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Course Development

371	Bartholomae, David, and Anthony R. Petrosky. Facts, Artifacts and Counterfacts. Upper Montclair, N.J.: Boynton/Cook, 1986. Basic writers can learn to use academic discourse in a course that asks them to read difficult nonfiction books and write about their reading processes. The students find that all reading requires interpretation and that interpretive methods are inevitably culture-bound. They thus come to see that their "problem" as basic writers consists in their use of nonacademic or imperfectly assimilated academic interpretive methods. As they become more familiar with the language and methods of the university, they can create authoritative, academically successful personae in their writing. This book explains the theory behind the authors' University of Pittsburgh course and reproduces course materials, including twenty-four sequenced writing assignments. It also includes chapters by their colleagues on revising, correcting errors, and using personal writing to develop a dialogue between student and text.
372	Dickson, Marcia. It's Not Like That Here: Teaching Academic Writing and Reading to Novice Writers. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1995. A major problem for novices entering the academic discourse community is that they do not understand how they can use their nonacademic literacies and personal knowledge there. The Distanced/Personal writing course project attacks this problem by having students research and write about a topic like high-school education, about which they have some personal experience, a topic that can be explored both in the library and by ethnographic research in their home communities. Final papers synthesize these disparate sources. Several chapters give advice on how to help students read difficult academic material and interview others effectively.
373	Dixon, John. Growth through English. 3rd ed. 1967. London: Oxford Univ. Press for the National Association for the Teaching of English, NCTE, and MLA, 1975. "Language is learnt in operation, not by dummy runs." Children need to do more writing in school for their own purposes of self-exploration or communicating personal experience. The development of writing ability thus becomes a social and cognitive process. English education should be based on a "growth model" rather than a "skills" or "cultural heritage" model. Reporting on his conclusions following the 1966 Dartmouth Conference, Dixon gives examples of student writing and suggestions for classroom practice at the elementary and middle-school levels, but his curriculum theory has also influenced college teachers. In this edition, Dixon recommends paying more attention to the students' social world and encouraging students to write in a wider variety of modes.
374	Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981. Learning to master our writing makes us feel that we can express our ideas powerfully and move our audience. Writing well thus becomes an important way of relating to the world. This book works from the same premises as Writing without Teachers [397] with many more teaching suggestions, particularly on making writing responsive to audience.
375	Foster, David. A Primer for Writing Teachers: Theories, Theorists, Issues, Problems. 2nd ed. Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook, 1993. The teaching of writing has been influenced by a number of theories and traditions. The handbook tradition of error correcting still wields power in the field, although most writing teachers are now convinced that handbook exercises do not improve writing. The rhetorical tradition, revived in the last two decades, emphasizes the communication situation and connects with poststructuralist focus on context. The work of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner in cognitive psychology has led to the development of a variety of cognitive-process models of writing that have been vastly influential in teaching and research. Constructivist views, drawing on the work of Rorty, Bakhtin, and Freire [258, 259], oppose the cognitivist view of language as expression of thought. Cognitive construction implies that mental constructs shape knowledge and understanding; social construction proposes that meaning is a function of social discourse. This perspective emphasizes the negotiation of communal discourse conventions in learning to write. Several discourse systems offer additional theoretical bases for teachers of writing. Relational systems (Burke [166, 167], Moffett [381], Britton [226]) emphasize the interaction between writer and audience; categorical systems (Kinneavy [194], classify topics, strategies, forms, and styles; "micro-rhetorics" (Christensen [297], Alton Becker) focus on the shaping of sentences and paragraphs. Writing teachers must also be aware of the relationship between literacy and dialect, the problems of measuring writing skills, and research in basic writing. Foster concludes with a chapter each on course planning and teaching methods. See: Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World [259].
376	Graves, Richard L., ed. Rhetoric and Composition: A Sourcebook for Teachers and Writers. 3rd ed. Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook, 1990. Thirty-one previously published essays collected as a resource for practicing writing teachers. Few of the essays from the previous edition appear in this one. There are sections on theory, motivating student writing, and style, as well as stories from the writing classroom. Essays include Maxine Hairston, "The Winds of Change"; Lester Faigley, "Competing Theories of Process" [229]; Robert Brooke, "Underlife and Writing Instruction"; Gabriele Lusser Rico, "Tapping Creative Potential for Writing"; Donald Murray, "Writing and Teaching for Surprise"; Valerie Krishna, "The Syntax of Error"; Francis Christensen, "A Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence" [324]; Winston Weathers, "Grammars of Style: New Options in Composition"; Stephen North, "The Idea of a Writing Center" [643]; Peter Elbow, "Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience" [309]; Linda Brodkey, "On the Subjects of Class and Gender in 'The Literacy Letters'" [444]; and Ann Berthoff, "Paulo Freire's Liberation Pedagogy." See: Bruce Herzberg. "Community Service and Critical Teaching" [699].
377	Kail, Harvey. "Narratives of Knowledge: Story and Pedagogy in Four Composition Texts." Rhetoric Review 6 (Spring 1988): 179–89. A course or a textbook is like a story about acquiring knowledge, a heroic quest; in the texts considered here, it is a myth of separation, initiation, and return. In Young, Becker, and Pike's Rhetoric: Discovery and Change [294], the hero's quest is to reunite the post-Babel world of epistemic alienation by overcoming barriers to communication through the exercise of tortuous heuristics and the disarming of opponents by Rogerian rhetoric, at once winning the trust of the audience and a glimpse of unclouded reality. In Berthoff's Forming/Thinking/Writing [287], the hero assails the Castle of Positivism to reclaim the imagination, sailing off on assisted invitations to examine magical objects that lead first to chaos and then to self-recognition. In Coles's Teaching Composing, the hero awakens from enchantment by the school, abandons its familiar language, enters the gap of silence between languages, and, with the help of classmate-comrades, gains the freedom of true individual identity. These and other such narratives are founded on social traditions—the Christian search for salvation or the romantic quest for a natural form of individual identity.
378	Kiniry, Malcolm, and Ellen Strenski. "Sequencing Expository Writing: A Recursive Approach." CCC 36 (May 1985): 191–202. The basic-writing program at the University of California at Los Angeles uses a sequence of expository assignments, in order of increasing cognitive complexity, to introduce students to academic writing: listing, definition, seriation (e.g., chronology), classification, summary, comparison/contrast, analysis, and academic argument. These schema, abstracted from a survey of writing assignments in all departments, allow for development, recursivity (repetition of earlier tasks in later assignments), the use of model academic writing, and an introduction to the methods of reasoning in different academic disciplines.
379	Lindemann, Erika. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995. Writing is a means of communication (sending a message to a reader in a particular context) as well as a process involving pre-writing, writing, and rewriting. Psychology and linguistics inform modern methods of teaching students to find ideas; choose words; shape effective sentences, paragraphs, and forms of discourse; and revise what they have written. Lindemann provides chapters on each step in the writing process, on premodern rhetoric, on modern grammar, on the evaluation of writing, and on the design of courses. The third edition provides an expanded bibliography and an outline of the history of composition and rhetoric.
380	Miller, Richard E. As If Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1998. Theories that aim to reform education often have very little impact on what actually happens in classrooms, because academics tend to despise the bureaucratic labor that would make change possible. The few successful reforms have adapted to local conditions, not attempting to radically restructure the school day or the curriculum or to retrain teachers, but negotiating minor adjustments while taking these circumstances into account. The reformer who effects such changes must have the administrative ability of the bureaucrat as well as the creative insight of the intellectual. Miller illustrates how the bureaucrat-intellectual could function through case studies: Matthew Arnold in his role as inspector of schools; the Great Books approach; British cultural studies for open-admissions students; and ethnography as a means for student self-study.
381	Moffett, James. Teaching the Universe of Discourse. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968. English classes in grades K through 12 should focus on language as a symbol system that enables increasingly abstract thought. This view of language is realized in a curriculum that moves students through a "spectrum" of kinds of discourse—interior dialogue, conversation, correspondence, public narrative, and public generalization and inference—that are classified according to the distance between speaker/writer, hearer/reader, and subject. Moving through the spectrum requires increasing efforts to imagine one's audience and what they need to be told about the subject. Lessons can begin with drama performed in class, followed by narrative, moving from diaries and letters to memoirs and biographies. As narration becomes more anonymous, older students move to abstract reasoning. This curriculum is student-centered because it reflects children's cognitive development and because student writing is the principal content. An influential curriculum model, based on the principles developed at the 1966 Dartmouth Conference.
382	Muller, Herbert J. The Uses of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967. Summarizing the conclusions agreed upon at the 1966 Dartmouth Conference, Muller makes several recommendations. Children in a democratic school system should not be grouped according to ability; the classroom should also be ethnically and socially diverse. The English curriculum should center on the child's cognitive development, and "good English" should not be taught prescriptively. Literature, not literary criticism, should be taught, with respect for personal responses. English teachers should connect writing with speaking to break down students' tendency to use academic jargon; bring drama into the classroom to foster social maturity and creativity; and use audiovisual media in the classroom and make the study of film, television, and other mass media part of English study. Alternatives to formal examinations should also be sought.
383	Murray, Donald M. A Writer Teaches Writing. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985. Murray advocates teaching writing through a workshop approach, in which students and teachers seek the surprise of hearing the written voices that engage readers. Drawing on his experience as a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, Murray gives detailed advice on teaching the whole writing process, from syllabus design ("inviting writing") to evaluation (helping students learn to evaluate their own drafts). See: Wayne Campbell Peck, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins. "Community Literacy" [702].
384	Petrosky, Anthony R., and David Bartholomae, eds. The Teaching of Writing: Eighty-Fifth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986. Eleven comprehensive essays directed to an audience of educators who are not composition specialists. Included are David Bartholomae, "Words from Afar"; John Gage, "Why Write?"; Patricia Bizzell, "Composing Processes: An Overview"; Arthur N. Applebee, "Problems in Process Approaches: Toward a Reconceptualization of Process Instruction"; Rexford Brown, "Evaluation and Learning"; and Paul Kameen, "Coming of Age in College Composition."
385	Reynolds, Mark, ed. Two-Year College English: Essays for a New Century. Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1994. Nineteen essays on a variety of issues facing teachers of English in two-year colleges, including Janice Albert, "I Am Not the Look in Your Eyes"; Mary L. Needham, "This New Breed of College Students"; Mary Kay Morrison, " 'The Old Lady in the Student Lounge': Integrating the Adult Female Student into the College Classroom"; Smokey Wilson, "What Happened to Darlene? Reconstructing the Life and Schooling of an Underprepared Learner"; Kate Mangelsdorf, "Latina/o College Writing Students: Linguistic, Cultural, and Gender Issues"; Raelyn Agustin Joyce, "Aliteracy among Community College Students"; Claudia Barrett and Judith Wootten, "Today for Tomorrow: Program and Pedagogy for 21st-Century College Students"; Myrna Goldenberg and Barbara Stout, "Writing Everybody In"; Judith Rae Davis and Sandra Silverberg, "The Integration Project: A Model for Curriculum Transformation"; Ellen Andrews Knodt, "If at First You Don't Succeed: Effective Strategies for Teaching Composition in the Two-Year College"; Nell Ann Pickett, "A Quarter Century and Beyond: My Story of Teaching Technical Writing"; Jean Bolen Bridges, "Honors English in the Two-Year Colleges"; Mark Harris and Jeff Hooks, "Writing in Cyberspace: Communication, Community, and the Electronic Network"; Al Starr, "Community College Teaching: Endless Possibilities"; Bertie E. Fearing, "Renewed Vitality in the 21st Century: The Partnership between Two-Year College and University English Departments"; and Keith Kroll, "(Re)Viewing Faculty Preservice Training and Development."
386	Shor, Ira. Critical Teaching and Everyday Life. Boston: South End Press, 1980. Open-admissions policies have brought increasing numbers of working-class students into American colleges. They need to learn how to distance themselves from their everyday experience in order to analyze it critically, a first step toward understanding and acting on their political situation. Shor shows howitical situation. Shor shows how encourages such analysis while reducing the teacher's authority. The most complete application of the ideas of Paulo Freire [258] to American education. Cf. Berthoff [153] and Fiore and Elsasser [450].
387	Shor, Ira, and Caroline Pari. Critical Literacy in Action. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, 1999. Seventeen previously published essays elaborating Freirean critical pedagogy, with a new introductory essay by Shor, "What Is Critical Literacy?" Other essays include Elsa Auerbach's essay on adult ESL teaching, "Teacher, Tell Me What to Do"; Beverly Tatum, "Teaching White Students about Racism: The Search for White Allies and the Restoration of Hope," which proposes alternatives to the oppressor/victim roles of whites and blacks; Tom Fox's critique of extant models of racial and linguistic differences, "Basic Writing as Cultural Conflict"; Terry Dean, "Multicultural Classrooms, Monocultural Teachers" [447]; Houston Baker's 1992 Presidential Address to the MLA, "Local Pedagogy; or, How I Redeemed My Spring Semester"; Jane Nagle, "Social Class and School Literacy," which challenges middle-class assumptions about the goals of working-class students; Dale Bauer, "The Other 'F' Word" [483]; Bruce Herzberg, "Community Service and Critical Teaching" [699]; and James Berlin, "Students (Re)Writing Culture," from Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures [515].
388	Small, Robert C., Jr., and Joseph E. Strzepek. A Casebook for English Teachers: Dilemmas and Decisions. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1988. Thirty-three cases dramatically present problems that call for ethical and pedagogical solutions, for example, dialect prejudice, sexual stereotyping, hostile reactions to group work, students unprepared for class, plagiarism, grade complaints, failed lessons, boring papers, unwillingness to participate in class discussion, and mechanical errors in papers. Each case is followed by analytic questions, suggestions for approaching the problem from different angles, possible pedagogical solutions or follow-up activities, and reading suggestions. Though designed for secondary-school teachers, most cases apply as well to college classes.
389	Summerfield, Judith, and Geoffrey Summerfield. Texts and Contexts: A Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Teaching Composition. New York: Random House, 1986. Human discourse is produced in reaction to social contexts. People adopt a variety of roles constructed in discourse, roles that can be understood as occupying a position on a spectrum from participant in the social context to spectator of it. Participant texts tend to offer many sensory impressions of the context but little explanation of it. They also tend to be structured paratactically. Spectator texts tend to evaluate the social context from a critical distance, to seek connections among contexts, and to be structured hypotactically. Students can be stimulated to write in a variety of participant and spectator roles as they react to texts by others. They can thus test the purposes and effects of taking different roles, develop commitment in writing, and become more critical as readers. See: Barbara E. Fassler Walvoord, Helping Students Write Well: A Guide for Teachers in All Disciplines [366].
390	Tate, Gary, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick, eds. A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001. This collection of twelve original essays serves as an introduction to composition studies and its wide range of current pedagogies and also offers an overview of the pedagogical approaches important in the discipline. Process, expressive, rhetorical, collaborative, cultural studies, critical, feminist, community service, writing center, and basic writing pedagogies, as well as writing across the curriculum and technology and the teaching of writing, are each explained in a separate essay which includes bibliographic guides. Contributors include Lad Tobin, Christopher Burnham, William A. Covino, Rebecca Moore Howard, Diana George, John Trimbur, Ann George, Susan C. Jarratt, Laura Julier, Susan McLeod, Eric H. Robinson, Deborah Mutnick, and Charles Moran.
391	Williams, James D. Preparing to Teach Writing: Research, Theory, and Practice. 2nd ed. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. Teachers of writing in college face an extensive field of theory and practice related to writing, rhetoric, classroom management, assignments, and assessment. In ten chapters, Williams presents exceptionally clear summaries of these concerns, offering theoretical background as well as practical options. Chapters include an overview of the history of rhetoric and its relation to writing instruction; explanations of the main current theories of composition; the workshop classroom; how to teach reading, grammar, and style; ESL, Ebonics, and nonstandard English; and commenting on and assessing writing.