future adult educators seeking employment opportunities in higher education, adult literacy education, adult English language instruction, writing centers, and secondary education. A faculty administrator and five former graduate students…

This article describes a version of the Seminar in Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy, a Master's level course that Marcia Buell taught in summer 2017 at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. Buell argues that because many MA students enter graduate courses in Basic Writing expecting that the course will show them how to "fix"…

This article explores the pedagogical implications of translingualism by offering writing theory cartoon as a pedagogical tool to support basic writers' development of translingual dispositions. In a curriculum that challenges the supremacy of standard English over other languages and modalities, this assignment supports basic, multilingual…

This essay describes the process of reassessing our BW program at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in order to cultivate a more deliberate, transparent negotiation among stakeholders toward a "transcultural ethos." Informed by Bruce Horner's argument that leading-edge work on language and language difference can take place in BW, we…

Thirty years ago, Maxine Hairston observed that disciplinary shifts in writing studies occur not gradually but rather due to revolutionary "paradigm shifts." Perhaps. But even as the discipline has grown, chance encounters, collaborations rooted in friendship, conversations and coffees, and the discovery of mutual acquaintances have…

This article examines two course redesigns undertaken to improve student support, learning, and retention in the basic writing program at Oakland University, a doctoral research university in southeast Michigan, where support for developmental writers has fluctuated dramatically between nurture and neglect over the past fifty years. However,…

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…

What follows is a simple assertion: time for basic writing to get out from under, a call for us to inculcate a Basic Writing Across the Curriculum. It is time yet again to move away from the concept that basic writers are in need of remedies, in part because all composition courses are in some sense remedial, and to a greater degree because the…

This article offers a revised version of transactional reading theory to explain how students classified as basic writers tend to employ counterproductive reading and thinking processes that inhibit them from full participation in academic life. Louise Rosenblatt proposes that readers have two main positions or purposes in reading--the efferent…

An adjunct turned writing program administrator reflects on her professional journey and describes efforts to improve the teaching environment amongst composition faculty--primarily part-time--within her department. Based on a local program review, a pilot faculty relations plan was implemented that addressed two major areas: offering more…