As writing instructors, the authors spend hours "talking back" to their students through written comments on their drafts. But how do student writers receive their comments, and what do they "do" with this feedback? Teachers invest so much time and energy in their responses to papers. How do they know what gets through, what makes sense to their…

In 1990 Helon Howell Raines published "Is There a Writing Program in This College? Two Hundred and Thirty-Six Two-Year Schools Respond," in which she reported on her study, via survey and eight follow-up telephone interviews, of two-year college writing programs across the country. Raines asked questions about departmental and institutional…

"Teaching English in the Two-Year College's" series "What Works for Me" is a unique artifact in the development of composition as a field. In this article, the author claims "What Works for Me" as a valuable genre, a hybrid of new and old disciplinary forms. In the spirit of Derek N. Mueller's "Views from a Distance: A Nephological Model of the…

The purpose of this article is to present a case for building racial literacy in students. The author offers support for her argument by foregrounding a three-month study she conducted in her community college first-year composition (FYC) classroom. She hopes that this article will contribute to the growing body of research that emphasizes the…

For many writing teachers, helping students discover, explore, refine and, most importantly, inhabit their "voices" is both the teachers' greatest challenge and pleasure. Voice, they tell them, is what their writing "sounds" like when someone reads it; it is their personality on the page; it is the writer "speaking" to the reader. But what happens…

Community college campuses around the United States serve an increasingly diverse student body. A report from the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights highlights this growing trend by outlining a plan to increase racial diversity at four-year institutions by encouraging transfers from community colleges, primarily because community…

Contrastive rhetoric studies the writing of second language learners to understand how it is affected by their first language and culture. The field of contrastive rhetoric is as multidimensional as second language writing is complex. It draws on the work of contrastive analysis, anthropology, linguistics, pedagogy, culture studies, translation…

To writing, painting, drawing, and photography as artistic media, the author would like to add teaching as a creative endeavor as well. Especially in a classroom where English is not the first language for many students, the writing teacher needs to be creative with assignments and activities that address nontraditional ways of learning. Her…

To effectively address the needs of second language (L2) learners in college writing courses, many postsecondary institutions, especially those located in cities with high concentrations of immigrants, offer college-level courses for L2 students. Such courses include noncredit English language courses in an intensive English program, developmental…

The word "idea" assumed special meaning in composition studies when Stephen M. North, in "The Idea of a Writing Center," showed how an idea can evoke and ignite intense expectations and aversions surrounding literacy instruction. In particular, North lamented the "false sense of knowing" that made getting a message through (in this case, about…

In the best of times, students training to be writing center consultants are empowered to work creatively with writers and professors as part of an integrated enterprise that contributes to teaching and learning on their campuses. In the worst of times, students training to be writing center consultants are disempowered, caught between faculty and…

In 2006, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen's blog post "The People Formerly Known as the Audience" went viral in the journalism community. In the post Rosen argues that a fundamental power shift has occurred between "Big Media" and "the people formerly known as the audience" (PFKATA), who were not only writing back, but also…

Although not everyone needs textbooks, they still actively serve four audiences within the discipline. The four audiences that benefit from textbooks are students, instructors, the textbook sales force, and the textbook authors themselves. With a growing number of online classes where students have less and less, or even no, face time with their…

This article questions educators' reliance on textbooks through the author's own struggles to come to terms with his ambiguous, sometimes frustrating, relationship with textbooks. Seeing the wide-open white pages on his syllabus and schedule, not filled or structured by a textbook, the author realizes he has an opportunity to reconsider his…

In an early think-aloud protocol study that identifies which "actual" written comments help students revise, Mary Hayes and Donald Daiker examine "how students respond to educators' responses". Studying teacher feedback in a writing course focused on revision, Hayes and Daiker asked students to read aloud and analyze their instructor's written…