Author: ksuchor

Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) series. 192 pp. 2011. College. NCTE/CCCC and Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-3048-5.

Listen to the Podcast Interview with author Rebecca S. Nowacek and interviewer Angela Rounsaville:

Book Description

The question of how students transfer knowledge is an important one, as it addresses the larger issue of the educational experience. In Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act, Rebecca S. Nowacek explores, through a series of case studies, the issue of transfer by asking what in an educational setting engages students to become “agents of integration”— individuals actively working to perceive, as well as to convey effectively to others, the connections they make.

Author Information

Rebecca S. Nowacek is a professor of English at Marquette University.

Purchase Agents of Integration from Southern Illinois University Press.

Tiffany Rousculp is founding director of the Salt Lake Community College Community Writing Center and author of the SWR Series book Rhetoric of Respect: Recognizing Change at a Community Writing Center.

In this conversation with C. C. Hendricks, Rousculp talks about the founding of the CWC, the impact that its locations have had on its staff’s work and on its clientele, the process of writing her book, and the importance of blurring boundaries between the world of higher education and the larger communities it inhabits. She also offers some advice for others interested in engaging in community literacy work. (30:31)

 

Hear more from our authors and learn about their work in the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series.

 

Mara Holt, Collaborative Learning as Democratic Practice: A History

 

 

 

 

 

Sandra L. Tarabochia, Reframing the Relational A Pedagogical Ethic for Cross-Curricular Literacy Work

 

 

 

 

 

Leslie Seawright, Genre of Power: Police Report Writers and Readers in the Justice System

 

 

 

 

 

Kathleen Blake Yancey and Stephen J. McElroy, Assembling Composition

 

 

 

 

 

Ashley J. Holmes, Public Pedagogy in Composition Studies

 

 

 

 

 

Leigh Ann Jones, From Boys to Men: Rhetorics of Emergent American Masculinity

 

 

 

 

 

Tiffany Rousculp, Rhetoric of Respect: Recognizing Change at a Community Writing Center

 

 

 

 

 

Rhea Estelle Lathan, Freedom Writing:
African American Civil Rights Literacy Activism, 1955-1967

 

 

 

 

 

Rebecca S. Nowacek, Agents of Integration: Understanding Transfer as a Rhetorical Act

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Soliday, Everyday Genres: Writing Assignments across the Disciplines

 

 

 

 

 

Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau, The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations

 

 

 

 

 

James Ray Watkins Jr., A Taste for Language: Literacy, Class, and English Studies

 

 

 

 

 

Kelly Ritter, Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920-1960

 

 

 

 

 

Conference on College Composition and Communication
January 2001, Revised November 2009, Reaffirmed November 2014, Revised May 2020

Part One: General Statement

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) recognizes campuses around the world as fundamentally multilingual spaces, in which students and faculty bring to the acts of writing and communication a rich array of linguistic and cultural resources that enrich academic life and should be valued and supported. The aim of this document is to provide broad research-based guidelines for teachers and administrators to advocate for multilingual writers in all spaces of universities and colleges, including first-year writing, undergraduate and graduate courses across the curriculum, writing centers, and intensive English programs. The secondary aim of this statement is to promote social justice for all multilingual members of the academic community, students, faculty, and staff in order to make visible otherwise underutilized linguistic and literacy resources. This document is divided into sections detailing guidelines for writing classes, writing programs, teacher preparation, and teaching contexts as well as a selected bibliography of helpful resources.

In this document, we will use the term multilingual writers to describe students who often are institutionally categorized as English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. These students are also referred to by other terms such as English language learners (ELLs), second language (L2) writers, and limited English proficiency (LEP) learners. These terms point toward established fields of scholarship as well as a history of student support programs and pedagogical practices. We will use the term multilingual writers to acknowledge that for such writers English may be a second, third, fourth, or fifth language, as well as to acknowledge emerging scholarship about language use by these students.

Multilingual writers include international visa holders, refugees, permanent residents, and undocumented immigrants, as well as naturalized and native-born citizens of the United States and Canada. Many have grown up speaking languages other than English at home, in their communities, and in schools; others began to acquire English at a very young age and have used it alongside their native languages. Multilingual writers can have a wide range of literacies in their first languages, from being unable to read or write to having completed graduate degrees in that language. They learn and acquire English in various educational contexts, by employing various strategies, and to meet various global/local standards.

Colleges and universities, including technical colleges, two-year colleges, four-year institutions, and graduate programs, have actively sought to increase the diversity of their student populations through recruitment of international students and establishment of international branch campuses, even as domestic language minoritized populations have grown. Multilingual writers are and should be recognized as an integral part of writing courses and programs worldwide.

Multilingual writers may demonstrate different expectations for and understandings of discourse, because the nature and functions of discourse, audience, and rhetorical appeals often differ across national, linguistic, and educational contexts—for example, within academic writing, whether the main argument of an essay should appear at the beginning or end, or how sources should be used, are deeply rooted in specific cultural assumptions held by instructors and students. At the same time, however, other writers—especially graduate students—are already knowledgeable about the discourse and content of their respective disciplines. The process of acquiring academic literacies—including syntactic and lexical competence—in an additional language is a complex, recursive, lifelong process.

Historically, languages have been viewed as occupying separate spaces in the minds of multilinguals, so that language users actually “switch” between languages, using the resources from only one language at a time. We understand languages as integrated, so that multilingual writers have the ability to draw on their full linguistic repertoire for communication and meaning-making. We also recognize that language use takes place within material spaces, using diverse resources such as gestures, images, and physical objects. Even as writers develop their competence and confidence in English, they may (intentionally or unintentionally) employ features of multiple languages and literacies in their English writing as they begin to participate as members of their fields through upper-division and/or graduate courses, and beyond.

For these reasons, we urge writing teachers and writing program administrators to

• recognize and support multilingual writers’ practices of integrating their unique linguistic and cultural resources into writing both in classrooms and at the level of the writing program.
• recognize and take responsibility for the regular presence of multilingual students in writing classes, to understand their characteristics, and to develop instructional and administrative practices that are sensitive to their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
• offer teacher preparation based on evidence-based scholarship and best practices for multilingual writers in the forms of graduate courses, faculty workshops, relevant conference travel, and, when possible, require such coursework or other similar preparation for instructors working with writers in a higher-education context.
• investigate issues surrounding multilingual writing and writers in the context of writing programs, including first-year writing programs, undergraduate and graduate, technical, creative, and theoretical writing courses, writing centers, and Writing Across the Curriculum programs, and make multilingual practices visible and central across these spaces.
• include cross-disciplinary perspectives on multilingual writers in developing theories, designing studies, analyzing data, and discussing implications of studies of writing.
• advocate for emotional and legal support for multilingual writers around issues such as immigration and discrimination, and challenge materials and pedagogical and programmatic practices that disadvantage multilingual writers.

In the following sections, we provide more detailed guidelines for writing and writing-intensive courses, for writing program administrators, and for teacher preparation and pedagogy.

Part Two: Guidelines for Writing and Writing-Intensive Courses

Class Size

Since working with multilingual writers often requires additional feedback and conference time with the instructor, enrollments in mainstream classes with a substantial number of multilingual writers should be reduced to a maximum of 20 students per class. In classes made up exclusively of multilingual writers, enrollments should be limited to a maximum of 15 students per class.

Writing Assignment Design

When designing assignments, instructors should avoid topics that require substantial background knowledge that is related to a specific culture or history that is not being covered by the course. Instructors should also be aware that topics such as sexuality, criticism of authority, political beliefs, personal experiences, and religious beliefs may be sensitive for students of different cultural and educational backgrounds. We encourage instructors to provide students with multiple options for successfully completing an assignment, such as by providing multiple prompts or allowing students to write in a variety of genres for completing the assignment. Instructors should provide clearly written assignments so that expectations are not left tacit. For more on assignment design, see the teacher preparation section.

Assessment

The evaluation of second language texts should take into consideration various aspects of writing (e.g., topic development, organization, grammar, word choice). Writing instructors should look for evidence of a text’s rhetorically effective features, rather than focus only on one or two of these features that stand out as problematic. To reduce the risk of evaluating students on the basis of their cultural knowledge rather than their writing proficiency, writing prompts for placement and exit exams should avoid cultural references that are not readily understood by people who come from various cultural backgrounds. When possible, instructors should provide students with a rubric that articulates assessment criteria. For best practices on responding to student writing, see the teacher preparation section.

The Committee on Second Language Writing supports the recommendations in the CCCC position statement on Writing Assessment. In particular, we endorse the ideas that best assessment practices use multiple measures, that writing ability should be assessed via “more than one piece of writing, in more than one genre, written on different occasions, for different audiences, and responded to and evaluated by multiple readers,” and that instructors should “respect language variety and diversity and [assess] writing on the basis of effectiveness for readers.”

Textual Borrowing

Textual ownership and the ownership of ideas are concepts that are culturally based and therefore not shared across cultures and educational systems. Further, “patchwriting,” defined by Rebecca Moore Howard as the copying of sections of texts, such as phrasings and sentence patterns, is a natural part of the process of learning to write in a second language. As with native English-speaking students, multilingual students may plagiarize when they panic about getting an assignment completed in time or doubt their ability to complete the assignment competently. Plagiarism is attributed to practices that range from the wholesale taking of an entire text to the improper use of citation conventions. To help second language writers avoid practices that violate institutional policies, all writing instructors, as well as disciplinary instructors and writing centers, should teach US expectations for textual borrowing and citation conventions. Instructors and administrators should not expect multilingual writers to perfectly execute these practices after a single lesson. We advocate that when suspecting a multilingual writer of plagiarism, instructors should take into consideration the student’s cultural background, level of experience with North American educational systems, and confidence level for writing in English.

Teacher Preparation

Any writing course, including basic writing, first-year composition, advanced writing, and professional writing, as well as any writing-intensive course that enrolls any second language writers should be taught by an instructor who is able to identify and is prepared to address the linguistic and cultural needs of second language writers.  This preparation may be offered through preparing future faculty programs, first-year composition programming for instructors, or faculty development programming offered through Writing Across the Curriculum programs, writing centers, ESL support services, or other campus initiatives. (More guidelines related to teacher preparation are provided in Part Four: Guidelines for Teacher Preparation and Preparedness.)

Resources for Teachers

Writing programs should provide resources for teachers working with second language writers, including textbooks and readers on the teaching of second language writing as well as reference materials such as dictionaries and grammar handbooks for language learners. Moreover, writing programs should encourage  — and offer incentives for — teachers to attend workshops on teaching second language writers that are presented at professional conferences such as CCCC, NCTE, and Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Writing programs without experts in second language writing are encouraged to seek consultation from disciplinary experts.

Part Three: Guidelines for Writing Programs

First-Year Composition

Placement

Decisions regarding the placement of multilingual writers into first-year writing courses should be based on students’ writing proficiency rather than their race, native-language background, nationality, or immigration status. Placement decisions should also not be based solely on the scores from standardized tests of general language proficiency or of spoken language proficiency. Instead, wherever possible, scores from the direct assessment of students’ writing proficiency should be used, ideally with multiple writing samples. Writing programs should work toward making a wide variety of placement options available—including mainstreaming, basic writing, and second language writing as well as courses that systematically integrate native and nonnative speakers of English, such as cross-cultural composition courses.

Not all students self-identify as “ESL,” “multilingual,” or “second language” students. Some students may welcome the opportunity to enroll in a writing course designated for multilingual writers for the additional language support, while others may prefer to enroll in a mainstream first-year composition course. Due to these considerations, we advocate Directed Self-Placement (see Royer and Gilles; Saenkhum) using a combination of direct assessment of student writing and student choice. Writing programs should inform international and residential multilingual students of the advantages and disadvantages of each placement option so that students can make informed decisions.

Credit

Second language sections of first-year composition courses should be offered for credit that satisfies the college’s or university’s writing requirement. Second language writing courses that are prerequisite to required composition courses should be offered for credit that can be used toward satisfying the foreign-language requirement and should receive the same credit accorded other prerequisite composition courses.

Resources for Teachers

Writing programs should provide resources for teachers working with multilingual writers, including textbooks and readers on the teaching of second language writing as well as reference materials such as dictionaries and grammar handbooks for language learners. Moreover, writing programs should encourage—and offer incentives for—teachers to attend workshops on teaching second language writers that are presented at professional conferences sponsored by groups such as CCCC, NCTE, and Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Writing programs without experts in second language writing are encouraged to seek consultation from disciplinary experts.

Staffing

In order to ensure that multilingual students receive high-quality instruction based on up-to-date developments in relevant disciplines (writing studies, TESOL, applied linguistics), it is important to prioritize, when possible, the hiring of tenure-track and tenured faculty. It is a common misperception that “native speakers” of English will necessarily be better teachers; in fact, teachers who are themselves multilingual can offer valuable insight into language learning and serve as models of successful users of English.

Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines Programs

Beyond the composition requirements, writing instruction, at some institutions, is encouraged or required to further promote academic literacy and prepare students for disciplinary discourse within and beyond the academy. This includes professional writing courses, often taught in English departments. Therefore, the literacy support of multilingual writers needs to extend beyond the composition requirement as well.

Institutions requiring undergraduates to complete writing-intensive courses across the curriculum should offer faculty development in second language writing that should include information about second language writing development, information about second language populations at the institution, approaches for designing writing assignments that are culturally inclusive, and approaches for assessing writing that are ethical in relation to second language writing. When possible, institutions are encouraged to design resources that accommodate their writing students who have moved beyond the first-year writing program (e.g., a campus with a large number of multilingual writers taking technical writing courses may develop a separate section for multilingual writers taught by an individual with expertise in both fields). Institutions requiring a writing assessment as a graduation requirement should design this writing assessment so that it is fair and equitable for multilingual writers.

Writing Centers

Writing centers offer crucial resources to multilingual students in undergraduate and graduate levels. These students often visit the writing center to seek support in understanding writing assignments or developing a piece of writing, and to gauge reader response to their writing. They may also seek input on interpreting teacher feedback or assessment and learning more about nuances of the English language. Therefore, it is imperative that writing centers model and discuss effective approaches for working with multilingual writers in tutor training, make available reference materials specific to language learners such as dictionaries on idiomatic English, and hire tutors with specialized knowledge in second language writing. Writing centers that hire multilingual tutors will have someone who can provide second language writing students with firsthand writing strategies as well as empathy. Multilingual graduate writers can benefit from a writing center with a staff well versed in graduate-level literacy expectations and second language writing.

Support for Graduate Students

At institutions with graduate programs, various writing administrators (especially WAC directors), second language acquisition specialists, and/or other informed advocates of multilingual writers should work closely with graduate programs enrolling multilingual writers to create discipline-specific writing support, such as a graduate writing fellows program, English for Academic Purposes courses, or English for Specific Purposes courses. In these courses second language writing graduate students can learn to examine discipline-specific discourse, and they can compose texts that will help them fulfill program requirements and participate in professionalization opportunities, in addition to learning academic English literacy conventions.

Part Four: Guidelines for Teacher Preparation

The teaching of writing occurs in multiple contexts, from the type of course (basic writing, first-year composition, professional writing, WAC/WID, graduate writing, writing centers, and intensive English courses) to the media through which the course is taught (online classes, hybrid classes). As instructors prepare for these teaching contexts and student populations, they will need to consider some of the pedagogical assumptions that inform their practices.  Writing instructor preparation needs to expand instructors’ knowledge of writing issues in general, as well as how to specifically work with multilingual writers. Writing programs should encourage instructors to perceive their institutional roles as guides that will help all students develop their academic literacy by identifying the strengths and the issues that need the student’s attention. To this end, second language writing should be integrated throughout the professional preparation and development programs of all writing teachers, whether that be through a practicum experience, WAC workshops, ESL support services, writing center training, or other campus initiatives. If case studies are used as a methodology, for example, teachers in training might also conduct case studies with second language writers. If observation is used, teachers in training should consider observing both Native English speaking (NES) and nonnative English speaking (NNES) students. If student texts are shared for analysis, both NES and NNES texts should be used.

Teacher preparation should address the following topics:

Cultural Beliefs Related to Writing

Multilingual writers often come from contexts in which writing is shaped by linguistic and cultural features different from their NES peers. Beliefs related to individuality versus collectivity, ownership of text and ideas, student versus teacher roles, revision, structure, the meaning of different rhetorical moves, writer and reader responsibility, and the roles of research and inquiry all impact how student writers shape their texts. Teacher preparation should address the empirical research on these differences, although it is equally important for teachers to consider students’ individual experiences and avoid reducing students to stereotypes.

Assignments

Writing instructors should gain experience in reflecting on how writing assignments may tacitly include cultural assumptions or tacitly rely on knowledge of culturally specific information.  Writing instructors should also gain experience designing writing assignments with second language students in mind, considering topics that are culturally sensitive to multilingual writers and including directions easily understandable to multiple audiences. Discussions on assignment design might include scaffolding, creating benchmarks within larger projects, and incorporating additional resources such as the writing center. Discussions might also include reflections on students’ negotiations between composing in a home country language (including variations of English) and composing in academic English.

Building on Students’ Competencies

Teacher preparation programs should encourage instructors to identify strengths that multilingual writers bring to the classroom. Instructors should look for opportunities to use students’ current literacy practices as a foundation for teaching the expectations of academic literacy. For example, second language students who use digital technology to keep in touch with friends and family across national borders often demonstrate savvy rhetorical strategies, including the ability to communicate with others who write in other varieties of English. With the help of an instructor, multilingual writers can learn to bridge the strategies they use to communicate socially through digital media to the expectations of the academy.

Response to Student Writing

Teacher preparation should include discussion on how the prose second language writers produce can violate their aesthetic expectations for academic English. Instructors need to learn strategies for seeing and promoting the textual features that are rhetorically effective, and for prioritizing two or three mechanical or stylistic issues that individual multilingual writers should focus on throughout the duration of the course. Teacher preparation should include discussion on how response tools, such as rubrics and conferencing, might consider these differences.

Sustained Professional Development

Teacher preparation experiences are often held as meetings during an orientation, guest lectures by experts, faculty workshops, and graduate-level seminars. While there is value in single-experience situations (e.g., a guest lecture, a single workshop, or a single class dedicated to second language issues), instructors will be better prepared to work with multilingual students if issues of second language writing and writers are a consistent feature that is reinforced throughout their training in writing instruction, especially inservice training encouraged of all writing instructors.

Part Five: Considering L2 Writing Concerns in Local Contexts

The role English has assumed as the lingua franca of academic, business, political, and technical communication internationally has increased the demand for English instruction in global contexts. US colleges and their surrounding communities have grown considerably more diverse in recent years. Recent statistics (2017) collected by the US Census Bureau indicate that 21.3% of the US population speaks a language other than English at home. Writing programs should consider that students enrolled in US college composition courses—“ESL” or “mainstream”—as well as in writing and writing-intensive courses across the curriculum may vary in their linguistic backgrounds and their experiences with academic English. We recommend that writing programs develop a better awareness of the language experiences of their students, including understanding the evolution of English—its fluidity and its global variation (i.e., World Englishes).

Building Awareness of Local Multilingual Populations

We recommend that writing programs familiarize themselves with the multilingual populations surrounding their institutions. Doing so not only provides valuable insight into the language experiences of some students in their writing programs, but it also could identify large multilingual populations wishing to matriculate into the college/university. Information on local populations can be collected from the US Census Bureau’s website. Also, websites such as the National Center for Education Statistics provide data on the number of English language learners (ELLs) receiving special services in area high schools, some of whom might aspire to enter the university one day. Such information can be collected and disseminated on a centrally managed university website for the benefit of both instructors within the composition program and other university faculty.

Collecting Information on Language Use and Language Background

Further, writing programs should actively seek to determine the language use and language backgrounds of their students, particularly since many universities often do not collect such information from multilingual students who enter the university from US high schools. Yearly surveys conducted across the sections of first-year writing could provide writing programs with insight into the language needs of students in their courses. Further, posting the results of these surveys on a centrally managed website could help educate faculty across the university on the language needs and backgrounds of their students.

Encouraging Cross-Institutional Collaborations

For many resident second language students, the journey from secondary school to postsecondary is often met with awkward or inconsistent transitions (Harklau). Writing teachers and writing program administrators would benefit greatly from developing a better understanding of these students’ experiences prior to entering the college or university setting. One way to begin to learn about those experiences and to facilitate a more fluid journey across these educational contexts is to create more opportunities for cross-institutional collaborations with secondary schools and local secondary school teachers. Some possibilities for encouraging such collaborations might include bridge programs for local second language students, writing center outreach to local schools, and collaborations with English teacher education programs.

For more information, see the NCTE Position Paper on the Role of English Teachers in Educating English Language Learners (ELLs): https://ncte.org/statement/teaching-english-ells/.

Part Six: Selected Bibliography

Belcher, Diane, and Alan Hirvela, editors. Linking Literacies: Perspectives on L2 Reading-Writing Connections. University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Bloch, Joel. “Technology for Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) Writing.” Teaching and Technology, 2018.

Bruce, Shanti, and Ben Rafoth, editors. ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors, 2nd ed., Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2009.

Canagarajah, Suresh. “The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 57, no. 4, 2006, pp. 586–619.

Caplan, Nigel A. Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers. University of Michigan Press ELT, 2019.

Caplan, Nigel, and Ann Johns, editors. Changing Practices for the L2 Writing Classroom: Moving Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay. University of Michigan Press, 2019.

Casanave, Christine Pearson. Controversies in Second Language Writing: Dilemmas and Decisions in Research and Instruction. 2nd ed., University of Michigan Press, 2017.

Cox, Michelle, Jay Jordan, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, and Gwen Gray Schwartz, editors. Reinventing Identities in Second Language Writing. NCTE, 2010.

Crusan, Deborah. Assessment in the Second Language Writing Classroom. University of Michigan Press, 2010.

Ferris, Dana R. Teaching College Writing to Diverse Student Populations. University of Michigan Press, 2009.

—. Treatment of Error in Second Language Student Writing. University of Michigan Press, 2011.

Ferris, Dana R., and John Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process, and Practice. Routledge, 2013.

Harklau, Linda, Kay M. Losey, and Meryl Siegal, editors. Generation 1.5 Meets College Composition: Issues in the Teaching of Writing to U.S.-Educated Learners of ESL. Erlbaum, 1999.

Horner, Bruce, Min-Zhan Lu, and Paul Kei Matsuda, editors. Cross-Language Relations in Composition. Southern Illinois University Press, 2010.

Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty.” College English, vol. 57, no. 7, 1995, pp. 708–36.

Hyland, Ken. Second Language Writing. 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2019.

Hyland, Ken, and Fiona Hyland, editors. Feedback in Second Language Writing. Cambridge

University Press, 2019.

Journal of Second Language Writing. New York: Elsevier.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva. “L2 Literacy and the Design of the Self: A Case Study of a Teenager Writing on the Internet.” TESOL Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 3, 2000, pp. 457–82.

Laverick, Erin N. “A Late Adopter’s Chance to Take an ESL Program Multimodal.” Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education, vol. 3, no. 1, 2014, pp. 56–60.

Laverick, Erin N. “Weaving Multimodal Compositions into an ESL Curriculum.” Cultivating Visionary Leadership by Learning for Global Success, edited by Don Parlow and Mary Alice Trent, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, 80–8.

Lee, Jerry Won. “Beyond Translingual Writing.” College English, vol. 79, no. 2, 2016, pp. 174–195.

Leki, Ilona. Undergraduates in a Second Language: Challenges and Complexities of Academic Literacy Development. Erlbaum, 2007.

Leki, Ilona, Alister Cumming, and Tony Silva. A Synthesis of Research on Second Language Writing in English. Routledge, 2008.

Manchón, Rosa M., and Paul Kei Matsuda, editors. Handbook of Second and Foreign Language Writing. De Gruyter, 2016.

Matsuda, Paul Kei. “Basic Writing and Second Language Writers: Toward an Inclusive Definition.” Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 22, no. 2, 2003, pp. 67–89.

—. “Composition Studies and ESL Writing: A Disciplinary Division of Labor.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 50, no. 4, 1999, pp. 699–721.

—. “The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition.” College English, vol. 68, no. 6, 2006, pp. 637–51.

Matsuda, Paul Kei, Michelle Cox, Jay Jordan, and Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, editors. Second Language Writing in the Composition Classroom: A Critical Sourcebook. Bedford/St. Martin’s; NCTE, 2006.

Matsuda, Paul Kei, Maria Fruit, and Tamara Lee Burton Lamm, editors. “Bridging the Disciplinary Divide: Integrating a Second-Language Perspective into Writing Programs.” Spec. issue of WPA: Writing Program Administration, vol. 30, no. 1–2, 2006.

Matsuda, Paul Kei, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper and Xiaoye You, editors. The Politics of Second Language Writing: In Search of the Promised Land. Parlor Press, 2006.

Matsuda, Paul Kei, and Tony Silva, editors. Second Language Writing Research: Perspectives on the Process of Knowledge Construction. Erlbaum, 2005.

Matsuda, Paul Kei, Sarah Elizabeth Snyder, and Katherine Daily O’Meara, editors. Professionalizing Second Language Writing. Parlor Press, 2017.

Ortmeier-Hooper, Christina. “English May Be My Second Language, but I’m Not ‘ESL.’“ College Composition and Communication, vol. 59, no. 3, 2008, pp. 389–419.

Ortmeier-Hooper, Christina, and Todd Ruecker, editors. Linguistically Diverse Immigrant and Resident Writers: Transitions from High School to College. Routledge, 2016.

Pecorari, Diane. Teaching to Avoid Plagiarism: How to Promote Good Source Use. McGraw-Hill Education, 2013.

Raimes, Ann. Grammar Troublespots: A Guide for Student Writers. Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Roberge, Mark, Meryl Siegal, and Linda Harklau, editors. Generation 1.5 in College Composition: Teaching Academic Writing to U.S.-Educated Learners of ESL. Routledge, 2009.

Robertson, Wayne, director. Writing Across Borders. Oregon State University, 2005. (For more information, go to http://wic.oregonstate.edu/writingacrossborders).

Royer, Daniel and Roger Gilles, editors. Directed Self-Placement: Principles and Practices. Hampton Press, 2003.

Saenkhum, Tanita. Decisions, Agency, and Advising: Key Issues in the Placement of Multilingual Writers into First-Year Composition Courses. Utah State University Press, 2016.

Severino, Carol. Tutoring Second Language Writers. Utah State University Press, 2016.

Shapiro, Shawna, Raichle Farrelly, and Mary Jane Curry, editors. Educating Refugee-Background Students: Critical Issues and Dynamic Contexts. Multilingual Matters, 2018.

Shin, Dongshin, and Tony Cimasko. “Multimodal Composition in a College ESL Class: New Tools, Traditional Norms.” Computers and Composition, vol. 28, 2008, pp. 376–95.

Silva, Tony, and Zhaozhe Wang, editors. Reconciling Translingualism and Second Language Writing. Routledge, forthcoming.

Swales, John M., and Christine B. Feak. Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills. Vol. 1. University of Michigan Press, 2004.

Tardy, Christine. Building Genre Knowledge. Parlor Press, 2009.

Trimbur, John. “The Dartmouth Conference and the Geohistory of the Native Speaker.” College English, vol. 71, no. 2, 2008, pp. 142–69.

Zamel, Vivian, and Ruth Spack, editors. Crossing the Curriculum: Multilingual Learners in College Classrooms. Erlbaum, 2003.

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

Conference on College Composition and Communication
March 2017

Bibliography of Resources Supporting UR in Rhetoric and Writing Studies (October 2018, pdf)

Executive Summary

Undergraduate research is a widely recognized, high-impact educational practice that offers student researchers and their mentors unique opportunities to engage in shared, discipline-based intellectual inquiry. For undergraduate research in writing studies and rhetoric to flourish at two- and four-year institutions, whether it is embedded in curricula or located in co- and extracurricular opportunities, it must be well-defined and well-supported by relevant campus units (e.g., departments, programs, campus policies) and by the allocation of available campus resources.

Introduction

Part educational movement, part curricular innovation, undergraduate research is now widely recognized as a “high-impact educational practice”:¹  a method of teaching and learning known to substantially benefit students from a variety of backgrounds across a range of instructional contexts, including curricular, cocurricular, and extracurricular activities. On one hand, undergraduate research in all subject areas involves written communication. On the other hand, undergraduate research in writing creates unique, discipline-specific opportunities. Students who become undergraduate writing researchers obtain knowledge of writing that can be learned only through direct participation in full-fledged creative or critical inquiries. As undergraduate writing researchers, students also have the unique experience of contributing actively as subject experts to one or more communities (e.g., department or program, campus, discipline). Likewise, faculty, staff, and graduate students who teach and mentor undergraduate writing researchers gain distinctive opportunities for student-centered instruction, collaboration (e.g., coresearch, coauthorship), and professional development.

This position statement reflects CCCC members’ growing commitment to undergraduate research. It also supports members’ efforts to foster undergraduate research in writing at their home institutions, whether two- or four-year colleges or universities. To that end, this statement affirms undergraduate research in writing as a distinctive activity, and it outlines principles and best practices for mentoring undergraduate writing researchers, developing curricula that support undergraduate research in writing research curriculum, and building and sustaining campus infrastructure that can sustain undergraduate writing research activities.

Recognizing Undergraduate Research in Writing

At its most robust, undergraduate research includes the following elements: the formation of one or more mentoring relationships, preliminary study and project planning, information gathering and analysis, and the feedback loop of peer review and revision associated with the dissemination of findings, whether through publication or public presentation.

In writing studies, undergraduate research reflects the breadth of available methods and methodologies developed and used by professional writing researchers, including textual, archival, and digital scholarship; quantitative and qualitative empirical research; and creative inquiry. Undergraduate research in writing also reflects the full range of students, faculty, and staff involved in college writing. Undergraduate researchers can be first-year students, two-year college students, English language learners, writing or English majors and minors, writing tutors, supplemental instructors, and/or students from any discipline who engage in Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), Writing in the Disciplines (WID), or Writing in the Major (WIM). Mentors of undergraduate researchers in writing are similarly diverse. They can be full-time and part-time faculty members, graduate students, staff, administrators, and/or community members affiliated with relevant campus programs. Mentoring relationships, whether formal or informal, benefit from various forms of institutional support calibrated to mentors’ roles and status.

No single model for integrating undergraduate research in writing into postsecondary education exists. Instead, undergraduate research in writing can be curricular, cocurricular, or extracurricular. It can take place during a single quarter or semester, over a summer, or across a period of years. Whatever the case, undergraduate research in writing follows established ethical standards for inquiries of different kinds, including archival work, community-based projects, studies that involve online or digital media, and studies that involve human participants.²

Principles and Best Practices for Undergraduate Research in Writing

For undergraduate research in writing to flourish, it must be actively cultivated and sustained through individual relationships; through scaffolding provided by campus initiatives and strategic plans; and through infrastructure provided by campus units (e.g., programs, departments), policies, and resources. Specifically

For students
Undergraduate research in writing starts with well-supported undergraduate researchers or students who have one or more opportunities during college to work formally or informally with one or more mentors on well-defined, well-scaffolded projects that align with both institutional learning outcomes and students’ own educational goals.

Good mentors

• Can be faculty and instructors of any status or rank, graduate students, or staff.
• Have relevant knowledge of not only writing practices and processes but also writing research methods and methodologies.
• Are willing and able to communicate regularly with undergraduate researchers, offering guidance and feedback over time, at every stage of a project.
• Connect undergraduate researchers with available experts (e.g., librarians, statisticians) and relevant disciplinary and institutional resources (e.g., data collection and analysis software, funding opportunities).
• Help undergraduate researchers comply with ethical standards for writing inquiries, including (but not limited to) certification and project approval procedures specific to research with human participants.
• Guide researchers through dissemination in various media and offer a conduit to disciplinary and institutional support.

Well-defined projects

• Have exigence, addressing a research question of pressing interest and importance to the student researcher and the field.
• Make a genuine contribution, however modest, to public knowledge of writing, whether academic (e.g., disciplinary knowledge), professional, or community-based.
• Fit into students’ schedules over a set period of time.
• Follow relevant ethical standards.
• Have concrete and realistic goals for dissemination.

Well-aligned projects

• Reflect relevant learning outcomes, whether for a single course or course of study.
• Advance students’ individual college-level educational goals.
• Are eligible for support from available sources (e.g., course credit, travel funding).
  Reinforce students’ post-graduate plans.

For mentors
Whether mentors work one-to-one with undergraduate researchers, in small groups, or in teams involving multiple mentors and mentees, mentoring undergraduate research in writing can enliven teaching, enrich research and scholarship, and enhance professional development in alignment with mentors’ own job responsibilities and career goals.

Pedagogically, mentors

• Draw on and expand existing instructional expertise to focus holistically on mentees’ interests and needs.
• Draw on and expand existing scholarly expertise to help students move through the research process from identifying a research question through to relating project findings to the larger scholarly, professional, or community conversation.
• Promote knowledge transfer by helping undergraduate researchers recognize how they are using previously acquired knowledge and how they are building skills and abilities they will be able to apply subsequently in their academic, professional, and personal lives.
• Help students build networks of connection on campus and within broader local and disciplinary communities through relationships forged in conjunction with their projects.

As researchers and scholars, mentors

• Draw on existing disciplinary expertise in rhetoric and composition/writing studies and adjacent fields.
• Expand their disciplinary knowledge to engage student researchers’ interests and needs.
• Develop research and workflow protocols for effective and ethical collaboration with undergraduate researchers.
• Collaborate with students on the coconstruction of knowledge and the coauthorship of scholarly publications and presentations.
• When appropriate, draw from existing scholarship on undergraduate research and also contribute to it.

As members of campus, local, and disciplinary communities, mentors

• Foster and contribute to the development and ongoing delivery of curricula that support undergraduate research in writing.
• Participate actively in building and sustaining campus capacity for undergraduate research.
• Identify opportunities for undergraduate researchers to collaborate with community and workplace partners.
• Connect campus efforts with regional, national, and international initiatives for undergraduate research.

For institutions
To build and support a culture of undergraduate research that includes writing studies, individual colleges and universities must provide infrastructure, scaffolding, and sustaining resources.

Infrastructure consists of

• Campus leadership informed about how writing, as a discipline that draws on humanities, social sciences, and fine arts methods and methodologies, fits into the larger campus picture of undergraduate research.
• Inclusion of writing scholars on campus committees related to undergraduate research.
• Attentiveness to the needs of undergraduate researchers in writing by relevant campus units (e.g., IRB, libraries, stats centers).
• Policies (e.g., hiring, annual evaluation, tenure, and promotion) that recognize and reward involvement in undergraduate research.

Scaffolding comprises

• Support for lower- and upper-division courses that incorporate research or elements of research and thus require special accommodations (e.g., equipment, location, credit hours).
• Professional development opportunities for mentors.
• Inclusion of undergraduate researchers and their mentors in relevant campus events and publications.
• Awards that recognize and celebrate excellence in undergraduate research.
• Mechanisms for assessing the impact of undergraduate research on campus.

Resources include

• Funding to support undergraduate researchers through the full arc of undergraduate research, from data collection and analysis to dissemination.
• Funding to support undergraduate research mentors’ involvement in all stages of their mentees’ work, regardless of mentors’ ranks and campus roles (e.g., adjunct, non-tenure- track, and tenure-track faculty members; staff; administrators).
• Access for spaces and tools for completing undergraduate research, including software licenses, storage for physical and virtual data, poster printers, and so on.

Endnotes

1. See George D. Kuh, High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Do, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter (Washington, DC: AAC&U, 2008) Kuh’s analysis of data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) demonstrates that high-impact practices, including undergraduate research, not only improve retention and graduation rates but also promote deep learning and gains in general, personal, and practical knowledge. Kuh traces the value of high-impact practices to the ways in which they require students to invest considerable energy in purposeful intellectual activities; to be engaged with faculty and peers in substantive work and to receive feedback on that work; to connect with people from diverse backgrounds; and to transfer their developing knowledge and skills across contexts, including classrooms, campus organizations, the workplace, and the wider community.

2. See CCCC Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Research in Composition Studies.

This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) presents this position statement to provide guidelines for how best to prepare and support postsecondary instructors of writing throughout their careers. In producing this statement, CCCC envisions many audiences that may possess disparate interests, including undergraduate and graduate students; parents or guardians; high school instructors who facilitate Dual Credit and Concurrent Enrollment (DC/CE) courses; prospective and current postsecondary instructors of writing; writing program administrators; department chairs; college and university administrators; and municipal, state, and national legislators. With so many interested groups involved in or concerned about the preparation of those who teach postsecondary writing, there is a need for direction and clarity regarding what principles should inform the preparation and continued professional development of postsecondary writing instructors.

Read the full statement, CCCC Statement on Preparing Teachers of College Writing [November 2015 (replaces the 1982 CCCC “Position Statement on the Preparation and Professional Development of Teachers of Writing”)]

The purpose of this statement is to describe the range of scholarly activities in rhetoric, writing, and composition. The audiences for this statement include faculty and administrators who have the responsibility for evaluating this scholarship as part of the recruitment, promotion, and other evaluative activities that occur in colleges and universities; scholars in the field who are explaining their work to nonspecialists; and any others who want to understand the work of scholars in this broadly interdisciplinary field.

Read the full statement, Scholarship in Rhetoric, Writing, and Composition: Guidelines for Faculty, Deans, and Chairs [March 2018 (replaces the 1987 CCCC “The Range of Scholarship in Composition: A Description for Department Chairs and Deans”)]

This statement is intended for promotion and tenure committees, and candidates for promotion and tenure. Its purpose is to provide some general principles to promotion and tenure committees and candidates to ensure that candidates’ work with technology is explained accurately and evaluated fairly. The statement consists of three parts: general statements about technology and its potential impact on the promotion and tenure review processes, specific guidelines for promotion and tenure committees; and specific guidelines for candidates for promotion and tenure.

Read the full statement, CCCC Promotion and Tenure Guidelines for Work with Technology (November 1998, Revised November 2015)

Words and images can be worth a lot of money, and that fact sometimes causes a collision between educators and copyright holders. One notable example of such a collision, the case of Cambridge University Press et al v. Patton et al, was reported upon in the previous IP Report. The outcome of that case offers some encouragement to educators who use e-reserves to distribute materials to their students. But that is only one example among many. Educators have a stake in numerous other IP-related developments, such as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) rule making, the proliferation of plagiarism detection services, and the growth of open access journals and repositories and attempts to restrict such growth.

At their conferences, the NCTE and the CCCC provide opportunities for panels and presentations on IP issues as they affect the educational community. In addition to these opportunities for the discussion of IP issues, the NCTE and the CCCC sponsor or facilitate the following:

Intellectual Property Caucus

The IP Caucus was formed in 1994. While it is not a formal organization within the NCTE or CCCC, it has a strong working relationship with both. Each spring, at the CCCC’s annual convention, the IP Caucus holds a meeting, open to all, at which participants break into roundtables to discuss IP-related developments that have affected or are likely to affect the educational community. For example, during the last caucus, in March of 2012, educators at one roundtable discussed the need to re-think academic integrity statements in light of the fact that research from the Citation Project and LILAC Group, among others, provides evidence that what we currently are doing—threatening students and focusing on punishment—is not working. In view of that fact, roundtable participants considered ways to focus on learning rather than penalties.

In 2013, the IP Caucus will again invite educators who are concerned with issues of copyright, fair use, openness, remix, access, and the ownership and use of intellectual property to join in thought-provoking discussions on these topics.

Intellectual Property Committee

The IP Committee was established in 1996, largely at the initiative of the Intellectual Property Caucus, and maintains a close relationship with that group as it promotes discussion among CCCC and NCTE members about IP issues. It also develops policy statements and pedagogical materials on IP-related issues and fosters research on IP topics. Specifically, the Intellectual Property Committee is charged with the following:

• keep the CCCC and NCTE memberships informed about intellectual property developments, through reports in the CCCC newsletter and in other NCTE and CCCC forums,
• maintain a close working relationship with the Caucus on Intellectual Property and Composition Studies,
• develop policy statements to guide writing teachers’ and researchers’ uses of coursepacks, electronic materials, etc., and
• address issues of concern to the organizations, such as interpretations of fair use (e.g., in relation to photocopying, use of unpublished material, use of copyrighted materials in multimedia, use of graphic images, etc.); copyright debates and evolving policies regarding electronic rights in publishing and use of published materials; safeguarding the public domain; attitudes and practices regarding authorship of texts, including students’ texts (e.g., collaboration; acknowledgment of sources; plagiarism); and other topics.

IP Annual

Since 2006, one way that the Intellectual Property Committee has both “ke[pt] the CCCC and NCTE memberships informed about intellectual property developments” and “maintain[ed] a close working relationship with the Caucus on Intellectual Property and Composition Studies” is through the joint sponsorship of the IP Annual, a yearly report on major IP developments that is hosted by NCTE/CCCC. The first annual, covering events in 2005, consisted of three articles, one on a lawsuit against the Google book scanning project (still being litigated eight years later), and two on rulings in other significant cases, BMG Music v. Gonzalez and MGM v. Grokster. The latest annual, Top Intellectual Property Developments of 2011, consists of six articles, including an essay on open access developments, a report on a significant court ruling affecting the scope of the public domain, and an article on a campaign against legislation that might have restricted public access to publicly funded research. The entire IP Annual series is accessible at the web site of the Committee on Intellectual Property.

IP Reports

In 2009, another collaboration between the IP Committee and the IP Caucus got under way with the publication of the first monthly IP Report in the NCTE InBox. As of today, thirty-six of these reports have been published. These brief articles introduce educators to resources relevant to IP issues and alert them to legislation and court cases that may affect them as writers, researchers, and instructors. Recent reports have included a wide range of articles, from IP considerations that affect textbook affordability to the ins and outs of a lawsuit involving the scanning of copyrighted publications (HathiTrust Case).

Opportunities for Involvement

The IP Committee is a formally constituted group that meets annually at the CCCC convention. During the rest of the year, its members communicate online via their NCTE Connected Community. The IP Caucus, on the other hand, is not a formal part of the NCTE/CCCC, but it works closely with the IP Committee. In fact, the membership is overlapping, as IP Caucus members tend to volunteer to serve on the IP Committee. In addition, the senior chair of the Caucus serves on the Committee. In a sense, then, if you attend the Caucus, you have a voice on the Committee. So come and be heard at next year’s CCCC Convention! Learn about the IP issues that affect you and your students, ask questions, and express opinions. In the meantime, the IP Caucus and the IP Committee, with the support of the NCTE/CCCC, will continue to publish both the IP Annual and the monthly IP Reports as they endeavor to keep educators up to date on rapidly evolving events in the field of IP.

Thank you to Martine Courant Rife, Mike Edwards, Jeff Galin, and Jim Purdy, whose ideas (and occasionally language) were appropriated for this report.

This column is sponsored by the Intellectual Property Committee of the CCCC and the CCCC-Intellectual Property Caucus. The IP Caucus maintains a mailing list. If you would like to receive notices of programs sponsored by the Caucus or of opportunities to submit articles either to this column or to the annual report on intellectual property issues, please contact kgainer@radford.edu.

 

Intellectual Property Reports Main Page

The CCCC Studies in Writing and Rhetoric Series (SWR), established in 1984, supports research that explores how writing, rhetoric, and literacy are currently and have been historically taught, learned, practiced, and circulated within communities, whether in colleges, workplaces, or neighborhoods, local, national, digital, or international contexts. The series also focuses on supporting a broad range of projects that accurately represent the diverse identities of teachers, learners, administrators, and researchers involved in writing, rhetoric, and literate activity, addressing the cultural, social, political, and material realities that define their work. Work published in SWR seeks to identify and resist the inequities and forces of oppression that shape the teaching of writing, rhetoric, and literacy as well as to intervene in them. The series aspires to be global both in scope and reach, and is dedicated to the use of digital technologies that ensure its publications are accessible and available to a national and international audience.

• • Visit the SWR Submissions page for information on submitting a book proposal.
  • For questions related to the SWR series, please email Stephanie Kerschbaum, SWR Editor, at kersch@uw.edu.
  • View instructions for SWR reviewers.
  • Learn more about and purchase SWR books.
  • SWR Editor search procedures
  • Listen to interviews with SWR authors.

Newest SWR Books

Transnational Assemblages: Social Justice and Crisis Communication during Disaster
Author: Sweta Baniya
ISBN: 9780814101933
With grounded case studies of the 2015 Nepal earthquake and 2017 Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, Baniya showcases how locals in marginalized and colonized spaces overcome disaster-created complexities via coalitional and transnational engagements.
Read an open-access version of this book at the WAC Clearinghouse.

The Hands of God at Work: Islamic Gender Justice through Translingual Praxis
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ISBN: 9780814101766
Drawing from ethnographic data collected in Indonesia from 2009 to 2022, Engelson explores how an English-medium Indonesian PhD program in interreligious studies and three Muslim scholar-activists activate knowledge where languages intersect, a process mediated by material circumstances within Indonesia and voices past, present, and future that both are audience to and transcend the traditional geographic and discursive borders associated with them.

Queer Techné: Bodies, Rhetorics, and Desire in the History of Computing
Author: Patricia Fancher
ISBN: 9780814101735
Drawing on archival materials from the Manchester University National Archive for the History of Computing, Fancher first analyzes the technical and scientific writing of Alan Turing and then places Turing’s work in the context of queer friends who collaborated with him and within a community of women whose labor forms the foundation of computing operations. Fancher argues for the importance of embodied experiences, gender, and sexuality as central lenses for understanding technical communication as well as technical innovation.

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ISBN: 9780814101704
Based on an ethnographic study in Nepal spanning a decade, Silvester speaks with and to the stories of Bhutanese women in diaspora learning English later in life during resettlement and in the context of waves of social change brought on by the end of their asylum. The book provides insight for teaching literacies across cultural landscapes.

Recollections from an Uncommon Time: 4C20 Documentarian Tales
Editors: Julie Lindquist, Bree Straayer, and Bump Halbritter
ISBN: 9780814139523
Originally intended to document the 2020 CCCC Convention experience, this book became a means for documentarians to share a common experience in the uncommon time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read an open-access version of this book at the WAC Clearinghouse.

Transfer in an Urban Writing Ecology: Reimagining Community College–University Relations in Composition Studies
Authors: Christie Toth with Joanne Castillo, Nic Contreras, Kelly Corbray, Nathan Lacy, Westin Porter, Sandra Salazar-Hernandez, and Colleagues
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Combining student writing, personal reflection, and academic analysis, this book urges, documents, and helps to enact more transfer-conducive writing ecologies.

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Shane A. Wood offers a collection of conversations about the theory and teaching of writing in postsecondary contexts.
Read an open-access version of this book at the WAC Clearinghouse.