Concepts in Composition

Concepts in Composition
Concepts in Composition is designed to foster reflection on how theory impacts practice, allow-
ing prospective teachers to assume the dual role of both teacher and student as they enter
the discipline of Writing Studies and become familiar with some of its critical conversations.
Now in its third edition, the volume offers up-to-date scholarship and a deeper focus on
diversity, both in the classroom and in relation to Writing Studies and literacy more broadly.
This text continues to offer a wealth of practical assignments, classroom activities, and read-
ings in each chapter. It is the ideal resource for the undergraduate or graduate student looking
to pursue a career in writing instruction.
Irene L. Clark is Professor of English, Director of Composition, and Director of the Master’s
Option in Rhetoric and Composition at California State University, Northridge. She previ-
ously taught at the University of Southern California (USC), where she also co-directed
the university’s Writing Program and directed its Writing Center. She has authored several
textbooks for both undergraduate and graduate students and written a number of articles
concerned with Writing Studies, genre, and transfer. Her recent scholarly interest is in the
interconnection between literacy and current work in neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain
to alter in response to experience. She holds a B.A. in Music from Hunter College, an M.A. in
English from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in English Literature from USC.
Concepts in Composition
Theory and Practices in the Teaching
of Writing
Third Edition
Irene L. Clark
With Contributions by
Betty Bamberg
John Edlund
Olga Griswold
Sharon Klein
Julie Neff-Lippmann
Jennifer Sheppard
Third edition published 2019
by Routledge
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First edition published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. 2003
Second edition published by Routledge 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Clark, Irene L., author
Title: Concepts in composition : theory and practices in the
teaching of writing / Irene L. Clark.
Description: Third edition. | New York : Routledge, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018059439| ISBN 9781138088641
(hardcover) | ISBN 9781138088658 (softcover) | ISBN
9780203728659 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: English language—Rhetoric—Study and teaching.
| English language—Composition and exercises—Study and
teaching. | English language—Study and teaching—Foreign
speakers. | Report writing—Study and teaching.
Classification: LCC PE1404 .C528 2019 | DDC 808/.042071—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059439
ISBN: 978-1-138-08864-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-08865-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-72865-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgments xi
1 Processes: Approaches and Issues 1

IRENE L. CLARK
Readings: Composing Behaviors of One- and Multi-Draft Writers 32

Author: Muriel Harris (1989)
Source: College English, 51(2): 174–190
Moving Writers, Shaping Motives, Motivating Critique and Change:
A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing 47
Author: Mary Jo Reiff (2006)
Source: In Relations, Locations, Positions: Composition Theory for
Writing Teachers. Eds. Peter Vandenberg, Sue Hum, Jennifer
Clary-Lemon. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 157–206
2 Invention: Issues and Strategies 52

IRENE L. CLARK
Reading: Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language:

A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer’s Block 76
Author: Mike Rose (1980)
Source: College Composition and Communication, 31(4): 389–401
3 Revision: Issues and Strategies 87

BETTY BAMBERG AND IRENE L. CLARK
Reading: Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced

Adult Writers 110
Author: Nancy Sommers (1980)
4 Audiences 119
IRENE L. CLARK
Reading: Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for

Ignoring Audience 141
vi Contents
Author: Peter Elbow (1987)
Source: College English, 49(1): 50–69
5 Genre, Transfer, and Related Issues 159

IRENE L. CLARK
Reading: “Emphasizing Similarity” but Not “Eliding Difference”:

Exploring Sub-Disciplinary Differences as a Way to Teach
Genre Flexibly 190
Author: Katherine L. Schaefer (2015)
Source: WAC Journal, 26: 36–55
6 Reading/Writing Connections 205

IRENE L. CLARK
Reading: Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading

(and Writing) in the Composition Classroom 222
Author: Michael Bunn (2013)
7 Assessment: Issues and Controversies 238

JULIE NEFF-LIPPMAN
Reading: Across the Drafts 265

Author: Nancy Sommers (2006)
Source: College Composition and Communication, 58: 248–257
8 Teaching Multilingual Students in a Composition Class 272

OLGA GRISWOLD AND JOHN EDLUND
Reading: Promoting Grammar and Language Development in the

Writing Class: Why, What, How, and When 302
Author: Dana R. Ferris (2016)
Source: In Teaching English Grammar to Speakers of Other Languages.
Ed. E. Hinkel. New York: Hinkel (2016) pp. 222–245
9 Language, Linguistic Diversity, and Writing 317

SHARON KLEIN
Reading: Clarifying the Multiple Dimensions of Monolingualism:

Keeping Our Sights on Language Politics 356
Authors: Missy Watson and Rachael Shapiro (2018)
Source: Composition Forum, 38, http://compositionforum.
com/issue/38
Contents vii
10 Issues in Digital and Multimodal Writing: Composition Instruction for
the 21st Century 379
JENNIFER SHEPPARD
Reading: The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and

Multimodal Composing 410
Author: Cynthia L. Selfe (2009)
Appendix 1: Effective Writing Assignments 446

Appendix 2: Developing a Syllabus 452
Index 461
Preface
The idea for Concepts in Composition: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing originated
when I was flying home from New York, having come from a conference concerned with
the teaching of college composition. Flying west from New York to LA is always longer than
the flight east, and I was using the extra flight time to read through some class notes I had
brought with me. The course was intended for prospective high school teachers and graduate
teaching assistants, and I had organized my course materials around theoretical concepts that
I felt were the most important for my students to understand in terms of their influence on
classroom practice. As I flipped through and organized my papers, some of which spilled onto
the floor beneath my seat, I began to think about how useful they would be for both students
and teachers if they were organized into a book.
Thus was Concepts in Composition conceived, and, in accordance with the structure of my
course, I organized each chapter into the following elements:
• An overview of a significant concept in composition that informs classroom teaching.

• Writing assignments and discussion prompts to foster further exploration of the concept.
• An article, sometimes two, to generate further discussion.
• Bibliographical references for further research.
• Suggestions for classroom activities to apply the concept in a pedagogical context.
The goal of that first edition, which has been sustained in the second and third, is to enable
prospective teachers to reflect on how theory impacts practice, to become conscious of how
they think about writing in the context of a first-year writing class, and to develop strate-
gies that can help students improve as writers. Each chapter addresses a theoretical concept
that impacts classroom teaching and includes suggestions for writing, discussion, and further
exploration. Having used the book in many classes, I have found that its approach enables
prospective instructors to assume the dual role of both teacher and student as they enter the
conversations of the discipline, become familiar with some of its critical issues, and feel con-
fident about their teaching.
High in the air, jotting down ideas, flipping through my notes, I initially thought that
I would write every chapter myself. However, once on the ground, breathing relatively
fresh air, I decided that the breadth of scholarship and diversity of perspective would be
significantly improved if I enlisted the aid of scholars in the field who had expertise in
particular concepts in composition. The result was a more substantive book that is con-
siderably richer, due to the contributions of several of my knowledgeable colleagues who
graciously agreed to revise and in some instances to write completely new chapters for
this third edition. I am deeply appreciative of their impressive breadth of knowledge and
remarkable good humor.
Preface ix
The Third Edition
The third edition of this book, as was the case for the first and the second editions, provides an
overview of significant concepts in composition, integrating composition theory with class-
room application. However, the third edition, even more than the previous two, is focused
on how the discipline, now known as Writing Studies, now recognizes that the teaching
and learning of writing is a great deal more complicated than was otherwise believed, both
in terms of scholarship and pedagogy, and frequently overlaps with other disciplines such
as Education, Communication, Linguistics, and Psychology. Although all contributors have
remained committed to the “Concepts in Composition” approach that informed the first
and second editions, the third edition reflects deepening understandings and the recognition
that several aspects of the discipline have branched into sub-categories, with specific areas of
scholarship. Online, multimodal, and digital writing have been a separate focus for some time,
but other areas, such as threshold concepts, cognition, assessment, genre, and transfer now
have their own conferences and journals. Although it was always understood that the teaching
of writing was a complicated enterprise, we now realize that many other elements need to be
considered, such as prior knowledge, motivation, identity, dispositions, and agency, as well as
political, social, and cultural contexts.
The recognition that Writing Studies is a diverse and complicated discipline has
resulted in changes to several chapter titles. Chapter 1, which in the first edition was titled
“Process,” and in the second was titled “Processes,” is now titled “Processes: Issues and
Approaches,” “Invention” is now titled “Invention: Issues and Strategies,” “Revision”
is now titled “Revision: Issues and Strategies,” and the chapter concerned with genre is
now titled “Genre, Transfer, and Related Issues,” “Assessment” is now titled “Assessment:
Issues and Controversies,” “Language and Diversity” is now titled “Language, Linguistic
Diversity, and Writing,” and the chapter that was once titled “Electronic Writing Spaces”
is now titled “Issues in Digital and Multimodal Writing: Composition Instruction for the
21st Century.” There is also a new chapter titled “Reading/Writing Connections” that dis-
cusses scholarship concerned with reading and suggests strategies for incorporating reading
instruction into writing courses.
Of course, no one book could adequately discuss the amount of scholarship concerned
with each of these concepts in composition, so in terms of what is new in this third edition, I
have focused on four areas that have recently become of particular significance: the intercon-
nection between reading and writing; the increased emphasis on genre and transfer; concern
for disadvantaged students particularly as they are impacted by assessment; and the increased
importance of new media. In addition to being addressed directly in specific chapters, these
topics are referenced in other chapters as well.
In essence, however, this third edition retains its deep concern for helping students suc-
ceed, both within and beyond the writing class. Toward that end, its emphasis is on helping
teachers not only to develop meaningful and purposeful assignments, lessons, and projects
for classroom use, but also to understand the “concepts of composition” on which effective
classroom pedagogy is based. Although many factors can contribute to a teacher’s success in
a writing class, the message in this book—that writing teachers need to be acquainted with
the theories of composition and rhetoric that have influenced composition pedagogy for
more than 50 years—has not changed. As our field has developed and gained prominence as
a scholarly discipline, fewer academics now believe that teaching writing means simply cor-
recting grammatical errors and is an enterprise that anyone who writes well can do without
a great deal of knowledge, training, and motivation. The many journals, books, confer-
ences and organizations that are associated with this burgeoning discipline have brought
x Preface
the recognition that helping students improve as writers requires a thorough grounding in
both theory and practice.
For all contributors to this book, the most daunting challenge has been figuring out how
to address each multifaceted concept in composition within the confines of a single chapter.
Composition scholarship is extensive, and the question of what to include and what to omit
was the subject of many conversations among my contributors, all of whom were concerned
about simplifying, but who also recognized the paradox of teaching composition: that teach-
ers need to know a little about each concept to plan their courses effectively, but that it is only
through classroom experience that they will be able to understand the interaction of theory
and practice. It is a credit to my contributors that they all managed to find a middle ground
between too much and too little information, presenting a balanced perspective for beginning
teachers while pointing the way to further exploration and research.
It is often the case that new teachers, worried about how to fill class time, become impa-
tient with courses that address theory at all. “Just tell me what I need to teach,” they implore.
“Give me a syllabus and I’ll follow it.” The third edition of Concepts in Composition: Theory
and Practice in the Teaching of Writing, as was the case with the two previous editions, aims to
help teachers find answers for themselves by helping them understand connections between a
theoretical concept and a classroom lesson. It is only when teachers understand that relation-
ship that they will be able to teach effectively.
A companion website is available for use with this volume, with additional materials for
instructors using the book in the classroom. Please check the Routledge website for details: www.
routledge.com/Concepts-in-Composition-Theory-and-Practice-in-the-Teaching-of-
Writing/Clark/p/book/9780415885164.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to the contributors to this third edition. Their willingness to update and
completely revise their chapters, their breadth of scholarship, and their generosity of spirit
have been crucial to the development of this third edition. I would also like to thank Nicole
Salazar, Brian Eschrich, Simon Barraclough, and the editorial staff at Routledge publishers,
who provided continued support and encouragement, as did my wonderful graduate students
at California State University, Northridge, whose enthusiasm for the first edition sparked my
own efforts. And then, finally, and always, there is my husband and family, who have devot-
edly supported my publishing efforts and encouraged me in all my endeavors, both scholarly
and otherwise.
1 Processes
Approaches and Issues
Irene L. Clark
There is a “general notion in our culture, a sort of debased Romantic version of creativ-
ity wherein verbal artifacts are supposed to be produced as easily and inevitably as a hen lays
eggs. . . . The classical rhetoricians knew better.”
(Bizzell, 1986, p. 50)
In the first edition of Concepts in Composition (2002), Chapter 1 was titled “Process” to empha-
size that an important goal of a first-year writing course is to enable students to develop a
writing process that works effectively for them. This focus on “process” originated when
Composition began to be recognized as a subject of study, when the saying “writing is a
process” became almost a mantra. In the second edition (2012), the first chapter was titled
“Processes,” a change in title that reflected the recognition that there is no one writing “pro-
cess” that works for everyone, that writers use various processes at different times, depending
on what sort of text they wish to write, and that writing is interconnected with other pro-
cesses, such as reading and reflection. Six years later, as I revise Chapter 1 for a third edition,
Composition is now known as “Writing Studies,” and burgeoning research has yielded addi-
tional insight into the study and teaching of writing. Although it is still considered important
for students to understand that writing is a process and to develop effective processes of read-
ing and writing, we now understand that the study of writing is a great deal more complicated
than was otherwise believed and involves many other considerations, among them rhetoric,
prior knowledge, motivation, genre, transfer, and sense of agency. If the goal of a writing
course is to enable students to improve as writers, we have to extend research into other
areas—hence the current title, “Processes: Approaches and Issues.”
This chapter provides a brief historical overview of the discipline that is now known as
Writing Studies. It begins by reviewing what is often referred to as the “process movement”
and explains several competing views or theories of composing. It also discusses the intercon-
nection of writing with reading, rhetoric, and reflection, and briefly explores the potential
impact of new media on the teaching of writing, a topic that will be discussed in greater
depth in Chapter 10. It also provides information about the role of “threshold concepts” in
the teaching of writing and the issue of transfer.
The “Process” Movement

When I first began teaching writing, the hallway outside my office displayed a cartoon-like
picture depicting a classroom of 100 years ago or more. In the center of the scene was a stereo-
typical professor of that time, caricatured with pointed gray beard, wire spectacles, bushy gray
eyebrows, and a censorious expression. The picture showed him doggedly pouring knowl-
edge through an oversized funnel into the head of a student, a sulky, somewhat plump young
man. Obviously intended to be humorous, the picture ironically suggested that successful
2 Irene L. Clark
teaching involves transferring knowledge from professor to student, the professor active and
determined, the student passive and submissive, perhaps uninterested, even unwilling.
I often recall that picture when I think about the term “process” in the context of
Composition pedagogy, because the outmoded concept of teaching it portrays constitutes the
antithesis of current ideas about the teaching of writing. Since at least the 1980s, the discipline
of Rhetoric and Composition has emphasized the importance of helping students become
active participants in learning to write, because, as the learning theorist Jerome Bruner (1966)
has maintained:
to instruct someone in [a] discipline is not a matter of getting him to commit results
to mind. Rather, it is to teach him to participate in the process that makes possible the
establishment of knowledge. . . .Knowledge is a process, not a product.
(p. 72)
Pouring information into the heads of resistant students does not usually result in writing
improvement, and the term “process” remains of key importance for both teachers and schol-
ars. Motivating students and helping them develop an effective writing process continues to
be a key goal of a writing course. However, it is now also recognized that knowledge about
writing is also necessary for students to continue to develop as writers, in particular, an under-
standing of rhetoric and genre.
The Writing Process Movement: A Brief History

In the history of post-secondary education in the United States, it is only recently that seri-
ous consideration has been given to writing. The field of written rhetoric, which came to be
called “Composition,” grew during the 19th century from an older tradition of oral rhetoric,
which has been traced back to 500 bce. However, during the 19th century, several political
and technological developments had the effect of focusing academic attention on writing in
English, instead of in Latin and Greek as had previously been the case. The establishment
of the land grant colleges in 1867 brought a new population of students to the university,
students from less privileged backgrounds who had not studied classical languages and who,
therefore, had to write in the vernacular—that is, English. Then, a number of inventions
had the effect of making writing more important in a variety of settings. The invention of
the mechanical pencil (1822), the fountain pen (1850), the telegram (1864), and the type-
writer (1868), plus the increasing availability of cheap durable paper, paralleled and aided the
increasing importance of writing at the university.
As writing became more important, the task of teaching writing was assumed by various
educational institutions. The writing classes developed were viewed as “a device for preparing
a trained and disciplined workforce” and for assimilating “huge numbers of immigrants into
cultural norms, defined in specifically Anglo-Protestant terms” (Berlin, 1996, p. 23). In 1874,
Harvard University introduced an entrance exam that featured a writing requirement, and
when the English faculty received the results, they were shocked by the profusion of error
of all sorts—punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and syntax. In 1879, Adams Sherman Hill,
who had been in charge of the Harvard entrance examination for several years, complained
that even the work of good scholars was flawed by spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors
and urged that a required course in sophomore rhetoric that had been offered at Harvard for
several years be moved to the first year. Thus was a literacy crisis born, and when Harvard
instituted a first-year writing course, a number of institutions did likewise.
Although it is impossible to say if this story depicts exactly what occurred, I am quite fond
of it and use it frequently both in lectures and in casual conversations in which someone has
Processes 3
bemoaned the “decline” in student writing, claiming that it used to be so much better. The truth,
though, is that each generation seems to look back on a golden age in which students were
able to write “better” than they can at present, whatever “better” might mean; a time when
students were more serious, more committed to learning, etc. And yet, even at Harvard, a
recognized elite university, students’ writing had been deemed inadequate. Even at Harvard,
as Chester Noyes Greenough wrote in an early issue of the English Journal (February 1913),
the work of undergraduate “men” was characterized by “incoherence, lack of unity in sen-
tences and paragraphs, ignorance of certain rules of punctuation, repeated misspelling of
certain words, and so on” (p. 113).
The First-Year Course and the Use of Handbooks

Greenough’s article noted the writing limitations of the students at Harvard, but his primary
concern was on the inadequate training provided to those assigned the task of working with
these students. Although first-year writing courses abounded at a number of institutions, it was
soon realized that such courses not only failed to provide an instant solution to the problem
but also created a great deal of work for faculty who undertook or were assigned the task of
reading and responding to student texts. However, by the turn of the century, a presumed
method of addressing this situation was devised—the creation of a new sort of textbook called
the “handbook,” in which all of the rules and conventions of writing could be written and
to which teachers could refer in the margins of student papers. The idea behind the devel-
opment of the handbook was that teachers would no longer have to read and mark student
papers in detail. Instead, they could skim the papers for errors, circle those errors in red, and
cite rule numbers, which students could then look up in their handbooks. Handbooks became
very popular, and soon every publisher had developed one, followed by a workbook of exer-
cises that students could use to practice. Presumably, these handbooks and workbooks would
lighten the teacher’s load and solve the problem of teaching students to write. Yet, not surpris-
ingly, the problems continued, and student writing did not improve.
The difficulties experienced by those attempting to teach students to write at the begin-
ning of the 20th century were described in the lead article of the first issue of the English
Journal, published in 1912. The title of that article was “Can Good Composition Teaching
Be Done Under Present Conditions?” and the first word of the article was “No.” Then,
after a few sentences, the article went on as follows: “Every year teachers resign, breakdown,
perhaps become permanently invalided, having sacrificed ambition, health, and in not a few
instances even life, in the struggle to do all the work expected of them” (Hopkins, p. 1).
Certainly, this was not an encouraging portrait of an emerging field!
Moreover, the Composition course was often a brutal experience for students as well. Lad
Tobin (1994), in his essay “How the Writing Process Was Born—and Other Conversion
Narratives,” recalled it like this:
Once upon a time, in an age of disciplinary darkness and desolation . . . writing stu-

dents were subjected to cruel and inhuman punishments. They were assigned topics like
“Compare Henry Fleming from The Red Badge of Courage to one of the characters in the
Iliad; make sure to consider the definition of an anti-hero” or “Write about your most
humiliating moment.” They were told, with a straight face, that no decent person ever
wrote without outlining first, that there is a clear distinction between description, narra-
tion, exposition, and argument; that grammatical errors were moral and mortal sins, and
that teachers’ evaluations of student essays were always objective accurate and fair . . .
In that dark period of our disciplinary history, teachers rarely explained anything
about the process of writing (unless you count “outline, write, proofread, hand in” as the
4 Irene L. Clark
student’s process) . . . Or they would explain some of the rules governing good writing.
But they would say nothing about invention, how to get started, what to do in the mid-
dle, or what to do when the middle turned back into the start, and so on.
(pp. 2–3)
Of course, this picture constitutes a generalization, and it is likely that many teachers, intui-
tively understanding what was helpful to beginning writers, did not adhere to this model
of “teaching” writing. Yet, that this model did indeed exist I can attest to from my own
college experience, where essay topics were assigned regardless of whether students knew
or cared much about them, and where few, if any, process-oriented activities—prewriting
strategies, multiple drafts, collaborative groups, student–teacher conferences—were encour-
aged or even mentioned. When I submitted a paper as a college student, I would wait with
trepidation for the teacher to return it, which he or she would eventually do, usually with-
out having written anything other than a grade or perhaps a brief evaluative comment on
the front page.
In a review essay titled, “Of Pre- and Post-Process: Reviews and Ruminations,” Richard
Fulkerson (2001) characterized the situation of how first-year writing used to be similar
to “riding a bicycle. If you knew how to do it, then you could demonstrate your ability
on demand; hence the idea of in-class and time-limited writing” (p. 96). Fulkerson (2001)
described his own experience in a “pre-process program” as follows:
In the fall quarter, we had an anthology of readings, a handbook of grammar, and the
2nd edition of McCrimmon’s Writing with a Purpose. We wrote at least five papers. One
assigned topic was “My First Day at School.” Another was “any philosophical issue.” A
third was a limited research paper about some historic person, who we were to argue was
or was not “great” based on several readings in the anthology. Dr. Staton would assign
the topic orally, and we would have about a week to write. Then he marked the paper,
put a grade on it, and a brief comment.
(p. 95)
Learning to write in those days meant being able to figure out what the teacher wanted in
order to create an acceptable “product,” and, apparently, few teachers thought that helping
students acquire a workable writing “process” was part of their job. Whatever process stu-
dents used, they had to manage on their own. Unfortunately, this model still exists, not usu-
ally in first-year writing classes, but often in other classes designated as “writing-intensive,”
where writing is assigned but not actually taught.
This lack of attention to the process writers engage in when they write reflected a concept
of creativity that to some extent persists in our culture—that is, that a “good” writer is some-
one who can produce an excellent text as quickly, independently, and effortlessly as a bird
learns to fly. This idea suggests that those of us who struggle, for whom writing is a laborious,
time-consuming, and often painful process (i.e., most, if not all, of us), are not, by definition,
“good” writers. One could either write, or one couldn’t. Such was the fantasy of that time,
and even now our culture continues to value speed and ease of production, particularly in
reference to the speaking ability of our politicians, who are deemed “good speakers” if they
can think on their feet.
In ancient times, however, classical rhetoricians understood the concept of “process,”
although the concept was used in the preparation of speeches, not for the writing of essays.
In ancient Greece and Rome, rhetoricians envisioned the composing process as consisting of
five stages—invention (the discovery of ideas), arrangement (putting ideas in a persuasively
effective order), style (finding the right language in which to present the ideas), memory
Processes 5
(memorizing the speech), and delivery (using voice and gesture to present the speech effec-
tively). Apparently, it was understood that a “gifted” speaker had to engage in an elaborate
process in order to deliver an effective speech.
For Writing and Discussion

Write a brief essay describing how you learned to write. What sort of writing tasks were
you assigned? To what extent was your experience similar to Fulkerson’s description?
Did your teachers focus on the idea of process?
The Birth of the Process “Movement”

This product-oriented view of writing continued through the 1950s and 1960s. Then, in
1963, at the Conference of College Composition and Communication, it is reported that
there was a different feeling in the air, a feeling that the field had changed. That conference
signaled a renewal of interest in Rhetoric and Composition theory, a revival that generated
the “process” approach to Composition and a new research area that focused on under-
standing how people write and learn to write. This interest in writing as a process led to
the development of a number of process-oriented methods and techniques—staged writing,
conferencing, strategies of invention, and revision—activities that are now considered essen-
tial components of a writing class. Suddenly, all over the country, writing teachers began to
embrace a “process” approach to writing, tossing out their handbooks and grammar exercises
in order to focus on process-oriented teaching. “Process” was in; “product” became almost
a dirty word.
In fact, Richard Fulkerson (2001) suggested that we refer to this interest in process-
oriented writing as a political party, “with members frequently willing to vote together for the
same candidates, and more or less united around certain slogans lacking in nuance and short
enough for bumper stickers. ‘Teach process not product.’ ‘Down with Current-Traditional
Rhetoric.’ ‘Say no to grammar’” (pp. 98–99).
Influences on the Concept of Process Teaching

The saying “writing is a process” thus became a slogan for the enlightened and like all move-
ments (or political parties), one can retrospectively note antecedent influences. One particu-
larly important influence on the development of process teaching in the early 1960s was what
has been referred to as the New Education Movement often associated with the ideas of the
psychologist Jerome Bruner. Bruner viewed learning as a process that reflected “the cognitive
level of the student and its relation to the structure of the academic discipline being studied”
(Berlin, 1990, p. 207), and emphasized the role of student participation and individual dis-
covery in the learning process. In the context of writing pedagogy, Bruner’s ideas translated
into an emphasis on students engaging in composing activities so as to discover their own
composing process—rather than in analyzing someone else’s text—and on teachers creating a
facilitative learning environment to enable students to do so—rather than focusing on assign-
ing grades or correcting grammar.
Another important influence on the emerging writing process movement was the
Dartmouth conference of 1966, a meeting of approximately 50 English teachers from the
United States and Great Britain to consider common writing problems. What emerged from
6 Irene L. Clark
the conference was the awareness that considerable differences existed between the two
countries in how instruction in English was viewed. In the United States, English was con-
ceived of as an academic discipline with specific content to be mastered, whereas the British
focused on the personal and linguistic growth of the child (Appleby, 1974, p. 229). Instead of
focusing on content, “process or activity . . . defined the English curriculum for the British
teacher” (Appleby, 1974, p. 230), its purpose being to foster the personal development of the
student. As Berlin (1990) noted,
The result of the Dartmouth Conference was to reassert for U.S. teachers the value of the
expressive model of writing. Writing is to be pursued in a free and supportive environ-
ment in which the student is encouraged to engage in an act of self-discovery.
(p. 210)
This emphasis on the personal and private nature of composing was also manifested in the
recommendations of early Composition scholars such as Ken Macrorie, Donald Murray,
Walker Gibson, and Peter Elbow.
What does it actually mean to view writing as a process? Broadly speaking, a process
approach to writing and the teaching of writing means devoting increased attention to writers
and the activities in which writers engage when they create and produce a text, as opposed to
analyzing and attempting to reproduce “model” texts. Reacting against a pedagogy oriented
toward error correction and formulaic patterns of organization, the process approach, as it
evolved during the 1960s and 1970s, was concerned with discovering how writers produce
texts, developing a model of the writing process, and helping writers find a process that would
enable them to write more effectively and continue to improve as writers. Although to many
writers and teachers the concept of a writing “process” was not news, the increased emphasis
in the classroom on helping students acquire an effective process and on finding out what suc-
cessful writers did when they wrote, constituted a new pedagogical approach and a potentially
exciting research direction.

Reflecting on Your Own Writing Process
(Adapted from “Chronotopic Lamination: Tracing the Contours of Literate Activity.”
Paul Prior and Jody Shipka, Writing Selves/Writing Societies, Bazerman & Russell
(Eds.), published February 1, 2003. http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies.)
This is an assignment that will enable you to gain conscious awareness of the process
you use to write papers that are assigned in classes (and the extent to which that process
might be different when you write for other purposes). It is an assignment that you can
also use with your students.
Think about a paper you have written recently for a college class. Then draw two
pictures:
1 The first picture should represent how you actually engaged in writing this particu-
lar piece. It might show a place or places where you did that writing.
2 The second picture should represent the whole writing process for this particular
piece. The picture might show how this writing activity got started, interactions
Processes 7
with other people and other texts, experiences that have influenced the direction or
approach you used, the number and type of drafts, your evaluations of, and emo-
tions about this activity at different times.
After the two drawings are completed:
1 Describe the writing assignment and class for which it was intended. How did you
feel about the assignment? Were you interested in it immediately? Did you find it
difficult or confusing?
2 List as many activities associated with that writing as you possibly can recall. Some
questions to consider:
•• What was the first action you performed to complete the writing task? What
actions followed?
•• Did you think about the writing when you were involved in other activities
(driving a car, for example)?
•• Did you talk with anyone about the topic?
•• What sort of revision did you do?
•• Were these behaviors typical of what you usually do when you are given a
writing assignment?
•• Do you feel your writing process is effective?
•• Do you use a different process when you are working on something that you,
yourself, have decided to write? If so, how is it different?
The Stages of Writing

One perspective that gained prominence during the early days of the process movement
was that the writing process consisted of a series of sequenced, discrete stages sometimes
called “planning, drafting, and revising,” or “prewriting, writing, and rewriting.” An arti-
cle by Gordon Rohman (1965), “Prewriting: The Stage of Discovery in the Writing
Process,” published in College Composition and Communication, emphasized the importance
of invention and providing students with models of how writing is actually done. Articles
published during this period strongly emphasized prewriting; however, what many of
them also suggested was that writing occurred in a linear sequence, each stage following
neatly upon the other, the “prewriting” phase preceding the “writing” phase, which then
precedes the “revising” phase. Such a model was based on the idea that writing reflects
what already has been well-formulated in the mind of the writer and, by implication,
suggested that writing can occur only after the main ideas are in place. According to this
model, discovery and creativity entered the process only in terms of the writer’s decisions
about how to say what has been discovered, not in discovering and selecting what to say.
It also suggested that once a writer knew what he or she wanted to write, that part of the
process was complete.
We now know that this linear model of writing as a series of discrete stages does not reflect
what most writers actually do, because writers frequently discover and reconsider ideas dur-
ing, as well as before, they write, moving back and forth between the prewriting, writing, and
revision stages as the text emerges. For example, when I wrote this chapter, I began with a set
of points I planned to discuss, but I modified them many times as I wrote, not only revising
sentences but also generating additional material as new ideas occurred to me. In addition,
8 Irene L. Clark
with ease of access to new information, writers now can move from writing to research and
back to writing without ever leaving their desks. Moreover, because every person’s writ-
ing habits are different, an insistence on a lock-step sequence of stages can prove inhibiting,
sometimes paralyzing, to beginning writers. Those who believe that writing cannot occur
until every thought is clarified often delay actually writing until the paper is fully outlined
and developed—or until time has run out and the due date forces the writer to begin. For
some students, the idea that a writer must know exactly what he or she is going to say before
beginning to write can create a writer’s block that actually prevents effective writing from tak-
ing place. Although the idea that writing occurs in stages was a more helpful one than the
previous emphasis on grammatical correctness, when it was interpreted rigidly, this idea did
not provide sufficient insight into the composing processes of actual writers; nor was it always
useful in the classroom or in other venues.
Renewed Interest in Rhetoric

The process movement was also characterized by a renewed interest in rhetoric and its con-
nection to Composition, a phenomenon that is often referred to as the “new rhetoric,”
although the term “rhetoric” was absent from early publications. However, in 1971, James
Kinneavy published A Theory of Discourse, which established “the relation between composi-
tion and classical—specifically Aristotelian—rhetoric” (Williams, 1998, p. 30). This work
helped legitimize Composition as a genuine research discipline and suggested that anyone
who is serious about teaching writing should be studying rhetoric. Providing a theoretical
grounding for the new rhetoric, Kinneavy’s work was also notable for its reminder that writ-
ing is an act of communication between writer and audience.
Many of the scholars who worked in Composition during the early days of the process
movement have “a story to tell about how and when they discovered rhetoric” (Lunsford,
2007, p. 1), and today, rhetoric has become an important element in many writing classes.
Although the term is often associated with empty or sometimes deceptive language, such as
“that’s just rhetoric,” “rhetoric” refers to the complex interaction between the writer, the
reader, and the context, and is therefore neither good nor bad in itself. An ethical person will
use rhetoric to explore an idea and discover truth, whereas an unethical person will use it to
deceive. Plato distrusted rhetoric because of its association with the Sophists, who used it to
“win” an argument, no matter where the truth might be. Aristotle, however, viewed rhetoric
as the ability, in each case, to discover the available means of persuasion, the presumption
being that persuasion should and could be used in the service of justice. Although not all writ-
ing is persuasive, awareness of how writer, audience, and situation interact in the creation of
a text enables us to know the world and make informed choices in the construction of a text.
John Gage in “The Reasoned Thesis” pointed out that Aristotelian rhetoric does not have to
be understood strictly in terms of persuasion or coercion, but rather in terms of inquiry, of
helping people discover “mutual grounds for assent” (Gage, 1996, p. 10). M. J. Killingsworth
(2005) showed how rhetoric can enable writers and readers achieve mutual understanding of
the values they share.
Rhetoric, Exigence, and Process

This book will emphasize that an understanding of rhetoric can help students discover direc-
tions for exploration and revision, and, in my own writing and teaching, I have found the
terms “rhetorical situation” and “exigence” to be particularly useful. Lloyd Bitzer’s notion
of the “rhetorical situation,” which he defines as a problem, situation, or need that can be
impacted or addressed in some way through writing, can enable students to find a rationale or
Processes 9
purpose for writing. Bitzer also used the word “exigence,” which he defined as a defect, an
obstacle or some problem or situation that is not what it ought to be or at least needs atten-
tion. When my students are in the process of developing ideas for an essay, I will often ask
them “Where’s the exigence?”
The idea of “exigence” can enable students to begin the process of writing and keep
them focused on a reason for writing as they develop ideas and formulate an approach. It can
also motivate revision, as they consider the potential impact of their writing on an audience
and revisit the context, occasion, and purpose for writing. Chapter 2 on “Invention and
Revision” will discuss the role of rhetoric and exigence in further detail.
Rhetoric, Authority, and Values

Including rhetoric in a writing class focuses students’ attention on what enables them to
accept the “truth” of an idea—that is, what makes an idea convincing and what sort of
evidence and authority contributes to making it so. For example, in a strongly Christian
community in which the Bible is viewed as a source of values, quoting from the Bible may
serve as a definitive authority and convincing evidence might be found by quoting from that
source. Academic writing, however, is usually intended for a broader, more secular com-
munity, and therefore the Bible may not serve as a convincing source of authority for that
audience. Moreover, as Killingsworth (2005) maintained:
Modern rhetoric does not so much replace one authority with another; rather it attacks
the very idea of absolute authority. People who use rhetoric don’t have to be atheists or
moral relativists, but they must realize that the constraints on how we discuss issues are
different as we move from community to community, audience to audience.
(p. 13)
In writing about an issue such as whether women should submit to their husband in marriage,
Killingsworth pointed out, a student would have to base his or her arguments “on something
more than the Bible” (p. 12). Incorporating rhetoric into a writing class will enable students to
understand how the values of an intended audience impact the direction and credibility of a text.
Early Research on Composing

The “process” movement generated a great deal of scholarship, some based on observational
studies, others focused on cognitive models of learning. In an overview of early research con-
cerned with the writing process, Sondra Perl (1994) noted 1971 as the year when the field
of Composition moved from an almost exclusive focus on written products to an examina-
tion of composing processes. 1971 was the year that Janet Emig published “The Composing
Processes of Twelfth Graders,” which Perl describes as the first study to ask a process-oriented
question, “How do 12th-graders write?” and the first to devise a method to study writing
processes as they unfolded. Emig observed eight 12th-graders who spoke aloud as they com-
posed, and from her observations, called into question the absoluteness of the stage-model
theory of composing. Noting that these students did not create outlines before they com-
posed, Emig characterized the composing process as recursive, rather than linear, noting that
writers move back and forth between various phases of the process as they compose.
Although the validity of having students speak aloud as they compose can be questioned,
Emig’s study was important because it showed the oversimplification of the writing process
inherent in the stage model, which was, and to some extent still is, reinforced in some text-
books. Moreover, it generated a number of observational studies that shed further light on the
10 Irene L. Clark
composing process, among them the work of Linda Flower and John Hayes (1980), discussed
later in this chapter, that linked the development of writing ability to cognitive development
and the studies by Sondra Perl (1979) and Nancy Sommers (1980) which provided valuable
insight into revision.
The Role of Cognitive Psychology

Early studies of the composing process were strongly influenced by ideas associated with
cognitive psychology, particularly those of Jerome Bruner, previously discussed, and those of
Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. The underlying idea of cognitive psychology is that to under-
stand an observable behavior (such as writing), one must understand the mental structures
that determine that behavior. Conceiving of language and thought as the primary mental
structures that influence writing, cognitive psychologists maintained that to understand how
students learn to write, one must understand how these structures develop as an individual
matures and acquires knowledge of the world.
Cognitive psychology perceives linguistic and intellectual ability as developing in a natural
sequence, and it is this concept that has had the most significant impact on the study of writ-
ing acquisition and on how a writing teacher can utilize that sequence in the classroom. Emig
(1971), for example, maintained that the ability to write personal, expressive writing precedes
the ability to write on literary or academic topics. She, therefore, urged teachers to use more
of what she referred to as “reflexive”—that is, personal—writing in the classroom, based on
students’ own experiences and feelings. Beginning with personal topics before addressing
more abstract topics, Emig claimed, fosters students’ cognitive development. Whether or
not this is absolutely true has not been established. However, in order for students to engage
with a topic, it is useful for them to consider what personal involvement they might have
with it. In my own writing classes, students often write about a personal experience that is
related to the topic before they focus on issues or controversies that may be developed in an
argument essay.
The Work of Flower and Hayes

Several articles by Flower and Hayes continued to explore the writing process based on theo-
ries of cognitive psychology. Concerned with avoiding models that suggest that the writing
process is linear, Flower and Hayes (1981) set up a cognitive theory based on four points:
1 The process of writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes that
writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing.
2 These processes have a hierarchical, highly embedded organization in which any process
can be embedded within any other.
3 The act of composing itself is a goal-directed thinking process, guided by the writer’s
own growing network of goals.
4 Writers create their own goals in two key ways: by generating both high-level goals and
supporting subgoals that embody the writer’s developing sense of purpose, and then, at
times, by changing major goals or even establishing new ones based on what has been
learned in the act of writing.
(p. 366)
Flower and Hayes also focused on the role of problem-definition in the writing process, not-
ing in their article “The Cognition of Discovery: Defining a Rhetorical Problem” (1980)
that although a teacher may give “20 students the same assignment, the writers themselves
Processes 11
create the problem they solve” (p. 23). Using the technique of “protocols” (having students
speak aloud as they compose), Flower and Hayes constructed a model of the rhetorical prob-
lem itself, which consisted of two major units: the rhetorical situation, which consists of the
“writer’s given,” including the audience and the assignment, and the set of goals that the
writer creates for himself. The four goals they noted involved the reader, creating a persona
or voice, building a meaning, and producing a formal text, which, as they point out, “closely
parallel the four terms of the communication triangle: reader, writer, world, word” (p. 25).
Although recent scholarship in Writing Studies has not privileged cognitive approaches to
the study and teaching of writing, current research in neuroscience has generated renewed
interest in cognition. A recently published book titled Contemporary Perspectives on Cognition
and Writing (2017) consists of chapters that explore and affirm the importance of cognition
and neuroscience for understanding and teaching writing.
Developmental Models of the Composing Process

This notion that the development of writing ability correlates with human linguistic and
intellectual development resulted in a number of publications that suggested that the English
curriculum should parallel the sequence in which that development was presumed to occur.
Deriving from Piaget’s notion of cognitive development, James Moffett’s Teaching the Universe
of Discourse (1968) outlined a theory by which a sequential curriculum in language arts could
be based. Moffett’s system consisted of a progression that moved from the personal to the
impersonal and from low to high levels of abstraction based on two horizontal scales. The
first, the audience scale, organized discourse according to the distance between the writer and
his or her audience, according to four categories (Moffett, 1968b):
Reflection (interpersonal communication within the self)
Conversation (interpersonal communication between two people within communica-
tion distance)
Correspondence (interpersonal communication between remote individuals)
Publication (impersonal communication between unconnected individuals, unknown to
one another).
(p. 33)
Moffett’s second scale, the subject scale, categorized discourse by how far away the writer
or speaker is from the subject being considered. For example, a person may be sitting at a
table in a cafeteria eating lunch, noting what is happening at the given moment. Later on, he
or she might report on what happened in the cafeteria during lunch, generalize about what
usually happens in the cafeteria at lunch, or argue that something might or should happen
in the cafeteria at lunch. These two scales, the audience scale and the subject scale, Moffett
suggested, can be used to help students recreate their experience through language, enabling
them to develop facility in writing. Moffett’s concept of a language-arts curriculum based on
this sequence was explained in considerable detail in his textbook A Student-Centered Language
Arts Curriculum (1968a).
A British study, The Development of Writing Abilities 11–18, published in 1975 by James
Britton, Tony Burgess, Nancy Martin, Alex McLeod, and Harold Rosen, also included the
notion of sequential development. Aimed at creating a model that would “characterize all
mature written utterances and then go on to trace the developmental steps that led to them”
(p. 6), this system of Britton and his colleagues categorized all student writing by function—
the transactional, which communicates information to an unknown audience; the expressive,
12 Irene L. Clark
which communicates information to a known audience; and the poetic, which deals only
tangentially with any form of audience. Britton et al. characterized most school writing as
transactional, but argued that because students are most engaged in expressive writing, this is
the type of writing that is most likely to foster the development of writing ability.
Both Moffett’s work and the work of Britton et al., evolving from the theories of Jean
Piaget, addressed the question of how children learn to move beyond their early egocentri-
cism to reach out to an audience; a topic addressed by Linda Flower in her seminal article
“Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing” (1979). According to
Flower, novice writers often have difficulty transcending their own egocentric perspective to
consider the needs of their intended audience. As a result, their texts are often characterized
by what she refers to as “writer-based prose”—that is, texts in which information is omitted
or inadequately explained, definitions unclarified—in other words, texts that reflect what
might be in their writers’ minds at the time of writing but that have not been sufficiently
contextualized or modified for a reader. Often reflecting the order in which the writer first
generated ideas, writer-based prose may be clear to the writer, but a reader may have dif-
ficulty understanding it. Awareness of writer-based prose in the writing class can be used
to help novice writers transform “writer-based” to “reader-based” prose, enabling them to
develop a better understanding of the concept of audience.
Pursuing a similar direction, Andrea Lunsford, in an article titled “Cognitive Development
and the Basic Writer” (1979), claimed that the difficulties novice or “basic” writers have with
writing are because of their not having reached a level of cognitive development that would
enable them to form abstractions. To remedy this problem, Lunsford suggested a variety of
workshop activities focusing on analysis and active thinking. During that same year (1979),
Sharon Pianko published “A Description of the Composing Processes of College Freshman
Writers,” in which she claimed that the composing process of basic writers is less developed
than that of more skillful writers.
For Further Exploration

Early Process-Oriented Scholarship
Faigley, L., & Witte, S. (1980). Analyzing revision. CCC, 32: 400–414.
Flower, L., & Hayes, J. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. CCC, 32: 354–387.
Kroll, B., & Schafer, J. (1978). Error analysis and the teaching of composition. CCC, 29: 242–248.
Matsuhashi, A. (1981). Pausing and planning:The tempo of written discourse production. Research
in the Teaching of English, 15: 113–134.
Perl, S. (1979). The composing process of unskilled college writers. Research in the Teaching of
English, 13: 317–336.
Perl, S. (1981). Understanding composing. CCC, 31: 363–369.
Pianko, S. (1979). A description of the composing processes of college freshmen writers. Research
in the Teaching of English, 13: 5–22.
Sommers, N. (1980). Revision strategies of student writers and experienced adult writers. CCC,
31: 378–388.
Rhetoric and the Composition Class

Gage, J. T. (1996). The reasoned thesis: The E-word and argumentative writing as a process of
inquiry. In B. Emmel, P. Resch, & D. Tenney (Eds.), Argument revisited; Argument redefined
(pp. 3–18). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Processes 13
Killingsworth, M. J. (2005). Appeals in modern rhetoric: An ordinary-language approach. Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press.
Lunsford, A. A. (2007). Writing matters. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press.
Lunsford,A.A., & Glenn, C. (1990). Rhetorical theory and the teaching of writing. In G. Hawisher,
& A. Soter (Eds.), On literacy and its teaching (pp. 174–189). Albany, NY: State University of
New York.

Compare Nancy Sommers’s “The Revision Strategies of Student Writers and
Experienced Adult Writers” (in Chapter 3) with Muriel Harris’s essay “Composing
Behaviors of One-and Multi-Draft Writers” at the end of this chapter. Note the simi-
larities and differences between their perspectives on the writing process. What are the
implications of these perspectives for working with students in a writing class?
Expressivism and the Concept of Personal Voice

The initial phase of the process movement has often been associated with an emphasis on the
importance of students being able to “express” their thoughts and feelings through writing,
a perspective that is often referred to as “expressivism.” Teachers adhering to an expressivist
philosophy tended to assign essays concerned with personal experience and self-reflection,
the goal being to enable students to discover their own personal “voice” that would result
in “authentic” writing and self-empowerment. Ken Macrorie, in his 1970 textbook Telling
Writing, insisted on the importance of truth-telling by avoiding what he refers to as “Engfish,”
which he defines as institutional language, or language that conceals rather than reveals a
personal self. In the preface to that work, Macrorie (1970) defined Composition teaching in
the following terms:
Enabling students to use their own powers, to make discoveries, to take alternative
paths. It does not suggest that the world can best be examined by a set of rules . . . The
program gives the student first, freedom to find his voice and let his subjects find
him . . . for both teacher and student, a constant reading for truth, in writing and
commenting on that writing. This is a hard requirement, for no one speaks truth
consistently.
(pp. vii–viii)
For Macrorie, good writers speak in honest voices and tell some kind of truth; a perspective
similar to that of Donald Stewart (1972), for whom the most important goal of a writing
course was for students to engage in a process of self-discovery, manifested in the student’s
text by the appearance in the text of an authentic voice. Donald Graves (1983) also referred
to voice as infusing a text with the writer’s presence. Perhaps the best-known proponent of
the concept of voice, Peter Elbow (1986), although acknowledging the difficulty of defin-
ing voice, nevertheless viewed the discovery of voice as a necessary prerequisite of growth.
“I can grow or change,” Elbow maintained, but “not unless I start out inhabiting my own
14 Irene L. Clark
voice or style. . . . In short, I need to accept myself as I am before I can tap my power or
start to grow” (p. 204). Voice, for Elbow, constitutes both a motivating force and a source
of power. In its emphasis on empowering the inner self, the expressivist approach to writing
is sometimes referred to as the “romantic” school of writing, in contrast to the “classical” or
“cognitive” school, which view writing in terms of intellectual development as manifested
in problem solving.
Of course, there is no reason that the “process” approach should be so closely con-
nected to expressivist writing. As Ladd Tobin (1994) points out, “a teacher could assign
a personal essay but ignore the writing process or assign a critical analysis yet nurture the
process” (p. 6). Nevertheless, process and personal or expressivist writing were often asso-
ciated with one another in the early days of the process movement, and today the expres-
sionists remain:
a force in rhetoric and composition studies. Such as Peter Elbow, Donald Murray, Ken
Macrorie . . . continue to explore writing as a private and personal act. It is this group
that continues to insist on the importance of the individual against the demands of insti-
tutional conformity, holding out for the personal as the source of all value.
(Berlin, 1990, pp. 218–219)
Social Constructionism
Although cognitive and expressivist approaches to Composition dominated scholarship dur-
ing the 1970s and 1980s, during the mid-1980s, publications began to appear that questioned
both the validity and the utility of focusing on the individual. Patricia Bizzell’s “Cognition,
Convention, and Certainty: What We Need to Know About Writing” (1983) argued that
writers are not autonomous individuals, distinct and removed from culture, but, rather, that
individual consciousness is shaped by culture through language. This perspective implied
that all writers, even when they are presumably composing only for themselves or writing
notes for a subsequent piece of writing, are mentally influenced by the “inner speech,” as
Vygotsky (1978) referred to it, that develops in response to a particular culture’s concept of
language and thought. From this perspective, then, writing is socially constructed because it
both reflects and shapes thinking; a position that in Composition studies is known as social
constructionism. Social constructionist approaches to Composition emphasize the role of com-
munity in shaping discourse and the importance of understanding community expectations
when working with students. Bizzell’s article (1983), for example, pointed out that although
Flower and Hayes’s cognitive-based model described how writing occurs, it focused too
strongly on the individual writer and did not help Composition teachers “advise students on
difficult questions of practice” (p. 222).
Social constructionist approaches to Composition derive from perspectives in philosophy,
as well as other fields, that emphasize the importance of community consensus in determining
knowledge. This view is based on the idea that individuals perceive the world according to
the shared beliefs and perceptions of the community or communities to which they belong; it
is one that writers in fields such as history or ethnography have supported for some time. The
philosopher, Richard Rorty, for example, in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), main-
tained that knowledge is a “socially constructed belief,” a viewpoint that straddles a middle
position between absolute relativism, in which an individual may choose to believe anything,
and the positivist notion of objective truth derived from an absolute reality. The anthropolo-
gist, Clifford Geertz (1983), similarly argued that modern consciousness is an “enormous
multiplicity” of cultural values, and Charles Bazerman (1981) has emphasized the role of the
scientific community in shaping the writing of scientists.
Processes 15
In Composition, social constructionist approaches have been associated with the work of
David Bartholomae, Kenneth Bruffee, Patricia Bizzell, and James Berlin, who all focused on
the social context of writing and the role of community in determining the appropriateness
and effectiveness of a text. Kenneth Bruffee’s “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation
of Mankind’” (1984) maintained that every person is born into the “conversation of man-
kind” and that it is this conversation that gives meaning and value to what we do, influencing
both thinking and writing. “We can think because we can talk, and we think in ways we have
learned to talk” (p. 87), Bruffee explained.
Collaborative Learning
Bruffee’s scholarship is also associated with collaborative learning: a concept that frequently
informs the pedagogy used in writing classes. An important goal of this approach is to balance
authority between students and teacher, so that students can participate in their own learning
through peer editing and writing groups. This idea, as Bruffee pointed out, is actually quite
similar to the work of the early process theorists such as Peter Elbow, who had long advo-
cated the effectiveness of the “teacherless” classroom and the necessity of delegating author-
ity to writing groups. According to this perspective, students learn only when they have
assumed responsibility for their own learning. They do not develop writing skills by listening
to a teacher lecture about the writing process. Rather they must engage fully in that process
themselves, working together with peers.
Collaborative Learning in the Classroom

Although the concept of collaborative learning is easy to endorse in the abstract, successful
implementation in the classroom requires the teacher to plan carefully all activities involv-
ing group work, whether they be peer editing sessions, group discussions, or team research
projects. All of us who have blithely assumed that simply telling students to work together
or putting them into pairs or groups without providing specific instructions can attest to the
problems that often occur. Unless collaborative activities are carefully orchestrated by the
teacher, students may not take group work seriously, socializing instead of working, allocat-
ing most of the work to one member, completing the activity superficially, and generally
not engaging fully in the process. Sometimes they will offer innocuous compliments to one
another such as “I liked your paper. I could relate to it.” Or “It flowed.” Or else they will
complete the group activity quickly so that they can leave the class early.
Wendy Bishop (1997), in “Helping Peer Writing Groups Succeed,” emphasized the
importance of carefully scripting and modeling what is expected from peer writing groups.
Below are some additional suggestions for maximizing the value of collaborative activities in
the writing class:
•• Model the activity by first engaging in it yourself in front of the class. Before putting
students into groups for peer editing, ask students to volunteer a paper to be edited, or
use one from another class. Make copies for the class and demonstrate how you expect
students to proceed.
•• Determine the procedures for group work, such as whether students should read
papers silently or aloud, how many copies of the paper students should bring in, how
much time should be allotted for each paper, and the sort of comments that should
be encouraged.
•• Assign the groups yourself through random selection. If students choose their own
groups, they may spend the time socializing instead of working. To enable the groups
16 Irene L. Clark
to develop a productive working relationship, keep the groups constant throughout the
semester, unless there is a good reason for changing them.
•• For peer editing, develop assignment-specific questions (see the following “For Writing
and Discussion” section for an example).
•• When possible, require students to report their discussion results to the class. This works
well when students engage in group research because it requires them to take responsibil-
ity for their work. They should be aware that they will be standing in front of the class
and that inadequate preparation will be apparent to everyone!

The following assignment is provided as an example of how peer questions should be
oriented toward a specific assignment. Work through this process by writing a response
to the assignment, bringing your response to class, and working in groups to respond
to the questions. By completing the process yourself, you will gain insight into how to
use it in your writing class.
Writing Assignment
One important insight arising from research into the composing process is that no
approach or strategy is appropriate for all writers and that, as Muriel Harris points out,
“there is a very real danger in imposing a single ‘ideal’ composing style on students.” In
fact, the more we engage in research about the composing process, the more we realize
how much more we need to learn.
As a writer and a student of writing, you have learned a great deal about the writing
process from your own experiences: some of them useful, some less so, and it is your
writing background that will serve as the primary resource for this assignment. Think
about your own history as a writer—your classroom successes and failures, teachers and
writers who have influenced you, assignments you have completed, and strategies you
have developed as you grappled with various types of writing assignments throughout
your academic career. Then in an essay of three to five pages, respond to the follow-
ing question:
Based on your experience as a writer and a student, what insights into the
composing process do you consider to be the most important?
In discussing insights you have gained, please enliven your prose with specific exam-
ples and anecdotes.
First draft: 3 copies due in class on __. First drafts must be typed.
Final draft due on __.
Peer Editing Question Sheet

Name of writer _____ Feedback provided by _____
1 Does the essay respond to the prompt—that is, what insights into the composing
process does the writer consider most important?
2 Examine the introduction. What function does it serve? To attract attention? To
indicate a direction for the essay? How does the introduction prepare the reader for
other sections in the essay?
Processes 17
3 Examine the essay for support. What are the main ideas or themes? What specific
examples, anecdotes, or explanations are used to support these ideas or themes?
4 Examine the essay for coherence. What strategies are used to connect each para-
graph with the next?
5 Examine the essay for style and sentence structure. What specific words does the
writer use to illustrate main points? What kind of person do you sense behind
the prose? How does the writer make this person seem real? How does the
writer use sentence structure to develop the essay? Is the essay’s style sufficiently
varied? Are the sentences choppy?
6 What has the writer done to make the essay interesting? What did you learn from
this essay? What did the writer do to enhance the audience appeal of this essay?
Collaborating Online
Access to new media has now enabled students to collaborate virtually—sharing ideas and
drafts online, working in groups on various projects without meeting face to face. Beach,
Anson, Breuch, and Swiss (2009) discuss a number of options for using “digital discussion
environments to enhance writing instruction and student engagement” (p. 48). Defining
“digital discussion environments” as those that promote conversation and collaboration, these
authors provide an overview of both synchronous (real-time) discussions, used when students
are on the computer at the same time, and asynchronous discussions, when students write sepa-
rate messages at different times. Synchronous discussions tend to be more conversational and
are sometimes used even when all students are in a classroom; asynchronous discussions occur
when students are not in the same location and can serve as a written transcript of an ongoing
discussion. Both can be useful in enabling students to learn from one another and build upon
one another’s ideas.
Online writing and collaboration can take many forms: having students respond to a read-
ing, discovering a purpose for writing, finding additional research, responding to drafts, dis-
cussing ideas for a project, or enabling students to become aware of audience. Whatever
purpose it might serve, however, planning is crucial, just as it is in a face-to-face classroom.
When they engage in a digital collaboration, students should have a clear idea of what they
are expected to do or learn in the context of a particular assignment or task. Possibilities for
online collaboration will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 9.

Social Constructionism
Bartholomae, D., & Petrosky, A. (1986). Facts, artifacts, and counterfacts. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Bazerman, C. (1981). What written knowledge does: Three examples of academic discourse.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 11: 361–387.
Bruffee, K. Social construction, language and the authority of knowledge. College English, 48:
773–790.
Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books.
Harris, J. (1989). The idea of community in the study of writing. CCC, 40: 11–22.
Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
(continued)
18 Irene L. Clark
(continued)
Vygotsky, L. (1978). In M. Cole,V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.), Mind in soci-
ety. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Collaborative Learning
Bizzell, P. (1983). Cognition, convention, and certainty: What we need to know about writing.
PRETEXT, 3: 213–243.
Brooke, R. (1991). Writing and sense of self: Identity negotiation in writing workshops. Urbana, IL:
NCTE.
Brooke, R., Mirtz, R., & Evans, R. (1994). Small groups in writing workshops. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Bruffee, K. A. (1984, November). Collaborative learning and the “conversation of mankind.”
College English, 46: 635–652.
Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without teachers. New York: Oxford University Press.
Forman, J. (Ed.). (1992). New visions of collaborative writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
George, D. (1984) Working with peer groups in the composition classroom. CCC, 35: 320–326.
Gere, A. R. (1987). Writing groups: History, theory, and implications. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Lunsford, A., & Ede, L. (1990). Singular texts/plural authors: Perspectives on collaborative writing.
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Mason, E. (1970). Collaborative learning. London: Ward Lock.
Smith, D. (1989). Some difficulties with collaborative learning. Journal of Advanced Composition, 9:
45–57.
Spellmeyer, K. (1994). On conventions and collaboration: The open road and the iron cage. In
J. Clifford, & J. Schilb (Eds.), Writing theory and critical theory. New York: MLA.
Trimbur, J. (1989, October). Consensus and difference in collaborative learning. College English,
51: 602–616.
Collaborating Online
Beach, R., Anson, C., Breuch L. B., & Swiss, T. (2009). Teaching writing using blogs, wikis, and other
digital tools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
Gane, N., & Beer, D. (2008). New media. Oxford: Berg.
Wysocki, A. F., Johnson-Eilola, J., & Selfe, C. L. (2004). Writing new media:Theory and applications for
expanding the teaching of composition. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Criticism of the Process Movement

The process movement resulted in important developments in the teaching of writing, nota-
bly a flowering of interest in Composition pedagogy, the creation of an established research
discipline concerned with writing and the teaching of writing, the realization that people
learn to write by actually writing and revising, rather than by completing decontextualized
exercises, and a renewed attention to individualized instruction. However, although rec-
ognizing its pedagogical importance, some critics maintain that because “the process model
focuses on writers and their psychological states . . . it offers little insight into the relationship
between writers and audience” (Williams, 1998, p. 45). Other critics have pointed out that
the process model does not address the issue of how gender, race, class, and culture influence
writers’ goals, standards, and methods, or even the concept of literacy itself. Scholars such as
Catherine Dorsey-Gaines and Denny Taylor (1988) examined how the concept of “process”
is influenced by race, and Nancie Atwell (1988) and Julie Neff (1994) wrote about how a
Processes 19
process approach must be specially tailored to the needs of the learning-disabled. Mike Rose,
in Lives on the Boundary: The Struggle and Achievements of America’s Under-prepared (1989), and
Shirley Brice Heath, in Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work Communities and Classrooms
(1983), discussed the impact of social class on the acquisition of literacy.
Another critical perspective questioned the extent to which the process model was successful
in addressing the literacy crisis. Some scholars noted that it neither provided a magic solution to
student writing problems, nor influenced the writing class as drastically as has sometimes been
claimed. Lad Tobin (1994) characterized the movement as a type of “fairy tale,” not because
“it is false or childish or naïve,” but, rather, because its “disciples” tended to oversimplify the
problems inherent in composing and in the teaching of writing. Tobin argued that although
we can appreciate the usefulness of the process model, we also “need to acknowledge and
confront the extent of the difficulties we face . . . to stop pretending that we have everything
under control, that everything is proceeding according to plan” (pp. 144–145).
In a similar vein, Joseph Harris noted that “while it seems clear to me that the process
movement helped establish composition as a research discipline, I am not nearly so sure it
ever transformed the actual teaching of writing as dramatically as its advocates have claimed”
(1997, p. 55). Harris also pointed out that although “the older current-traditional approach to
teaching writing focused relentlessly on surface correctness, the advocates of process focused
just as relentlessly on “algorithms, heuristics, and guidelines for composing” (p. 56). No sys-
tem, Harris argued, should be adopted without qualification.
Post-Process Theory
Concern about the effectiveness and validity of the process movement has been manifested in
literature concerned with “post-process theory,” a term that refers to the idea that the process
movement is no longer pertinent, either theoretically or pedagogically. In Post-Process Theory:
Beyond the Writing-Process Paradigm (1999), Thomas Kent asserted that because every commu-
nication act requires the writer to “guess” how a text will affect a reader, it is impossible to
model communication, and, therefore, there is no writing process that can be presented in the
classroom. “No single course can teach a student how to produce or analyze discourse,” Kent
maintains, “for the hermeneutic guessing required in all discourse production and analysis can
be only refined; it cannot be codified and then taught” (p. 39). In his essay in that collection,
Gary Olson (1999) took this position further, asserting not only that writing cannot be taught
but also that it cannot even be adequately described. To construct a model of the writing
process, Olson states, is to be in conflict with the postmodern rejection of certainty and the
corresponding emphasis on assertion as a valued academic skill. For Olson, “the vocabulary of
process is no longer useful” (p. 9), and, therefore, compositionists must move away from “a
discourse of mastery and assertion toward a more dialogic, dynamic, open-ended, receptive,
nonassertive stance” (p. 14). Olson, however, did not suggest how this perspective can benefit
students or be applied in a pedagogical context.
Another criticism of the process movement focused on the emphasis on formula with
which the writing process has been presented in the classroom. Joseph Petraglia and David
Russell both rejected the rigidity of a “prewrite, write, revise, edit” model, Petraglia noting
in “Is There Life after Process?” (1999) that Composition scholarship seems to be increas-
ingly irrelevant to working effectively with students. Russell, embracing an activity theory
orientation, emphasized that there are many writing processes. Instead of teaching one pro-
cess, Russell (1999) maintains, compositionists study those various processes to “(re)classify
them, commodify them, and involve students with (teach) them in a curriculum” (p. 88) that
acknowledges that some writing activities can be performed mechanistically, whereas oth-
ers cannot. As yet, post-process theory has not been applied to effective classroom teaching.
20 Irene L. Clark
However, for an excellent and enjoyable review of post-process scholarship, read Richard
Fulkerson’s “Of Pre- and Post-Process: Reviews and Ruminations” (2001).
Recent Emphases in Composition Research and Teaching

As Composition developed as a discipline, with new journals appearing at remarkable speed,
and many regional, national, and international conferences being organized, the focus of
Composition research and pedagogy underwent various shifts in emphasis which influenced
both research and teaching. Tracing the evolution of these emphases, John Trimbur (1994)
used the word “turns,” and building on this idea, Kathleen Blake Yancey (2018) used the
word “episodes.” Yancey’s version of how the field (or discipline) evolved situates the first
episode in the middle of the 20th century, when the focus of the Composition course was
language, with pedagogical practice derived from linguistics. In the second episode, the focus
was on the composing process, the goal being to help students develop an effective process.
The third episode was characterized by an emphasis on cultural theory, influenced by writ-
ers with a revolutionary agenda, such as Paolo Freire and Karl Marx. The fourth episode,
which John Trimbur referred to as the “social turn,” was characterized by the idea that the
content of a writing class could be whatever the teacher decided it should be, as long as
some sort of writing was included. Trimbur’s 1994 review of three books concerned with
Composition studies maintained that the focus was not so much on “students’ reading and
writing processes, but rather in terms of the cultural politics of literacy” (Trimbur 1994,
p.109). However, this emphasis on cultural studies and on how students are situated within
a political/cultural scene raised concern among some scholars that it did not provide students
with sufficient knowledge about writing.
The most recent “turn” identified by Yancey is a focus on Rhetoric and Composition,
not only as a means of teaching students to write, but as a field of study which includes
compelling evidence. As Bazerman similarly argued in 2002, “It is time to recognize that
writing provides some of the fundamental mechanisms that make our world work—and to
assert that writing needs to be taken seriously along with the other major matters of inquiry
supported by institutional structures” (Bazerman, 2002, quoted in Yancey, 2018, p. 22).
Bazerman’s perspective has been supported by several 21st-century Composition scholars
who lamented the lack of empirical research in the field. Richard Haswell argued in 2005
that the field needs to justify its existence by engaging in what he called RAD research (rep-
licable, aggregable, and data-supported), a perspective supported by Chris Anson in 2008,
who warned that unless the field provided evidence that Composition courses resulted in
improvement in student writing ability, those in charge of funding the courses would feel
justified in eliminating them.
Providing “proof” that Composition courses result in discernible improvement in student
writing, however, is difficult to demonstrate. Students will often report that their writing
has improved and speak glowingly of the help they have received from their writing teach-
ers. But self-reporting is usually not considered adequate proof that actual improvement has
occurred or that the improvement was based on students’ having taken a writing course or
engaged in a particular type of writing. Although it is generally agreed that motivating students
to write is likely to contribute to writing improvement, it is difficult to claim definitively
that it was the writing class itself that generated that motivation. Because so many factors can
impact a given measurement—such as students’ prior knowledge, sense of agency, the type
of writing task used to measure improvement, developing maturity, as well as the multiplic-
ity of tools used for assessment, the claim that the writing course was the primary factor is
difficult to establish.
Processes 21
Threshold Concepts
Recently, the desire to consolidate and articulate what is known in the field of Writing
Studies has generated interest in “threshold concepts,” an idea derived from the work of
J. F. Meyer and Ray Land (2006), who defined threshold concepts as those that are “critical
for epistemological participation in disciplines. More than mere concepts, threshold concepts
act as portals that learners pass through; in doing so, learners change their understandings of
something” (Adler-Kassner et al., 2017). As explained by Land, Meyer, and Baillie (2010)
a threshold-concepts approach is characterized by passing through a portal, from which a
new perspective opens up, allowing things formerly not perceived to come into view. This
permits a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a
transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something, without which the
learner cannot progress” (p. ix).
Applying and expanding the idea of threshold concepts to writing, Linda Adler-Kassner
et al. defined threshold concepts as “concepts critical for participation in communities of
practice” (p. 18). Threshold concepts can be understood as “articulation of shared beliefs
providing multiple ways of helping us name what we know and how we can use what we
know in the service of writing” (Yancey, 2016, p. xix), and in a chapter titled “Assembling
Knowledge: The Role of Threshold Concepts in Facilitating Transfer,” Adler-Kassner et al.
maintained that threshold concepts are particularly important in enabling students to transfer
what they learn in a first-year writing class to other courses and contexts.
The relationship of threshold concepts to writing is additionally explored in in Naming
What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies (2015), which includes a section that
discusses how threshold concepts can be applied in a first-year writing course. The authors
of that section, Doug Downs and Liane Robertson, maintained that “the threshold concepts
of writing are general principles that apply across a wide range of writing situations, even as
those situations vary widely” (p. 106). They particularly focused on two key purposes of the
first-year writing course: addressing misconceptions of writing and helping students under-
stand that the content in a first-year writing course can transfer to other writing contexts.
Below are four approaches that can help achieve these purposes:
1 Helping students understand that writing involves “rhetorical human interaction in

which readers and writers interact to shape writing and meaning” (p. 107). Whereas
novice writers tend to think of writing strictly in terms of getting sentences right, a
rhetorical focus helps students realize that writing means “being responsible to readers”
(p. 107). Understanding that writing is rhetorical enables students to understand the situ-
ated nature of writing.
2 Helping students consider the “process” of writing—not simply the awareness that writ-
ing involves drafting, writing, revising, and editing, but a more profound understanding
of how writing comes into being—that is, that writing is not purely inspirational, ideas
striking like a bolt of lightning. Rather, texts get their meaning from engagement with
other texts and involvement in conversations.
3 Helping students understand that writing is performative—that is, writing gets things
accomplished.
4 Helping students gain insight into their prior knowledge and beliefs about writing. For
example, many students leave high school thinking that “writing is formulaic or that
writing in one context is universal for all contexts” (p. 112). Encouraging students to
reflect on prior knowledge in a first-year writing class can help them figure out when
prior knowledge can be a “barrier to new learning” (p. 112), interfering with their ability
to see writing differently in college.
22 Irene L. Clark
For Discussion and Writing

In small groups, read aloud each of the four approaches to applying threshold concepts
in a writing course. Summarize these approaches in your own words. Then discuss pos-
sibilities for implementing these approaches into your own writing and teaching.
Writing about Writing

Related to the idea of threshold concepts is the idea that writing courses should focus students’
attention on writing itself, a curricular direction referred to as “Writing about Writing.” This
idea was developed by Writing Studies scholars who questioned what should be the primary
area of study for a writing course, arguing that a Composition course based on topics that
have nothing to do with writing made little sense. Rather, the course should enable students
to actually engage with issues concerned with writing. Applying this idea in a textbook titled
Writing about Writing, Downs and Wardle (2017) incorporated concepts and principles from
Writing Studies with which, they think, students should become familiar. These concepts
focus on issues in Writing Studies such as why students’ ideas about writing are important, why
literacy matters, how texts are composed, and how writing is impacted by prior experience.
Although a course that is based entirely on Writing Studies readings may not be suitable
for all students, many of the articles included in the Downs and Wardle text raise issues worth
discussing in a writing class. In particular, the article by Deborah Brandt, which discusses the
idea of “literacy sponsors,” can be especially enlightening for students as they begin to reflect
on how they became literate. In that reading, Brandt argued that “people don’t become liter-
ate on their own; rather, literacy is sponsored by people, institutions, and circumstances that
both make it possible for a person to become literate and shape the way the person actually
acquires literacy” (Downs and Wardle, 2017, p. 68).

Reflect on the various “literacy sponsors that have influenced how you became liter-
ate.” Which sponsors do you feel had the most significant impact on your ability to
read and write?
Reading as a Process
Interconnections between writing and reading will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6, but in
the context of this chapter, it is important to note that reading, like, writing, is also a process
and also requires rhetorical understanding. Although most entering college students are able
to read or “decode” words that are printed on a page, many are unable to understand the
texts assigned in their college classes because they don’t understand “academic writing as a
process in which writers engage with other texts” (Bean, 2005, p. xxiii). Helping students
develop an effective reading process, also includes the concept of “critical” reading as a means
of enabling students to recognize biased perspectives in various texts, including visual texts
such as websites and advertisements.
Processes 23
The idea that reading is a process enables students to approach a text purposefully, not
simply to begin reading passively, sentence by sentence, without considering why it was
written, the conversation it is addressing, and the strategies the writer has used to accomplish
a particular purpose. In working with students in a writing class, I urge them to develop a
process of reading that I refer to as “the three-pass approach,” which consists of the following
process-oriented activities:
1 The First Pass—Reflection and Quick Overview

During the first pass, students reflect on the subject and context that are being
addressed, evaluate the qualifications and motives of the author, and examine the read-
ing for additional clues, such as the title, publication information, and easily discernible
strategies of organization.
2 The Second Pass—Reading for Meaning and Structure
During the second pass, students read the text for meaning to determine what it is
saying. To aid understanding, they are encouraged to look for structural clues within the
text and summarize main points. Other activities associated with the second pass might
include creating a “map” of the text or noting the “moves” the writer uses.
3 The Third Pass—Interacting with the Text
During the third pass, students are encouraged to interact with the text, actively
engaging in a critical dialogue with it, in order to understand it more deeply and deter-
mine how much of it to accept. Such interaction involves distinguishing between fact
and opinion, evaluating the type of evidence cited, deciding whether the writer is aware
of the complexity of the topic, and paying close attention to how language is being used
to shape the reader’s perspective.
(For additional information on this three-pass approach, see Clark, College Arguments:
Understanding the Genres, 2nd Edition, 2016.)
Genre and Process

“Genre knowledge” can also have a significant impact on the “process” a writer will use to
complete a writing task. To write a shopping list, for example, one would simply jot down items
on a piece of paper, and any revision of that list would be unlikely to involve serious effort—
perhaps the addition of other items, a check placed next to an item already purchased, or a line
through an item that was not needed after all. More complicated genres or high-stakes genres,
however, involve more serious effort, and the “process” of writing might begin with a reflec-
tion about what such a genre requires, not only in terms of form, but what type of information
is required, for whom it is being written, and the purpose for which it is being written. In the
reading included at the end of this chapter, Mary Jo Reiff (2006) noted that a writing assign-
ment, particularly one that requires an unfamiliar genre, generates a number of genre-based
questions. Reiff observed that when she was asked to write about the “genre of the Pedagogical
Insight essay,” she called on her “genre knowledge, her past experience with similar texts in
similar situations” (p. 157) in order to orient herself to the expectations of the genre. Because she
knew that she was not familiar with this genre, she asked herself several questions, such as “What
are the actions that this genre performs? How will I position myself within this genre—what
identity and relations will I assume?” (p. 157). These questions then prompted her to consider
a potential audience and the social and cultural situation toward which her response would be
directed. A consideration of genre, then, enabled Reiff to begin the process of writing her essay.
A number of scholars (in particular, see Devitt, 2004) have suggested that an important
goal of a writing class is to help students become aware of the genres they are expected
24 Irene L. Clark
to produce, an approach that is particularly useful for students whose first language is not
English. Such a genre-based class may focus on studying multiple examples of a genre in
order to discern its features, as well as more usual process-oriented activities, such as writing
multiple drafts and obtaining peer feedback. The topic of genre will be addressed in further
detail in Chapter 5.
It is clear that the emphasis on process has not solved every problem associated with help-
ing students learn to write. Nevertheless, it was characterized by an intellectual and moral
energy that generated an exciting new discipline and an important ideological focus that
continues to influence Composition research and pedagogy.

Process
Bartholomae, D. (1980). The study of error. CCC, 31: 253–269.
Daniell, B. (1994). Theory, theory talk, and composition. In J. Clifford, & J. Schilb (Eds.), Writing
theory and critical theory (pp. 127–140). New York: MLA.
Dyer, P. M. (1990). What composition theory offers the writing teacher. In L. A. Arena (Ed.),
Language proficiency: Defining, teaching, and testing (pp. 99–106). New York: Plenum.
Elbow, P. (1981). Writing with power: Techniques for mastering the writing process. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Elbow, P. (1981). Embracing contraries: Explorations in learning and teaching. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Elbow, P. (1991). Reflections on academic discourse. College English, 53: 135–155.
Faigley, L. (1986). Competing theories of process: A critique and a proposal. College English, 48:
527–542.
Hairston, M. (1982). The winds of change: Thomas Kuhn and the revolution in the teaching of
writing. CCC, 33: 76–86.
Knoblauch, C. H., & Brannon, L. (1984). Rhetorical traditions and the teaching of writing. Upper
Montclair, NJ: Boynton Cook.
Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C., & Goelman, H. The role of production factors in writing ability.
In M. Nystrand (Ed.), What writers know: The language, process, and structures of academic discourse
(pp. 173–210). New York: Academic.
Selzer, J. (1984). Exploring options in composing. CCC, 35: 276–284.
Transfer and Threshold Concepts

Adler-Kassner, L., & Wardle, E., Eds. (2015). Naming what we know:Threshold concepts of writing stud-
ies. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Anson, C. & Moore, J., Eds. (2017). Critical transitions: Writing and the question of transfer. Fort
Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse.
Downs, D. & Wardle, E. (2017). Writing about writing (3rd ed.). Boston, MA; Bedford/St. Martins.
Malenczyk, R. et al., Eds. (2018). Composition, rhetoric and disciplinarity. Logan, UT: Utah State
University Press.
Processes 25
Writing Assignment
Understanding Yourself as a Writer1
Although all writers engage in planning, drafting, and revising, they do so in a variety
of ways and no writer approaches every writing task the same way. One way to move
away from writing habits that have not worked well for you in the past is to understand
what type of writer you are. Think about the models of writers described here. In the
space provided, indicate the extent to which this description pertains to your own writ-
ing habits.
Writers Who Plan in Advance. These people tend to think about their ideas and plan their
writing in their minds or on paper before they begin to write. As a result, their first drafts
are usually better than most first drafts often are, even though these drafts will probably
still need additional revision before they can be submitted. People who plan in advance
use spare moments of their time to think—while they eat lunch, drive, and wait in line.
When they start to write, they usually have at least some idea about what they want to say.
Writers Who Discover Ideas through Writing. Although every writer discovers ideas
through writing, at least sometimes, these writers use writing to find out what they
want to say, planning and revising while they write. They begin by writing whatever
comes into their minds and then reconsider and rewrite again and again. Writers who
discover ideas through writing may even throw out a whole first draft and begin again.
Writers Who Spend Equal Time on Planning, Writing, and Revising. Some writers divide
the writing task into stages, a method that is probably the most effective in writing a
college essay as long as adequate time is allowed for each stage of the process. However,
it is important to keep in mind that an effective plan involves more than a few notes
scratched on a sheet of paper, that sufficient time must be allowed for drafting, and that
a revision means a great deal more than correcting a few sentences.
Writers Who Delay. This is a familiar type of writer—those who delay writing until
right before the paper is due. These writers sometimes stay up all night, trying to write
a complete draft of a paper, and, thus, when they submit their work, they are really
submitting a first draft, not usually their best work. Of course, for various reasons, all
writers probably procrastinate sometimes. But those who always write first drafts under
conditions of pressure or panic are unlikely to do as well as they could.
Writing Assignment
Assessing Your Own Writing Process
This self-assessment will enable you to look at your own writing process, to evaluate
the strategies you use when you write. Try to answer each question as fully as possible.
1 Mark the scale below to indicate how easy or difficult you find the process of
writing. Easy–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Difficult
Please explain your selection, indicating the reasons for your response.
2 Describe how you usually write your papers.
(continued)
26 Irene L. Clark
(continued)
3 What practices or “rules of writing” do you find to be useful? Which do you find
to be phony or not useful?
4 Which of the following problems have you experienced?
•• Beginning the paper
•• Knowing what you want to say
•• Writing an introduction
•• Getting a first sentence
•• Finding a thesis
•• Organizing the paper
•• Deciding how to structure your ideas
•• Writing an outline
•• Addressing the needs of your audience
•• Knowing what your reader wants
•• Deciding what information to include
•• Working on coherence and style
•• Connecting each paragraph to your overall point
•• Writing sentences that connect with one another
•• Making your writing lively and interesting to read
•• Finding the right words.
5 Based on your responses to the previous questions, what changes would you like to
make in your writing behavior?
Writing Assignment
Writing Class Observation
If you currently attend a college or university where writing classes are taught, arrange
to observe at least three classes over a two-week period. Then, based on your observa-
tions, write a two-part report of five to seven pages that addresses the following:
Part I. Describe the writing class you observed, including many specific details such
as the name of the teacher, the level of the class, how often the class meets, the
number of students, the textbook used, the assignment the students are working on,
the handouts that were used, the seating arrangement—any details that will enable
a reader to understand what the teacher and students were doing during various
segments of the class.
Part II. Discuss how observing these classes has provided you with information that
you will use to plan your own writing class. Specific points to address in this sec-
tion include the teacher, students, classroom dynamics, methodology, and materials.
What did you learn in this class from both the teacher and the students that will be
helpful to you?
Note that your purpose is NOT to evaluate the teacher or the methods in any way, but
rather to reflect on what you have learned and can apply to your own teaching.
Processes 27
Classroom Observation Guidelines
1 Select the “teacher volunteer” whose class you plan to observe.
2 Plan to observe at least three successive class meetings, or a total of four class meet-
ings over a three-week period.
3 Contact the teacher (via telephone, e-mail, or mail) and make certain that you
will be the only observer in class on the days of your visits. Request that he or she
provides you with a copy of the course syllabus and any other important handouts
when you observe your first class.
4 Find out if the teacher has any preference regarding your “role” as observer in his/
her class. For example, should you get up and walk around if group work is in
progress or remain in your seat and listen in on the closest group?
5 During your first observation, take as many notes as you feel are necessary to pro-
vide you with a full record of your experience.
6 During your second and subsequent observations, focus on what you consider to
be the most informative and important insights you have gained.
7 If possible, have a short “debriefing” session with the instructor when you have
finished the sequence of observations.
8 Be sure to arrive on time for the class. Do not leave until the class has ended.
Points to Note When Observing Composition Classes

Physical Arrangement of Class. How seats are arranged and placement of teacher.
Atmosphere in Classroom/Classroom Dynamics. Formal? Informal? Friendly?
The Lesson. The day’s agenda, the day’s topic, specific skills to be taught, activities
planned (group work, writing/thinking activities, revision, invention, and exercises),
sequencing of activities, materials used, quality of discussion, and applicability of lesson
to student writing/language skills.
Student Behaviors
•• What kind of writing are the students doing?
•• How many students are participating?
•• What are students doing who are not participating?
•• Are students reading their work aloud?
•• Are students speaking to one another?
•• Are students working in groups?
•• How are students reacting to the day’s agenda and topic?
Teacher Behaviors
•• What sort of voice does the teacher use?
•• Has the teacher engaged the students?
•• What kind of working relationship does the teacher have with the students?
•• What is the evidence that suggests that kind of working relationship?
•• What does the teacher do when students participate or ask questions? Characterize
the teacher’s strategies for listening and promoting dialogue.
(continued)
28 Irene L. Clark
(continued)
Teacher Activities
•• Presenting the assignment/lesson.
•• Modeling a particular writing strategy.
•• Teacher addressing class as a whole.
•• Teacher addressing a small group.
•• Teacher speaking with an individual student.
•• Teacher presenting the lesson.
Overall, you should be aware of how writing and reading are addressed in the class, how
students are engaged, with the instructor and with each other, how the lesson has been
planned, and how much student participation drives and supports the action of the class.
The Importance of Reflection

Readers of this book are likely to be teaching a one- or perhaps two-semester writing class,
but the ideas associated with “process” should, of course, enable students to continue to
improve as writers, beyond the expectations of a first-year writing course. To help students
to develop a writing process that works well in various contexts and to continue to develop as
writers, it is important for them to “reflect” on what they have learned—to develop a meta-
cognitive awareness of what it means to write at various stages and in various contexts. The
following assignments focus on fostering student reflection.
Writing Assignment
Keeping a Reflective Writing Journal
A useful strategy for gaining insight into your own writing process is to keep a reflective
writing journal. A reflective writing journal will enable you to recall writing experi-
ences in your past, from which you can develop your own “theory” of writing. Insights
fostered by this means will be useful for helping your students to develop an effective
writing process. The following are some suggestions for entries into your reflective
writing journal:
1 Discuss your history as a writer, focusing on particular highlights.

2 Describe your own writing process.
3 Write about one of your best teachers.
4 Find some examples of what you feel is “good writing.” What makes this writing
good?
5 Why have you chosen to study Rhetoric and Composition?
Writing a Reflective Memo (to be used to help students reflect on a draft)
REFLECTIVE MEMO1
To accompany a draft
Processes 29
1 My thesis is
2 This thesis needs to be argued because
3 My thesis needs to be read because
4 If I had two more days to work on this, I would
5 My favorite section is
6 My favorite sentence is
7 What could we spend more time on in class that would enable me to do this assign-
ment more competently?
Note
1 This form is based on a discussion of various types of writers in Lisa Ede (1995) Work in Progress (3rd
ed.), Boston/New York: St. Martin’s Press.
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Readings
Composing Behaviors of One- and Multi-Draft Writers
Muriel Harris
A belief shared by teachers of writing, one that we fervently try to inculcate in our students,
is that revision can improve writing. This notion, that revision generally results in better text,
often pairs up with another assumption, that revision occurs as we work through separate
drafts. Thus, “hand in your working drafts tomorrow and the final ones next Friday” is a com-
mon assignment, as is the following bit of textbook advice: “When the draft is completed, a
good critical reading should help the writer re-envision the essay and could very well lead
to substantial rewriting” (Axelrod and Cooper 10). This textbook advice, hardly atypical, is
based on the rationale that gaining distance from a piece of discourse helps the writer to
judge it more critically. As evidence for this assumption. Richard Beach’s 1976 study of the
self-evaluation strategies of revisers and non-revisers demonstrated that extensive revisers
were more capable of detaching themselves and gaining aesthetic distance from their writing
than were non-revisers. Nancy Sommers’ later theoretical work on revision also sensitized
us to students’ need to re-see their texts rather than to view revision as an editing process at
the limited level of word changes.
A logical conclusion, then, is to train student writers to re-see and then re-draft a piece
of discourse. There are other compelling reasons for helping students view first or working
drafts as fluid and not yet molded into final form. The opportunities for outside intervention,
through teacher critiques and suggestions or peer evaluation sessions, can be valuable.
And it is equally important to help students move beyond their limited approaches and limit-
ing tendency to settle for whatever rolls out on paper the first time around. The novice view
of a first draft as writtenin-stone (or fast-drying cement) can preclude engaging more fully
with the ideas being expressed. On the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there
are advantages in being able, where it is appropriate, to master the art of one-draft writing.
When students write essay exams or placement essays and when they go on to on-the-job
writing where time doesn’t permit multiple drafts, they need to produce first drafts which are
also coherent, finished final drafts. Yet, even acknowledging that need, we still seem justi-
fied in advocating that our students master the art of redrafting to shape a text into a more
effective form.
The notion that reworking a text through multiple drafts and/or visible changes is generally
a beneficial process is also an underlying assumption in some lines of research. This had
been particularly evident in studies of computer-aided revision, where counts were taken of
changes in macrostructure and microstructure with and without word processing. If more
changes were made on a word processor than were written by hand, the conclusion was that
word processors are an aid to revision. Such research is based on the premise that revision
equals visible changes in a text and that these changes will improve the text.
Given this widely entrenched notion of redrafting as being advantageous, it would be
comforting to turn to research results for clearcut evidence that reworking of text produces
better writing. But studies of revision do not provide the conclusive picture that we need in
order to assert that we should continue coaxing our students into writing multiple drafts.
Lillian Bridwell’s 1980 survey of revision studies led her to conclude that “questions about
the relationship between revision and qualitative improvement remain largely unanswered”
Composing Behaviors 33
(199), and her own study demonstrated that the most extensively revised papers “received
a range of quality ratings from the top to the bottom of the scale” (216). In another review of
research on revision, Stephen Witte cities studies which similarly suggest that the amount
of re-drafting (which Witte calls “retranscription”) often bears little relation to the overall qual-
ity of completed texts (“Revising” 256). Similarly, Linda Flower and John Hayes, et al., cit-
ing studies which also dispute the notion that more re-drafting should mean better papers,
conclude that the amount of change is not a key variable in revision and that revision as
an obligatory stage required by teachers doesn’t necessarily produce better writing. (For a
teacher’s affirmation of the same phenomenon, see Henley.)
Constricting revision to retranscription (i.e., to altering what has been written) also denies
the reality of pre-text, a composing phenomenon studied by Stephen Witte in “Pre-Text and
Composing.” Witte defines a writer’s pre-text as “the mental construction of ‘text’ prior to
transcription” (397). Pre-text thus “refers to a writer’s linguistic representation of intended
meaning, a ‘trial locution’ that is produced in the mind, stored in the writer’s memory, and
sometimes manipulated mentally prior to being transcribed as written text” (397). Pre-texts
are distinguished from abstract plans in that pre-texts approximate written prose. As the
outcome of planning, pre-text can also be the basis for further planning. In his study Witte
found great diversity in how writers construct and use pre-text. Some writers construct little
or no pre-text; others rely heavily on extensive pre-texts; others create short pre-texts; and
still others move back and forth between extensive and short pre-texts. The point here is that
Witte has shown us that revision can and does occur in pre-texts, before visible marks are
made on paper. In an earlier paper, “Revising, Composing Theory, and Research Design,”
Witte suggests that the pre-text writers construct before making marks on paper is prob-
ably a function of the quality, kind, and extent of planning that occurs before transcribing
on paper. The danger here is that we might conclude that the development from novice to
expert writer entails learning to make greater use of pre-text prior to transcribing. After all, in
Linda Flower’s memorable phrase, pre-text is “the last cheap gas before transcribing text”
(see Witte, “Pre-Text” 422). But Witte notes that his data do not support a “vote for pre-text”
(“Pre-Text” 401). For the students in Witte’s study, more extensive use of pre-text doesn’t
automatically lead to better written text. Thus it appears so far that the quality of revision can
neither be measured by the pound nor tracked through discreet stages.
But a discussion of whether more or fewer drafts is an indication of more mature writ-
ing is itself not adequate. As Maxine Hairston reminds us in “Different Products, Different
Processes,” we must also consider the writing task that is involved in any particular case of
generating discourse. In her taxonomy of writing categories, categories that depict a vari-
ety of revision behaviors that are true to the experience of many of us, Hairston divides
writing into three classes; first, routine maintenance writing which is simple communication
about uncomplicated matters; second, extended, relatively complex writing that requires the
writer’s attention but is self-limiting in that the writer already knows most of what she is going
to write and may be writing under time constraints; and third, extended reflective writing in
which the form and content emerge as the writing proceeds. Even with this oversimplified,
brief summary of Hairston’s classes of writing, we recognize that the matter of when and if
re-drafting takes place can differ according to the demands of different tasks and situations
as well as the different skills levels of writers.
Many—or perhaps even most—of us may nod in agreement as we recognize in Hairston’s
classes of writing a description of the different types of writing we do. But given the range
34 Muriel Harris
of individual differences that exist among writers, we still cannot conclude that the nature
of effective revision is always tied to the writing task, because such a conclusion would not
account for what we know also exists—some expert writers who, despite the writing task,
work at either end of the spectrum as confirmed, consistent one-drafters or as perpetual
multi-drafters. That writers exhibit a diversity of revising habits has been noted by Lester
Faigley and Stephen Witte in “Analyzing Revision.” When testing the taxonomy of revision
changes they had created, Faigley and Witte found that expert writers exhibited “extreme
diversity” in the ways they revised:
One expert writer in the present study made almost no revisions; another started with an
almost stream-of-consciousness text that she then converted to an organized essay in
the second draft; another limited his major revisions to a single long insert; and another
revised mostly by pruning.
(410)
Similarly, when summarizing interviews with well-known authors such as those in the Writers at
Work: The Paris Review Interviews series, Lillian Bridwell notes that these discussions reveal a
wide range of revision strategies among these writers, from rapid producers of text who do little
revising as they proceed to writers who move along by revising every sentence (198).
More extensive insights into a variety of composing styles are offered in Tom Waldrep’s
collection of essays by successful scholars working in composition, Writers on Writing. Here
too as writers describe their composing processes, we see a variety of approaches, includ-
ing some writers who plan extensively before their pens hit paper (or before the cursor blips
on their screens). Their planning is so complete that their texts generally emerge in a single
draft with minor, if any, editing as they write. Self-descriptions of some experienced writers in
the field of composition give us vivid accounts of how these one-drafters work. For example,
Patricia Y. Murray notes that prior to typing, she sees words, phrases, sentences, and para-
graphs taking shape in her head. Her composing, she concludes, has been done before her
fingers touch the typewriter, though as she also notes, she revises and edits as she types
(234). William Lutz offers a similar account:
Before I write, I write in my mind. The more difficult and complex the writing, the more
time I need to think before I write. Ideas incubate in my mind. While I talk, drive, swim,
and exercise I am thinking, planning, writing. I think about the introduction, what exam-
ples to use, how to develop the main idea, what kind of conclusion to use. I write, revise,
rewrite, agonize, despair, give up, only to start all over again, and all of this before I ever
begin to put words on paper. . . . Writing is not a process of discovery for me . . . . The
writing process takes place in my mind. Once that process is complete the product
emerges. Often I can write pages without pause and with very little, if any, revision or
even minor changes.
(186–87)
Even with such descriptions from experienced writers, we are hesitant either to discard the
notion that writing is a process of discovery for many of us or to typecast writers who make
many visible changes on the page and/or work through multiple drafts as inadequate writ-
ers. After all, many of us, probably the majority, fall somewhere along the continuum from
one- to multi-drafters. We may find ourselves as both one- and multi-drafters with the classes
of writing that Hairston describes, or we may generally identify ourselves as doing both but
also functioning more often as a one- or multi-drafter. Just as we have seen that at one end
of the spectrum there are some confirmed one-drafters, so too must we recognize that at the
other end of that spectrum there are some confirmed multi-drafters, expert writers for whom
extensive revising occurs when writing (so that a piece of discourse may go through several
or more drafts or be reworked heavily as the original draft evolves.) David Bartholomae, a
self-described multi-drafter, states that he never outlines but works instead with two pads of
paper, one to write on and one for making plans, storing sentences, and taking notes. He
views his first drafts as disorganized and has to revise extensively, with the result that the
revisions bear little resemblance to the first drafts (22–26). Similarly, Lynn Z. Bloom notes
that she cannot predict at the outset a great deal of what she is going to say. Only by writing
does she learn how her content will develop or how she will handle the structure, organiza-
tion, and style of her paragraphs, sentences, and whole essay (33).
Thus, if we wish to draw a more inclusive picture of composing behaviors for revision, we
have to put together a description that accounts for differences in levels of ability and experi-
ence (from novice to expert), for differences in writing tasks, and also for differences in the
as yet largely unexplored area of composing process differences among writers. My interest
here is in the composing processes of different writers, more particularly, the reality of those
writers at either end of that long spectrum, the one-drafters at one end and the multi-drafters
at the other. By one-draft writers I mean those writers who construct their plans and the pre-
texts that carry out those plans as well as do all or most of the revising of those plans and
pre-texts mentally, before transcribing. They do little or no retranscribing. True one-drafters
have not arrived at this developmentally or as a result of training in writing, and they should
not be confused with other writers who—driven by deadlines, lack of motivation, insuffi-
cient experience with writing, or anxieties about “getting it right the first time”—do little or no
scratching out of what they have written. Multi-drafters, on the other hand, need to interact
with their transcriptions in order to revise. Independent of how much planning they do or
pre-text they compose, they continue to revise after they have transcribed words onto paper.
Again, true multi-drafters have not reached this stage developmentally or as a result of any
intervention by teachers. This is not to say that we can classify writers into two categories,
one- and multi-drafters, because all the evidence we have and, more importantly, our own
experience tells us that most writers are not one or the other but exist somewhere between
these two ends of the continuum.
However, one- and multi-drafters do exist, and we do need to learn more about them to
gain a clearer picture not only of what is involved in different revising processes but also to
provide a basis for considering the pedagogical implications of dealing with individual differ-
ences. There is a strong argument for looking instead at the middle range of writers who do
some writing in single drafts and others in multiple drafts or with a lot of retranscribing as
they proceed, for it is very probable that the largest number of writers cluster there. But those
of us who teach in the individualized setting of conferences or writing lab tutorials know that
we can never overlook or put aside the concerns of every unique individual with whom we
work. Perhaps we are overly intrigued with individual differences, partly because we see that
some students can be ill-served in the group setting of the classrooms and partly because
looking at individual differences gives us such enlightening glimpses into the complex reality
of composing processes. Clinicians in other fields would argue that looking at the extremes
36 Muriel Harris
offers a clearer view of what may be involved in the behaviors of the majority. But those
who do research in writing also acknowledge that we need to understand dimensions of
variation among writers, particularly those patterned differences or “alternate paths to expert
performance” that have clear implications for instruction (Freedman et al. 19). In this case,
whatever we learn about patterns of behavior among one- and multi-drafters has direct impli-
cations for instruction as we need to know the various trade-offs involved in any classroom
instruction which would encourage more single or multiple drafting. And, as we will see when
looking at what is involved in being able to revise before drafting or in being able to return
and re-draft what has been transcribed, there are trade-offs indeed. Whatever arguments are
offered, we must also acknowledge that no picture of revision is complete until it includes all
that is known and observed about a variety of revision behaviors among writers.
But what do we know about one- and multi-drafters other than anecdotal accounts that
confirm their existence? Much evidence is waiting to be gathered from the storehouse of
various published interviews in which well-known writers have been asked to describe their
writing. And Ann Ruggles Gere’s study of the revising behaviors of a blind student gives us
a description of a student writer who does not redraft but writes “first draft/final draft” papers,
finished products produced in one sitting for her courses as a master’s degree candidate. The
student describes periods of thinking about a topic before writing. While she doesn’t know
exactly what she will say until actually writing it, she typically knows what will be contained
in the first paragraph as she types the title. Her attention is not focused on words as she
concentrates instead on images and larger contexts. A similar description of a one-drafter
is found in Joy Reid’s “The Radical Outliner and the Radical Brainstormer.” Comparing her
husband and herself, both composition teachers, Reid notes the differences between her-
self, an outliner (and a one-drafter), and her husband, a brainstormer (and a multi-drafter),
differences which parallel those of the writers in Writers on Writing that I have described.
The descriptions of all of the one- and multi-draft writers mentioned so far offer a fairly
consistent picture, but these descriptions do little more than reaffirm their existence. In an
effort to learn more, I sought out some one- and multi-drafters in order to observe them
composing and to explore what might be involved. Since my intent was not to determine the
percentage of one- and multi-drafters among any population of writers (though that would be
an interesting topic indeed, as I suspect there are more than we may initially guess—or at
least more who hover close to either end of the continuum). I sought out experienced writers
who identify themselves as very definitely one- or multi-drafters. The subjects I selected for
observation were graduate students who teach composition or communications courses, my
rationale being that these people can more easily categorize and articulate their own writing
habits. From among the group of subjects who described themselves as very definitely either
one- or multi-drafters, I selected those who showed evidence of being experienced, compe-
tent writers. Of the eight selected subjects (four one-drafters and four multi-drafters), all were
at least several years into their graduate studies in English or communications and were
either near completion or had recently completed advanced degrees. All had received high
scores in standardized tests for verbal skills such as the SAT or GRE exams; all had grade
point averages ranging from B+ to A in their graduate courses; and all wrote frequently in a
variety of tasks, including academic papers for courses and journal publications, conference
papers, the usual business writing of practicing academics (e.g., letters of recommendation
for students, memos, instructional materials for classes, etc.), and personal writing such as
letters to family and friends. They clearly earned their description as experienced writers.
Experienced writers were used because I also wished to exclude those novices who may,
through development of their writing skills, change their composing behaviors, and also those
novices whose composing habits are the result of other factors such as disinterest (e.g., the
one-drafter who habitually begins the paper at 3 a.m. the night before it’s due) or anxiety (e.g.,
the multi-drafter who fears she is never “right” and keeps working and re-working her text).
The experienced writers whom I observed all confirmed that their composing behaviors
have not changed over time. That is, they all stated that their writing habits have not altered
as they became experienced writers and/or as they moved through writing courses. However,
their descriptions of themselves as one- or multi-drafters were not as completely accurate
as might be expected. Self-reporting, even among teachers of writing, is not a totally reliable
measure. As I observed and talked with the eight writers, I found three very definite one-
drafters, Ted, Nina, and Amy; one writer, Jackie, who tends to be a one-drafter but does
some revising after writing; two very definite multi-drafters, Bill and Pam; and two writers,
Karen and Cindy, who described themselves as multi-drafters and who tend to revise exten-
sively but who can also produce first draft/final draft writing under some conditions. To gather
data on their composing behaviors, I interviewed each person for an hour, asking questions
about the types of writing they do, the activities they engage in before writing, the details of
what happens as they write, their revision behaviors, the manner in which sentences are
composed, and their attitudes and past history of writing. Each person was also asked to
spend an hour writing in response to an assignment. The specific assignment was a request
from an academic advisor asking for the writers’ descriptions of the skills needed to succeed
in their field of study. As they wrote, all eight writers were asked to give thinking-aloud pro-
tocols and were videotaped for future study. Brief interviews after writing focused on eliciting
information about how accurately the writing session reflected their general writing habits
and behaviors. Each type of information collected is, at best, incomplete because accounts
of one’s own composing processes may not be entirely accurate, because thinking-aloud
protocols while writing are only partial accounts of what is being thought about, and because
one-hour writing tasks preclude observing some of the kinds of activities that writers report.
But even with these limitations I observed patterns of composing behaviors that should dif-
ferentiate one-draft writers from multi-draft writers.
Preference for Beginning with a Developed Focus vs. Preference

for Beginning at an Exploratory Stage
Among the consistent behaviors that one-drafters report is the point at which they can and
will start writing. All of the four one-drafters expressed a strong need to clarify their thinking
prior to beginning to transcribe. They are either not ready to write or cannot write until they
have a focus and organization in mind. They may, as I observed Jacky and Ted doing, make
some brief planning notes on paper or, as Amy and Nina did, sit for awhile and mentally plan,
but all expressed a clearly articulated need to know beforehand the direction the piece of
writing would take. For Nina’s longer papers, she described a planning schedule in which the
focus comes first, even before collecting notes. Ted too described the first stage of a piece of
writing as being a time of mentally narrowing a topic. During incubation times before writing,
two of these writers described some global recasting of a paper in their minds while the other
two expressed a need to talk it out, either to themselves or friends. There is little resorting of
written notes and little use of written outlines, except for some short lists, described by Ted
as “memory jogs” to use while he writes. Amy explained that she sometimes felt that in high
school or as an undergraduate she should have written outlines to please her teachers, but
38 Muriel Harris
she never did get around to it because outlines served no useful purpose for her. Consistent
throughout these accounts and in my observation of their writing was these writers’ need to
know where they are headed beforehand and a feeling that they are not ready to write—or
cannot write—until they are at that stage. When asked if they ever engaged in freewriting,
two one-drafters said they could not, unless forced to, plunge in and write without a focus
and a mental plan. Ted, in particular, noted that the notion of exploration during writing would
make him so uncomfortable that he would probably block and be unable to write.
In contrast to the one-drafters’ preference for knowing their direction before writing, the
two consistent multi-drafters, Pam and Bill, explained that they resist knowing, resist any
attempt at clarification prior to writing. Their preference is for open-ended exploration as they
write. They may have been reading and thinking extensively beforehand, but the topic has
not taken shape when they decide that it is time to begin writing. Bill reported that he pur-
posely starts with a broad topic while Pam said that she looks for something “broad or ambig-
uous” or “something small that can grow and grow.” As Bill explained, he doesn’t like writing
about what he already knows as that would be boring. Pam too expressed her resistance to
knowing her topic and direction beforehand in terms of how boring it would be. Generally, Bill
will do about four or five drafts as he works through the early parts of a paper, perhaps two
to four pages, before he knows what he will write about. He and Pam allow for—and indeed
expect—that their topic will change as they write. Pam explained: “I work by allowing the
direction of the work to change if it needs to. . . . I have to allow things to go where they need
to go.” When I observed them writing, Pam spent considerable time planning and creating
pre-texts before short bursts of transcribing while Bill wrote several different versions of an
introduction and, with some cutting and pasting, was about ready to define his focus at the
end of the hour. He reported that he depends heavily on seeing what he has written in order
to find his focus, choose his content, and organize. Pam also noted that she needs to see
chunks of what she has transcribed to see where the piece of discourse is taking her.
The other two writers who characterized themselves as multi-drafters, Karen and Cindy,
both described a general tendency to plunge in before the topic is clear. Karen said that she
can’t visualize her arguments until she writes them out and generally writes and rewrites as
she proceeds, but for writing tasks that she described as “formulaic” in that they are famil-
iar because she has written similar pieces of discourse, she can write quickly and finish
quickly—as she did with the writing task for this study. Since she had previously written the
same kind of letter assigned in this study, she did not engage in the multi-drafting that would
be more characteristic, she says, of her general composing behaviors. Cindy, the other self-
described multi-drafter, almost completed the task in a single draft, though as she explained
with short pieces, she can revert to her “journalistic mode” of writing, having been a work-
ing journalist for a number of years. For longer papers, such as those required in graduate
courses, her descriptions sound much like those of Bill, Pam, and Karen. All of these writers,
though, share the unifying characteristic of beginning to write before the task is well defined
in their minds, unlike the one-drafters who do not write at that stage.
Preference for Limiting Options vs. Preference for

Open-Ended Exploring
Another consistent and clearly related difference between one-and multi-drafters is the differ-
ence in the quantity of options they will generate, from words and sentences to whole sections
of a paper, and the way in which they will evaluate those options. As they wrote, all four of
the one-drafters limited their options by generating several choices and then making a deci-
sion fairly quickly. There were numerous occasions in the think-aloud protocols of three of
the four one-drafters in which they would stop, try another word, question a phrase, raise the
possibility of another idea to include, and then make a quick decision. When Ted re-read one
of his paragraphs, he saw a different direction that he might have taken that would perhaps
be better, but he accepted what he had. (“That’ll do here, OK . . . OK” he said to himself and
moved on.) Nina, another one-drafter, generated no alternate options aloud as she wrote.
As is evident in this description of one-drafters, they exhibited none of the agonizing over
possibilities that other writers experience, and they appear to be able to accept their choices
quickly and move on. While observers may question whether limiting options in this manner
cuts off further discovery and possibly better solutions or whether the internal debate goes
on prior to transcribing, one-drafters are obviously efficient writers. They generate fewer
choices, reach decisions more quickly, and do most or all of the decision-making before
transcribing on paper. Thus, three of the four one-drafters finished the paper in the time allot-
ted, and the fourth writer was almost finished. They can pace themselves fairly accurately
too, giving me their estimates of how long it takes them to write papers of particular lengths.
All four one-drafters describe themselves as incurable procrastinators who begin even long
papers the night before they are due, allowing themselves about the right number of hours
in which to transcribe their mental constructs onto paper. Nina explained that she makes
choices quickly because she is always writing at the last minute under pressure and doesn’t
have time to consider more options. Another one-drafter offered a vivid description of the
tension and stress that can be involved in these last minute, all-night sessions.
While they worry about whether they will finish on time, these one-drafters generally do.
Contributing to their efficiency are two time-saving procedures involved as they get words
on paper. Because most decisions are made before they commit words to paper, they do
little or no scratching out and re-writing; and they do a minimum of re-reading both as they
proceed and also when they are finished. The few changes I observed being made were
either single words or a few short phrases, unlike the multi-drafters who rejected or scratched
out whole sentences and paragraphs. As Nina wrote, she never re-read her developing text,
though she reported that she does a little re-reading when she is finished with longer papers.
The tinkering with words that she might do then, she says, is counterproductive because
she rarely feels that she is improving the text with these changes. (Nina and the other one-
drafters would probably be quite successful at the kind of “invisible writing” that has been
investigated, that is, writing done under conditions in which writers cannot see what they are
writing or scan as they progress. See Blau.)
In contrast to the one-drafters’ limited options, quick decisions, few changes on paper and
little or no re-reading, the multi-drafters were frequently observed generating and exploring
many options, spending a long time in making their choices, and making frequent and large-
scale changes on paper. Bill said that he produces large quantities of text because he needs
to see it in order to see if he wants to retain it, unlike the one-drafters who exhibit little or
no need to examine their developing text. Moreover, as Bill noted, the text he generates is
also on occasion a heuristic for more text. As he writes, Bill engages in numerous revising
tactics. He writes a sentence, stops to examine it by switching it around, going back to add
clauses, or combining it with other text on the same page or a different sheet of paper. For
the assigned writing task, he began with one sheet of paper, moved to another, tore off some
40 Muriel Harris
of it and discarded it, and added part back to a previous sheet. At home when writing a longer
paper, he will similarly engage in extensive cutting and pasting. In a somewhat different
manner. Pam did not generate as many options on paper for this study. Instead, her proto-
col recorded various alternative plans and pre-texts that she would stop to explore verbally
for five or ten minutes before transcribing anything. What she did write, though, was often
heavily edited so that at the end of the hour, she, like Bill, had only progressed somewhat
through an introductory paragraph of several sentences. Thus, while Bill had produced large
amounts of text on paper that were later rejected after having been written, Pam spent more
of her time generating and rejecting plans and pre-texts than crossing out transcriptions.
Writing is a more time-consuming task for these multi-drafters because they expect to
produce many options and a large amount of text that will be discarded. Both Bill and Pam
described general writing procedures in which they begin by freewriting, and, as they pro-
ceed, distilling from earlier drafts what will be used in later drafts. Both proceed incremen-
tally, that is, by starting in and then starting again before finishing a whole draft. Both writers
are used to re-reading frequently, partly to locate what Pam called “key elements” that will
be retained for later drafts and partly, as Bill explained, because the act of generating more
options and exploring them causes him to lose track of where he is.
Because both Bill and Pam seem to be comfortable when working within an as-yet only
partially focused text, it would be interesting to explore what has been termed their “tolerance
for ambiguity,” a trait defined as a person’s ability to function calmly in a situation in which
interpretation of all stimuli is not completely clear. (See Budner, and Frenkel-Brunswick.)
People who have little or no tolerance for ambiguity perceive ambiguous situations as sources
of psychological discomfort, and they may try to reach conclusions quickly rather than to take
the time to consider all of the essential elements of an unclear situation. People with more
tolerance for ambiguity enjoy being in ambiguous situations and tend to seek them out. The
relevance here, of course, is the question of whether one-drafters will not begin until they have
structured the task and will also move quickly to conclusions in part, at least, because of hav-
ing some degree of intolerance for ambiguity. This might be a fruitful area for further research.
For those interested in the mental processes which accompany behaviors, another
dimension to explore is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a measure of expressed
preferences (i.e., not performance tasks) in four bi-polar dimensions of personality. The work
of Geroge H. Jensen and John K. DiTiberio has indicated some relationships between the
personality types identified by the MBTI and writing processes. Of particular interest here is
that Bill, who had independently taken the MBTI for other reasons, reported that he scored
highly in the dimensions of “extraversion” and “perceiving.” Extraverts, say Jensen and
DiTiberio, “often leap into tasks with little planning, then rely on trial and error to complete
the task” (288), and they “often find freewriting a good method for developing ideas, for they
think better when writing quickly, impulsively, and uncritically” (289). Perceivers, another
type described by Jensen and DiTiberio, appear to share tendencies similar to those with
a tolerance for ambiguity, for perceivers “are willing to leave the outer world unstructured. . . .
Quickly made decisions narrow their field of vision” (295). Perceiving types tend to select
broad topics for writing, like a wide range of alternatives, and always want to read one more
book on the subject. Their revisions thus often need to be refocused (296). The similarities
here to Bill’s writing behaviors show us that while the MBTI is somewhat circular in that the
scoring is a reflection of people’s self-description, it can confirm (and perhaps clarify) the
relationship of writing behaviors to more general human behaviors.
The Preference for Closure vs. Resistance to Closure
From these descriptions of one- and multi-drafters it is readily apparent that they differ in
their need for closure. The one-drafters move quickly to decisions while composing, and they
report that once they are done with a paper, they prefer not to look back at it, either imme-
diately to re-read it or at some future time, to think about revising it. Ted explained that he
generally is willing to do one re-reading at the time of completing a paper and sometimes to
make a few wording changes, but that is all. He shrugged off the possibility of doing even a
second re-reading of any of his writing once it is done because he says he can’t stand to look
at it again. All of the one-drafters reported that they hardly, if ever, rewrite a paper. This dis-
taste for returning to a completed text can be the source of problems for these one-drafters.
Forced by a teacher in a graduate course who wanted first drafts one week and revisions the
next week, Nina explained that she deliberately resorted to “writing a bad paper” for the first
submission in order to submit her “real” draft as the “revised” paper. Writing a series of drafts
is clearly harder for one-drafters such as Nina than we have yet acknowledged.
These one-drafters are as reluctant to start as they are impatient to finish. Although they
tend to delay the drafting process, this does not apply to their preparation which often starts
well in advance and is the “interesting” or “enjoyable” part for them. With writing that pro-
duces few surprises or discoveries for any of them because the generative process precedes
transcription, drafting on paper is more “tedious” (a word they frequently used during their
interviews) than for other writers. Said Ted, “Writing is something I have to do, not something
I want to do.” Even Jackie, who allows for some revising while drafting in order to develop
the details of her plan, reported that she has a hard time going back to revise a paper once
it is completed. She, like the others, reported a sense of feeling the paper is over and done
with. “Done, dead and done, done, finished, done,” concluded another of these one-drafters.
On the other hand, the multi-drafters observed in this study explained that they are never
done with a paper. They can easily and willingly go back to it or to keep writing indefinitely.
Asked when they know they are finished, Bill and Pam explained that they never feel they
are “done” with a piece of discourse, merely that they have to stop in order to meet a dead-
line. As Pam said, she never gets to a last draft and doesn’t care about producing “neat
packages.” Understandably, she has trouble with conclusions and with “wrapping up” at the
end of a piece of discourse. Asked how pervasive her redrafting is for all of her writing, Pam
commented that she writes informal letters to parents and friends every day and is getting to
the point that she doesn’t rewrite these letters as much. Bill too noted that he fights against
products and hates to finish. As a result, both Bill and Pam often fail to meet their deadlines.
Cindy, bored by her “journalistic one-draft writing,” expressed a strong desire to return to
some of her previously completed papers in order to rewrite them.
Writer-Based vs. Reader-Based Early Drafts

One way of distinguishing the early drafts produced by the multi-drafters for this study from
the drafts produced by the one-drafters is to draw upon Linda Flower’s distinction between
Writer-Based and Reader-Based prose. Writer-Based prose, explains Flower, is “verbal
expression written by a writer to himself and for himself. It is the working of his own ver-
bal thought. In its structure, Writer-Based prose reflects the associative, narrative path of
the writer’s own confrontation with her subject” (19–20). Reader-Based prose, on the other
hand, is “a deliberate attempt to communicate something to a reader. To do that it creates
42 Muriel Harris
a shared language and shared context between writer and reader. It also offers the reader
an issue-oriented rhetorical structure rather than a replay of the writer’s discovery process”
(20). Although Flower acknowledges that Writer-Based prose is a “problem” that composition
courses are designed to correct, she also affirms its usefulness as a search tool, a strategy
for handling the difficulty of attending to multiple complex tasks simultaneously. Writer-Based
prose needs to be revised into Reader-Based prose, but it can be effective as a “medium for
thinking.” And for the multi-drafters observed in this study, characterizing the initial drafts of
two of the multi-drafters as Writer-Based helps to see how their early drafts differ from those
of the one-drafters.
One feature of Writer-Based prose, as offered by Flower, is that it reflects the writer’s
method of searching by means of surveying what she knows, often in a narrative manner.
Information tends to be structured as a narrative of the discovery process or as a survey of the
data in the writer’s mind. Reader-Based prose, on the other hand, restructures the informa-
tion so that it is accessible to the reader. Both the protocols and the written drafts produced
by the two confirmed multi-drafters, Bill and Pam, reveal this Writer-Based orientation as their
initial way into writing. Bill very clearly began with a memory search through his own experi-
ence, made some brief notes, and then wrote a narrative as his first sentence in response to
the request that he describe to an academic counselor the skills needed for his field: “I went
through what must have been a million different majors before I wound up in English and it was
actually my first choice.” Pam spent the hour exploring the appropriateness of the term “skills.”
In distinct contrast, all four of the one-drafters began by constructing a conceptual frame-
work for the response they would write, most typically by defining a few categories or head-
ings which would be the focus or main point of the paper. With a few words in mind that
indicated his major points, Ted then moved on to ask himself who would be reading his
response, what the context would be, and what format the writing would use. He moved
quickly from a search for a point to considerations of how his audience would use his infor-
mation. Similarly, Amy rather promptly chose a few terms, decided to herself that “that’ll be
the focus,” and then said, “OK, I’m trying to get into a role here. I’m responding to someone
who . . . This is not something they are going to give out to people. But they’re going to read
it and compile responses, put something together for themselves.” She then began writing
her draft and completed it within the hour. Asked what constraints and concerns she is most
aware of when actually writing, Amy said that she is generally concerned with clarity for the
reader. The point of contrast here is that the search process was both different in kind and
longer for the multi-drafters. Initially, their time was spent discovering what they think about
the subject, whereas the one-drafters chose a framework within a few minutes and moved on
to orient their writing to their readers. Because the transformation or reworking of text comes
later for the multi-drafters, rewriting is a necessary component of their writing. The standard
bit of advice, about writing the introductory paragraph later, would be a necessary step for
them but would not be a productive or appropriate strategy for one-drafters to try. For the
one-drafters, the introductory paragraph is the appropriate starting point. In fact, given what
they said about the necessity of knowing their focus beforehand, the introductory paragraph
is not merely appropriate but necessary.
Because the early stages of a piece of writing are, for multi-drafters, so intricately bound
up with mental searching, surveying, and discovering, the writing that is produced is not
oriented to the reader. For their early drafts, Bill and Pam both acknowledged that their
writing is not yet understandable to others. When Pam commented that in her early drafts,
“the reader can’t yet see where I’m going,” she sighed over the difficulties this had caused
in trying to work with her Master’s thesis committee. If some writers’ early drafts are so per-
sonal and so unlikely to be accessible to readers, it is worth speculating about how effective
peer editing sessions could be for such multi-drafters who appear in classrooms with “rough
drafts” as instructed.
Conclusions
One way to summarize the characteristics of one- and multi-drafters is to consider what
they gain by being one-drafters and at what cost they gain these advantages. Clearly, one-
drafters are efficient writers. This efficiency is achieved by mentally revising beforehand,
by generating options verbally rather than on paper, by generating only a limited number of
options before settling on one and getting on with the task, and by doing little or no re-reading.
They are able to pace themselves and can probably perform comfortably in situations such
as the workplace or in in-class writing where it is advantageous to produce first-draft, final-
draft pieces of discourse. Their drafts are readily accessible to readers, and they can expend
effort early on in polishing the text for greater clarity. But at what cost? One-drafters are obvi-
ously in danger of cutting themselves off from further exploration, from a richer field of dis-
covery than is possible during the time in which they generate options. When they exhibit a
willingness to settle on one of their options, they may thereby have eliminated the possibility
of searching for a better one. In their impatience to move on, they may even settle on options
they know could be improved on. Their impulse to write dwindles as these writers experi-
ence little or none of the excitement of discovery or exploration during writing. The interesting
portion of a writing task, the struggle with text and sense of exploration, is largely completed
when they begin to commit themselves to paper (or computer screen). Because they are less
likely to enjoy writing, the task of starting is more likely to be put off to the last minute and to
become a stressful situation, thus reinforcing their inclination not to re-read and their desire
to be done and to put the paper behind them forever once they have finished. And it appears
that it is as hard for true one-drafters to suspend the need for closure as it is for multi-drafters
to reach quick decisions and push themselves rapidly toward closure.
Multi-drafters appear to be the flip side of the same coin. Their relative inefficiency causes
them to miss deadlines, to create Writer-Based first drafts, to produce large quantities of text
that is discarded, and to get lost in their own writing. They need to re-read and re-draft, and
they probably appear at first glance to be poorer writers than one-drafters. But they are more
likely to be writers who will plunge in eagerly, will write and re-write, and will use writing to
explore widely and richly. They also are more likely to affirm the value of writing as a heuristic,
the merits of freewriting, and the need for cutting and pasting of text. They may, if statistics
are gathered, be the writers who benefit most from collaborative discussions such as those in
writing labs with tutors. Their drafts are truly amenable to change and available for re-working.
Implications
Acknowledging the reality of one- and multi-drafting involves enlarging both our perspec-
tives on revision and our instructional practices with students. In terms of what the reality of
one-drafting and multi-drafting tells us about revision, it is apparent that we need to account
for this diversity of revision behaviors as we construct a more detailed picture of revision.
44 Muriel Harris
As Stephen Witte notes, “revising research that limits itself to examining changes in written text
or drafts espouses a reductionist view of revising as a stage in a linear sequence of stages”
(“Revising” 266). Revision can and does occur when writers set goals, create plans, and com-
pose pre-text, as well as when they transcribe and re-draft after transcription. Revision can be
triggered by cognitive activity alone and/or by interaction with text; and attitudes, preferences,
and cognitive make-up play a role in when and how much a writer revises—or is willing to
revise—a text.
Yet, while recognizing the many dimensions to be explored in understanding revision, we
can also use this diversity as a source for helping students with different types of problems
and concerns. For students who are one-drafters or have tendencies toward single drafting,
we need to provide help in several areas. They’ll have to learn to do more reviewing of written
text both as they write and afterwards, in order to evaluate and revise. They will also need
to be aware that they should have strategies that provide for more exploration and invention
than they may presently allow themselves. While acknowledging their distaste for return-
ing to a draft to open it up again, we also need to help them see how and when this can be
productive. Moreover, we can provide assistance in helping one-drafters and other writers
who cluster near that end of the spectrum recognize that sometimes they have a preference
for choosing an option even after they recognize that it may not be the best one. When Tim,
one of the one-drafters I observed, noted at one point in his protocol that he should take a
different direction for one of his paragraphs but won’t, he shows similarities to another writer,
David, observed by Witte (“Pre-Text and Composing” 406), who is reluctant to spend more
than fifteen seconds reworking a sentence in pre-text, even though he demonstrates the
ability to evoke criteria that could lead to better formulations if he chose to stop and revise
mentally (David typically does little revision of written text). This impatience, this need to
keep moving along, that does not always allow for the production of good text, can obviously
work against producing good text, and it is unlikely that such writers will either recognize or
conquer the problem on their own. They may have snared themselves in their own vicious
circles if their tendency to procrastinate puts them in a deadline crunch, which, in turn, does
not afford them the luxury of time to consider new options. Such behaviors can become a
composing habit so entrenched that it is no longer noticed.
As we work with one-drafters, we will also have to learn ourselves how to distinguish
them from writers who see themselves as one-drafters because they are not inclined, for
one reason or another, to expend more energy on drafting. Inertia, lack of motivation, lack of
information about what multiple drafts can do, higher priorities for other tasks, and so on are
not characteristic of true one-drafters, and we must be able to identify the writer who might
take refuge behind a label of “one-drafter” from the writer who exhibits some or many of the
characteristics of one-draft composing and who wants to become a better writer. For exam-
ple, in our writing lab I have worked with students who think they are one-drafters because
of assorted fears, anxieties, and misinformation. “But I have to get it right the first time.” “My
teachers never liked to see scratching out on the paper, even when we wrote in class,” or “I
hate making choices, so I go with what I have” are not the comments of true one-drafters.
With multiple-drafters we have other work to do. To become more efficient writers, they
will need to become more proficient planners and creaters of pre-text, though given their
heavy dependence on seeing what they have written, they will probably still rely a great deal
on reading and working with their transcribed text. They will also need to become more profi-
cient at times at focusing on a topic quickly, recognizing the difficulties involved in agonizing
endlessly over possibilities. In the words of a reviewer of this paper, they will have to learn
when and how “to get on with it.”
Besides assisting with these strategies, we can help students become more aware of
their composing behaviors. We can assist multi-drafters in recognizing that they are not slow
or inept writers but writers who may linger too long over making choices. For writers who
have difficulty returning to a completed text in order to revise, we can relate the problem to
the larger picture, an impatience with returning to any completed task. Granted, this is not a
giant leap forward, but too many students are willing to throw in the towel with writing skills in
particular without recognizing the link to their more general orientations to life. Similarly, the
impatient writer who, like Ted, proclaims to have a virulent case of the “I-hate-to-write” syn-
drome may be a competent one-drafter (or have a preference for fewer drafts) who needs to
see that it is the transcribing stage of writing that is the source of the impatience, procrastina-
tion, and irritation. On the other hand, writers more inclined to be multi-drafters need to rec-
ognize that their frustration, self-criticism, and/or low grades may be due to having readers
intervene at too early a stage in the drafting. What I am suggesting here is that some writers
unknowingly get themselves caught in linguistic traps. They think they are making generali-
zations about the whole act of “writing,” that blanket term for all the processes involved, when
they may well be voicing problems or attitudes about one or another of the processes. What
is needed here is some assistance in helping students define their problems more precisely.
To do this, classroom teachers can open conferences like a writing lab tutorial, by asking
questions about the student’s writing processes and difficulties.
In addition to individualizing our work with students, we can also look at our own teaching
practices. When we offer classroom strategies and heuristics, we need to remind our stu-
dents that it is likely that some will be very inappropriate for different students. Being unable
to freewrite is not necessarily a sign of an inept writer. One writer’s written text may be just as
effective a heuristic for that writer as the planning sheets are for another writer. Beyond these
strategies and acknowledgments, we have to examine how we talk about or teach compos-
ing processes. There is a very real danger in imposing a single, “ideal” composing style
on students, as Jack Selzer found teachers attempting to do in his survey of the literature.
Similarly, as Susan McLeod notes, teachers tend to teach their own composing behaviors in
the classroom and are thus in danger either of imposing their redrafting approaches on stu-
dents whose preference for revising prior to transcribing serves them well or of touting their
one- or few-draft strategies to students who fare better when interacting with their transcribed
text. Imposing personal preferences, observes McLeod, would put us in the peculiar position
of trying to fix something that isn’t broken. And there’s enough of that going around as is.
Works Cited
Axelrod, Rise B., and Charles R. Cooper. The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing. New York: St. Martin’s,
1985. Bartholomae, David. “Against the Grain.” Waldrep 1:19–29.
Beach, Richard. “Self-Evaluation Strategies of Extensive Revisers and Non-revisers.” College
Composition and Communication 27 (1976): 160–64.
Blau, Sheridan. “Invisible Writing: Investigating Cognitive Processes in Composition.” College
Bloom, Lynn Z. “How I Write.” Waldrep 1:31–37.
Bridwell, Lillian S. “Revising Strategies in Twelfth Grade Students’ Transactional Writing.” Research in
the Teaching of English 14 (1980): 197–222.
46 Muriel Harris
Budner, S. “Intolerance of Ambiguity as a Personality Variable.” Journal of Personality 30 (1962): 29–50.
Faigley, Lester, and Stephen Witte. “Analyzing Revision.” College Composition and Communication
32 (1981): 400–14.
Flower, Linda. “Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing.” College English 41
(1979): 19–37.
Flower, Linda, John R. Hayes, Linda Carey, Karen Shriver, and James Stratman. “Detection, Diagnosis,
and the Strategies of Revision.” College Composition and Communication 37 (1986): 16–55.
Freedman, Sarah Warshauer, Anne Haas Dyson, Linda Flower, and Wallace Chafe. Research in
Writing: Past, Present, and Future. Technical Report No. 1. Center for the Study of Writing. Berkeley:
University of California, 1987.
Frenkel-Brunswick, Else. “Intolerance of Ambiguity as an Emotional and Perceptual Personality
Variable.” Journal of Personality 18 (1949): 108–43.
Gere, Ann Ruggles. “Insights from the Blind: Composing Without Revising.” Revising: New Essays for
Teachers of Writing. Ed. Ronald Sudol. Urbana, IL: ERIC/NCTE, 1982, 52–70.
Hairston, Maxine. “Different Products, Different Processes: A Theory about Writing.” College
Henley, Joan. “A Revisionist View of Revision.” Washington English Journal 8.2 (1986): 5–7.
Jensen, George, and John DiTiberio.”Personality and Individual Writing Processes.” College
Lutz, William. “How I Write.” Waldrep 1:183–88.
McLeod, Susan. “The New Orthodoxy: Rethinking the Process Approach.” Freshman English News
14.3 (1986): 16–21.
Murray, Patricia Y. “Doing Writing.” Waldrep 1:225–39.
Reid, Joy. “The Radical Outliner and the Radical Brainstormer: A Perspective on Composing Processes.”
TESOL Quarterly 18 (1985): 529–34.
Selzer, Jack. “Exploring Options in Composing.” College Composition and Communication 35 (1984):
276–84.
Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College
Waldrep, Tom, ed. Writers on Writing. Vol. 1, New York: Random House, 1985. 2 vols.
Witte, Stephen P. “Pre-Text and Composing.” College Composition and Communication 38 (1987):
397–425.
—— “Revising, Composing Theory, and Research Design.” The Acquisition of Written Language:
Response and Revision. Ed. Sarah Warshauer Freedman. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1985, 250–84.
Moving Writers, Shaping Motives, Motivating Critique and Change
A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing
Mary Jo Reiff
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE
What prompted me to write this essay for this anthology? My “assignment” was to write about
the genre of the Pedagogical Insight essay. I immediately called on my genre knowledge—
my past experience with reading and writing similar texts in similar situations—to orient me
to the expectations of this genre. While I am familiar with the genre of “the essay”—and my
awareness alerted me to the fact that my piece could be less formal than an article, a piece
based more in experience than in research—I was not as familiar with the expectations of
this particular genre, a Pedagogical Insight essay. I began, then, with these questions: What
are the actions that this genre performs? How will I position myself within this genre—what
identity and relations will I assume? In what ways will the genre define and sustain the field’s
discussions of pedagogy or pedagogical approaches? What are the potential sites of resist-
ance and transformation?
I looked for clues about how the assignment located me within a situation and provided
me with the rhetorical means for acting within that situation. From the authors’ invitation, I
constructed the rhetorical situation that helped motivate and shape my response. The audi-
ence was described as “new teachers,” and the purpose was “to ground abstract composi-
tion theory, as presented by the anthologized articles, in the immediacy of a real classroom
context and a real teacher’s lived experience.” There was a specified length (1,500 words),
but within the constraints of audience, purpose, and format, there was also a great deal of
choice within this genre, with the authors noting that they “hope for a great diversity in tone,
stance, and focus.” A sample Pedagogical Insight essay was included in the materials sent—
an example of one writer’s “appropriate” response.
Writing an effective response would mean conceiving of my role as a writer not only in
relation to readers and other writers and their purposes, but also in relation to the social and
cultural formations in which they interact. As a result, the larger cultural context beyond the
immediate situation of this Pedagogical Insight essay also helped to generate and organ-
ize my response. In the materials passed along to help contextualize my response, I was
given the proposal (shaped in response to the editors at the National Council of Teachers
of English as well as to a secondary audience of contributors and reviewers) that positioned
the imagined readers of this anthology, positioned the book intertextually (among “compet-
ing texts”), and provided an overview of how the book responds to material conditions and
functions epistemologically. My response, then, is situated very purposefully and mediated
by various contextual factors, not the least of which is a response to the multiple and related
voices included in this section on relations.
Genre in the Classroom (or “How Our Students Can Relate”)

Our students are similarly positioned within and by genres. When confronted with a writing
assignment, students are suspended within a complex web of relations—from the institu-
tional, disciplinary, and/or course objectives that frame the assignment to the defined roles
for writers, their purposes, their subjects, and their conventions for writing. More important,
48 Mary Jo Reiff
a genre approach allows students to see a writing assignment itself as a social action—a
response to the whole disciplinary and institutional context for the assignment, not just a
response to the teacher. Students can access and participate effectively in academic situa-
tions by identifying the assumptions and expectations regarding subject, their roles as writers
(as critics, knowledgeable professionals in the field), the roles of readers (teacher-readers,
specialist audiences, implied audiences), and purposes for writing (to describe, analyze,
argue, evaluate, etc.) that are embedded in the assignment.
Approaching writing through a contextual genre theory consists of using genre as a
lens for accessing, understanding, and writing in various situations and contexts. A genre
approach to teaching writing is careful not to treat genres as static forms or systems of clas-
sification. Rather, students learn how to recognize genres as rhetorical responses to and
reflections of the situations in which they are used; furthermore, students learn how to use
genres to intervene in situations. Students begin by (1) collecting samples of a wide range of
responses within a particular genre; (2) identifying and describing the larger cultural scene
and rhetorical situation from which genre emerges (setting, subject, participants, purposes);
(3) identifying and describing the patterns of the genre, including content, structure, format,
sentences, and diction; and (4) analyzing genres for what they tell us about situation and
making an argumentative or critical claim about what these patterns reveal about the atti-
tudes, values, and actions embedded in the genre.
For example, a prelaw student in my advanced composition class explored the genre
activities of the law community by first examining the genre system—the textualized sites
such as opinions, wills, deeds, contracts, and briefs—that defines and sustains the legal
community. After choosing to focus her study on the genre of case briefs, the student began
by collecting samples of constitutional law briefs, discovering that the shared purposes and
functions “illustrated the legal community’s shared value of commitment to tradition, as well
as the need for a standard and convenient form of communicating important and complex
legal concepts.” Through her study of the repeated rhetorical patterns and social actions
of legal briefs, the student gained access to the habits, beliefs, and values of the law com-
munity. She not only learned about the genre features of case briefs—such as the technical
terminology, rigid format, and formal style—but she also become more aware of how these
formal patternings reflected and reinforced the goals of the community. Recognizing that all
the briefs follow the same organizational strategy of presenting sections labeled “case infor-
mation,” “facts of the case,” “procedural history,” “issue,” “holding,” and “court reasoning,”
she surmised that “Even the rigid structure of the format [suggests] the community’s empha-
sis on logic and order, which are two esteemed values of the profession.” The genre not only
reflects the legal community’s valuing of logic and order but, as the student discovered, also
reinscribes these values by “maintaining a system of communication that relates the scien-
tific and the complex world of law,” establishing a relationship, in effect, between scientific,
technical precision and the less precise interpretation of law and, as a result, reinforcing the
belief that legal cases are unambiguous and clearcut. Furthermore, reflecting on the legal
jargon, such as writ of mandamus, or the formal language of verbs like sayeth and witnes-
seth or words like hereunder and wherewith, the student makes the following connections
among text, contexts, and the ideological effects of genres:
Legal language is part of a lawyer’s professional training, so the habit of “talking like a
lawyer” is deeply rooted in the practices of the community. This tells us that lawyers feel
Moving Writers, Shaping Motives 49
compelled to use established jargon to maintain a legitimate status in the eyes of other
community members. In addition, formal language is needed to surround legal proceed-
ings with an air of solemnity, and to send the message that any legal proceeding is a
significant matter with important consequences.
The writer also notes how this use of legal language reinscribes a power relationship of
sorts, separating “insiders” (members of the profession) from “outsiders” (the public) by
cultivating a language “that reads like a foreign language to those outside the profession.”
For students like this one, using genre as a lens for inquiry cultivates a consciousness of the
rhetorical strategies used to carry out the social actions of a group or disciplinary commu-
nity, thus making the complex, multitextured relations of the legal community more tangible
and accessible.
Relating and Resisting

Students’ critical awareness of how genres work—their understanding of how rhetorical fea-
tures are connected to social actions—enables them to more effectively critique and resist
genres by creating alternatives. For example, a student’s critique of the wedding invitation
as a genre allowed the discovery of a particular cultural view of women or gender bias in its
rhetorical patterns and language (particularly in the references to the bride’s parents who
“request the honor of your presence”). Embedded in the invitation are cultural assumptions
of women as objects or property to be “handed over” from parents to spouse. The textual pat-
ternings of the genre, such as references to the parents and the bride as “their daughter” and
the omission of the bride’s name (while naming the bride’s parents and the groom), reinforce
what the student describes as a cultural attitude toward marriage that involves a loss of iden-
tity for women. Wedding invitations, then, in the student’s final analysis, are cultural artifacts
that through their repeated use in similar situations—the repeated cultural event of formally
announcing marriages—not only reflect but reinscribe gender inequality and unequal distri-
butions of power in relationships (Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi).
Classroom genres, too, reflect and enact the social relations of classrooms, and because
of the recurring forms of language use of genres, the institutionally sanctioned academic
genres might be more easily perpetuated, thus excluding students for whom these gen-
res are less accessible. Brad Peters, in “Genre, Antigenre, and Reinventing the Forms of
Conceptualization,” describes a college composition course in which students read about
the United States invasion of Panama in a book that takes a Panamanian perspective. The
students were then told to write an essay exam that followed a particular format moving from
a summary of the argument, to the three most compelling points for a Latin American reader,
to the three most fallacious points for a Latin American reader, and finally to the student’s
reaction compared to that of the Latin American reader. One student, Rita, wrote the essay
exam from the fictional perspective of her close friend Maria, a native Latin American, and
after completing the rhetorical analysis part of the exam, dropped the persona and took up
her own in the form of a letter to Maria. Peters identifies this as an “antigenre” but points out
that Rita’s response satisfies the social purpose of the genre while reconstituting voice and
varying the format of the genre. This demonstrates that even when the writing assignment is
fairly prescriptive and students are asked to write a fairly traditional genre, there is room for
them to maneuver within (and because of) the constraints of the genre.
50 Mary Jo Reiff
Toward Changing Relations and Developing New
Textual Relations
One criticism leveled against a genre approach to literacy teaching is that it focuses on anal-
ysis and critique of genres, stopping short of having writers use genres to enact change.
Genres—as they function to define, critique, and bring about change—can provide rich peda-
gogical sites, sites for intervention. Bruce McComiskey, for example, pairs academic and
public genres—having students write a critical analysis of education followed by a brochure
for high school students, or following an analysis of the cultural values of advertisements with
letters to advertisers arguing the negative effect on consumers. Genre analysis encourages
students to critique sites of intervention, analyzing how such genres enable participation in
the process while also limiting intervention. Students identify linguistic and rhetorical patterns
and analyze their significance, while simultaneously critiquing the cultural and social values
encoded in the genre (what the genre allows users to do and what it does not allow them to do,
whose needs are most/least served, how it enables or limits the way its users do their work).
But the final step would be to ask students to produce new genres or genres that encode
alternative values for the purpose of intervening. Students could create their own genres that
respond to those they analyzed. Or, after interrogating the sites at which change happens,
students can more directly intervene in these sites by writing their own alternative genres or
“antigenres” in response. I often have my students follow their analysis of genres by invent-
ing and formulating their own generic response or by writing a manual for others on how to
write that genre. The idea is that as students critique genres as sites of rhetorical action and
cultural production and reproduction, they also see how genres function as motivated social
actions, enabling them to enter into the production of alternatives.
Teaching Alternatives (or Coming Full Circle)

As is typical in the genre of the essay, I am going to conclude by returning to my introduction,
where I invoked the genre of the Pedagogical Insight essay. This genre seeks to intervene
in the theoretical readings in this section on Relations by reflecting, according to the authors’
goals, “some concrete, practical instantiations of theoretical positions.” Ideally this genre
will function for new teachers as a “conversation starter” about how teaching writing means
teaching relations, and how genre analysis can move teachers beyond teaching academic
forms to teaching purposeful rhetorical instruments for social action. By teaching students to
interrogate how social groups organize and define kinds of texts and how these genres, in
turn, organize and define social relations and practices, teachers can construct assignments
that enable students to engage more critically in situated action and to produce alternative
ways of interacting.
More important, perhaps, is an understanding of how our own work as teachers is also
situated institutionally and organized and generated by genres ranging from textbooks to
syllabi to assignments to the end comments we write on papers (see, for instance, Summer
Smith’s “The Genre of the End Comment” and her research on how our comments on papers
both enable and restrict writing choices). From the conversations we have with other teach-
ers about our classroom practices to the syllabi that we write that position us as teachers,
define our roles in the classroom, establish relationships between us and our students, and
reflect and reinforce the goals of our writing courses, the genres we use are sites of action—
sites in which we, as teachers, communicate, enact, and carry out our teaching lives. Just as
Moving Writers, Shaping Motives 51
genres may provide a framework for facilitating both inquiry and intervention for our students,
as teachers we can use our understanding of the institutional genres that situate us and our
teaching—our understanding of our “teaching assignment”—to prompt us to explore ways
we might enter into the production of alternative approaches.
Works Cited
Devitt, Amy, Mary Jo Reiff, and Anis Bawarshi. Scenes of Writing: Strategies for Composing with
Genres. New York: Longman, 2004.
McComiskey, Bruce. Teaching Composition as a Social Process. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2000.
Peters, Brad. “Genre, Antigenre, and Reinventing the Forms of Conceptualization.” Genre and Writing:
Issues, Arguments, Alternatives. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1997.
Smith, Summer. “The Genre of the End Comment: Conventions in Teacher Responses to Student
Writing.” College Composition and Communication 48.2 (1997): 249–68.
2 Invention
Issues and Strategies
Irene L. Clark
Invention is “a social act involving a dialectical relationship between individual spheres.”

(Karen Burke LeFevre, 1987, p. 48)
During the early days of the process movement, many writing classes focused on the value
of having students reflect on personal experience in order to discover ideas and write in an
“authentic” personal voice. Invention, as was emphasized in the scholarship of Peter Elbow
and Ken Macrorie, among others, meant discovering ideas from within the self, and the pro-
cess of discovery was viewed as a private act involving individual introspection. This expres-
sivist perspective on invention remains an important component in some writing classes.
However, it is now recognized that although recalling one’s own experiences and beliefs
are important elements in invention, discovering ideas for writing also involves connection
with others within a social sphere. As noted in the epigraph to this chapter, LeFevre’s perspec-
tive is that because all individuals are strongly influenced by social forces, “invention is better
understood as a social act in which an individual who is at the same time a social being inter-
acts in a distinctive way with society and culture to create something” (p. 2). LeFevre’s book
(1987) emphasized that “invention is neither a purely individual nor an interpersonal act or
process. Rather it is encouraged or constrained by social collectives whose views are transmit-
ted through such things as institutions, societal prohibitions, and cultural expectations” (p. 50).
This chapter presents an overview of invention, emphasizing that both the individual and
the social views are important to the process of discovering and shaping ideas. One of my
favorite expressions, one which I use in all of my classes, is “it depends”—which, in the con-
text of writing, means that the invention of ideas for a writing task depends on many factors,
such as the purpose, the genre, the audience, and the disciplinary or professional context for
which the writing is intended. Reflecting on personal experience may enable a writer to dis-
cover useful ideas, particularly when writing a literacy autobiography, but awareness of other
elements is also important, even for an essay that is based on life events. The focus of this
chapter, then, will be on several factors that pertain to invention: its roots in classical rhetoric,
ideas and controversies associated with the origin of ideas, and perspectives, approaches and
classroom strategies that teachers and students can experiment with in their own writing and
adapt in other literacy contexts. It will also suggest strategies for writing a literacy autobiogra-
phy, a genre that is assigned in many writing classes, and discuss the problem of writer’s block,
which is explored in further detail in the reading at the end of this chapter.
My experience in teaching writing at various levels suggests that there are two main reasons
that students have difficulty “inventing,” “generating,” or “discovering” material for the essays
they are assigned in their college classes. The first is that they don’t understand the assignment
and therefore don’t know how to proceed. The second is that they wait until the last minute
to begin. And, of course, both of these reasons are interconnected. When students are confused
Invention 53
about an assignment, they may wait until the last minute to begin working on it. And when
they haven’t spent enough time thinking about it, they may be unable to figure out what to
do. Whichever comes first, the process causes considerable anxiety.
We are all familiar with the scene: students up all night, staring at a blank screen and scrib-
bling notes that never develop into useful ideas—unable to write anything they are proud to
submit. Or they may manage to write a draft or part of a draft but then discover that it doesn’t
fulfill the requirements of the assignment because they didn’t understand what was expected
and/or didn’t engage with it seriously. Because students so frequently experience problems
with generating or locating ideas, helping them develop effective invention strategies is a very
important part of the writing class and should be addressed many times over the semester.
As a concept in composition, “invention” refers to the process writers use to search for,
discover, create, or “invent” material for a piece of writing, and at one time people thought
that invention was a first step that must be completed before beginning to write. Now we
understand that invention occurs throughout the writing process and can be both a conscious
and an unconscious process. For a few writers, particularly those who are familiar with a topic
or field and have written about it before, invention seems to happen effortlessly, involving
little more than thinking about it and jotting down a few ideas. But for most writers, particu-
larly those who are new to the university and are unclear about the expectations of academic
genres, invention involves considerable effort, often accompanied by stress. Even people
who write frequently in their professional lives say that they have at least some difficulty with
invention. As I prepared to revise this chapter on invention, for example, I spent considerable
time thinking about what I might add or omit, and students, who have had little experience
with the composing process and are unfamiliar with academic writing, often find writing
assignments anxiety provoking, to say the least.
The Heritage of Invention

In considering the role of invention in the writing process, both as a writer and as a prospec-
tive teacher, it is important to understand the following concepts:
1 Current approaches to and debates about invention have their roots in the past, particu-
larly in classical rhetoric.
2 What is deemed an “appropriate” subject is strongly influenced by societal values.
3 The process of invention is strongly influenced by the subject and rhetorical situation
being addressed.
Where Do Ideas Come From?

For invention to occur, a writer must have the capacity to invent, that is, he or she must have
a store of experience and/or knowledge that is sufficient enough to generate ideas, either
through the imagination or by knowing how to search for information. This statement seems
self-evident, but it raises the question of how writers develop this capacity and what should
be done in the writing class to aid the process. Does any person, simply on the basis of being
human, have the ability to invent material for a piece of writing? Or is invention the province
of only highly educated, intelligent, or imaginative people? Debate on this issue has occurred
for a long time and has implications for how writers should be educated and for how writing
should be approached in the classroom.
Robert Connors (1987), in his article “Personal Writing Assignments,” noted that
throughout the history of rhetoric, a true “rhetor” (anyone who composes discourse that is
intended to affect community thinking or events) was supposed to know everything, so as to
54 Irene L. Clark
be able to write on any possible subject. Cicero (106–43 bce) in De Oratore (1942) asserted
that “no one can be an absolutely perfect orator unless he has acquired a knowledge of all
important subjects and arts” (I, 4, 20), and Quintilian (35–95 ce), although not stating this
idea so forcefully, nevertheless, in Institutio Oratorio (1920), recommended a complete literary
and philosophical education as preparatory to the learning of rhetoric, “for there is nothing
which may not crop up in a cause or appear as a question for discussion” (II, 21, 22). Thus,
one position in the debate about invention maintains that, to have anything worthwhile to
say, speakers or writers must be highly educated and possess such a wealth of knowledge that
ideas will flow from them as easily and effortlessly as water in a stream.
On the other hand, more practical or realistic rhetoricians recognized that although it
might be desirable for writers and speakers to be so broadly educated, in actuality, this level
of knowledge is impossible for most people to acquire. Certainly students in their first year of
college, many of who are the first in their families to attend post-secondary education, cannot
be expected to possess this level of knowledge, however it may be defined. What most writers
and speakers need are approaches and invention strategies to investigate a subject and generate
ideas, an approach that Aristotle endorsed in his discussion of rhetoric.
Another debatable issue addressed during classical times concerned the question of where
ideas come from, a question that is of interest today as well. Are ideas “created” through the
active mind, and generated, fresh and new from within? Or are ideas “out there,” waiting to
be discovered? In the ancient world, the term “invent” was almost synonymous with “dis-
cover,” and the focus was on where ideas could be discovered. Tracing the origins of this
issue, W. Ross Winterowd pointed out that the concept of invention took two directions:
one associated with Plato, the other with Aristotle, and he referred to this split as “the idealist–
empiricist dialectic” (Winterowd & Blum, 1994, p. 2). For Plato (428–348 bc), ideas existed
independently and were available through the mind, the goal of invention being the discov-
ery of truth obtained through an inner-directed search. But for Aristotle, ideas were “out
there,” waiting to be discovered, their purpose being to convince an audience of the per-
suasiveness of a concept or belief. Winterowd maintained that Plato’s conception of ideas as
being “inner directed” was the source of the “transcendental tradition,” which provided the
basis for the romantic view of composing associated with Peter Elbow and Donald Murray,
whereas Aristotle was the founder of the “empirical tradition.”
Building on this perspective on invention, Karen Burke LeFevre argued for a four-part
continuum on invention: Platonic, Internal Dialogue, Collaborative, and Collective. LeFevre
defined the Platonic view of invention as occurring through solitary inner reflection, the
individual alone in his or her search for truth. This is similar to Winterowd’s notion of the
“romantic” view of invention. LeFevre’s “Internal Dialogue” perspective viewed invention
as a dialogue with another self, which is influenced by external forces and actual people. This
idea is in accord with the ideas of Wayne Booth in his well-respected text, Modern Dogma and
the Rhetoric of Assent (1974). In that text, Booth argued that “even when thinking privately,
I can never escape the other selves which I have taken in to make ‘myself’ and my thought
will always be a dialogue” (p. 126).
LeFevre’s “collaborative perspective” referred to the responses of the self to others outside
of the self, removing “the invention process out of the mind of the individual and into the
interaction of real people” (p. 62). The “collective perspective” was defined as: “neither a
purely individual nor an interpersonal act or process. Rather, it is encouraged or constrained
by social collectives, whose views are transmitted through such things as institutions, societal
prohibitions, and cultural expectations” (p. 50).
Of course, the extent to which these four perspectives on invention are appropriate
“depends” significantly on the purpose and context of the text for which the invention is
intended and it is likely that most writing tasks involve all four perspectives.
Invention 55

Briefly describe the invention strategies you use to generate ideas for assigned essays,
indicating the extent to which you are satisfied with the process you use. How do
you feel about teaching students particular invention strategies? Share your response
in small groups.
For Discussion: Four Perspectives on Invention

In small groups, summarize and discuss the four perspectives in LeFevre’s invention
scheme. Try to find examples of texts for which a particular perspective would be
appropriate. To what extent have you used these perspectives in the writing you have
done for school assignments?
Invention in Classical Rhetoric

Historians usually locate the classical period in rhetoric from the 5th century bce to around
the 5th century ce, the period that saw the flowering of rhetorical scholarship in Athens
and Rome. As was discussed in Chapter 1, the word “rhetoric” does not refer to empty or
deceptive words, as a modern reader might think; rather, it refers to the art that helps peo-
ple compose effective discourse. For ancient rhetoricians, rhetoric was an important means
of helping “people to choose the best course of action when they disagreed about political,
religious, or social issues” (Crowley, 1994, p. 1), and “invention” (heuresis in Greek, inven-
tio in Latin) was a significant part of rhetoric. It referred to the means of discovering pos-
sible arguments, providing “speakers and writers with sets of instructions to help them find
and compose proofs appropriate for any rhetorical situation” (Crowley, 1990, p. 30). The
word “invenire” meant “to find” or “to come upon” in Latin, and the Greek equivalent,
“heuriskein,” also meant “to find out” or “discover,” a word that has given us “heuristic,”
which means “an aid to discovery.” To Plato and Aristotle, “rhetoric” was oriented toward
the construction of “proofs”—that is, any statement or statements that could be used to
persuade an audience to think or act in a certain way, because ancient rhetoricians were
concerned primarily with persuasion. Those studying rhetoric at that time became familiar
with many invention strategies, which they could then apply to any rhetorical situation
that arose. Usually those situations occurred in a public context, growing out of the life of
the community.
The idea of community was inextricably linked to invention in the ancient world because
knowledge was located in communal learning. In fact, according to rhetorical theorist Sharon
Crowley, ancient rhetoricians defined knowledge as the collected wisdom of those who are
knowledgeable. Thus, they would have had difficulty understanding the problem students
have with finding something to write about, because they assumed that anyone who wanted
to compose would have had a clear reason for doing so. They would not be grappling with
a topic such as “The Problem with My Roommate” or “Describe a Moment When You
Learned Something about Yourself.” Rather, they would be addressing issues of public inter-
est that had generated some disagreement or dispute. This perspective has relevance for many
writing classes today as well.
56 Irene L. Clark
In ancient Greece, the need to train orators gave rise to two traditions: the techne, which
prescribed how to structure an oration, and the sophistic, which “offered set speeches that
students of oratory could memorize, analyze, and imitate” (Covino & Jolliffe, 1995, p. 39).
Plato questioned both of these traditions as being too mechanistic and not sufficiently con-
cerned with the discovery of truth, which he saw as absolute. Plato had this same criticism of
a group known as the “sophists,” who conceived of “rhetoric as epistemic, that is, as an art
that creates rather than reflects knowledge” (p. 84). Plato distrusted the sophists for believing
in the relativity of truth and for being manipulators of language; he was concerned that the
linguistic facility obtained through the teaching of the sophists was a trick that could be used
for ignoble purposes, such as influencing young people to believe what is false. He would, no
doubt, have had great difficulty with the language of advertising and one can only imagine
how shocked he would have been at the idea of “fake news!”
It must be noted here, however, that although the term “sophist” today suggests a person
who uses language to deceive, sophists in 5th century bc Athens were initially professors who
“lectured on the ‘new learning’ in literature, science, philosophy, and especially oratory. The
sophists set up small private schools and charged their pupils a fee for what amounted in many
cases to tutoring” (Corbett & Connors, 1999, p. 491). In 392 bce, Isocrates set up a school of
oratory, which was apparently quite lucrative, enabling him to amass “a considerable fortune
from his teaching” (Corbett & Connors, 1999, p. 491). Plato, however, held the sophists in
low esteem, arguing in the Gorgias, and the Phaedrus, that:
Rhetoric could not be considered a true art because it did not rest on universal principles.
Moreover, rhetoricians, like poets, were more interested in opinions, in appearances,
even in lies, than in the transcendental truth that the philosopher sought. They made the
“worse appear the better reason.” They were mere enchanters of the soul, more inter-
ested in dazzling their audiences than in instructing.
(Quoted in Covino and Joliffe, 1995, p. 492)
These objections to those who use language to manipulate still pertain today; often we disdain
the “sophistry” of politicians or advertisers, and the distressing polarization within the country
and the overwhelming amount of information being disseminated through various media has
resulted in frequent accusations of falsehood and a distrust of ever knowing what is actually true.

Plato’s criticism of the sophists was based on their ability to manipulate language to
suit particular audiences and situations as well as on their belief in the relativity and
contingency of truth. To what extent do you agree with Plato’s criticism? Consider the
following questions:
1 Is it ethical to teach persuasive strategies if they can be used to manipulate?

2 Are the means of persuasion simply a knack, a trick of language that anyone can learn?
3 When students write an essay in which they are asked to express and support an
“opinion,” must they really believe what they write?
4 Is it ethical to write an essay that expresses an opinion that the author does not
really hold?
Invention 57
Aristotle
Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric, composed between 360 and 334 bce, is an important source
of information about how invention was conceived of in the ancient world. Born in 384
bc, Aristotle went to Athens to study with Plato in 367 bc and then, at Plato’s death in
347 bc, stayed on as a teacher, where he eventually taught rhetoric, dividing it into five
parts: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery, although only the first three are
considered important in the context of writing. Aristotle is associated with two important
overall claims that pertain to invention: that rhetoric is an art that can be taught (thus, stu-
dents can be “taught” to invent), and that subject matter can be discovered in the world.
Seeking to rescue rhetoric from Plato’s low opinion of it, Aristotle asserted that although
individual rhetors might use rhetoric for unscrupulous ends, it is a skill, like a number of
others, such as physical strength, or the ability to decipher codes, that can be used for either
noble or ignoble purposes. In fact, he argued, the study of rhetoric would enable people to
understand and evaluate the quality of ideas, thereby helping them to assess their own beliefs
and recognize poor or fallacious arguments. This is a belief that is particularly relevant today.
For Aristotle, rhetoric was a system that enabled a rhetor to perceive the available means
of persuasion or “proofs” (pisteis), which he classified as either “artistic” or “non-artistic.” As
Corbett and Connors (1999) explained:
Non-artistic proofs are unimportant to the concept of invention because they consisted
of appeals to physical evidence, such as contracts or testimony. These are not invented
by the speaker because they involve the interpretation of already existing material such
as laws, witnesses, contracts, tortures, oaths. Apparently, the lawyer pleading a case in
court made most use of this kind of proof, but the politician or the panegyrist could use
them too.
(p. 18)
However, “artistic” proofs (called “artistic” because they are part of the “art” of rhetoric)
could be discovered, and these constituted the subject matter of The Art of Rhetoric, which
focused on three types of artistic proofs or appeals which still have validity today. The first
was ethos, usually translated as the character of the speaker as it comes across in a speech.
According to Covino and Jolliffe (1995),
theorists in ancient Greece and Rome did not agree among themselves whether ethos
exists solely in the text a rhetor creates, or whether the rhetor must evince ethos in his or
her life as well as in his or her texts.
(p. 15)
But Aristotle believed that “a rhetor could not depend . . . on the audience’s knowing more
about the rhetor’s ethos than the text itself established” (Covino & Joliffe, 1995, p. 15). In
other words, the text must speak for itself—that is, it must demonstrate that the rhetor is a
person of good sense, virtue, and will. In the context of the composition class, ethos refers to
a writer rather than a speaker, but the principle is the same, because a writer who has estab-
lished trustworthiness and good will in a text will be more convincing than one who has
not. All of us are more likely to accept another person’s ideas if we think of that person as
knowledgeable, trustworthy, logical, and fair, as opposed to ignorant, untrustworthy, illogi-
cal, and biased.
Aristotle’s idea of the credible rhetor has been affirmed in a 21st century study of academic
writing in multiple disciplines by Chris Thaiss and Terri Zawacki, which they reported on
58 Irene L. Clark
in Engaged Writers, Dynamic Disciplines (2006). The primary characteristics they discovered as
relevant across the disciplines were “clear evidence that the writer(s) have been persistent,
open-minded, and disciplined in study” (p. 5). Apparently, these characteristics are as impor-
tant today as they were in ancient Greece.
The second type of proof Aristotle discussed was pathos, which is sometimes called the
emotional or pathetic appeal. The main idea behind pathos was that an effective discourse will
appeal to or move an audience, and Aristotle’s (333 bc) Rhetoric contains a list of emotions
that could be used for this purpose, such as pity, fear, indignation, or anger. Aristotle also cat-
egorized potential audiences into character types such as the young, the old, aristocrats, and
the wealthy, assigning various emotions to each character type. This type of appeal also has
relevance for the composition class, in that an effective text will take into consideration what
is likely to move an intended audience. Moreover, a consideration of audience can serve as
an effective invention strategy that can aid in discovery.
Aristotle’s third and most important proof was logos, the appeal to reason, which in ancient
Greece did not refer simply to logic, but rather to “thought plus action.” As Covino and
Jolliffe (1995) explained,
just as ethos moves an audience by activating their faith in the credibility of the rhetor and
pathos stimulates their feelings and seeks a change in their attitudes and actions, so logos,
accompanied by the other two appeals, mobilizes the powers of reasoning.
(p. 17)
The Topoi
In addition to discussing the types of proofs that can be used to develop a more persuasive
text, Aristotle also referred to places in the memory, or topoi, where ideas can be stored and
retrieved. These topoi can be considered types of argumentative strategies and reasons that
can be useful in various rhetorical situations, and his idea was for orators to ask themselves
questions that the topoi generated, thereby developing content. The most frequently used
and most usable topics deriving from Aristotle’s system are definition, comparison, cause-and-
effect, and authority. Aristotle was the first rhetorician to introduce the topics, but others such
as Cicero and Quintilian developed them further, often describing “the places as though they
were hidden away.” Quintilian (1994), for example, defined the topoi as “the secret places
where arguments reside and from which they must be drawn forth” (p. 50).
It must be clarified here, however, that the word “topic” as it was conceived of in ancient
times, is not synonymous with the way in which the term is used today. When a teacher
asks a class to list “topics” they would like to write about, he or she means a subject, drawn
either from books, general knowledge, or personal experience. Ancient rhetoricians, how-
ever, thought of topics as existing in:
the structures of language or in the issues that concerned the community. That is why
they were called common places—they were available to anyone who spoke or wrote the
language in which they were couched and who was reasonably familiar with the ethical
and political discussions taking place in the community.
(Crowley, 1994, p. 50)
Emphasis on Community in Classical Rhetoric

Classical invention was directed outward, based almost entirely on logos, rather than on
ethos. It addressed issues that were relevant to the community and focused on questions that
were of concern to all members of society. As Connors (1987) phrased it:
Invention 59
Rhetorical exercises mirrored the classical belief that the world—the brute facts of it,
the doings of the persons in it, the nature of their feelings, judgments, beliefs—was the
grist for the mill of rhetoric. From the earliest age, students were to be trained to see the
world, to know what has been thought and said about it, and to hammer that knowledge
into discourse that could change it.
(p. 16)
The Heritage of Personal Writing

The public orientation of classical rhetoric did not privilege argument that was based on
personal opinion or that used personal experience as its main subject. However, many com-
position classrooms today continue to focus on, or at least include, assignments concerned
with personal writing, invention being directed toward individual recollection, feeling, and
opinion. Given the emphasis on argumentation and corresponding de-emphasis of personal
opinion in classical and neo-classical rhetoric, how did personal writing gain such a position
of importance in the writing class today?
Connors (1987) traced the beginnings of this trend to the 17th century, in which the
individual—personal tastes, feelings, experiences—began to be considered important to
public life, epitomized in the “rise of novels, books of personal essays, travel books, realis-
tic narrative and overly personal poems” (p. 169). This emphasis on the individual gained
importance in the latter part of the 18th and early 19th centuries, with the shift from a clas-
sical outlook to a romantic one, with the individual writer beginning to occupy a position of
greater prominence in education. The focus of George Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric
(1776) was on the thoughts and perceptions of the individual, and, according to Winterowd
and Blum (1994), “moved invention to the ivory tower of the individual mind” (p. 20),
placing a new emphasis on creativity (genius, imagination, fancy). Invention in this con-
text did not mean “discovering” content; it meant “creating” something completely new.
Sharon Crowley (1990, p. 32) noted that with the publication of Campbell’s The Philosophy
of Rhetoric, “for the first time in the history of rhetoric, the inventional process was focused
solely on the individual creative mind of a rhetor working in relative isolation.” This ten-
dency was further emphasized in the writing of Hugh Blair, whose influential Lectures on
Rhetorical and Belles Lettres (1783) focused attention on individual understanding as the goal
of knowledge, culminating in the development of creativity and taste. The dissemination of
what Winterowd referred to as “romantic rhetoric” thus resulted in the exaltation of self-
expression, and the privileging of imagination and inspiration over invention.
Personal Writing in the Early Phase of the Process Movement

Emphasis on the personal also characterized the initial phase of the process movement of the
1960s and 1970s, when the need to provide “at-risk” student populations with successful
writing experiences led to an emphasis on simple writing assignments concerned with topics
with which students were presumably familiar—that is, assignments concerned with their
own lives. An important goal at this time was to enable students to develop self-confidence by
accessing their own personal voice and to validate their experiences. In this context, personal
topics were considered more relevant than academic ones, enabling students to write about
what they know so that they could focus on the “craft” of writing.
The Literacy Autobiography: The Usefulness of Narrative

Even in writing courses that focus primarily on writing expository or argumentative essays,
a personal narrative may be assigned in the form of a “Literacy Autobiography” or “Literacy
60 Irene L. Clark
Narrative.” Students usually enjoy exploring their own literacy histories, and when they
share them with other students, they become more comfortable with one another, creating
a warmer, more open classroom environment. Moreover, even argument essays may use a
narrative example or perhaps several examples to support or illustrate an idea, often having a
more significant impact on a reader. Although my own focus in teaching writing is on argu-
mentative writing, I usually include one assignment that uses narrative.
In fact, although a narrative may incorporate elements associated with fiction, such as
character, dialogue, setting, point of view, and concrete details, a well-written narrative can
be viewed as a type of argument and the ability to narrate an event is often used in a number
of professions, such as nursing or police work. The ability to summarize what occurred in an
interview or an action involves narration, requiring the writer to decide where an act actually
began and what details to include in a report.
Literacy Narrative Assignment

Write an essay in which you tell the story of how you became part of a “literacy
community” and the insights about literacy you have gained by writing this “story.”
Although there are many different kinds of “literacies,” you should focus on one that
involves some form of language and/or rhetorical awareness (as in acquiring visual or
computer literacy). Literacy communities are like clubs in that they tend to have insiders
and outsiders. Knowing how to dress determines who is “in” and who is “out” of style
for a specific group. In the same way, there are keys to membership in a literacy com-
munity, namely the knowledge and proficiencies that support the values of the group.
Your literacy autobiography will tell the story of how you tried and perhaps suc-
ceeded at becoming a full-fledged member of a group. This membership could be offi-
cial as in the case of a sports team or unofficial in the case of becoming an accomplished
musician or lover of literature.
Keep in mind that a compelling story has a good shape, usually formed through
the development and resolution of some conflict or details with which a reader can
resonate. The authority in your autobiographical writing will come from the care with
which you select your material and the richness of the details you choose to present.
Choose a few important moments that show how you became a fuller member of the
literacy community.
Here are some ideas;
An experience with a book when you were young.

An experience in which you realized something about language or literacy that you
didn’t know before.
An experience in which you learned something like a language or gained familiarity
with a subject.
An experience in which your involvement with literacy alienated you from your
original background.
An idea you might discuss is the extent to which your joining a particular “literacy
community” has changed you in some way. What values are common to the group
you became a part of? Do you still hold those values?
Invention 61
Approaches to Invention
Heuristics
Whether the emphasis on personal writing during the early phases of the process move-
ment was really helpful to at-risk students can be debated, but, certainly, scholars of that
time devoted significant attention to invention; considerably more than they do today. Ken
Macrorie and Peter Elbow emphasized the importance of freewriting as a means of helping
students find a voice in writing, and another direction that has now become incorporated
into the teaching of composition was the use of “heuristics,” defined in Wikipedia as “any
approach to problem-solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method, not
guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, logical, or rational, but instead sufficient for reaching an
immediate goal.” The idea behind the use of heuristics was that it was better to have a sys-
tematic strategy for generating ideas rather than simply waiting for an idea to strike—like a
bolt of lightning.
The extent to which any heuristic can be effective, of course, will vary according to
many variables, but when composition scholarship began address the topic of invention and
the effectiveness of heuristics, Janice Lauer (1970) in “Heuristics and Composition” set up
criteria for judging the effectiveness of heuristic procedures, which, she maintains, have both
generative and evaluative powers. Such procedures, she emphasizes, must be distinguished
both from trial-and-error methods, which are nonsystematic and, hence, inefficient, and from
rule-governed procedures, which are overly rigorous. Lauer’s article also establishes the crite-
ria of transcendency, flexibility, and generative capacity for judging the effectiveness of a heu-
ristic procedure. Translated into questions, these characteristics may be perceived as follows:
1 Transcendency
How can writers transfer this model’s questions or operations from one subject to
another?
2 Flexible Order
Is the model flexible so that a thinker can return to a previous step or skip to an invit-
ing one as the evolving idea suggests?
3 Generative Capacity
Is the model generative so that it involves the writer in various operations—such as
visualizing, classifying, defining, rearranging, and dividing?
Lauer’s attempt to develop useful strategies for composition students, however, was criticized
by Ann Berthoff (1971) who condemned heuristics as being overly mechanical, in an article
titled “The Problem of Problem Solving.” Berthoff’s criticism was then countered by Lauer
(1972) who argued that heuristics were, by definition, open-ended, not rigid, flexible, and
not oriented toward finding a “right” answer.
The Lauer–Berthoff debate over heuristics was indicative of the interest in invention that
characterized the process movement in the 1960s and 1970s. In “Pre-Writing: The Stage of
Discovery in the Writing Process,” D. Gordon Rohman (1965) claimed that engaging in
prewriting enabled students to produce writing that “showed a statistically significant superi-
ority to essays produced in control sections” (p. 112). Young, Becker, and Pike in their book,
Rhetoric: Discovery and Change (1970), devised an elaborate invention scheme derived from
tagmemic linguistics, which approached composing in terms of a complex invention strategy
that requires a writer to examine a subject from nine different perspectives. The tagmemicists
maintained that because people conceive of the world in terms of repeatable units that are
part of a larger system, understanding those units can enable writers to investigate and, thus,
62 Irene L. Clark
generate material for a wider range of subjects. The tagmemic system is quite complicated,
and only a few writers use it on a regular basis, but it became the subject of significant schol-
arship during the 1970s. Those who are interested in this approach to invention can find
additional information in the following publications

Kenupper, C. W. (1980). Revising the tagmemics heuristic: Theoretical and pedagogical consid-
eration. CCC, 3: 161–167.
Odell, L. (1978). Another look at tagmemic theory: A response to James Kinney. CCC, 29:
146–152.
Young, R. E., & Becker, A. L. (1965).Toward a modern theory of rhetoric: A tagmemic contribu-
tion. Harvard Education Review, 35: 450–468.
Discovering Ideas by Rhetorical Engagement with Texts

Looking inwardly to gain access to one’s experience with and inherent belief in a topic can be
helpful if a student has had relevant experiences that can be elicited and the assignment calls
for such experiences. Sharon Crowley (1994), however, situated invention within a rhetorical
situation, a perspective that can be useful when students are assigned to address an argument,
controversy, or problem.
Joseph Harris’s book, Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts (2006), utilizes this idea,
discussing several “moves” that writers use to write in response to the work of others. Harris
conceived of all writing as “rewriting,” and since invention can occur throughout the writing
process, his approach can help students discover new directions and perspectives. Below is a
summary of these moves, which, in class, can be applied to an article that is distributed in class
to help students understand invention possibilities.
1 Coming to Terms. The concept of “coming to terms” involves “translating” a text written
by another writer into one’s own words. The focus is on trying to understand the writer’s
“project”—the ideas the writer wants to argue and the methods and strategies he uses to
do so. To “translate” a text, students find keywords, passages, or “flashpoints” they find
most important, examine how the writer connects examples to ideas, and the type of
experience and evidence used.
2 Forwarding. The idea of forwarding involves “taking words, images, or ideas from a text
and putting them to use in new contexts” (p. 37). The analogy Harris uses is that of
e-mail, in which a writer will “forward” a post that they think will interest particular
friends and make some comment about it, sometimes in the form of text-message sym-
bols. Forwarding a text can involve using a text as an illustration, citing a text to support
one’s own argument, drawing on ideas from a text in discussing a topic, and extending a
concept or definition from a text in one’s own writing.
3 Countering. The idea of “countering,” as Harris defines it, involves looking at other texts
in order to suggest a different way of thinking. It can mean arguing the other side of an
issue, redefining or reexamining “a term that a text has left undefined or unexamined”
(p. 57), or showing the limits of an idea.
Invention 63
All of these activities or “moves” can help students generate ideas for an essay, ultimately
enabling them to construct their own approach or position. What is particularly valuable
about this approach is that it involves students with other texts as a means of discovering
ideas and requires students to participate actively in the invention process, rather than wait
for an idea to strike. It also focuses students’ attention on the intertextuality that characterizes
academic writing.
Reading as Rhetorical Invention/Research Writing

Published in 1992, Doug Brent’s book titled Reading as Rhetorical Invention: Knowledge,
Persuasion and the Teaching of Research Based Writing, defines research writing as entering a
conversation, a rhetorical approach to invention that supports the interconnection between
reading and writing (see Chapter 6 in this volume). Brent maintains that when research is
presented in terms of making contact with other human beings who are conversing about a
topic, students will gain a sense of how they should proceed when they are assigned a writing
task that requires research. Without that understanding, Brent argues, many students approach
research as if they were “gathering shells at the beach, picking up ideas with interesting colors
or unusual shapes and putting them in a basket without regard for overall pattern” (p. xiii).
Research, for Brent, can take a number of forms, all of them oriented toward an audience for
whom the topic or problem is meaningful, informative, or persuasive. These can include not
only arguing about a debatable topic, but also explaining a concept that is poorly understood
or showing why a particular idea or situation is important and needs further attention. Brent
stresses that a reader uses texts to:
supplement the ‘paper-thin line’ of his own experience, to provide additional windows
on what is and what ought to be in the world. However, texts refer not just to the world
but to a world-view, not to an unmediated state of existence but to the author’s percep-
tion of the state of things.
(p. 21)
Brent’s concept of rhetorical reading focuses on the importance for readers of becoming
aware of how their own world view influences how they view a particular source and of
ultimately considering which texts are most persuasive. This rhetorical perspective helps writ-
ers focus on why a text was written (the purpose), the nature of the conversation, and the
conception of the intended audience.
A similarly rhetorical perspective on research writing is discussed in Bryna Siegel Finer’s
article, “Critical Praxis for Researched Writing: A Rhetorical Model for Teaching Students to
‘Do’ Research” (2015, Journal of Teaching Writing, 28(2): 41–66). Noting that the “research”
paper has been a problematic genre for many years, Finer uses the term “researched” writ-
ing, which is based on assigning problem-based research topics, preparing students to be
rhetorically aware not only of the conversations that the problem has generated, but also
of how genres coordinate ways of thinking. This emphasis on the generative possibilities of
genre is discussed in great detail in Anis Bawarshi’s book Genre and the Invention of the Writer:
Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition (2003). Bawarshi argues for a genre-based
pedagogy as a means of helping students understand that writing varies according to chang-
ing contexts, such as rhetorical situations and disciplines, and that students should “learn to
examine social and rhetorical texts in order to produce texts that successfully participate in
disciplinary and social conversations” (Arnold, 2005, n.p.).
64 Irene L. Clark
They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter
Related to the concept of “moves” in using readings to generate ideas is a very useful text-
book entitled They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, by Gerald Graff and
Cathy Birkenstein (2018), which exists in multiple versions, some with and some without
readings on various topics. Graff and Birkenstein maintained that the statement, “they say/I
say,” helps students understand that academic writing involves entering a conversation and
that this move constitutes a:
template that represents the deep, underlying structure, the internal DNA as it were, of
all effective argument. Effective persuasive writers do more than make well-supported
claims (“I say”); they also map those claims relative to the claims of others (“they say”).
(p. xii)
An example provided in the first edition of this book (2006) is the following:
Some say that The Sopranos presents caricatures of Italian Americans.

However, the characters in the series are very complex!
(p. xv)
Graff and Birkenstein maintained that the “they say/I say” model can help students with
invention, enabling them to find something to say. They argue that students are:
more likely to discover what they want to say not by thinking about a subject in an isola-
tion booth, but by reading texts, listening closely to what other writers say, and looking for
an opening in which they can enter the conversation. In other words, listening closely to
others and summarizing what they have to say can help writers generate their own ideas.
(p. xiii)
I have found the “they say/I say” approach very useful for students who are unclear about
how to develop a thesis—not only first-year writing students, but upper division and gradu-
ate students as well. However, some composition scholars are uncomfortable with the word
“template” and with some of the other templates that are illustrated in They Say/I Say, fearing
that this approach will result in mechanical, formulaic writing. Anticipating this concern, Graff
and Birkenstein emphasized that their approach can help students “enter” the academic con-
versation by demystifying what academic writing is, and that their templates “have a generative
quality, prompting students to make moves in their writing that they might not otherwise make
or even know they should make” (p. xiii). They pointed out that these “moves” are the same
as those that seasoned writers have picked up unconsciously and that templates have a long and
rich history that “reflect the classical rhetorical tradition of imitating established models” (p. xv).

1 How do you feel about the use of templates or consciously chosen “moves” as a
means of helping students discover ideas?
2 Do you use templates or moves in your own writing?
3 Assign a short text on a problematic or controversial issue. Have students read the
article and practice the invention moves discussed above.
Invention 65
Invention and Imitation
Distrust of templates in the discipline of Writing Studies is paralleled by a distrust of imitation
and modeling. Although, in the past, imitation was considered an important invention strat-
egy, recent concern with plagiarism, the danger that imitation will result in formulaic writing,
and the idea that student writing must be original have caused many teachers and scholars to
avoid using it in the invention process. However, I have always maintained that inexperi-
enced writers can gain a great deal from imitation, particularly when they are unfamiliar with
the writing genre they are expected to produce, and that imitation and modeling in conjunc-
tion with a rhetorical focus can enable students at all levels to invent ideas and expand their
repertoire of possibilities. Having students look at texts that engage with the conversation
being addressed in a writing assignment will enable them to see what might be done with that
assignment, thereby generating ideas on which they can continue to build.
The use of imitation to help students invent ideas can include modeling process behavior
in order to show students how to generate ideas, perhaps demonstrating various invention
strategies. Imitation can also be used to focus students’ attention on structure, enabling them
to identify various types of support and evidence which they can then incorporate into their
own writing. Another imitative approach might be to show students a model, have them ana-
lyze WHY the model is the way it is, and then experiment with creative variation. Although
the use of modeling and imitation has not been a recent subject for Writing Studies scholar-
ship, there is considerable potential in this approach that can be extremely useful in helping
students “invent” ideas.

If you have written a “research paper,” summarize the topic and main ideas in that
paper. How did you investigate the topic? How did you decide which sources to
include? To what extent did you think of yourself as “entering a conversation?” Have
you ever looked at a model text and imitated its structure? How do you feel about using
imitation and modeling in a writing class?
Writer’s Block
Writer’s block or some form of writer’s anxiety has been experienced by most, if not all,
writers from time to time; not only by student writers but also by professional and acclaimed
writers. In fact, Mike Rose (1984) began his groundbreaking Writer’s Block: The Cognitive
Dimension with a quotation from Flaubert that describes the agony of staying “a whole day
with your head in your hands, trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.”
Rose’s study suggested that at least “10% of college students block frequently, and the boom
of ‘writer’s block’ workshops stands as a reminder that writer’s block is a problem outside
of the classroom as well” (p. 1). Rose (1984) cited the following factors as contributing to
writer’s block:
1 The rules by which students guide their composing processes are rigid, inappropriately
invoked, or incorrect.
2 Their assumptions about composing are misleading.
3 They edit too early in the composing process.
66 Irene L. Clark
4 They lack appropriate planning and discourse strategies or rely on inflexible or inappro-
priate strategies.
5 They invoke conflicting rules, assumptions, plans, and strategies.
6 They evaluate their writing with inappropriate criteria or criteria that are inadequately
understood.
Rose maintained that students who block seem to be depending on rules and plans that impede
rather than aid the composing process. He cited the example of “Ruth,” who believed that
every sentence she wrote had to come out grammatically correct the first time around. This
belief led Ruth to edit each sentence before she proceeded to the next, thus closing off the
flow of ideas. Another example was “Martha,” who spent days developing a complex plan for
her paper, leaving her little time to actually write.
In terms of invention, Rose asserted that people who suffer from writer’s block are more
likely to generate material if the strategies they use are well structured. Non-structured tech-
niques, such as freewriting and brainstorming, can be useful, Rose (1984) maintained; how-
ever, the resulting morass of ideas “can sometimes lead to more disorder than order, more
confusing divergence than clarifying focus” (p. 91).
Another work concerned with writer’s block that was prominent during the early days of
the process movement was James Adams’s Conceptual Blockbusting (1974), which suggested
that most of us, but particularly anxiety-ridden students, are prevented from exploring ideas
freely because of emotional blocks that inhibit us from doing so. A few of these blocks con-
tribute to the problem students have in generating ideas for papers, in particular:
1 The fear of taking a risk. Adams pointed out that because most of us have grown up
rewarded when we produced the “right answer” and punished when we made a mistake,
we tend to avoid risk whenever possible. Yet exploring ideas for papers means taking
risks, to some extent. To come up with anything new means considering, at least for a
short time, a notion that has not been mentioned before, a notion that one may later
reject as inappropriate in some way. Because students fear the rejection associated with
risk-taking, they are often unable to entertain new ideas and will reject even a glimmer
of creative thought, which may prove to be unsuitable and subject them to ridicule.
2 No appetite for chaos. Because the fear of making a mistake is rooted in insecurity, most
of us tend to avoid ambiguity whenever possible, opting for safety over uncertainty, a
condition Adams (1974) referred to as “having no appetite for chaos.” Thus, because
they are uncomfortable with the “chaos” that characterizes the stage in the writing pro-
cess that exists before one generates an idea or focuses a topic, many students reach for
order before they have given the topic sufficient exploration. Thus, they find themselves
“stuck” with dead-end or uninteresting topics.
3 Preference for judging, rather than generating ideas. This emotional block, according to Adams,
also has its root in our preference for safety, rather than for risk, producing in students a
tendency to judge an idea too early or indiscriminately. Adams (1974) stated, “If you are
a compulsive idea-judger, you should realize that this is a habit that may exclude ideas
from your own mind before they have had time to bear fruit” (p. 47).
4 Inability to incubate. There is a general agreement that the unconscious plays an important
role in problem-solving, and it is, therefore, important for students to give their ideas an
opportunity to incubate, to wrestle with a problem over several days. Yet students often
procrastinate, putting off work on their papers until the day before they are due. They
often find themselves blocked before they can’t even get started.
5 Lack of motivation. Students are often asked to write about topics in which they have lit-
tle interest; their motivation lies only in the grade they hope to receive. Yet, as Adams
Invention 67
pointed out, it is unlikely that students can come up with an interesting idea for a paper
if they aren’t motivated, at least somewhat, by the topic.
Writer’s block and writing anxiety continue to be addressed from time to time in writing
scholarship, with recent approaches addressing psychological or emotional factors. Cynthia
A. Arem in Conquering Writing Anxiety (2011) distinguished between writer’s anxiety and
writer’s block. In her view, writer’s anxiety is “characterized by dread, nervousness, worry,
or hatred of writing. Some face anguish and panic” (p. 1) and is a condition that is deep-
seated. In contrast, Arem defined writer’s block as “a condition producing a transitory inability
to express one’s thoughts on paper. It is characterized by feelings of frustration, rather than
dread, hatred or panic” (p. 1). Arem’s book contains self-assessment charts and strategies to
break cycles of both writer’s anxiety and writer’s block and considers the influence of indi-
vidual learning styles. Among the ways suggested include creating a positive writing mindset,
calming techniques, visualization strategies, and the therapeutic use of writing journals.

Write a short paper discussing rules of composing that you find most useful when you
write papers for a class. Include in your paper responses to the following questions:
1 What rules of writing do you think about when you compose?

2 Do any of these rules make writing more difficult for you?
3 Have you ever experienced writer’s block?
4 Share your responses in small groups.
Invention and the Composition Classroom

In the conclusion to his study on writer’s block, Rose (1984) emphasized the importance of
selecting an invention strategy that is suited to the writing task, and it is important to remember
this idea when teaching invention in the classroom or using a particular strategy in your own
writing. It is important to understand that the kind of essay being written (e.g., a personal
essay or an academic argument) and the subject being addressed strongly determine the type
of invention strategy that is most appropriate for generating material. Heuristics direct writers’
attention in particular directions, encouraging them to approach a topic from one direction or
perspective as opposed to another. Thus, instructors should consider the effects of using one
strategy instead of another, helping students understand their differences.
Helping Students Understand the Assignment

Ancient rhetoricians recognized that to “invent” material for a discourse, a rhetor had to be
familiar with the subject under consideration; an idea that seems obvious. Yet in presenting
assignments to students, some teachers do not seem to recognize the importance of this basic
concept. Scribbling a writing assignment on the board or handing it out hastily in class, they
send students home to write an essay, or, even more unrealistically, to generate an essay right
on the spot. A fundamental invention concept derived from ancient rhetoricians, then (and
in accord with common sense), is that it is important to familiarize students with the topic
they are going to be writing about, to help them feel comfortable with the subject, and to
68 Irene L. Clark
make sure that they understand what is expected of them. This is true whether the essay is
concerned with a public controversy or with students’ own personal experiences. When the
assignment is first distributed, the teacher should read it aloud to the class and then students
should reread it on their own. They can also use worksheets to be completed at home, online,
or in class, to help them understand what is required.
Most importantly, all assignments should be scaffolded—that is, segmented—not only
as a way to familiarize students with the topic, but also to prevent students from postpon-
ing work until the night before the essay is due. Assign due dates for each component of the
process, encourage students to present their ideas in class, perhaps using PowerPoint, have
students write annotated bibliographies as a preparatory activity, and incorporate group and
online work into each segment of the process.
Creating an Invention-Oriented Classroom Atmosphere

In introducing a writing topic in the classroom, it is important to foster a classroom atmos-
phere that invites experimentation and exploration so that students will be able to entertain
possibilities without fear of ridicule or negative evaluation. To create a classroom atmosphere
that is “invention oriented,” you can share your own invention process with students and
encourage students to try out new ideas. Assure them that everyone finds invention difficult,
and help them understand that discovery of a main topic or subtopic can occur at any stage
of the writing process, not only at the beginning. An important goal of the writing class is to
enable students to explore new ideas—even in a half-written draft—and to investigate direc-
tions not previously considered.
An invention-oriented writing class also means stressing the importance of developing
ideas actively. Although for some writers “invention” means sitting at a desk and waiting for
an idea to strike, most people find it useful to explore a subject by engaging in preliminary
exploratory writing and reading activities. Such activities enable writers to assess what they
already know about the subject, although there is no guarantee that something wonderful will
be discovered immediately; in fact, writers often reject a significant portion of what they write
initially. But even if this is the case, it is likely that the process will stimulate the discovery of
something that is useful or, at least, bring the realization that additional information is needed.
Invention Strategies
Class and Group Discussion

The most useful method of helping students generate ideas for a writing assignment is to have
them discuss the topic in pairs, small groups, with the whole class, or online, using programs
such as Canvas or Moodle. Sharing ideas will enable students of all levels to engage with a
topic, fostering insight that will stimulate the imagination. This is a principle that seems self-
evident; yet it is often overlooked and little research exists that demonstrates its effectiveness.
An early study, published in 1969, was conducted by Robert Zoellner, who published the
results in an article entitled “Talk-Write: A Behavioral Pedagogy for Composition.” In that
article Zoellner asserted that students will be able to write more clearly and expansively if
they approach writing through another behavior (speaking) that has already proven at least
reasonably successful. Zoellner’s article focused on the importance of actual talk, but today’s
students are also quite familiar with online chats, so it makes sense to incorporate electronic
discussions as well.
Although Zoellner’s ideas have not been tested rigorously, a subsequent study by George
Kennedy (1983) suggested the validity of Zoellner’s work. Kennedy divided a group of basic
Invention 69
writers into two groups: the experimental “Speakwrites” and the control “Writeonlys,” and
both groups watched a film, which was used as the stimulus for a writing assignment. The
Speakwrites were interviewed individually on the subject of the film and were then asked
to write a 30-minute essay on a general topic generated by the film. The Writeonlys had no
opportunity to discuss the film and were asked only to write the 30-minute essay. When the
essays were graded by independent evaluators, the Speakwrites’ essays received significantly
higher scores than did the Writeonlys’. Kennedy’s research, therefore, highlighted the impor-
tance of “talking” to the invention process and the necessity of preparing students before they
begin to write. Online discussions are likely to have a similar benefit.
Journals
Journals are another source of ideas for an essay, and students often enjoy writing them. For
journals to be useful to the invention process, though, it is important to explain that a journal
in a composition class is not a diary of daily events, but, rather, a place for grappling with
ideas or responding to readings. Students will be able to distinguish between journals and
diaries if you prompt journal entries with specific questions, at least in the beginning of the
class, and to ask those whose entries are particularly well developed if you might share them
with other students.
Freewriting and Brainstorming

Many students find that writing freely about a topic, either by hand or on a computer, enables
them to generate preliminary ideas about it, particularly if the topic has affected them person-
ally. Jotting down ideas or brainstorming about a topic can thus be extremely helpful both as
a classroom exercise and as a homework assignment. Images that come to mind can suggest
other images, and frequently students find that they can then generate ideas that they didn’t
even know they had.
Clustering
Clustering is similar to freewriting and brainstorming in that its aim is to elicit as many ideas
as possible. Clustering, however, enables students to group ideas visually and to see possible
connections between ideas. To use clustering, the writer places the central idea or topic in
the center of the paper and circles it. Around this circled word, he or she writes other words
that are associated with this central idea and puts circles around them as well. Then they write
other words that are associated with these other ideas and use lines to connect them either to
each other or to other words on the page. Clustering helps writers develop details and find
connections that might not have been discovered otherwise.
Thinking about Your Assignment: A Worksheet

This worksheet will enable a writer to learn as much as possible about an assignment, so that
he or she will be able to write the essay with greater insight. Each of the steps below should
be followed and responses written.
1 Read the assignment aloud, paying particular attention to the place where the writing task
is discussed.
2 List the key terms in the assignment that give directions.
List any terms that need to be defined.
70 Irene L. Clark
3 Summarize the type of writing task that the assignment requires. Remember that most
college writing assignments require a thesis or main point although, at a beginning stage,
a writer may not know yet what that thesis will be.
4 What type of information does this paper require? Will the information be based primar-
ily on personal experience or opinion? Will it be necessary to find information from the
library or the Internet?
5 Locate any requirements of the assignment that may not be directly stated, but which are
necessary in order for the assignment to be completed satisfactorily.
•• Does this assignment require terms to be defined? If so, which ones?
•• Does this assignment require an interconnection between ideas—such as applying a
theory to a situation or text?
•• Does this assignment require the writer to take a position on a controversial subject?
If so, list two opposing views. Does this assignment require the writer to consider
questions of degree or make a judgment (does it say “to what extent” for example)?
6 Who is the audience for this paper, aside from the teacher? What sort of knowledge
about the topic can a writer assume the audience has?
Respond to the following questions about audience.
•• Before the people in my intended audience have read this paper, they are likely to have
the following beliefs about this topic:
•• After the people in my intended audience have read this paper, I would like them to
have the following beliefs about this topic:
7 Why does this topic matter? Why would anyone care about it? Why is it important to
think about? Are there implications or consequences that should be addressed?
8 A possible thesis or main point for this paper might be . . .
The Points-to-Make List

Brainstorming is usually just the first step in generating an interesting and well-thought-out
essay, with ideas that go beyond the superficial. A useful invention strategy that follows
brainstorming and precedes the drafting of an essay is the Points-to-Make List, which enables
a writer to sort and narrow ideas. Although different writers do this in individual ways, most
good writers will take time to write down, examine, and revise their ideas in an informal list
that is not as rigid as an outline. It is also an important tool to help develop an effective rough
plan and thesis statement.
The Points-to-Make List
Procedure:
1 Create a preliminary list:
Review your brainstorming notes and readings. It might be useful to do this with
a highlighter or different-colored pen so that you can clearly mark the ideas that you
think might be effective in your essay. At this stage, don’t worry if you’re interested in
a number of different (and possibly unrelated) ideas. In fact, be as inclusive as you can.
Just develop a primary list of points (ideas and/or opinions you have about this topic)
and evidence (facts, examples, and quotes) that you like for your essay. Then in the space
provided below, list those points.
Invention 71
Reminder:
The above list will probably include many different kinds of ideas: some broad, some narrow,
some opinions, some explanations. Don’t be concerned about this variety of ideas, and don’t
try to jump to a thesis statement too soon. Sometimes you need to work with ideas for a while
before you finally arrive at what you “really want to say.” Be especially aware of the trap that
many students fall into—A MERE LIST OF POINTS IS NOT A THESIS STATEMENT.
2 Reread the writing task for this assignment, comparing your list to the actual question you are sup-
posed to address. In any writing situation, you need to compare your brainstorming with
the assigned task, because it is very easy to move in other directions.
3 Examine, narrow and reorder your list. Decide which points you like best, listing them
below.
4 Look over your list and see if you can find a preliminary thesis statement or argument that responds
to the assignment prompt. List that preliminary thesis below.
Possible Thesis:
Exploring a Topic through Questioning

Learning to ask oneself questions about a topic is a useful invention strategy, loosely derived
from Aristotelian rhetoric. Responding to questions enables writers to reflect on experiences,
facts, opinions, and values they already have about the topic, determine what they don’t know
about the topic, decide what they need to find out, and then evaluate the material they find.
Several of the following strategies are based on the use of questions.
Exploration Questions
Exploration questions are useful for exploring a topic that is concerned with a controversy;
one that requires the writer to develop a thesis or position (a characteristic of most college
writing assignments). Responding in writing to these questions enables the writer to under-
stand a controversy in terms of background and issue; an insight that helps writers construct
a point of view. A sheet that can be used for this purpose appears on page 72 of this volume.
Topical Questions
Another questioning strategy, loosely based on Artistotle’s On Rhetoric (1991), uses the idea
of “topics” as a means of discovering material for an argument, a strategy that was devel-
oped by Edward Corbett (1981) in The Little Rhetoric and Handbook. Corbett’s questions
are listed below.
72 Irene L. Clark
Questions about concepts:
1 How has the term been defined by others?

2 How do you define the term?
3 What other concepts have been associated with the term?
4 In what ways has this concept affected the lives of people?
5 How might this concept be changed?
Questions about a statement or proposition:
6 What must be established before a reader will believe the proposition?

7 What are the meanings of key words in the proposition?
8 By what evidence or argument can the proposition be proved or disproved?
9 What counterarguments must be confronted and refuted?
10 What are the practical consequences of the proposition?
Exploration Questions
(Useful for developing ideas for an essay concerned with a controversy)
1 Is there a controversy associated with this topic? If so, briefly outline the nature of the
controversy.
2 What was your opinion on this controversy when you were growing up? What opinion
did your family and community have on this topic?
3 How did your school experiences influence your conception of the topic? Did your
teachers and classmates feel the same way about it as did your family? Were there any
points of disagreement?
4 Can you think of at least two people who hold differing views about this topic? If so,
describe these people and summarize what you believe were their points of view.
5 Has your opinion changed about this topic in any way? Why or why not?
6 Do you think that this topic is important for people to think about? Why or why not?
Journalistic Questions
The five questions journalists frequently ask to generate information about a topic can be used
effectively as an invention strategy. They are particularly useful in writing about a problem, a
focus that characterizes a number of writing assignments, but they can also be adapted to other sit-
uations or experiences. The following are the five questions, phrased in the context of a problem.
What is the problem?

Who finds this a problem?
When is this a problem?
Where is this a problem?
How can this problem be solved?
The Pentad
The author/scholar/rhetorician Kenneth Burke contributed many ideas to the field of rhetoric,
but in terms of invention, he is best known for the strategy known as the “pentad.” The pentad
Invention 73
is a scheme for investigating pretty much anything, and, indeed, Burke regarded the field of
rhetoric as inclusive of almost all human actions, defining it as “the use of language in such a
way as to produce a desired impression on the reader or hearer” (1953, p. 165). Thus, Burke,
like Aristotle, conceived of rhetoric in terms of audience, claiming in The Rhetoric of Motives
(1950) that meaning always involves an element of persuasion. The pentad was first introduced
in A Grammar of Motives (1952) as a device for analyzing literature, and, indeed, it is well suited
for this purpose. However, it can also be used to investigate other subjects.
The pentad consists of five terms that can be used to “invent” material. These are as
follows:
•• Act (What does it say? What happened? What sort of action is it?)
•• Agent (Who wrote it? Who did it? What kind of agent is it?)
•• Agency (How was it done? What were the methods of accomplishing it?)
•• Scene (Where did it happen? What background is necessary to understand? When did it
happen?)
•• Purpose (Why did it happen? What is its purpose?)
Whatever questioning strategy you recommend to your students, it is important to demon-

strate it by working with it in class on the board. Only when students have observed how
an invention strategy functions—to see it in action—will they be ready to work with it on
their own.

Invention and New Media
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ing about writing. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 82: 75–81.
Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lessner, S., & Collin, C. (2010). Finding your way in: Invention as inquiry based learning in first
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Read Mike Rose’s article at the end of this chapter, “Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and
the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer’s Block.” This article was
written in 1980, almost 40 years ago, before many of the seminal ideas and approaches
explored through the writing process movement had been incorporated into composi-
tion pedagogy. Now that we are in the 21st century, it is worth examining whether
Rose’s article is relevant to the writing scene today.
(continued)
74 Irene L. Clark
(continued)
In this context, consider whether Rose’s ideas pertain to experiences with writing
that you personally have encountered, either in school or elsewhere. Discuss these ideas
in small groups.
Then write an essay that addresses the following question:
To What Extent Is Rose’s Position on Writer’s Block Still

Relevant?
In developing ideas for this assignment, work with at least one invention strategy previ-
ously described.

Bawarshi, A. (2003). Genre and the invention of the writer: Reconsidering the place of invention in composi-
tion. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Brady, L. L. (2002). To whom it might actually concern: Letter writing as invention in first-year
composition. In D. Roen, V. Pantoja, L. Yena, S. K. Miller, & E. Waggoner (Eds.), Strategies for
teaching first year composition (pp. 249–251). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Brock, K. (2014). “Enthymeme as Rhetorical Algorithm.” Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in
Society, 4(1): 1–11.
Coe, R. M. (1981, October). If not to narrow, then how to focus: Two techniques for focusing.
CCC, 32: 272–277.
Connors, R., & Glenn, C. (1999). The new St. Martin’s guide to teaching writing. Boston, MA:
Bedford/St.Martin’s.
Emig, J. (1977, May). Writing as a mode of learning. CCC, 28: 122–128.
Finer, B. S. (2015). Critical praxis for researched writing: A rhetorical model for teaching students
to “do research.” Journal of Teaching Writing, 28(2): 41–66.
Fleuri, S., & Peary, A. (2014).The Montaigne method: Adding content and consciousness through
revision as invention. Journal of Teaching Writing, 29(2): 11–30.
Howard, R. (2009). Invention: A bibliography for composition and rhetoric. http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/
Bibs/Invention.htm.
LeFevre, K. B. (1987). Invention as a social act. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
McKenzie, CB. (2012). Reconsidering the personal essay: An alternative assignment, the material
artifact analysis. Journal of Teaching Writing, 27(2): 71–85.
Rickert,T. (2007). Invention in the wild: On locating kairos in space-time. In C. J. Keller, & C. R.
Weisser (Eds.), The locations of composition. Albany, NY: New York State University Press.
Rider, J. (1990). Must imitation be the mother of invention? Journal of Teaching Writing, 9(2):
175–185.
Roen, D., Pantoja,V.,Yena, L., Miller, S. K., & Waggoner, E. (Eds) (2002). Strategies for teaching first
year Composition. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Witte, S. (1987). Pre-text and composing. CCC, 38, 397–425.
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Reading
Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language
A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer’s Block
Mike Rose
Ruth will labor over the first paragraph of an essay for hours. She’ll write a sentence, then
erase it. Try another, then scratch part of it out. Finally, as the evening winds on toward
ten o’clock and Ruth, anxious about tomorrow’s deadline, begins to wind into herself, she’ll
compose that first paragraph only to sit back and level her favorite exasperated interdiction
at herself and her page: “No. You can’t say that. You’ll bore them to death.”
Ruth is one of ten UCLA undergraduates with whom I discussed writer’s block, that frus-
trating, self-defeating inability to generate the next line, the right phrase, the sentence that
will release the flow of words once again. These ten people represented a fair cross-section
of the UCLA student community: lower-middle-class to upper-middle-class backgrounds
and high schools, third-world and Caucasian origins, biology to fine arts majors, C+ to A−
grade point averages, enthusiastic to blasé attitudes toward school. They were set off from
the community by the twin facts that all ten could write competently, and all were currently
enrolled in at least one course that required a significant amount of writing. They were set
off among themselves by the fact that five of them wrote with relative to enviable ease while
the other five experienced moderate to nearly immobilizing writer’s block. This blocking usu-
ally resulted in rushed, often late papers and resultant grades that did not truly reflect these
students’ writing ability. And then, of course, there were other less measurable but probably
more serious results: a growing distrust of their abilities and an aversion toward the compos-
ing process itself.
What separated the five students who blocked from those who didn’t? It wasn’t skill; that
was held fairly constant. The answer could have rested in the emotional realm—anxiety,
fear of evaluation, insecurity, etc. Or perhaps blocking in some way resulted from variation
in cognitive style. Perhaps, too, blocking originated in and typified a melding of emotion
and cognition not unlike the relationship posited by Shapiro between neurotic feeling and
neurotic thinking.1 Each of these was possible. Extended clinical interviews and testing
could have teased out the answer. But there was one answer that surfaced readily in brief
explorations of these students’ writing processes. It was not profoundly emotional, nor was
it embedded in that still unclear construct of cognitive style. It was constant, surprising,
almost amusing if its results weren’t so troublesome, and, in the final analysis, obvious: the
five students who experienced blocking were all operating either with writing rules or with
planning strategies that impeded rather than enhanced the composing process. The five
students who were not hampered by writer’s block also utilized rules, but they were less
rigid ones, and thus more appropriate to a complex process like writing. Also, the plans
these non-blockers brought to the writing process were more functional, more flexible, more
open to information from the outside.
These observations are the result of one to three interviews with each student. I used
recent notes, drafts, and finished compositions to direct and hone my questions. This pro-
cedure is admittedly non-experimental, certainly more clinical than scientific; still, it did
lead to several inferences that lay the foundation for future, more rigorous investigation:
Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans 77
(a) composing is a highly complex problem-solving process2 and (b) certain disruptions of
that process can be explained with cognitive psychology’s problem-solving framework. Such
investigation might include a study using “stimulated recall” techniques to validate or dis-
confirm these hunches. In such a study, blockers and non-blockers would write essays.
Their activity would be videotaped and, immediately after writing, they would be shown their
respective tapes and questioned about the rules, plans, and beliefs operating in their writing
behavior. This procedure would bring us close to the composing process (the writers’ recall
is stimulated by their viewing the tape), yet would not interfere with actual composing.
In the next section I will introduce several key concepts in the problem-solving literature.
In section three I will let the students speak for themselves. Fourth, I will offer a cognitiv-
ist analysis of blockers’ and non-blockers’ grace or torpor. I will close with a brief note on
treatment.
Selected Concepts in Problem-Solving: Rules and Plans

As diverse as theories of problem-solving are, they share certain basic assumptions and
characteristics. Each posits an introductory period during which a problem is presented,
and all theorists, from Behaviorist to Gestalt to Information Processing, admit that cer-
tain aspects, stimuli, or “functions” of the problem must become or be made salient and
attended to in certain ways if successful problem-solving processes are to be engaged.
Theorists also believe that some conflict, some stress, some gap in information in these
perceived “aspects” seems to trigger problem-solving behavior. Next comes a process-
ing period, and for all the variance of opinion about this critical stage, theorists recognize
the necessity of its existence—recognize that man, at the least, somehow “weighs” pos-
sible solutions as they are stumbled upon and, at the most, goes through an elaborate
and sophisticated information-processing routine to achieve problem solution. Furthermore,
theorists believe—to varying degrees—that past learning and the particular “set,” direction,
or orientation that the problem solver takes in dealing with past experience and present
stimuli have critical bearing on the efficacy of solution. Finally, all theorists admit to a solu-
tion period, an end-state of the process where “stress” and “search” terminate, an answer
is attained, and a sense of completion or “closure” is experienced.
These are the gross similarities, and the framework they offer will be useful in under-
standing the problem-solving behavior of the students discussed in this paper. But since this
paper is primarily concerned with the second stage of problem-solving operations, it would
be most useful to focus this introduction on two critical constructs in the processing period:
rules and plans.
Rules
Robert M. Gagné defines “rule” as “an inferred capability that enables the individual to
respond to a class of stimulus situations with a class of performances.”3 Rules can be learned
directly4 or by inference through experience.5 But, in either case, most problem-solving theo-
rists would affirm Gagné’s dictum that “rules are probably the major organizing factor, and
quite possibly the primary one, in intellectual functioning.”6 As Gagné implies, we wouldn’t be
able to function without rules; they guide response to the myriad stimuli that confront us daily,
and might even be the central element in complex problem-solving behavior.
78 Mike Rose
Dunker, Polya, and Miller, Galanter, and Pribram offer a very useful distinction between
two general kinds of rules: algorithms and heuristics.7 Algorithms are precise rules that will
always result in a specific answer if applied to an appropriate problem. Most mathematical
rules, for example, are algorithms. Functions are constant (e.g., pi), procedures are routine
(squaring the radius), and outcomes are completely predictable. However, few day-to-day
situations are mathematically circumscribed enough to warrant the application of algorithms.
Most often we function with the aid of fairly general heuristics or “rules of thumb,” guidelines
that allow varying degrees of flexibility when approaching problems. Rather than operating
with algorithmic precision and certainty, we search, critically, through alternatives, using our
heuristic as a divining rod—”if a math problem stumps you, try working backwards to solu-
tion”; “if the car won’t start, check x, y, or z,” and so forth. Heuristics won’t allow the precision
or the certitude afforded by algorithmic operations; heuristics can even be so “loose” as to be
vague. But in a world where tasks and problems are rarely mathematically precise, heuristic
rules become the most appropriate, the most functional rules available to us: “a heuristic
does not guarantee the optimal solution or, indeed, any solution at all; rather, heuristics offer
solutions that are good enough most of the time.”8
Plans
People don’t proceed through problem situations, in or out of a laboratory, without some
set of internalized instructions to the self, some program, some course of action that, even
roughly, takes goals and possible paths to that goal into consideration. Miller, Galanter, and
Pribram have referred to this course of action as a plan: “A plan is any hierarchical process
in the organism that can control the order in which a sequence of operations is to be per-
formed” (p. 16). They name the fundamental plan in human problem-solving behavior the
TOTE, with the initial T representing a test that matches a possible solution against the per-
ceived end-goal of problem completion. O represents the clearance to operate if the com-
parison between solution and goal indicates that the solution is a sensible one. The second
T represents a further, post-operation, test or comparison of solution with goal, and if the two
mesh and problem solution is at hand the person exits (E) from problem-solving behavior.
If the second test presents further discordance between solution and goal, a further solu-
tion is attempted in TOTE-fashion. Such plans can be both long-term and global and, as
problem-solving is underway, short-term and immediate.9 Though the mechanicality of this
information-processing model renders it simplistic and, possibly, unreal, the central notion
of a plan and an operating procedure is an important one in problem-solving theory; it at
least attempts to metaphorically explain what earlier cognitive psychologists could not—the
mental procedures (see pp. 390–391) underlying problem-solving behavior.
Before concluding this section, a distinction between heuristic rules and plans should be
attempted; it is a distinction often blurred in the literature, blurred because, after all, we are
very much in the area of gestating theory and preliminary models. Heuristic rules seem to
function with the flexibility of plans. Is, for example, “If the car won’t start, try x, y, or z” a heu-
ristic or a plan? It could be either, though two qualifications will mark it as heuristic rather than
plan. (A) Plans subsume and sequence heuristic and algorithmic rules. Rules are usually
“smaller,” more discrete cognitive capabilities; plans can become quite large and complex,
composed of a series of ordered algorithms, heuristics, and further planning “sub-routines.”
(B) Plans, as was mentioned earlier, include criteria to determine successful goal-attainment
and, as well, include “feedback” processes—ways to incorporate and use information gained
from “tests” of potential solutions against desired goals.
One other distinction should be made: that is, between “set” and plan. Set, also called
“determining tendency” or “readiness,”10 refers to the fact that people often approach prob-
lems with habitual ways of reacting, appropriate to a specific problem,11 but much of the
literature on set has shown its rigidifying, dysfunctional effects.12 Set differs from plan in that
set represents a limiting and narrowing of response alternatives with no inherent process to
shift alternatives. It is a kind of cognitive habit that can limit perception, not a course of action
with multiple paths that directs and sequences response possibilities.
The constructs of rules and plans advance the understanding of problem-solving beyond
that possible with earlier, less developed formulations. Still, critical problems remain. Though
mathematical and computer models move one toward more complex (and thus more real)
problems than the earlier research, they are still too neat, too rigidly sequenced to approxi-
mate the stunning complexity of day-to-day (not to mention highly creative) problem-solving
behavior. Also, information-processing models of problem-solving are built on logic theo-
rems, chess strategies, and simple planning tasks. Even Gagné seems to feel more com-
fortable with illustrations from mathematics and science rather than with social science and
humanities problems. So although these complex models and constructs tell us a good deal
about problem-solving behavior, they are still laboratory simulations, still invoked from the
outside rather than self-generated, and still founded on the mathematico-logical.
Two Carnegie-Mellon researchers, however, have recently extended the above into a
truly real, amorphous, unmathematical problem-solving process—writing. Relying on pro-
tocol analysis (thinking aloud while solving problems), Linda Flower and John Hayes have
attempted to tease out the role of heuristic rules and plans in writing behavior.13 Their
research pushes problem-solving investigations to the real and complex and pushes, from
the other end, the often mysterious process of writing toward the explainable. The latter is
important, for at least since Plotinus many have viewed the composing process as unex-
plainable, inspired, infused with the transcendent. But Flower and Hayes are beginning, any-
way, to show how writing generates from a problem-solving process with rich heuristic rules
and plans of its own. They show, as well, how many writing problems arise from a paucity of
heuristics and suggest an intervention that provides such rules.
This paper, too, treats writing as a problem-solving process, focusing, however, on
what happens when the process dead-ends in writer’s block. It will further suggest that,
as opposed to Flower and Hayes’ students who need more rules and plans, blockers may
well be stymied by possessing rigid or inappropriate rules, or inflexible or confused plans.
Ironically enough, these are occasionally instilled by the composition teacher or gleaned
from the writing textbook.
“Always Grab Your Audience”—The Blockers

In high school, Ruth was told and told again that a good essay always grabs a reader’s
attention immediately. Until you can make your essay do that, her teachers and textbooks
putatively declaimed, there is no need to go on. For Ruth, this means that beginning bland
and seeing what emerges as one generates prose is unacceptable. The beginning is eve-
rything. And what exactly is the audience seeking that reads this beginning? The rule, or
Ruth’s use of it, doesn’t provide for such investigation. She has an edict with no determiners.
80 Mike Rose
Ruth operates with another rule that restricts her productions as well: if sentences aren’t
grammatically “correct,” they aren’t useful. This keeps Ruth from toying with ideas on paper,
from the kind of linguistic play that often frees up the flow of prose. These two rules con-
verge in a way that pretty effectively restricts Ruth’s composing process.
The first two papers I received from Laurel were weeks overdue. Sections of them were
well written; there were even moments of stylistic flair. But the papers were late and, overall,
the prose seemed rushed. Furthermore, one paper included a paragraph on an issue that
was never mentioned in the topic paragraph. This was the kind of mistake that someone with
Laurel’s apparent ability doesn’t make. I asked her about this irrelevant passage. She knew
very well that it didn’t fit, but believed she had to include it to round out the paper. “You must
always make three or more points in an essay. If the essay has less, then it’s not strong.”
Laurel had been taught this rule both in high school and in her first college English class; no
wonder, then, that she accepted its validity.
As opposed to Laurel, Martha possesses a whole arsenal of plans and rules with which
to approach a humanities writing assignment, and, considering her background in biology,
I wonder how many of them were formed out of the assumptions and procedures endemic
to the physical sciences.14 Martha will not put pen to first draft until she has spent up to two
days generating an outline of remarkable complexity. I saw one of these outlines and it
looked more like a diagram of protein synthesis or DNA structure than the time-worn pattern
offered in composition textbooks. I must admit I was intrigued by the aura of process (vs. the
static appearance of essay outlines) such diagrams offer, but for Martha these “outlines” only
led to self-defeat: the outline would become so complex that all of its elements could never
be included in a short essay. In other words, her plan locked her into the first stage of the
composing process. Martha would struggle with the conversion of her outline into prose only
to scrap the whole venture when deadlines passed and a paper had to be rushed together.
Martha’s “rage for order” extends beyond the outlining process. She also believes that
elements of a story or poem must evince a fairly linear structure and thematic clarity, or—
perhaps bringing us closer to the issue—that analysis of a story or poem must provide the
linearity or clarity that seems to be absent in the text. Martha, therefore, will bend the logic of
her analysis to reason ambiguity out of existence. When I asked her about a strained para-
graph in her paper on Camus’ “The Guest,” she said, “I didn’t want to admit that it [the story’s
conclusion] was just hanging. I tried to force it into meaning.”
Martha uses another rule, one that is not only problematical in itself, but one that often
clashes directly with the elaborate plan and obsessive rule above. She believes that
humanities papers must scintillate with insight, must present an array of images, ideas,
ironies gleaned from the literature under examination. A problem arises, of course, when
Martha tries to incorporate her myriad “neat little things,” often inherently unrelated, into
a tightly structured, carefully sequenced essay. Plans and rules that govern the con-
struction of impressionistic, associational prose would be appropriate to Martha’s desire,
but her composing process is heavily constrained by the non-impressionistic and non-
associational. Put another way, the plans and rules that govern her exploration of text
are not at all synchronous with the plans and rules she uses to discuss her exploration.
It is interesting to note here, however, that as recently as three years ago Martha was
absorbed in creative writing and was publishing poetry in high school magazines. Given
what we know about the complex associational, often non-neatly-sequential nature of the
poet’s creative process, we can infer that Martha was either free of the plans and rules
discussed earlier or they were not as intense. One wonders, as well, if the exposure to
three years of university physical science either established or intensified Martha’s con-
cern with structure. Whatever the case, she now is hamstrung by conflicting rules when
composing papers for the humanities.
Mike’s difficulties, too, are rooted in a distortion of the problem-solving process. When
the time of the week for the assignment of writing topics draws near, Mike begins to pre-
pare material, strategies, and plans that he believes will be appropriate. If the assignment
matches his expectations, he has done a good job of analyzing the professor’s inten-
tions. If the assignment doesn’t match his expectations, however, he cannot easily shift
approaches. He feels trapped inside his original plans, cannot generate alternatives, and
blocks. As the deadline draws near, he will write something, forcing the assignment to
fit his conceptual procrustian bed. Since Mike is a smart man, he will offer a good deal
of information, but only some of it ends up being appropriate to the assignment. This
entire situation is made all the worse when the time between assignment of topic and
generation of product is attenuated further, as in an essay examination. Mike believes
(correctly) that one must have a plan, a strategy of some sort in order to solve a problem.
He further believes, however, that such a plan, once formulated, becomes an exact struc-
tural and substantive blueprint that cannot be violated. The plan offers no alternatives,
no “sub-routines.” So, whereas Ruth’s, Laurel’s, and some of Martha’s difficulties seem
to be rule-specific (“always catch your audience,” “write grammatically”), Mike’s troubles
are more global. He may have strategies that are appropriate for various writing situations
(e.g., “for this kind of political science assignment write a compare/contrast essay”), but
his entire approach to formulating plans and carrying them through to problem solution is
too mechanical. It is probable that Mike’s behavior is governed by an explicitly learned or
inferred rule: “Always try to ‘psych out’ a professor.” But in this case this rule initiates a
problem-solving procedure that is clearly dysfunctional.
While Ruth and Laurel use rules that impede their writing process and Mike utilizes a
problem-solving procedure that hamstrings him, Sylvia has trouble deciding which of the
many rules she possesses to use. Her problem can be characterized as cognitive perplexity:
some of her rules are inappropriate, others are functional; some mesh nicely with her own
definitions of good writing, others don’t. She has multiple rules to invoke, multiple paths to
follow, and that very complexity of choice virtually paralyzes her. More so than with the previ-
ous four students, there is probably a strong emotional dimension to Sylvia’s blocking, but
the cognitive difficulties are clear and perhaps modifiable.
Sylvia, somewhat like Ruth and Laurel, puts tremendous weight on the crafting of her first
paragraph. If it is good, she believes the rest of the essay will be good. Therefore, she will
spend up to five hours on the initial paragraph: “I won’t go on until I get that first paragraph
down.” Clearly, this rule—or the strength of it—blocks Sylvia’s production. This is one prob-
lem. Another is that Sylvia has other equally potent rules that she sees as separate, uncom-
plementary injunctions: one achieves “flow” in one’s writing through the use of adequate
transitions; one achieves substance to one’s writing through the use of evidence. Sylvia
perceives both rules to be “true,” but several times followed one to the exclusion of the other.
Furthermore, as I talked to Sylvia, many other rules, guidelines, definitions were offered, but
none with conviction. While she is committed to one rule about initial paragraphs, and that
rule is dysfunctional, she seems very uncertain about the weight and hierarchy of the remain-
ing rules in her cognitive repertoire.
82 Mike Rose
“If It Won’t Fit My Work, I’ll Change It”—The Non-Blockers
Dale, Ellen, Debbie, Susan, and Miles all write with the aid of rules. But their rules differ from
blockers’ rules in significant ways. If similar in content, they are expressed less absolutely—
e.g., “Try to keep audience in mind.” If dissimilar, they are still expressed less absolutely,
more heuristically e.g., “I can use as many ideas in my thesis paragraph as I need and then
develop paragraphs for each idea.” Our non-blockers do express some rules with firm assur-
ance, but these tend to be simple injunctions that free up rather than restrict the composing
process, e.g., “When stuck, write!” or “I’ll write what I can.” And finally, at least three of the
students openly shun the very textbook rules that some blockers adhere to: e.g., “Rules like
‘write only what you know about’ just aren’t true. I ignore those.” These three, in effect, have
formulated a further rule that expresses something like: “If a rule conflicts with what is sensi-
ble or with experience, reject it.”
On the broader level of plans and strategies, these five students also differ from at least
three of the five blockers in that they all possess problem-solving plans that are quite func-
tional. Interestingly, on first exploration these plans seem to be too broad or fluid to be useful
and, in some cases, can barely be expressed with any precision. Ellen, for example, admits
that she has a general “outline in [her] head about how a topic paragraph should look” but
could not describe much about its structure. Susan also has a general plan to follow, but, if
stymied, will quickly attempt to conceptualize the assignment in different ways: “If my original
idea won’t work, then I need to proceed differently.” Whether or not these plans operate in
TOTE-fashion, I can’t say. But they do operate with the operate-test fluidity of TOTEs.
True, our non-blockers have their religiously adhered-to rules: e.g., “When stuck, write,”
and plans, “I couldn’t imagine writing without this pattern,” but as noted above, these are few
and functional. Otherwise, these non-blockers operate with fluid, easily modified, even easily
discarded rules and plans (Ellen: “I can throw things out”) that are sometimes expressed with
a vagueness that could almost be interpreted as ignorance. There lies the irony. Students
that offer the least precise rules and plans have the least trouble composing. Perhaps this
very lack of precision characterizes the functional composing plan. But perhaps this lack of
precision simply masks habitually enacted alternatives and sub-routines. This is clearly an
area that needs the illumination of further research.
And then there is feedback. At least three of the five non-blockers are an Information
Processor’s dream. They get to know their audience, ask professors and T.A.s specific ques-
tions about assignments, bring half-finished products in for evaluation, etc. Like Ruth, they
realize the importance of audience, but unlike her, they have specific strategies for obtaining
and utilizing feedback. And this penchant for testing writing plans against the needs of the
audience can lead to modification of rules and plans. Listen to Debbie:
In high school I was given a formula that stated that you must write a thesis paragraph
with only three points in it, and then develop each of those points. When I hit college I
was given longer assignments. That stuck me for a bit, but then I realized that I could
use as many ideas in my thesis paragraph as I needed and then develop paragraphs for
each one. I asked someone about this and then tried it. I didn’t get any negative feed-
back, so I figured it was o.k.
Debbie’s statement brings one last difference between our blockers and non-blockers into
focus; it has been implied above, but needs specific formulation: the goals these people
have, and the plans they generate to attain these goals, are quite mutable. Part of the muta-
bility comes from the fluid way the goals and plans are conceived, and part of it arises from
the effective impact of feedback on these goals and plans.
Analyzing Writer’s Block
Algorithms Rather Than Heuristics
In most cases, the rules our blockers use are not “wrong” or “incorrect”—it is good practice,
for example, to “grab your audience with a catchy opening” or “craft a solid first paragraph
before going on.” The problem is that these rules seem to be followed as though they were
algorithms, absolute dicta, rather than the loose heuristics that they were intended to be.
Either through instruction, or the power of the textbook, or the predilections of some of our
blockers for absolutes, or all three, these useful rules of thumb have been transformed into
near-algorithmic urgencies. The result, to paraphrase Karl Dunker, is that these rules do not
allow a flexible penetration into the nature of the problem. It is this transformation of heuristic
into algorithm that contributes to the writer’s block of Ruth and Laurel.
Questionable Heuristics Made Algorithmic
Whereas “grab your audience” could be a useful heuristic, “always make three or more
points in an essay” is a pretty questionable one. Any such rule, though probably taught to aid
the writer who needs structure, ultimately transforms a highly fluid process like writing into a
mechanical lockstep. As heuristics, such rules can be troublesome. As algorithms, they are
simply incorrect.
Set
As with any problem-solving task, students approach writing assignments with a variety of
orientations or sets. Some are functional, others are not. Martha and Jane (see note 14),
coming out of the life sciences and social sciences respectively, bring certain methodological
orientations with them—certain sets or “directions” that make composing for the humanities
a difficult, sometimes confusing, task. In fact, this orientation may cause them to misperceive
the task. Martha has formulated a planning strategy from her predisposition to see processes
in terms of linear, interrelated steps in a system. Jane doesn’t realize that she can revise the
statement that “committed” her to the direction her essay has taken. Both of these students
are stymied because of formative experiences associated with their majors—experiences,
perhaps, that nicely reinforce our very strong tendency to organize experiences temporally.
The Plan That Is Not a Plan
If fluidity and multi-directionality are central to the nature of plans, then the plans that Mike
formulates are not true plans at all but, rather, inflexible and static cognitive blueprints.15
Put another way, Mike’s “plans” represent a restricted “closed system” (vs. “open system”)
kind of thinking, where closed system thinking is defined as focusing on “a limited number
of units or items, or members, and those properties of the members which are to be used
are known to begin with and do not change as the thinking proceeds,” and open system
84 Mike Rose
thinking is characterized by an “adventurous exploration of multiple alternatives with strate-
gies that allow redirection once ‘dead ends’ are encountered.”16 Composing calls for open,
even adventurous thinking, not for constrained, no-exit cognition.
Feedback
The above difficulties are made all the more problematic by the fact that they seem resistant
to or isolated from corrective feedback. One of the most striking things about Dale, Debbie,
and Miles is the ease with which they seek out, interpret, and apply feedback on their rules,
plans, and productions. They “operate” and then they “test,” and the testing is not only
against some internalized goal, but against the requirements of external audience as well.
Too Many Rules—“Conceptual Conflict”
According to D. E. Berlyne, one of the primary forces that motivate problem-solving behavior
is a curiosity that arises from conceptual conflict—the convergence of incompatible beliefs or
ideas. In Structure and Direction in Thinking,17 Berlyne presents six major types of concep-
tual conflict, the second of which he terms “perplexity”:
This kind of conflict occurs when there are factors inclining the subject toward each of a
set of mutually exclusive beliefs.
(p. 257)
If one substitutes “rules” for “beliefs” in the above definition, perplexity becomes a useful
notion here. Because perplexity is unpleasant, people are motivated to reduce it by problem-
solving behavior that can result in “disequalization:”
Degree of conflict will be reduced if either the number of competing . . . [rules] or their

nearness to equality of strength is reduced.
(p. 259)
But “disequalization” is not automatic. As I have suggested, Martha and Sylvia hold to rules
that conflict, but their perplexity does not lead to curiosity and resultant problem-solving
behavior. Their perplexity, contra Berlyne, leads to immobilization. Thus “disequalization” will
have to be effected from without. The importance of each of, particularly, Sylvia’s rules needs
an evaluation that will aid her in rejecting some rules and balancing and sequencing others.
A Note on Treatment
Rather than get embroiled in a blocker’s misery, the teacher or tutor might interview the
student in order to build a writing history and profile: How much and what kind of writing
was done in high school? What is the student’s major? What kind of writing does it require?
How does the student compose? Are there rough drafts or outlines available? By what rules
does the student operate? How would he or she define “good” writing? etc. This sort of
interview reveals an incredible amount of information about individual composing processes.
Furthermore, it ofen reveals the rigid rule or the inflexible plan that may lie at the base of
the student’s writing problem. That was precisely what happened with the five blockers.
And with Ruth, Laurel, and Martha (and Jane) what was revealed made virtually immedi-
ate remedy possible. Dysfunctional rules are easily replaced with or counter-balanced by
functional ones if there is no emotional reason to hold onto that which simply doesn’t work.
Furthermore, students can be trained to select, to “know which rules are appropriate for
which problems.”18 Mike’s difficulties, perhaps because plans are more complex and perva-
sive than rules, took longer to correct. But inflexible plans, too, can be remedied by pointing
out their dysfunctional qualities and by assisting the student in developing appropriate and
flexible alternatives. Operating this way, I was successful with Mike. Sylvia’s story, however,
did not end as smoothly. Though I had three forty-five minute contacts with her, I was not
able to appreciably alter her behavior. Berlyne’s theory bore results with Martha but not with
Sylvia. Her rules were in conflict, and perhaps that conflict was not exclusively cognitive.
Her case keeps analyses like these honest; it reminds us that the cognitive often melds with,
and can be overpowered by, the affective. So while Ruth, Laurel, Martha, and Mike could
profit from tutorials that explore the rules and plans in their writing behavior, students like
Sylvia may need more extended, more affectively oriented counseling sessions that blend
the instructional with the psychodynamic.
Notes
1 David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles (New York: Basic Books, 1965).
2 Barbara Hayes-Ruth, a Rand cognitive psychologist, and I are currently developing an information-
processing model of the composing process. A good deal of work has already been done by Linda
Flower and John Hayes (see p. 393 of this article). I have just received—and recommend—their “Writing
as Problem Solving” (paper presented at American Educational Research Association, April, 1979).
3 The Conditions of Learning (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), p. 193.
4 E. James Archer, “The Psychological Nature of Concepts,” in H. J. Klausmeier and C. W. Harris, eds.,
Analysis of Concept Learning (New York: Academic Press, 1966), pp. 37–44; David P. Ausubel, The
Psychology of Meaningful Verbal Behavior (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1963); Robert M. Gagné,
“Problem Solving,” in Arthur W. Melton, ed., Categories of Human Learning (New York: Academic
Press, 1964), pp. 293–317; George A. Miller, Language and Communication (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1951).
5 George Katona, Organizing and Memorizing (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1940); Roger N.
Shepard, Carl I. Hovland, and Herbert M. Jenkins, “Learning and Memorization of Classifications,”
Psychological Monographs, 75, No. 13 (1961) (entire No. 517); Robert S. Wood-worth, Dynamics of
Behavior (New York: Henry Holt, 1958), chs. 10–12.
6 The Conditions of Learning, pp. 190–91.
7 Karl Dunker, “On Problem Solving,” Psychological Monographs, 58, No. 5 (1945) (entire No. 270);
George A. Polya, How to Solve It (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945); George A. Miller, Eugene
Galanter, and Karl H. Pribram, Plans and the Structure of Behavior (New York: Henry Holt, 1960).
8 Lyle E. Bourne, Jr., Bruce R. Ekstrand, and Roger L. Dominowski, The Psychology of Thinking
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971).
9 John R. Hayes, “Problem Topology and the Solution Process,” in Carl P. Duncan, ed., Thinking:
Current Experimental Studies (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1967), pp. 167–81.
10 Hulda J. Rees and Harold E. Israel, “An Investigation of the Establishment and Operation of Mental
Sets.” Psychological Monographs, 46 (1925) (entire No. 210).
11 Ibid.; Melvin H. Marx, Wilton W. Murphy, and Aaron J. Brownstein, “Recognition of Complex Visual
Stimuli as a Function of Training with Abstracted Patterns,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62
(1961), 456–60.
86 Mike Rose
12 James L. Adams, Conceptual Blockbusting (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1974); Edward DeBono,
New Think (New York: Basic Books, 1958); Ronald H. Forgus, Perception (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1966), ch. 13; Abraham Luchins and Edith Hirsch Luchins, Rigidity of Behavior (Eugene: Univ. of
Oregon Books, 1959); N. R. F. Maier, “Reasoning in Humans. I. On Direction,” Journal of Comparative
Psychology, 10 (1920), 115–43.
13 “Plans and the Cognitive Process of Writing,” paper presented at the National Institute of Education
Writing Conference, June 1977; “Problem Solving Strategies and the Writing Process,” College
English, 39 (1977), 449–61. See also footnote 2.
14 Jane, a student not discussed in this paper, was surprised to find out that a topic paragraph can be
rewritten after a paper’s conclusion to make that paragraph reflect what the essay truly contains. She
had gotten so indoctrinated with Psychology’s (her major) insistence that a hypothesis be formulated
and then left untouched before an experiment begins that she thought revision of one’s “major prem-
ise” was somehow illegal. She had formed a rule out of her exposure to social science methodology,
and the rule was totally inappropriate for most writing situations.
15 Cf. “A plan is flexible if the order of execution of its parts can be easily interchanged without affecting
the feasibility of the plan . . . the flexible planner might tend to think of lists of things he had to do; the
inflexible planner would have his time planned like a sequence of cause–effect relations. The former
could rearrange his lists to suit his opportunities, but the latter would be unable to strike while the
iron was hot and would generally require considerable ‘lead-time’ before he could incorporate any
alternative sub-plans” (Miller, Galanter, and Pribram, p. 120).
16 Frederic Bartlett, Thinking (New York: Basic Books, 1958), pp. 74–76.
17 Structure and Direction in Thinking (New York: John Wiley, 1965), p. 255.
18 Flower and Hayes, “Plans and the Cognitive Process of Writing,” p. 26.
3 Revision
Issues and Strategies
Betty Bamberg and Irene L. Clark
Revising a text “creates an effect analogous to driving with headlights.”

(Doug Downs, 2015)
A section written by Doug Downs in Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing
Studies (2015) is titled “Revision is Central to Developing Writing” (p. 66), a statement with
which all writers and writing teachers are likely to agree. Of course, there are people who
claim that they do their best work under pressure—typing or scribbling a draft at 3 a.m. the
morning before it is due, a process often accompanied by considerable stress. I have heard
this statement many times, but I doubt that it is true for most writers, and unlikely to be true
for students. A student writer who hastily writes an essay at 3 a.m. would probably be able to
write a better essay if he or she had left enough time to revise.
Downs defined revision as referring to the “significant development of a text’s ideas, struc-
ture, and/or design,” distinct from “line editing or copyediting to ‘polish’ a text” (p. 66), and
he then presented two “corollaries” pertaining to revision: (1) that unrevised writing “will
rarely be as well-suited to its purpose as it could be with revision,” and (2) that writers who
don’t revise are likely to see fewer positive results from their writing than those who build
time for feedback and revision” (p. 66). As is stated in the epigraph to this chapter, Downs
compared the revision process to driving with headlights:
The headlights reach only a fraction of the way to the destination; a writer can only
begin writing what they ‘see’ at the beginning. Driving to the end of the headlights first
reach—writing the first draft—lets the headlights now illuminate the next distance ahead.
(p. 66)
This chapter traces varying perspectives on what is involved in revision and discusses what
research and theory have revealed about the ways that writers, especially student writers,
revise and sometimes resist revising. It emphasizes the importance of teaching and demon-
strating revision and suggests ways for teachers to encourage students to revise in ways that
develop and shape the meaning of their texts and result in more effective pieces of writing.
Focusing on “revision” as an important theoretical and pedagogical concept in composition,
the chapter will address the following aspects of the topic:
1 Why “revision” was initially seen as a process of correcting errors.

2 How research and theory in cognitive development and the composing process have led
to a new concept of revision.
3 What research tells us about the ways that writers, especially student writers, revise.
88 Betty Bamberg and Irene L. Clark
4 What factors tend to inhibit or encourage meaningful revision.
5 What teachers can do to encourage students to revise in ways that develop and shape the
meaning of their texts.
The chapter also includes strategies that students can practice in class and adapt to their own
writing processes.
Different Concepts of Revision: Experienced versus Inexperienced

Writers
It is generally recognized that experienced writers rethink and reconsider their initial rhetori-
cal choices about content, development, organization, sentence structure, and word choice so
they can revise their work and improve it. They consider questions such as
•• How can I construct a more valid and convincing argument?

•• What example could I add to make this point clearer?
•• What is the most logical way to organize my argument?
•• Do I need to engage in additional research?
•• Have I adequately considered the values of my intended audience?
Inexperienced writers, however, especially student writers, typically focus on surface-level

editing. They ask questions such as
•• Is my grammar correct?
•• Is this word spelled correctly?
•• Do I need a comma here?
This second set of questions reflects an older view of revision, which considered it to be a
mechanical process involving little more than correcting errors or making minor changes in
sentence structure or word choice to improve style. The first set of questions, on the other
hand, illustrates a perspective on revision that has emerged from composing process research
and theory over the last 40 years. This perspective, which is concerned primarily with issues
of audience, purpose, content, organization, genre, and style, reconceptualizes revision as a
primary means of developing, elaborating, and shaping the intended meaning of a text.
Older Concepts of Revision

Unlike invention, which was a key concept in classical rhetoric, commentary that could
be construed as revision was rare in classical rhetorical theory. For Aristotle, composing
involved finding and structuring content, then polishing the sentences, and he “relegates
[alterations] to the sentence level, to the editing of forms and their arrangement” (Hodges,
1982, p. 26). Although Quintilian (1921) also commented on the importance of sentence-
level corrections, he recognized the possibility that new ideas could suddenly arise while
delivering a speech or reviewing a written composition and advocated integrating these
new insights into the discourse rather than rejecting them. However, the narrow definition
of the revision process as surface editing and correction continued to prevail. Throughout
the Middle Ages, imitation rather than invention was emphasized, and style was further
separated from content. During the Renaissance, the idea that revision primarily involved
changes at the sentence level was further strengthened when Ramus reorganized Aristotle’s
rhetoric, moving invention, arrangement, and logic to philosophy. Although both Francis
Bacon and Ben Jonson spoke out against the preoccupation with style and proposed a more
Revision 89
holistic view that would allow for revisioning of content and arrangement, their ideas failed
to gain acceptance (Hodges, 1982). As a result, rhetoric was limited to considering how
language might be used to “dress thought,” and rhetoricians became concerned with find-
ing the most effective tropes—”figures of thought”—which included metaphor, personi-
fication, and synecdoche (the substitution of the part for the whole), or “schemes,” which
included structures such as parallelism, ellipsis, and anaphora (repeating the same words at
the beginning of successive phrases or clauses to create emphasis) to express ideas (Covino
& Jolliffe, 1995, p. 23). Although the 18th-century rhetoricians Hugh Blair and George
Campbell explicitly rejected the narrow emphasis on style that characterized Renaissance
rhetoric and, instead, revived a concern for ideas and persuasion in rhetoric, nevertheless
their treatises focused on correctness and sentence-level changes insofar as they considered
revision (Hodges, 1982).
In the United States, error correction as a major emphasis in writing instruction initially
arose more from social conditions in late 19th-century America than from the rhetorical
tradition (Berlin, 1987; Connors, 1997). Robert Connors argued that the emphasis on error
correction in composition instruction arose from a linguistic insecurity that resulted from
changes in American society in the second half of the 19th century. As universities moved
away from studying classical languages and moved toward educating the new professional
classes, the place of rhetoric in the university curriculum changed dramatically from the
advanced study of effective persuasion to a concern with the ability to write acceptable com-
positions in English. In 1874, Harvard established an entrance examination, soon copied by
other universities, that required students “to write a short English composition, correct in
spelling, punctuation, grammar, and expression” (Bizzell, Herzberg, & Reynolds, 2000, p. 4).
When more than half of Harvard’s prospective students failed the exam, the university and
the press condemned students’ prior preparation and called for reform of the secondary cur-
riculum to improve their writing ability. However, Adams Sherman Hill, who oversaw the
Harvard entrance exam, thought that results from improved secondary instruction would not
be rapid enough and proposed that Harvard require “a temporary course in remedial writ-
ing instruction . . . of all incoming freshmen” (Connors, 1997, p. 11). In the instructional
model instituted at Harvard, subsequently copied by many other universities, students wrote
frequent short compositions, which their instructors then read and marked to indicate gram-
matical errors. After these essays were returned, students were often expected to rewrite
them to correct the errors. This approach to revision became an integral part of the “current-
traditional” approach to rhetoric that dominated both university and high school composi-
tion instruction until the 1960s, and it firmly established a concept of revision as rewriting to
correct grammatical errors.
Contemporary Concepts of Revision in the Composing Process

Revival of classical rhetoric in the 1960s led to a renewed interest in Aristotle’s rhetorical prin-
ciples, particularly his concern for audience and purpose, adapted for written rather than oral
discourse. Rhetorical theorists reclaimed invention as an essential component of composing and
drew on research in cognitive and developmental psychology to argue that language created
meaning. In this context, knowledge and meaning were, thus, viewed as “constructed,” rather
than observed and reported. In addition, scholarly and pedagogical interest in how writers
compose focused attention on revision as an important stage in the composing process. Initially,
composing was viewed as linear, with writers moving through discrete steps: first, prewriting,
or invention, then drafting, revision, and finally editing. Murray (1978), for example, divided
the process into three stages: first, prevision, which includes everything that precedes the first
draft; second, vision, the completion of a first or discovery draft in which the writer “stakes out
a territory to explore” (p. 87); and third, revision, which consists of everything a writer does to
the draft to develop a meaning that can be communicated to a reader. However, later theorists
and researchers rejected the linear model in favor of a recursive one in which writers moved
back and forth among the activities of invention, drafting, and revision throughout the com-
posing process (Flower & Hayes, 1981; Perl, 1979). During this ongoing process, writers could
revise at any point during composing and at any level—from the major units of discourse such
as the thesis or the main arguments to individual words and sentences. However, their primary
concern was always developing meaning in terms of purpose and audience.
Donald Murray (1978) characterized the new approach to revision as “everything writers
do to discover and develop what they have to say, beginning with the reading of a completed
first draft” (p. 87), as “internal revision.” He identified four aspects of discovery in the pro-
cess of internal revision. First, writers discover content and information, which leads them
to the second aspect—the discovery of form and structure. Third, writers discover meaning
through language itself. Fourth, writers find a voice, or point of view pertaining to their sub-
ject. Murray labeled the old approach to revision—proofreading that focused on conventions
of form, style, language, and mechanics—as “external revision.” Because the process para-
digm made discovering and developing meaning central to the composing process, composi-
tion teachers became concerned with encouraging what Murray called “internal revision.”
Questions of correctness—once the primary focus of revision—were to be addressed at the
end, only after questions regarding content, organization, and audience had been resolved.
To clearly distinguish the older concept of revision from the newer one, all changes involving
correctness were increasingly referred to as editing rather than as revision.
Murray’s expressivist approach to revision focused on self-expression and developing a per-
sonal voice. However, when later theorists and researchers looked at revision in academic and
professional writing, they found that writers needed to draw on their knowledge of discipline-
specific forms or genres and discourse conventions when revising. Alice Horning (2002), who
studied the revision processes of academic and workplace professional writers, discovered that
they draw on three different kinds of awareness as they revise: awareness of themselves as writ-
ers, awareness of strategies that reflect their personality preferences, and awareness of language
as language. These writers also rely on skills such as collaboration with colleagues, familiarity
with relevant genres, and focusing successfully on text and context to revise effectively.

What kinds of questions do you ask yourself when you reread your writing to revise it?
How well do they help you revise your writing? Are you aware of genre conventions
that you need to follow? Has past instruction or experience in composition influenced
the questions you ask yourself or the strategies you use to revise?
Revision Strategies of Student Writers

Although this new concept of revision emphasized its role in discovering and shaping mean-
ing, early composing process research showed that student writers typically viewed revision
as error correction and made only superficial changes in their texts. In Janet Emig’s (1971)
groundbreaking study of the composing processes of 12th graders, Lynn, the student writer
she described most extensively, recalled that her teacher made her revise by recopying essays
to correct errors and described the process as “punishment work” (p. 68).
Revision 91
Charles Stallard (1974) analyzed the writing behaviors of 12th-grade writers and observed
a number of aspects of composing, including revision. He found that the kind and amount
of revision characteristic of good writers differed from that of a group of randomly selected
student writers. Even though both groups were concerned about spelling and mechanics in
general, good writers made almost three times more revisions than writers in the random
group. Their major emphasis involved word choice, but they were more likely to make
multiple word, syntactic, and paragraph revisions. Even for the good writers, however, the
number of syntactic and paragraph changes was small.
In an exploratory study of upper-division college students, Beach (1976) found that some
students followed the approach to revision used by students in Stallard’s study. Identifying
these students as non-revisers, he found they relied on textbook formulas, expressed less
interest in the writing tasks, and limited the time and effort they spend on writing. However,
other students revised extensively and saw revision as an opportunity to discover and shape
their meaning. These extensive revisers conceived of their papers in holistic terms and used
subsequent drafts to work out their arguments and to make any necessary changes. Beach
attributed these differences to the students’ ability to evaluate their writing critically: an ability
present in the extensive revisers but lacking in the non-revisers.
Bridwell’s (1980) research, which focused exclusively on revision strategies, compared
more and less successful 12th-grade writers. To analyze her data, she developed a compre-
hensive classification system to describe the types of revisions that students made. Each revi-
sion was categorized according to one of six levels, beginning with surface-level changes in
mechanics and moving up to progressively more complex changes—individual words, then
phrases, clauses, sentences, multiple sentences, and finally the whole text. She also counted the
number of revisions made at three points during composing: in-process first drafts, between
drafts, and in-process second drafts. Bridwell found that both groups of students revised sub-
stantially more during the two in-process stages and made the greatest number of changes at
all levels while writing the second draft. However, the more successful writers made more
changes between drafts. Despite these differences, she found that surface- and word-level
revision accounted for over half of all revisions made by both the more and the less successful
writers. None of the students made revisions that involved the whole-text level, and very few
revisions were made at the sentence- or multiple-sentence level.
Research on basic or developmental writers shows that they focus almost exclusively on
editing individual words and sentences for correctness rather than making meaning-based
changes. In Perl’s case study of “unskilled college writers” (1979), the students continuously
proofread and edited their writing during composing. She concluded that they focused on
correct form to a degree that interfered with generating ideas and drafting. Despite these stu-
dents’ emphasis on proofreading and editing, many errors remained in their work.
A key research study on revision, conducted by Nancy Sommers (1980), compared revi-
sions made by college freshmen with those of experienced writers, including journalists,
editors, and academics, and found striking differences between their approaches to revision.
Because of its important insights, this essay is included as the reading at the end of this chapter.
For Reading and Discussion

Read “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers,” p. 110.
Be prepared to discuss the following questions in small groups:
(continued)
(continued)
1 What kind of revisions do experienced writers make? How are these different from
the revisions of student writers?
2 What is the attitude of student writers toward revising? What are their main con-
cerns? How do these differ from the attitudes and concerns of experienced writers?
3 How do the revising strategies of student and adult writers in Sommers’s study
relate to Donald Murray’s conception of internal and external revision?

How would you describe your revision process? Do you engage primarily in external
revision, focusing on words and sentences, or do you also use revision as a way of
discovering, shaping, and developing your meaning (internal revision)? How has past
writing instruction influenced your approach to revision?
Obstacles to Revision
Student Resistance to Revision

Given the acknowledged importance of revision to the creation of an acceptable or even
excellent text, why do students resist revising? Anne Becker (2006) in “A Review of
Writing Model Research Based on Cognitive Processes,” argued that “typically inexperi-
enced or novice writers do not take much time to develop detailed plans before writing,
and when confronted with the need for revision, they consider any rewriting as punitive”
(p. 25). Or students may believe that revision is a sign of failure, regarding suggestions to
revise as a personal affront, or that revision destroys the creativity of a first, perhaps more
spontaneous, draft.
Another explanation blames the nature of school-sponsored writing and classroom instruc-
tional approaches for creating obstacles to revision: school writing assignments often don’t
give students an opportunity to write for real audiences or purposes, while teachers may rein-
force a view of revision as error hunting. Monahan (1984), for example, found that seven of
the nine teachers in his study taught revision by having students write second drafts using a
grammar-based checklist. Moreover, an emphasis on editing and sentence-level revision can
occur even in a class in which a teacher employs a process approach and strategies such as peer
revision and multiple drafts to emphasize revision. Yagelski (1995) studied such a class and
found that students still focused their revision on surface and stylistic concerns. Despite the
writing workshop structure of the class, students revised in response to the teacher’s concep-
tion of “good” writing, which emphasized grammatical correctness, tight organization, and a
straightforward prose style. Most of the teacher’s comments on drafts focused on lower-level
concerns with virtually no attention given to ideas, and peer responses to drafts reflected simi-
lar concerns. As a result, students revised primarily to improve their grades and considered the
teacher to be the primary audience.
In addition, when revision involves larger textual elements and focuses on meaning, it
becomes a complex cognitive process. Flower, Hayes, Carey, Schriver, and Stratman (1986)
studied this complexity by comparing the cognitive processes used by experts and novice
Revision 93
student writers while revising. Basing their study on the Flower–Hayes cognitive model
of composing, they attempted to model the basic thinking process underlying revision and
looked for places where experts and novices made different decisions or handled the process
itself differently. They identified three major obstacles for beginning writers: detecting prob-
lems in the text, diagnosing the problems, and choosing a strategy to remedy the problems. In
their model, revision begins as writers review their text and evaluate it. To detect problems,
writers must evaluate the draft in terms of their goals or intentions and criteria for effective
writing. Detection, therefore, involves two complex constructive processes: first, represent-
ing the text through the act of reading and then representing one’s intentions. Expert writ-
ers are able to represent both their text and their intentions clearly and also have extensive
knowledge of criteria for effective writing. As a result, they are able to read their drafts
for rhetorical problems related to content, organization, genre, and audience as well as for
sentence-level problems of style and correct form. Novice writers, on the other hand, typi-
cally work with a vague representation of their texts. They may read meanings in their head
into the text and fail to realize these meanings are not actually present for a reader. In addi-
tion, they have difficulty representing the overall structure of a draft and so have trouble read-
ing a draft for rhetorical problems. Finally, because they are likely to have a very limited set
of criteria for evaluating writing, they are able to detect only a few problems.
Once writers sense that something is wrong in their texts, they must be able to turn
that detection into a diagnosis that suggests what needs to be done to correct the problem.
However, diagnosis requires writers to recognize and categorize problems, an ability that
novices don’t have. Experts are able to see the problems they identify as fitting within mean-
ingful, familiar categories and are then able to use their past experience and knowledge to
select strategies for revision. Novices, however, are able to categorize only a small number of
problems—usually at the word or sentence level—and possess a limited repertoire of revision
strategies. Therefore, the complex cognitive processes involved in revising, particularly at the
rhetorical level, explain why novice student writers consistently revise in more narrow and
limited ways than experienced writers.

What kinds of difficulties do you experience when you revise your drafts? Are you able
to identify problems in content, development, or organization as well as those involving
sentences and correct form? What techniques or strategies do you use when you revise?
The Role of Reflection in Revision

Recent scholarship concerned with revision focuses on the importance of having students
reflect in writing about how they plan to “re-see” a draft in order to revise it (Taczak, 2015;
Yancey, 1998). Defining reflection as purposeful meditation on experiences, Taczak (2015)
maintained that reflection can stimulate effective revision because it can prompt metacogni-
tion, “allowing writers to recognize what they are doing in that particular moment (cogni-
tion) as well as to consider why they made the rhetorical choices they did (metacognition)”
(p. 78). However, although encouraging students to reflect on rhetorical and stylistic choices
may motivate students to focus on revision and may result in an improved text, reflection
does not always have this desired effect. As is noted in a study by Kimberly Emmons (2003),
requiring students to develop a narrative of progress often “focuses their attention on personal
growth rather than recognizing that their writing could proceed in a variety of directions,
depending on the discursive situations they encounter” (p. 44). In Emmons’s study, although
the reflections in some cases did result in revision (one student talked about revising a thesis
and the thesis did improve), others used all the right terms in the reflection but the revised
essay was quite similar to the original. As Emmons phrased it, “they talked the talk but they
didn’t walk the walk” (p. 45).
More recently, Lindenman et al. (2018) published an intriguing study that demonstrated
the complex relationship between reflection and revision. The study was based on the idea
that “through reflection, students would avoid simplistic understandings of revision as edito-
rial changes and instead use their metacognitive writing knowledge to assess their work and
make meaningful changes in their texts” (p. 583). In this study, students were asked to revise
an essay completed earlier in the writing course and also to compose a reflective memoir to
accompany their revision. The requirement for the memoir was to have students discuss what
they learned about academic writing and about themselves as an academic writer over the
course of the semester. They were also asked to note the changes they made in their texts and
examine the reasons for those changes. Rubrics were developed for both the memoir and the
revised texts, the goal being to determine whether the reflection helped students revise their
work in significant ways and whether the quality of the reflections correlated with the quality
of the revisions.
Despite the premise on which the study was based, Lindenman et al. discovered that
reflection did not always inspire better revision. Although some students “did engage in
reflective thinking and writing, their revisions did not always result in substantive and effec-
tive reimaginings of their work” (p. 584), and the memoirs evaluated as most substantial did
not always result in substantial revision. Their conclusion was that a reflective component
alone may not provide “insight into a student’s actualized or applied knowledge, growth
and practice” and that there are often “disparities between students’ theoretical knowledge
and their ability (or motivation) to put that knowledge into practice” (p. 604). Their study
revealed what Harris argued in 2006—that “you can’t just think changes to an essay; you
need to make them” (p. 104).
For Discussion and Writing

Read “Revision and Reflection: A Study of (Dis)Connections between Writing
Knowledge and Writing Practice” by Lindenman et al. cited at the end of this chapter.
Why do you think there was not a stronger connection between the quality of the stu-
dents’ reflections and the revisions they made to their essays?
A Project: If you are teaching a writing class, you might wish to duplicate this
study by having your students revise a previously written essay and write a reflective
memoir about the changes they made. Using the rubrics for both the memoir and the
essay discussed in the Lindenman article, catalogue your results and discuss them with
classmates or other teachers.
Helping Students Revise Effectively: Intervening in the Composing

Process
Given the importance of revision in composing, students’ consistent tendency to view revi-
sion as correcting errors or making small changes in wording or sentence structure has led
Revision 95
rhetoricians and composition specialists to search for strategies that would encourage more
meaning-based revision. Beach (1976), who concluded that his non-revisers’ concept of revi-
sion reflected the attitudes of teachers and textbooks, recommended that we “provide alter-
native, helpful models of the revision process” (p. 164). Sommers (1980) also concluded that
students had been taught to revise in a “narrow and predictable way.” She observed that stu-
dents “have strategies for handling words and phrases, but don’t know what to do when they
sense something larger is wrong” (p. 383). Composition instruction, therefore, has focused
on expanding students’ understanding of revision to include developing and shaping mean-
ing, finding ways to intervene during the composing process that encourages meaning-based
revision, and teaching students strategies for revising at the rhetorical level.
Using Whole-Class Workshops and One-to-One Conferences to Encourage Revision

Ken Macrorie and Donald Murray, early proponents of the process approach, were among
the first to develop intervention strategies to help students revise drafts. Adapting a structure
used in creative writing classes, Macrorie created an in-class workshop that engaged the
whole class, guided by the teacher, in reading and responding to work in progress. Murray
also focused on students’ in-progress drafts, but he relied primarily on one-to-one confer-
ences. Both strategies continue to be used today, either in their original form or modified for
different settings and types of students.
In Writing to Be Read, Macrorie (1968) provided the rationale for his approach by explain-
ing that beginning writers need to gain experience “through engaging in critical sessions
with peers” (p. 85) if their writing is to improve. He later (1985) described the peer response
group as a “helping circle,” where students and the teacher give truthful responses to drafts
that students read aloud to the group. Because writers are anxious about receiving criticism,
Macrorie prohibited negative criticism at the beginning and allowed students to comment
only about those parts of the drafts that they liked. Once students experienced success by hear-
ing positive comments, then other students, assisted by the teacher, could begin to criticize
the drafts. Although teachers led the writing workshop, they gave up some of their author-
ity in what Macrorie (1970) called his “Third Way” of teaching. Rather than controlling all
aspects of the class, teachers must allow “students [to] operate with freedom and discipline,”
by giving them “real choices” and by encouraging them “to learn the way of experts” (p. 27).
Although he acknowledged that students cannot criticize writing unless they have developed
evaluation standards, Macrorie argued that students learn such standards primarily from the
responses of other students, rather than by having them imposed by the teacher, and that a
teacher “needs to encourage the writers to criticize upon their own two feet, and to evolve
their own standards” (1968, p. 85). Teachers assisted in this process by stating their opinions
and pointing out examples of what they consider to be good and bad writing by both student
and professional writers.
Like Macrorie, Donald Murray also endorsed supportive criticism of in-progress drafts
and diminished the authority of the teacher in order to increase students’ responsibil-
ity for their writing. However, he relied primarily on teacher–student conferences, rather
than on class workshops to encourage revision. Murray (1985) structured conferences with
students according to a basic pattern: first, students commented on their drafts; next the
teacher read or reviewed the drafts and responded to the students’ comments. Finally, the
students responded to the teacher’s responses. Murray (1985) explained that the purpose of
this structure is “to help students learn to read their own drafts with increasing effectiveness”
(p. 148). He described the conference as a “co-reading” of students’ texts, which helps them
read their writing more intensively and see its features more clearly. The teacher focused on
“what is working and what needs work,” made comments that were designed to stimulate
and encourage students to revise their drafts, and avoided offering evaluative generalizations.
Over the course of several conferences, students began to develop criteria for evaluating their
own work. After students had a grasp of evaluative criteria, Murray added in-class workshops
in which student writers read their work either to a small group or the whole class. However,
unlike Macrorie’s students, who offered first-draft freewriting for peer response, Murray’s
students revised their initial drafts before presenting them to a group.
Using Peer Response Groups to Encourage Revision

Peter Elbow’s work popularized peer response groups as a strategy for encouraging revision.
As the title of his book Writing without Teachers (1973) indicates, Elbow’s approach further
de-emphasized the role of the teacher by placing full responsibility for responding to drafts
on writers themselves. Elbow’s initial guidelines for listeners outlined a descriptive approach
to giving feedback: pointing to words and phrases they find particularly striking and effec-
tive or weak and empty; summarizing what they consider to be the main point, feelings, or
center of gravity; telling the writer what they experienced as they tried to read the writer’s
words carefully; and describing their perceptions through metaphors or analogies (e.g., talk-
ing about the writing by comparing it to voices, the weather, motion, clothing, terrain, color,
shape, etc.). However, Elbow’s later books and articles provided more structured guidelines
for peer response groups and placed a greater emphasis on helping students learn criteria for
good writing. In Sharing and Responding, Elbow and Belanoff (1989) expanded Elbow’s earlier
descriptive approach to responding and also added sections on analytic responding, reader-
based responding, and criterion-based or judgment-based responding. For example, readers
may ask for responses to specific features or dimensions of writing such as structure, point of
view, attitude toward the reader, diction, or syntax. In analytic responding, readers ask for
“skeleton feedback” about three main dimensions of a paper—reasons and support, assump-
tions, and audience. They may also play the “doubting and believing game,” in which the
reader is first asked to “believe (or pretend to believe) everything I have written” and give
more facts to build the writer’s case. Next, the reader is asked to “doubt everything” and give
arguments against the writer’s case (p. 66). In criterion-based or judgment-based responding,
which Elbow identified as useful when writers want to know how their writing measures up
to specific criteria, response groups respond in terms of traditional criteria for different types
of writing. For example, criteria for expository or essay writing include such dimensions as
focus on the task, content, clarity, organization, and mechanics. With these additions, Elbow
not only provided more direction for peer response groups but also encouraged writers to
respond to writing in terms of traditional evaluative criteria.
Using Computers to Encourage Revision

With the advent of computers and word-processing programs, theorists and researchers antic-
ipated that the new technology, which eliminated the need to retype or recopy entire texts
when revising, would encourage students to revise more extensively. They also hoped that the
greater ease of manipulating text (i.e., adding, deleting, or moving) would encourage more
meaning-based revisions. However, research results regarding the effect of computers and
word-processing programs on revision has been mixed. An early study by Hawisher (1987)
compared the amount of revision and quality of writing when advanced college freshmen
used computers and when they used pen and paper. In addition to receiving specific instruc-
tion on revising their writing, students also received specific instruction on the mechanics of
using a word processor to revise, completed self-assessment forms designed to prompt revi-
sion, and wrote out plans for revising their final drafts. Hawisher found that students not only
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revised more when using paper and pen than when using the computer but also that there
seemed to be no relationship between frequency of revision and quality ratings received by
the essays. In addition, there were no significant differences in quality rating between paper
and pen essays and those done on the computer. A later study involving average and above-
average 8th graders also found that papers produced using word processors were not higher in
quality than those written with pen and paper (Joram, Woodruff, Bryson, & Lindsay, 1992).
On the other hand, some research has shown word processing to have had a posi-
tive effect on revision and writing quality. For example, Owston, Murphy, and Wideman
(1992) compared revision strategies and writing quality when 8th-grade students, all expe-
rienced computer users, composed on a computer or by hand. They found that papers writ-
ten on computer received significantly higher-quality ratings than those written by hand.
However, computer revisions were likely to be microstructural rather than macrostructural
changes, and most revision took place at the initial drafting stage. In a study of basic col-
lege writers, McAllister and Louth (1988) found that those students who used computers
produced higher-quality revisions of assigned paragraphs than basic writers who did not
use computers. Reynolds and Bonk (1996) investigated the use of computer prompts to
encourage revision. In their study, half of the students in an intermediate college composi-
tion class had access to 24 generative and evaluative prompts that supported previous ideas
and instructions in the course about revision. The prompts could be self-initiated by writers,
but were also available through a keyboard template. Results showed that students using the
prompting system made more meaning-related changes in their texts and produced higher-
quality texts. Walker (1997), who compared the on-screen and off-screen revision processes
of developmental writers, found that results varied depending on students’ attitudes toward
revision. Those who were open to revision made more meaning changes when revising
on-screen, but others had difficulty revising both on- and off-screen. Pennington (2003)
reviewed a number of studies on the effects of computer use on the writing of ESL students.
Although results were mixed, later studies were more likely to have positive results and
showed that students revised more when using computers.
Despite some positive results, the effects of computers and word processing on compos-
ing remain problematic. Crafton (1996), who surveyed studies conducted after computer use
had become more common and students were routinely using word-processing programs to
write their papers, concluded that the computer introduces new problems and complexities
into the writing process and may, in some cases, emphasize the written product rather than
support the composing process. Eklundh (1994) found that computers encouraged local-
ized revision because the size of the screen limits the amount of text that can be reread and
reviewed, whereas Sharples (1994) suggested that the ease of making low-level revisions
might actually disrupt the composing process by encouraging students to engage in continu-
ous editing throughout the composing process. Moreover, text-editing tools such as gram-
mar and spelling checkers seem to reinforce a concept of revision as error correction and
surface-level changes. Heilker (1992) observed that students often respond to suggestions
from text-analysis programs as if they were directives from a person rather than a machine. As
a result, he concluded that “the writer–computer relationship is displacing and replacing the
writer–audience relationship in the rhetorical situation” (p. 65).
Research on the effect of computers on revision has shifted from the effect of word pro-
cessing on revision to the use of computers to facilitate peer revision, often in composition
classes taught in a computer lab. Brown (1997) discusses the benefits of “serial collaboration,”
in which students have an opportunity to have their work reviewed by five or more peers.
After training students to respond effectively to their peers, she advocates using the computer
for serial collaboration because it greatly simplifies the logistics of the process. Honeycutt
(2001), who compared e-mail and synchronous conferencing, found that students rated
e-mail as more serious and helpful than chats even though they made greater reference to
writing and response tasks using chats. Tuzi (2001), who looked at the impact of e-feedback
on the revisions of ESL writers, found that although students could see benefits to e-feedback,
they generally preferred oral feedback. Liu and Sadler (2003) also found that face-to-face
communication between L2 peers was more effective even though students using computers
made more comments.
Today, most, if not all, high school and college students use word processing when writing
essays, and computer use has been integrated into all aspects of composing and composition
instruction. Given the widespread use of computers and word processing, teachers need to
be aware of their limitations as well as their potential. As the research makes clear, computers
and word processing do not automatically lead students to make substantive revisions. Instead,
the kinds of revision that students make reflect their conception of revision and their goals in
revising. In some cases, therefore, computers may reinforce a focus on editing and sentence-
level revision. Computers and word processing will facilitate meaning-based revision only
if students view revision as a process of shaping the text in terms of purpose and audience.
Students must also be able to identify the types of larger changes that are needed and have a
repertoire of rhetorical strategies at their command to make the needed changes. As a result,
teachers need to provide classroom instruction and responses to drafts that will prepare stu-
dents to take advantage of the computer’s potential for facilitating substantive revision.

When you write essays for class, do you compose your first draft on the computer or
by hand? How does the computer affect the way you revise? Do most of your com-
puter revisions involve sentence-level changes in words and incorrect forms rather than
changes in content, development, or organization? How frequently do you revise when
composing on a computer? Do you print out a draft and revise on paper at any point in
the process? Share your response in small groups.
Using Direct Instruction to Encourage Revision

Growing awareness of the importance of genre in shaping texts and the complexity of revision
has led teachers to provide direct instruction that helps students understand criteria for evalu-
ating different genres and develop a repertoire of revision strategies. For example, writers of
narrative texts are often admonished to “show, don’t tell,” while writers of analytic arguments
are expected to provide well-supported claims. The type of instruction, therefore, needs to be
tailored to the kind of writing students are being asked to do. Calkins and Bleichman (2003),
who teach revision to elementary children and focus on narratives, offer mini-lessons on
topics such adding dialogue and showing rather than telling as well as suggestions for adding
and deleting text. Gilmore (2007), whose book Is It Done Yet? Teaching Adolescents the Art of
Revision targets adolescents and the formal analytic essay, provides instruction on revising each
section of an essay’s content—introductions, organization, incorporating evidence, conclu-
sions, and interpreting texts and passages.
Instruction designed to help students compose texts in specific genres may also assist them
in revising their texts. For example, Felton and Herko (2004) use in-class dialogue to con-
duct an argumentative writing workshop that helps students develop a complex two-sided
Revision 99
argument that acknowledges an opposing-side claim and offers a counterargument to that
claim. To help students move from oral to written argument, they give them a graphic organ-
izer (PREP—position, reason, explanation, and proof) that asks them to state their position
on the issue, their reason for the position, an explanation for the reason, and proof, or evi-
dence for the explanation. After students have written their arguments, they use a revision
worksheet based on the PREP organizer to evaluate their work and make needed revisions.
Hillocks (1979, 1983) developed an instructional program in which high school students
observed and recorded sensory perceptions to help them write descriptive essays with more
specific details and another program in which students engaged in inquiry to help them write
more effective definitions. Research studies confirmed that students receiving instruction
wrote papers superior to those who received only an assignment. Because both instructional
programs used a process approach that emphasized invention and revision, students undoubt-
edly made use of their genre knowledge when revising their texts as well as when initially
drafting them.
Instruction can also help more advanced students learn rhetorical strategies that could be
used for both drafting and revising essays. Harris (2006) in Rewriting: How to Do Things with
Texts presents sophisticated strategies for developing and revising critical academic essays that
analyze one or more complex texts. In They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic
Writing, Graff and Birkenstein (2006) give students “templates” that help them move between
the ideas in texts and their own response to those ideas. They argue that these templates
help students focus not only on “what is being said, but on the forms that structure what
is being said” (p. xi). For example, to show agreement with another writer’s position, stu-
dents might write “She argues_______, and I agree because_______” (p. 8), while writers
can express disagreement using a template such as “I think X is mistaken because she over-
looks__________” (p. 55).
Although most instruction in revision has focused on global revision, students can also
benefit from sentence-level revision that moves beyond correcting errors and helps them
write more stylistically effective sentences. In Writing to be Read (1970), Macrorie gives
guidelines for improving style through techniques such as eliminating forms of “to be”
(e.g., is, was, etc.), “tightening” by eliminating unnecessary words, and using active rather
than passive voice. Gilmore (2007) includes a chapter on revising style that shows stu-
dents how to revise sentences to improve syntax and clarity by using precise word choice,
concise language, and grammatically correct syntax. Williams’s (2003) Style: The Basics of
Clarity and Grace presents ten sentence-level revision lessons, each of which addresses a
different aspect of style and includes advanced topics such as sentence emphasis, shape,
and elegance.
Research on the Effectiveness of Intervention Strategies

What evidence do we have that intervening during the composing process prompts more
extensive and meaningful revision? Because peer group and teacher responses to drafts are
usually part of a general instructional approach, it is difficult to isolate the effect of these strate-
gies on revision. In addition, researchers have been more interested in whether instructional
strategies improve students’ writing rather than in the effect on students’ revision practices.
For example, Clifford (1981) studied the effect of composing in stages where writing was
taught as a process, and students wrote multiple drafts of their essays. In the experimental
classes, students engaged in brainstorming, freewriting, and peer response groups that used
feedback sheets to guide group discussion about sentence structure and syntax, paragraph
patterns and structure, and support for generalizations. Students also evaluated their peers’
papers, using an evaluation sheet, based on criteria developed collaboratively by the class,
that indicated the strongest and weakest parts of the paper, and made specific suggestions
for revisions. At the end of the term, the writing of these students was compared to that of
students who were taught by a traditional “product” approach, in which the teacher read and
evaluated only finished essays. In these classes, revision was optional and occurred only after
students had received comments and a grade from their teacher. Clifford found that students
in the process writing classes wrote essays that were significantly better than those written by
students in the traditional classes. Although he attributed much of the improvement in writ-
ing ability to the peer workshops that focused on revision, undoubtedly other aspects of the
class also had an effect, so the total approach, rather than peer response alone, was responsible
for students’ improved writing.
Although peer response groups have been a popular and highly recommended instruc-
tional strategy for encouraging students to revise, a number of studies have discovered dif-
ficulties that may arise when they are used. For example, Kraemer (1993) found that some
students were uncomfortable being critical and, therefore, chose to be nice rather than help-
ful. When Styslinger (1998) investigated students’ views on peer revision, students reported
that they generally focused on sentence-level problems and discussed ways to edit papers.
Many of her students also expressed frustration with the peer revision process. They com-
plained about the comments made by peers, describing them as too limiting, general, or nice
and not always based on a careful reading of the paper. Students also judged the value of peer
comments in relation to their perceptions of a peer’s ability and course grade. In general, they
wanted teachers to play a larger role during the peer revision process. Styslinger concluded
that teachers could improve peer groups by teaching students how to comment, reinforcing
careful readings and responses, and allowing enough time for the process.
Further insights into the difficulties of using peer response groups effectively can be found
in studies that focus on the interaction and dynamics within these groups. Carol Berkenkotter
(1984) studied the comments made by three students participating in a peer response group in
her freshman composition class. After discovering that students responded to peer readers in
“significantly different ways depending on the writer’s personality, level of maturity, and abil-
ity to handle writing problems” (p. 313), she concluded that these differences made it difficult
to make generalizations about the effect of peer response groups on revision and that using
peer response groups effectively was neither simple nor straightforward. In another study,
Thomas Newkirk (1984) investigated the differences between instructor and peer evalua-
tion by comparing the responses that freshmen English students and instructors gave to four
papers, in which students were asked to use personal experience to support generalizations.
Before the papers were evaluated, mechanical errors in spelling and punctuation were cor-
rected so that these factors would not enter into the evaluations. When Newkirk compared
students’ and teachers’ evaluations, he found that they often used different criteria in judging
student work. For example, students consistently responded to papers in terms of whether
they could “relate to” the topic, whereas teachers rarely expressed a concern for such per-
sonal identification. Given their use of different criteria, Newkirk concluded that peer groups
might be limited in their ability to provide an adequate response to student papers without
careful preparation and training.
In a study specifically designed to investigate the effect of teacher comment and self-
evaluation on revision, Beach (1979) compared students who used a self-evaluation guide
to revise drafts, received teacher responses to drafts, or were told to revise on their own.
After analyzing the amount and kind of revision that resulted with each of these instruc-
tional strategies, he found that students who received teacher evaluation showed a greater
degree of change, higher fluency, and more support in their final drafts than students who
received no evaluation or who used the self-evaluation forms. Moreover, students who used
the self-evaluation guides engaged in no more revising than those who were asked to revise
Revision 101
on their own without any assistance. Beach concluded the self-evaluation forms were inef-
fective because students had received little instruction in self-assessment and were not used to
detaching themselves critically from their writing. As a result, he recommended that teachers
“provide evaluation during the writing of drafts” (p. 119).
Audience and purpose are central concerns of experienced writers when they revise, and
several research studies examined the effect of directing students’ attention to these aspects
of composing. Roen and Wylie (1988) conducted a study that asked students to focus on
audience before revising an essay by asking them to list things their readers (specified as their
teacher and peers) would know about their topic and those things they would not know.
Students who considered their audience during revision received higher holistic scores than
those who did not. Studies by Wallace and Hayes (1991) and Wallace, Hatch, Hayes, Miller,
Moser, and Silk (1996) focused on changing students’ task definition when revising by illus-
trating strategies for making global revisions. In both studies, students received eight minutes
of instruction that used overhead transparencies to contrast the difference between local and
global revisions of a text. Instruction also contrasted an expert revision procedure—first read-
ing through the entire text to identify major problems—with a novice approach—correcting
local errors line-by-line. Results found a significant increase in global revision and essay qual-
ity for students enrolled in regular first-year composition sections, but not for basic writers.
Therefore, the authors concluded that the regular composition students probably possessed
fundamental revision skills, and the instruction prompted or reminded them to use these skills.
Although peer response groups and teacher feedback during the composing process can
promote revision, the kinds of revision and their effectiveness will depend upon the type
of comments students receive. Teacher comments that focus on sentence-level correctness
will reinforce students’ tendency to see revision as editing rather than an opportunity to re-
envision their content and organization. Peer comments may be ineffective or misleading if
students are unable to identify weaknesses in a text and to suggest alternatives. In the cogni-
tive model of revision proposed by Flower, Hayes, Carey, Schriver, and Stratman (1986),
writers must first be able to detect a problem, then diagnose the problem, and finally draw on
a knowledge of rhetorical strategies and use them to modify the text to remedy the problem.
Direct instruction in the characteristics of specific genres and learning to evaluate these genres
is therefore critical to the success not only of peer response groups but also to writers’ ability
to revise independently.
The research published in the recent study by Lindeman st al. (2018) suggests the value
of self-directed revision. Their study indicated that “self-directed revisers often addressed
higher-order issues”and “were better able to diagnose a writing problem, identify a solution,
and work to solve that problem in the revision” (p. 599). Their study also suggests that teach-
ers direct students’ attention to the why of a revision over the what.
Adapting Intervention Strategies for a Wide Range of Contemporary Students

Because of the difficulties encountered in intervening effectively during the composing pro-
cess, the individual conferences, writing workshops, and peer response groups popularized
by Macrorie, Murray, and Elbow, along with the classroom structures for implementing
them, have been adapted by later rhetoricians and composition specialists to make them more
workable and effective. Because these strategies were initially designed for students in regular
first-year or advanced composition classes, they often did not work for younger or less able
students. In addition, they initially relied primarily on an inductive approach to developing
criteria for effective writing. Most adaptations are more structured and directive than the
strategies originally proposed and, thus, are appropriate for a wider range of students and
classroom settings.
Adapting the Whole-Class Workshop
The whole-class workshop is now often used as an instructional strategy to teach students
criteria for evaluating writing and to model the peer review process. Most students, especially
younger and less able writers, need direct instruction in evaluating writing and guidance in
responding to the writing of peers. Connors and Glenn (1995) offer the following guidelines
for conducting successful whole-class workshops: “(1) use examples of strong writing so
students can easily recognize a paper’s strengths, (2) hand out copies of a student’s paper in
advance and ask other students to read and write comments before the class workshop begins,
(3) have the writer read his/her paper aloud and then ask for guidance on specific concerns”
(p. 45). Axelrod, Cooper, and Warriner (1994) suggest an alternative approach that uses an
anonymous draft on the same or a similar assignment written by a student in another class.
During the whole-class workshop, teachers explain the evaluative criteria to be used and
consciously model the kinds of question and response that students should use in responding
to each other’s drafts.
Adapting Individual Conferences

Nancie Atwell (1987) has adapted Murray’s conference approach for the secondary school
curriculum by conducting all conferences within the classroom. These conferences are at the
center of an overall approach to writing instruction in which all class activities center on writ-
ing and responding. To increase student involvement, Atwell refers to students as “authors,”
and students write primarily for themselves and their peers. In the first edition of In the Middle,
Atwell (1987) recommends scheduling large blocks of class time for writing, ideally every day,
but at least three consecutive days a week. In her classroom, students choose the topics and
forms for their writing projects, and also move through the writing process at their own pace.
They revise their drafts in response to feedback received during short conferences with the
teacher, with each conference focusing on only one aspect of writing at a time (i.e., content,
organization, development, etc.). In addition, students may confer with a peer or use a list
of questions that help them confer with themselves about possible revisions. They develop
criteria for evaluating and revising their writing through various activities: participating in
brief mini-lessons where the teacher presents writing strategies, by seeing what works in the
writing of other students and professional writers, and participating in “share” sessions, where
they read their own work and respond to the writing of other students. Finally, students learn
grammar and mechanics in context, primarily through editing conferences with the teacher.
Adapting Peer Response Groups

Elbow’s “teacherless” peer response groups have been widely adopted as a strategy for
encouraging revision. However, these groups have often worked better in theory than in
practice (typical problems were discussed earlier in the section that examined research on
intervention strategies), and Elbow himself adapted peer response groups by providing the
more structured and directive approaches found in Sharing and Responding (1989). When peer
response groups work, however, they have many benefits. Anne Gere (1987) pointed out that
they are particularly effective in addressing the problem of audience awareness and provide an
opportunity for collaborative learning in which students come to understand how knowledge
is socially constructed. Lindemann (1995) believes that the peer workshop is “one of the best
ways to teach students to become independent critics” (p. 202).
Given their potential value in developing students’ writing skills, many teachers and
researchers have looked for ways to overcome the difficulties that can arise when using peer
response groups. For example, Hacker (1996) focused on systematically training students
Revision 103
in peer response techniques. For each of the first three writing assignments, he modeled
examples of successful peer response episodes. In addition, some students had two individual
conferences with him where they reviewed two drafts that they had read prior to the confer-
ence. In the conferences, he and the student discussed issues to be addressed in an upcoming
peer evaluation workshop. Hacker found that those students who had conferences with him
asked more questions of their peers when they were in the role of writer and made more
responses when in the role of responder. He concluded that students generally don’t know
how to respond to drafts in “consistent, systematic ways” and “[t]he time and care taken by
writers before peer response determines in large part the types and amount of commentary”
that students give (p. 125). Although conferring with students before they participate in peer
response groups is time-consuming and too labor-intensive to be practical in most settings,
Hacker’s success with his approach illustrates the importance of carefully preparing and guid-
ing students before they respond to papers written by their peers.
Lindemann (1995) outlines procedures for improving the effectiveness of peer response
workshops that can be used in many classroom settings. She observes that writing workshops
need careful planning because “students aren’t accustomed to working in groups” and “need
explicit instructions for using their time in groups constructively” (p. 199). Teachers must
also give students a language for discussing their work and assign concrete, manageable tasks.
She recommends dividing the class into heterogeneous groups of five to seven students that
remain together for the entire term and suggests beginning with brief tasks. At the beginning
of a term, workshop groups might, for example, examine only the first paragraph of an essay
or a single paragraph in detail for ten or 15 minutes. As they become more experienced, they
would gradually address larger and more difficult tasks that would require more time to com-
plete. She also recommends that students, guided by the teacher, generate their own list of
evaluative criteria stated in language they understand. Although teachers monitor the groups
to ensure that they stay on task or to help them refocus the discussion, it is important for them
to stay in the background if students are to become independent critics.
Virtually all adaptations recommend that students write as well as talk during the peer
response workshops so that writers have a written record of critical comments that they can refer
to when they revise. Sometimes students are asked to write comments on a peer’s draft or on a
blank piece of paper that is stapled or clipped to the draft. However, structured peer response
forms are a popular method for guiding students’ responses and providing specific feedback. For
these forms to work successfully, they must be carefully designed and linked to prior classroom
instruction. According to the model developed by Flower and her colleagues (1986), the first
steps in the revision process are detecting and diagnosing problems. Because novice student
writers have difficulty with these steps, particularly in identifying rhetorical problems, a well-
designed peer response form will help students focus on the relevant rhetorical issues.
The following is an example of a peer response form that could be used in conjunction
with the draft essay on pages 00–00. It focuses the reader’s attention on argument strategies,
audience, and development. If students were evaluating a different type of essay, a personal
narrative for example, the form would need to be modified to focus students’ attention on
different aspects of writing (i.e., those that make for an effective narrative). The form assumes
that students have had previous instruction regarding the rhetorical principles that it asks them
to analyze. In addition, students need instruction on strategies that can be used to eliminate
the problems that have been identified if they are to revise successfully.
English 1 Title of Essay:

Peer Suggestion Sheet
Your Name: Writer:
1 Is there a clear thesis in the essay? If so, locate and write down the thesis statement.
If not, what do you think that the thesis statement seems to be? What do you think
about the writer’s thesis?
2 What are two reasons that the writer gives to support his/her thesis? Are these effec-
tive? Why or why not?
3 Has the writer considered any objection(s) that a reader might make to the position
he/she takes? If so, how does the writer deal with the objection(s)? If not, what
objections can you think of that the writer should consider?
4 Where would you like to see more development, specifics, or details? In other
words, where do you want to know more?
5 How well could you follow the general flow or arrangement of the essay? Were
there places that confused you? If so, explain what they were and why they were
confusing? Is the essay written in a five-paragraph form? If so, what suggestions can
you make to the writer to change that structure?
6 Are the transitions between sentences and paragraphs easy to follow? Point to places
where the transitions are unclear.

The essay below is a draft written in response to an assignment that asked the writer to take
and support a position on an issue. If this writer were a student in your class, what would
be the main rhetorical problems—audience, content, development, and organization—
that you would point out as needing revision? Select two or three rhetorical problems and
write comments that you might put on a paper to guide this writer’s revision.
PC Is Ridiculous!
A debate has scourged the United States for several decades regarding the issue of “PC.” The
abbreviation is often confused with several different means, such as Personal Computer, President’s
Choice, but instead I am addressing the coined term “Political Correctness.” Everyday the debate
about PC becomes a more prominent topic in the classroom, the newspapers, and casual conversa-
tion and people are getting sick of it.
The truth of the matter is actually simple. No matter what Stanley Fish might claim, politi-
cal correctness stifles free speech and will ultimately lead to a completely repressive society. At this
point, students are afraid to open their mouths and say what they really think because they are
afraid of being labeled “racist” or “sexist.” Is this what education is about? Is this what our society
has come to? Isn’t it time we stopped being afraid of telling the truth?
Our country was founded on the Bill of Rights and the first amendment to that document guar-
antees freedom of speech. If the PC people continue to make policy in our colleges and universities,
free speech will no longer be a guaranteed right for students. Are students supposed to be considered
second citizens? Isn’t the university a place where people can speak freely? The PC movement has
gotten completely out of hand and all policies concerned with it on campus ought to be eliminated.
Helping Students Become Independent Revisers

If students are to write effectively for different audiences and purposes throughout their aca-
demic and professional lives, they must become confident writers who can move through the
Revision 105
composing process independently. Classroom instruction, along with feedback from teachers
and peers, all contribute to helping students become independent revisers. However, most
students will benefit from developing procedures and strategies for revising without the sup-
port of teachers and peers.
In her text Work in Progress, Lisa Ede (1989) asks students to identify their preferred com-
posing style and to analyze and monitor their writing process. Drawing on these insights,
students then develop personal guidelines for revision that include reminders about typical
problems, strategies successfully used in the past to address these problems, and productive
work habits that will lead to successful revision. Ede provides students with a practical, three-
stage process for revising that begins with asking the “BIG” questions about focus, content,
and organization, next considers coherence, and finally examines stylistic options.
The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing by Axelrod and Cooper, which can be accessed in mul-
tiple editions, offers a comprehensive approach to revision that is linked to instruction on
critical features of different genres of writing and fits within the overall writing process. The
authors advise students to begin their revisions by getting a critical reading from a classmate,
friend, or family member. Then, they outline a detailed procedure for students to follow
when revising. First, students reread their draft straight through to get an objective overview
and identify possible problems. Next, they make a scratch outline of the essay’s development
and a two-column chart of a revision plan. In the left column, the student lists the basic fea-
tures of the writing task assigned. For example, if the purpose of the assignment was to explain
a concept, the list would include such features as concept focus, a logical plan, clear defini-
tions, and careful use of sources. However, if students were writing about a remembered
event, they would need to consider different features: a well-told story, vivid presentation of
significant scenes and people, and an indication of the event’s significance. Students then ana-
lyze their drafts in terms of the basic features, identifying problems to be solved by referring
to questions provided in a critical reading guide. Finally, using detailed suggestions from the
book, students consider ways to solve the problems identified. The revision process created
by Axelrod and Cooper models the strategies characteristic of expert, experienced writers. If
students repeat these procedures as they revise each assignment, they are likely to learn strate-
gies and internalize an approach that will enable them to revise independently whenever they
have a writing project.

Do you usually find that teachers’ oral or written comments on your writing, either
drafts or final copies, are helpful? How do you make use of their comments? What has
been your experience with peer response groups? Have you found them helpful? If so,
in what ways? If not, why weren’t they helpful? Has class instruction given you strate-
gies for revising content? Style? Do you have a specific plan or strategy for revising
independently? If so, what is it? Share your answers in small groups.
Conclusion
Revision is acknowledged as crucial to shaping and discovering meaning during composing.
However, helping students learn to make meaning-based revisions is a challenging task. To
begin, students must develop a different concept of revision. Instead of viewing it as chang-
ing sentences and words or hunting for errors, they need to see it as a process of making
changes in content and organization and of shaping the text in terms of their purpose and
audience. Next, students must learn criteria for evaluating writing. Most students need direct
instruction not only in gaining an understanding of these criteria but also in applying them.
Teachers play a crucial role in providing this instruction, but providing such instruction can
be challenging. Not only is the writing process itself complex, but school-sponsored writing
also often lacks real purposes and audiences. Moreover, classroom structures usually constrain
and limit the composing process. Despite these difficulties, knowledgeable teachers can cre-
ate classroom environments that encourage and support substantive revision. If students learn
criteria for evaluating their own writing and that of their peers and can draw on a repertoire
of rhetorical strategies for revision, they will be able to use revision as a means of discovering
meaning and shaping their texts for specific audiences and purposes.

Look at a composition textbook designed for high school students and a rhetoric used by
first-year composition classes. Compare the concept of revision that each presents. What
strategies does each book recommend to help students revise effectively? How would
you evaluate these concepts and strategies based on what you have read in this chapter?

Calkins, L., & Bleichman, P. (2003). The craft of revision. Portsmouth, NH: Firsthand.
Although designed for elementary students, the revision strategies illustrated could be adapted for
use with older writers who are writing narrative/descriptive essays.
Christiansen, M.S. & Bloch, J. (2016). Papers are never finished, just abandoned: The role of writ-
ten teacher comments in the revision process. Journal of Response to Writing, 2(1): 6–42.
This study examines how four second-language (L2) students responded to comments on a series
of three papers. The results show that students overwhelmingly followed the strategy training
given during class on how to respond to teacher’s comments; however, the strategies used to
make changes did not always result in a positive revision.
Felton, M. K., & Herko, S. (2004). From dialogue to two-sided argument: Scaffolding adolescents’
persuasive writing. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 47: 672–683.
Describes classroom activities that enable students to draft and then revise persuasive essays to
create effective arguments.
Gilmore, B. (2007). “Is it done yet?” Teaching adolescents the art of revision. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
An excellent resource that gives specific classroom activities for revising both content and style.
Graff, G., & Birkenstein, C. (2006). They say/I say: The moves that matter in academic writing. New
York and London: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Focuses on strategies for responding to texts and incorporating them in researched academic
essays. Designed for college freshmen or advanced high school students.
Horning, A, & Becker, A. (Eds.) (2006). Revision history, theory, and practice. West Lafayette, IN:
Parlor Press.
Comprehensive overview of current views on revision. Includes chapters on revision strategies of
basic, ESL, and professional writers, best classroom practices, and guidelines for teachers and writers.
McAliear, R. & Pedretti, M. (2016). Students’ perceptions of doneness in the composition class-
room. Composition Studies, 44(2): 72–93.
Revision 107
Suggests that process-based composition pedagogy has ignored the question of “doneness:” the
criteria used to decide when a piece of writing is complete. The article uses survey results from
first and second year composition courses to challenge common beliefs about how students
determine when writing assignments are sufficiently completed.
McBeth, M. (2015). Revising by numbers: Promoting student revision through accumulated
points. Journal of Response to Writing, 1(2): 35–54.
Shvidko, E. (2015). Beyond “giver-receiver” relationships: Facilitating an interactive revision pro-
cess. Journal of Response to Writing, 1(2): 55–74.
Argues that in order to facilitate the development of students’ writing, teachers need to cultivate
principles of effective feedback. However, revision is a joint process, and for maximum effective-
ness students should be actively involved by analyzing and reflecting on their own writing and
responding to teacher feedback.
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Reading
Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced
Adult Writers
Nancy Sommers
Although various aspects of the writing process have been studied extensively of late,
research on revision has been notably absent. The reason for this, I suspect, is that cur-
rent models of the writing process have directed attention away from revision. With few
exceptions, these models are linear; they separate the writing process into discrete stages.
Two representative models are Gordon Rohman’s suggestion that the composing process
moves from prewriting to writing to rewriting and James Britton’s model of the writing process
as a series of stages described in metaphors of linear growth, conception—incubation—
production.1 What is striking about these theories of writing is that they model themselves
on speech: Rohman defines the writer in a way that cannot distinguish him from a speaker
(“A writer is a man who . . . puts [his] experience into words in his own mind”—p. 15); and
Britton bases his theory of writing on what he calls (following Jakobson) the “expressiveness”
of speech.2 Moreover, Britton’s study itself follows the “linear model” of the relation of thought
and language in speech proposed by Vygotsky, a relationship embodied in the linear move-
ment “from the motive which engenders a thought to the shaping of the thought, first in inner
speech, then in meanings of words, and finally in words” (quoted in Britton, p. 40). What this
movement fails to take into account in its linear structure—”first . . . then . . . finally”—is the
recursive shaping of thought by language; what it fails to take into account is revision. In
these linear conceptions of the writing process revision is understood as a separate stage at
the end of the process—a stage that comes after the completion of a first or second draft and
one that is temporally distinct from the prewriting and writing stages of the process.3
The linear model bases itself on speech in two specific ways. First of all, it is based on
traditional rhetorical models, models that were created to serve the spoken art of oratory. In
whatever ways the parts of classical rhetoric are described, they offer “stages” of composi-
tion that are repeated in contemporary models of the writing process. Edward Corbett, for
instance, describes the “five parts of a discourse”—inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria,
pronuntiatio—and, disregarding the last two parts since “after rhetoric came to be concerned
mainly with written discourse, there was no further need to deal with them,”4 he produces
a model very close to Britton’s conception [inventio], incubation [dispositio], production
[elocutio]. Other rhetorics also follow this procedure, and they do so not simply because of
historical accident. Rather, the process represented in the linear model is based on the irre-
versibility of speech. Speech, Roland Barthes says, “is irreversible:”
A word cannot be retracted, except precisely by saying that one retracts it. To cross out
here is to add: if I want to erase what I have just said, I cannot do it without showing the
eraser itself (I must say: “or rather . . .” “I expressed myself badly ..”); paradoxically, it is
ephemeral speech which is indelible, not monumental writing. All that one can do in the
case of a spoken utterance is to tack on another utterance.5
What is impossible in speech is revision: like the example Barthes gives, revision in speech is
an afterthought. In the same way, each stage of the linear model must be exclusive (distinct
Revision Strategies 111
from the other stages) or else it becomes trivial and counterproductive to refer to these junc-
tures as “stages.”
By staging revision after enunciation, the linear models reduce revision in writing, as in
speech, to no more than an afterthought. In this way such models make the study of revision
impossible. Revision, in Rohman’s model, is simply the repetition of writing; or to pursue
Britton’s organic metaphor, revision is simply the further growth of what is already there, the
“pre-conceived” product. The absence of research on revision, then, is a function of a theory
of writing which makes revision both superfluous and redundant, a theory which does not
distinguish between writing and speech.
What the linear models do produce is a parody of writing. Isolating revision and then dis-
regarding it plays havoc with the experiences composition teachers have of the actual writing
and rewriting of experienced writers. Why should the linear model be preferred? Why should
revision be forgotten, superfluous? Why do teachers offer the linear model and students
accept it? One reason, Barthes suggests, is that “there is a fundamental tie between teach-
ing and speech,” while “writing begins at the point where speech becomes impossible.”6 The
spoken word cannot be revised. The possibility of revision distinguishes the written text from
speech. In fact, according to Barthes, this is the essential difference between writing and
speaking. When we must revise, when the very idea is subject to recursive shaping by lan-
guage, then speech becomes inadequate. This is a matter to which I will return, but first we
should examine, theoretically, a detailed exploration of what student writers as distinguished
from experienced adult writers do when they write and rewrite their work. Dissatisfied with
both the linear model of writing and the lack of attention to the process of revision, I con-
ducted a series of studies over the past three years which examined the revision processes
of student writers and experienced writers to see what role revision played in their writing
processes. In the course of my work the revision process was redefined as a sequence
of changes in a composition—changes which are initiated by cues and occur continually
throughout the writing of a work.
Methodology
I used a case study approach. The student writers were twenty freshmen at Boston University
and the University of Oklahoma with SAT verbal scores ranging from 450–600 in their first
semester of composition. The twenty experienced adult writers from Boston and Oklahoma
City included journalists, editors, and academics. To refer to the two groups, I use the terms
student writers and experienced writers because the principal difference between these two
groups is the amount of experience they have had in writing.
Each writer wrote three essays, expressive, explanatory, and persuasive, and rewrote
each essay twice, producing nine written products in draft and final form. Each writer was
interviewed three times after the final revision of each essay. And each writer suggested revi-
sions for a composition written by an anonymous author. Thus extensive written and spoken
documents were obtained from each writer.
The essays were analyzed by counting and categorizing the changes made. Four revi-
sion operations were identified: deletion, substitution, addition, and reordering. And four lev-
els of changes were identified: word, phrase, sentence, theme (the extended statement of
one idea). A coding system was developed for identifying the frequency of revision by level
and operation. In addition, transcripts of the interviews in which the writers interpreted their
112 Nancy Sommers
revisions were used to develop what was called a scale of concerns for each writer. This
scale enabled me to codify what were the writer’s primary concerns, secondary concerns,
tertiary concerns, and whether the writers used the same scale of concerns when revising
the second or third drafts as they used in revising the first draft.
Revision Strategies of Student Writers

Most of the students I studied did not use the terms revision or rewriting. In fact, they did not
seem comfortable using the word revision and explained that revision was not a word they
used, but the word their teachers used. Instead, most of the students had developed various
functional terms to describe the type of changes they made. The following are samples of
these definitions:
Scratch Out and Do Over Again: “I say scratch out and do over, and that means what it
says. Scratching out and cutting out. I read what I have written and I cross out a word and
put another word in; a more decent word or a better word. Then if there is somewhere to
use a sentence that I have crossed out, I will put it there.”
Reviewing: “Reviewing means just using better words and eliminating words that are not
needed. I go over and change words around.”
Reviewing: “I just review every word and make sure that everything is worded right. I see
if I am rambling; I see if I can put a better word in or leave one out. Usually when I read
what I have written, I say to myself, ‘that word is so bland or so trite,’ and then I go and
get my thesaurus.”
Redoing: “Redoing means cleaning up the paper and crossing out. It is looking at some-
thing and saying, no that has to go, or no, that is not right.”
Marking Out: “I don’t use the word rewriting because I only write one draft and the
changes that I make are made on top of the draft. The changes that I make are usually
just marking out words and putting different ones in.”
Slashing and Throwing Out: “I throw things out and say they are not good. I like to write
like Fitzgerald did by inspiration, and if I feel inspired then I don’t need to slash and throw
much out.”
The predominant concern in these definitions is vocabulary. The students understand the
revision process as a rewording activity. They do so because they perceive words as the
unit of written discourse. That is, they concentrate on particular words apart from their role
in the text. Thus one student quoted above thinks in terms of dictionaries, and, following
the eighteenth-century theory of words parodied in Gulliver’s Travels, he imagines a load
of things carried about to be exchanged. Lexical changes are the major revision activities
of the students because economy is their goal. They are governed, like the linear model
itself, by the Law of Occam’s razor that prohibits logically needless repetition: redundancy
and superfluity. Nothing governs speech more than such superfluities; speech constantly
repeats itself precisely because spoken words, as Barthes writes, are expendable in the
cause of communication. The aim of revision according to the students’ own description is
therefore to clean up speech; the redundancy of speech is unnecessary in writing, their logic
suggests, because writing, unlike speech, can be reread. Thus one student said, “Redoing
means cleaning up the paper and crossing out.” The remarkable contradiction of cleaning by
marking might, indeed, stand for student revision as I have encountered it.
The students place a symbolic importance on their selection and rejection of words as the
determiners of success or failure for their compositions. When revising, they primarily ask
themselves: can I find a better word or phrase? A more impressive, not so clichéd, or less
hum-drum word? Am I repeating the same word or phrase too often? They approach the revi-
sion process with what could be labeled as a “thesaurus philosophy of writing;” the students
consider the thesaurus a harvest of lexical substitutions and believe that most problems in their
essays can be solved by rewording. What is revealed in the students’ use of the thesaurus is a
governing attitude toward their writing: that the meaning to be communicated is already there,
already finished, already produced, ready to be communicated, and all that is necessary is
a better word “rightly worded.” One student defined revision as “redoing;” “redoing” meant
“just using better words and eliminating words that are not needed.” For the students, writing
is translating: the thought to the page, the language of speech to the more formal language
of prose, the word to its synonym. Whatever is translated, an original text already exists for
students, one which need not be discovered or acted upon, but simply communicated.7
The students list repetition as one of the elements they most worry about. This cues
signals to them that they need to eliminate the repetition either by substituting or delet-
ing words or phrases. Repetition occurs, in large part, because student writing imitates—
transcribes—speech: attention to repetitious words is a manner of cleaning speech. Without
a sense of the developmental possibilities of revision (and writing in general) students seek,
on the authority of many textbooks, simply to clean up their language and prepare to type.
What is curious, however, is that students are aware of lexical repetition, but not conceptual
repetition. They only notice the repetition if they can “hear” it: they do not diagnose lexical
repetition as symptomatic of problems on a deeper level. By rewording their sentences to
avoid the lexical repetition, the students solve the immediate problem, but blind themselves
to problems on a textual level; although they are using different words, they are sometimes
merely restating the same idea with different words. Such blindness, as I discovered with
student writers, is the inability to “see” revision as a process: the inability to “re-view” their
work again, as it were, with different eyes, and to start over.
The revision strategies described above are consistent with the students’ understanding
of the revision process as requiring lexical changes but not semantic changes. For the stu-
dents, the extent to which they revise is a function of their level of inspiration. In fact, they
use the word inspiration to describe the ease or difficulty with which their essay is written,
and the extent to which the essay needs to be revised. If students feel inspired, if the writing
comes easily, and if they don’t get stuck on individual words or phrases, then they say that
they cannot see any reason to revise. Because students do not see revision as an activity in
which they modify and develop perspectives and ideas, they feel that if they know what they
want to say, then there is little reason for making revisions.
The only modification of ideas in the students’ essays occurred when they tried out two or
three introductory paragraphs. This results, in part, because the students have been taught
in another version of the linear model of composing to use a thesis statement as a controlling
device in their introductory paragraphs. Since they write their introductions and their thesis
statements even before they have really discovered what they want to say, their early close
attention to the thesis statement, and more generally the linear model, function to restrict
114 Nancy Sommers
and circumscribe not only the development of their ideas, but also their ability to change the
direction of these ideas.
Too often as composition teachers we conclude that students do not willingly revise. The
evidence from my research suggests that it is not that students are unwilling to revise, but
rather that they do what they have been taught to do in a consistently narrow and predictable
way. On every occasion when I asked students why they hadn’t made any more changes,
they essentially replied, “I knew something larger was wrong, but I didn’t think it would help
to move words around.” The students have strategies for handling words and phrases and
their strategies helped them on a word or sentence level. What they lack, however, is a set
of strategies to help them identify the “something larger” that they sensed was wrong and
work from there. The students do not have strategies for handling the whole essay. They lack
procedures or heuristics to help them reorder lines of reasoning or ask questions about their
purposes and readers. The students view their compositions in a linear way as a series of
parts. Even such potentially useful concepts as “unity” or “form” are reduced to the rule that
a composition, if it is to have form, must have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion, or
the sum total of the necessary parts.
The students decide to stop revising when they decide that they have not violated any of
the rules for revising. These rules, such as “Never begin a sentence with a conjunction” or
“Never end a sentence with a preposition,” are lexically cued and rigidly applied. In general,
students will subordinate the demands of the specific problems of their text to the demands
of the rules. Changes are made in compliance with abstract rules about the product, rules
that quite often do not apply to the specific problems in the text. These revision strategies are
teacher-based, directed towards a teacher-reader who expects compliance with rules—with
pre-existing “conceptions”—and who will only examine parts of the composition (writing com-
ments about those parts in the margins of their essays) and will cite any violations of rules
in those parts. At best the students see their writing altogether passively through the eyes
of former teachers or their surrogates, the textbooks, and are bound to the rules which they
have been taught.
Revision Strategies of Experienced Writers

One aim of my research has been to contrast how student writers define revision with how a
group of experienced writers define their revision processes. Here is a sampling of the defini-
tions from the experienced writers:
Rewriting: “It is a matter of looking at the kernel of what I have written, the content, and
then thinking about it, responding to it, making decisions, and actually restructuring it.”
Rewriting: “I rewrite as I write. It is hard to tell what is a first draft because it is not deter-
mined by time. In one draft, I might cross out three pages, write two, cross out a fourth,
rewrite it, and call it a draft. I am constantly writing and rewriting. I can only conceptualize
so much in my first draft—only so much information can be held in my head at one time;
my rewriting efforts are a reflection of how much information I can encompass at one
time. There are levels and agenda which I have to attend to in each draft.”
Rewriting: “Rewriting means, on one level, finding the argument, and on another level,
language changes to make the argument more effective. Most of the time I feel as if I can
go on rewriting forever. There is always one part of a piece that I could keep working on.
It is always difficult to know at what point to abandon a piece of writing. I like this idea that
a piece of writing is never finished, just abandoned.”
Rewriting: “My first draft is usually very scattered. In rewriting, I find the line of argument.
After the argument is resolved, I am much more interested in word choice and phrasing.”
Revising: “My cardinal rule in revising is never to fall in love with what I have written in a
first or second draft. An idea, sentence, or even a phrase that looks catchy, I don’t trust.
Part of this idea is to wait a while. I am much more in love with something after I have
written it than I am a day or two later. It is much easier to change anything with time.”
Revising: “It means taking apart what I have written and putting it back together again.
I ask major theoretical questions of my ideas, respond to those questions, and think of
proportion and structure, and try to find a controlling metaphor. I find out which ideas can
be developed and which should be dropped. I am constantly chiseling and changing as
I revise.”
The experienced writers describe their primary objective when revising as finding the form
or shape of their argument. Although the metaphors vary, the experienced writers often use
structural expressions such as “finding a framework,” “a pattern,” or “a design” for their argu-
ment. When questioned about this emphasis, the experienced writers responded that since
their first drafts are usually scattered attempts to define their territory, their objective in the sec-
ond draft is to begin observing general patterns of development and deciding what should be
included and what excluded. One writer explained, “I have learned from experience that I need
to keep writing a first draft until I figure out what I want to say. Then in a second draft, I begin
to see the structure of an argument and how all the various sub-arguments which are buried
beneath the surface of all those sentences are related.” What is described here is a process
in which the writer is both agent and vehicle. “Writing,” says Barthes, unlike speech, “develops
like a seed, not a line,”8 and like a seed it confuses beginning and end, conception and produc-
tion. Thus, the experienced writers say their drafts are “not determined by time,” that rewriting
is a “constant process,” that they feel as if (they) “can go on forever.” Revising confuses the
beginning and end, the agent and vehicle; it confuses, in order to find, the line of argument.
After a concern for form, the experienced writers have a second objective: a concern for
their readership. In this way, “production” precedes “conception.” The experienced writers
imagine a reader (reading their product) whose existence and whose expectations influ-
ence their revision process. They have abstracted the standards of a reader and this reader
seems to be partially a reflection of themselves and functions as a critical and productive
collaborator—a collaborator who has yet to love their work. The anticipation of a reader’s
judgment causes a feeling of dissonance when the writer recognizes incongruities between
intention and execution, and requires these writers to make revisions on all levels. Such
a reader gives them just what the students lacked: new eyes to “re-view” their work. The
experienced writers believe that they have learned the causes and conditions, the product,
which will influence their reader, and their revision strategies are geared towards creating
these causes and conditions. They demonstrate a complex understanding of which exam-
ples, sentences, or phrases should be included or excluded. For example, one experienced
writer decided to delete public examples and add private examples when writing about the
energy crisis because “private examples would be less controversial and thus more persua-
sive.” Another writer revised his transitional sentences because “some kinds of transitions
116 Nancy Sommers
are more easily recognized as transitions than others.” These examples represent the type of
strategic attempts these experienced writers use to manipulate the conventions of discourse
in order to communicate to their reader.
But these revision strategies are a process of more than communication; they are part
of the process of discovering meaning altogether. Here we can see the importance of dis-
sonance; at the heart of revision is the process by which writers recognize and resolve the
dissonance they sense in their writing. Ferdinand de Saussure has argued that meaning
is differential or “diacritical,” based on differences between terms rather than “essential” or
inherent qualities of terms. “Phonemes,” he said, “are characterized not, as one might think,
by their own positive quality but simply by the fact that they are distinct.”9 In fact, Saussure
bases his entire Course in General Linguistics on these differences, and such differences
are dissonant; like musical dissonances which gain their significance from their relationship
to the “key” of the composition, which itself is determined by the whole language, specific
language (parole) gains its meaning from the system of language (langue) of which it is a
manifestation and part. The musical composition—a “composition” of parts—creates its “key”
as in an overall structure which determines the value (meaning) of its parts. The analogy with
music is readily seen in the compositions of experienced writers: both sorts of composition
are based precisely on those structures experienced writers seek in their writing. It is this
complicated relationship between the parts and the whole in the work of experienced writers
which destroys the linear model; writing cannot develop “like a line” because each addition
or deletion is a reordering of the whole. Explicating Saussure, Jonathan Culler asserts that
“meaning depends on difference of meaning.”10 But student writers constantly struggle to
bring their essays into congruence with a predefined meaning. The experienced writers do
the opposite: they seek to discover (to create) meaning in the engagement with their writing,
in revision. They seek to emphasize and exploit the lack of clarity, the differences of mean-
ing, the dissonance that writing as opposed to speech allows in the possibility of revision.
Writing has spatial and temporal features not apparent in speech—words are recorded in
space and fixed in time—which is why writing is susceptible to reordering and later addition.
Such features make possible the dissonance that both provokes revision and promises, from
itself, new meaning.
For the experienced writers the heaviest concentration of changes is on the sentence
level, and the changes are predominantly by addition and deletion. But, unlike the students,
experienced writers make changes on all levels and use all revision operations. Moreover,
the operations the students fail to use—reordering and addition—seem to require a theory
of the revision process as a totality—a theory which, in fact, encompasses the whole of the
composition. Unlike the students, the experienced writers possess a non-linear theory in
which a sense of the whole writing both precedes and grows out of an examination of the
parts. As we saw, one writer said he needed “a first draft to figure out what to say,” and
“a second draft to see the structure of an argument buried beneath the surface.” Such a
“theory” is both theoretical and strategical; once again, strategy and theory are conflated in
ways that are literally impossible for the linear model. Writing appears to be more like a seed
than a line.
Two elements of the experienced writers’ theory of the revision process are the adoption of
a holistic perspective and the perception that revision is a recursive process. The writers ask:
what does my essay as a whole need for form, balance, rhythm, or communication. Details are
added, dropped, substituted, or reordered according to their sense of what the essay needs
for emphasis and proportion. This sense, however, is constantly in flux as ideas are developed
and modified; it is constantly “re-viewed” in relation to the parts. As their ideas change, revision
becomes an attempt to make their writing consonant with that changing vision.
The experienced writers see their revision process as a recursive process—a process
with significant recurring activities—with different levels of attention and different agenda for
each cycle. During the first revision cycle their attention is primarily directed towards narrow-
ing the topic and delimiting their ideas. At this point, they are not as concerned as they are
later about vocabulary and style. The experienced writers explained that they get closer to
their meaning by not limiting themselves too early to lexical concerns. As one writer com-
mented to explain her revision process, a comment inspired by the summer 1977 New York
power failure: “I feel like Con Edison cutting off certain states to keep the generators going. In
first and second drafts, I try to cut off as much as I can of my editing generator, and in a third
draft, I try to cut off some of my idea generators, so I can make sure that I will actually fin-
ish the essay.” Although the experienced writers describe their revision process as a series
of different levels or cycles, it is inaccurate to assume that they have only one objective for
each cycle and that each cycle can be defined by a different objective. The same objectives
and sub-processes are present in each cycle, but in different proportions. Even though these
experienced writers place the predominant weight upon finding the form of their argument
during the first cycle, other concerns exist as well. Conversely, during the later cycles, when
the experienced writers’ primary attention is focused upon stylistic concerns, they are still
attuned, although in a reduced way, to the form of the argument. Since writers are limited
in what they can attend to during each cycle (understandings are temporal), revision strate-
gies help balance competing demands on attention. Thus, writers can concentrate on more
than one objective at a time by developing strategies to sort out and organize their different
concerns in successive cycles of revision.
It is a sense of writing as discovery—a repeated process of beginning over again, start-
ing out new—that the students failed to have. I have used the notion of dissonance because
such dissonance, the incongruities between intention and execution, governs both writing
and meaning. Students do not see the incongruities. They need to rely on their own internal-
ized sense of good writing and to see their writing with their “own” eyes. Seeing in revision—
seeing beyond hearing—is at the root of the word revision and the process itself; current dicta
on revising blind our students to what is actually involved in revision. In fact, they blind them
to what constitutes good writing altogether. Good writing disturbs: it creates dissonance.
Students need to seek the dissonance of discovery, utilizing in their writing, as the experi-
enced writers do, the very difference between writing and speech—the possibility of revision.
Acknowledgment
The author wishes to express her gratitude to Professor William Smith, University of
Pittsburgh, for his vital assistance with the research reported in this article and to Patrick
Hays, her husband, for extensive discussions and critical editorial help.
Notes
1 D. Gordon Rohman and Albert O. Wlecke, “Pre-writing: The Construction and Application of Models
for Concept Formation in Writing,” Cooperative Research Project No. 2174, U.S. Office of Education,
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; James Britton, Anthony Burgess, Nancy Martin,
118 Nancy Sommers
Alex McLeod, Harold Rosen, The Development of Writing Abilities (11–18) (London: Macmillan
Education, 1975).
2 Britton is following Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics,” in T. A. Sebeok, Style in Language
(Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1960).
3 For an extended discussion of this issue see Nancy Sommers, “The Need for Theory in Composition
Research,” College Composition and Communication. 30 (February, 1979), 46–69.
4 Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 27.
5 Roland Barthes, “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers,” in Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1977), pp. 190–191.
6 “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers,” p. 190.
7 Nancy Sommers and Ronald Schleifer, “Means and Ends: Some Assumptions of Student Writers,”
Composition and Teaching, II (in press).
8 Writing Degree Zero in Writing Degree Zero and Elements of Semiology, trans. Annette Lavers and
Colin Smith (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968), p. 20.
9 Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (New York, 1966), p. 119.
10 Jonathan Culler, Saussure (Penguin Modern Masters Series; London: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 70.
4 Audiences
Irene L. Clark
Every time we open the pages of another piece of writing, we are embarked on a new adven-
ture in which we become a new person . . . we are recreated by the language.
(Gibson, 1950, pp. 265–269)
As a concept in Composition, “audience” has always been difficult to define, especially in

the context of writing a college essay. For whom is the essay intended? A real person? For a
group of people? Someone we have imagined? For the teacher who assigns the grade? What
is the reason we are writing this essay, and who will care about our ideas? As Mary Jo Reiff
observed in 1996:
“Audience” is an unstable referent, a floating signifier. The term can refer to a construct
in the writer’s mind—the “imagined,” “intended,” or “invented” audience. Or it can
refer to a textual presence—the audience “implied” by textual cues or “inscribed” in the
text. Audiences can also refer to “real” people—the actual readers who exist either apart
from and prior to the text (as “addressed” readers) or those who exist as part of the com-
munity in which the text is produced.
In addition, insights associated with new media have further complicated the definition
because multimedia essays are more participatory, collaborative, and distributed. Recent
scholarship in new media has called attention to the blurring of boundaries between audience
and creators, the difficulty of knowing who one’s audience actually is, and issues involv-
ing intellectual property and shared knowledge, among others. How, then, should teachers
address the concept of audience in an undergraduate writing class? This chapter discusses
varying perspectives and controversies associated with audience, examines how the concept
of audience has been complicated by new media, discusses the issue of envisioning an audi-
ence when writing an essay for a standardized test, and suggests possibilities for addressing
audience in the writing class.
The Complicated Issue of Audience

Even before new media broadened and complicated the meaning of “audience,” the term
generated considerable scholarly discussion. Once equated simply with the actual reader
or readers of a text, “audience” in Composition scholarship is now accompanied by a set
of complex terms such as “invoked,” “evoked,” “fictionalized,” “intended,” or “general.”
More recently, in recognition of those who have been excluded from traditional academic
discourse, additional terms have been added, such as “ignored, rejected, excluded or denied”
(Lunsford & Ede, 2009, p. 174).
120 Irene L. Clark
Nevertheless, despite the attention given to audience as a theoretical concept, it has not
had a significant impact in writing classes because students tend to think of “audience” only
in terms of the teacher who will grade their work. Of course, it is true that the teacher is the
person who assigns the grade. However, it is also important to help students understand how
audience affects other aspects of a text, such as purpose, form, style, genre, and writer identity,
and to envision the concept of audience more broadly. Teachers may tell students to “con-
sider your audience,” which is good advice, but difficult for students to follow, unless the
teacher helps them understand the complexity of the concept and demonstrates how audience
awareness is manifested within a text, in whatever medium that text has been produced.
Perspectives on Audience
Audience has been a significant component of rhetoric since classical times. Plato, in the
Phaedrus (370 bce), asserted that the rhetorician should adapt a speech to the characteris-
tics of an audience, classifying “the type of speech appropriate to each type of soul” (1952,
p. 147). Aristotle also conceived of audience in terms of actual “hearers” of persuasive dis-
course. In Book II of the Rhetoric (1991), Aristotle discussed the ways a speaker might adapt
his discourse to various audiences, categorizing audiences according to their time in life
(youth, age, the prime of life, etc.) and discussing various appeals by means of which a rhetor
could be persuasive. This rhetorical model, as Kirsch and Roen (1990) have pointed out, rests
on several assumptions: that the audience is known, the values and needs of the audience can
be identified, and the audience is separate from the discourse and its social context. Although
potentially applicable to oral communication (as when giving a speech to a particular club or
professional group), the notion that an audience is completely knowable does not transfer eas-
ily to written discourse, in which an audience is often completely removed in both time and
space from the writer, and this is particularly the case with the use of new media. From the
perspective of the Composition class, this model characterizes a rhetorical interaction as mov-
ing in only one direction, from the rhetor (the speaker or writer) to the audience or reader.
The writer, according to this model, is conceived of as a sender and the audience as merely
a receiver and it is now recognized that the audience has a significant impact on the sender.
Nevertheless, insights into audience from classical rhetoric remain relevant, in particular
Aristotle’s discussion of three persuasive appeals: pathos, the appeal to the emotions of the
audience, ethos, the appeal to the credibility of the speaker, and logos, the appeal to logic and
reason. Familiarizing students with these appeals can help them consider what is likely to have
an impact on an audience. But in presenting these appeals in the classroom, it is important that
students not only know the definitions, but also understand how they work so that they can
use them in their own writing. In order for an appeal to be effective, “it must focus the audi-
ence’s attention, push the counterarguments into the background, and encourage the audience
members to play along for a while” (Killingsworth, 2005, p. 36). Killingsworth maintained
that the word “attention” here is key, pertinent to whatever medium is being used because
“the root of the word attention—‘to attend’—literally means to listen” (p. 36). “Listening” for
Aristotle’s audience meant an audience that was physically present and could actually hear what
was being said. For 21st-century audiences “listening” or “attending” can occur in cyberspace.
Rediscovering Audience
Mary Jo Reiff (2004), in an overview of perspectives on audience that are relevant for the
teaching of writing, noted that after Aristotle, attention to audience diminished, although it
was revived in the 18th century in its association with psychology. However, 19th-century
rhetoric did not emphasize audience, focusing instead on formal features of language such as
Audiences 121
style and correctness. The 20th century, then, “rediscovered” rhetoric, and with the redis-
covery came renewed recognition of the writer–audience relationship in constructing an
effective text. Redefining rhetoric more broadly as “the use of language as a symbolic means
of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols,” Kenneth Burke, in
The Philosophy of Literary Form (1973, p. 43), revived the importance of audience in commu-
nication, as did Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric: A Treatise
on Argument (1958). These texts affirmed the classical view of audience as existing outside
the discourse, and the Composition textbooks of the 1970s and 1980s, reflecting this view,
emphasized the importance of knowing the characteristics of particular audiences in terms
of their “educational and social backgrounds, how old they are, what kind of work they do,
and whether they are, on the whole, liberal or conservative about religion, sex and politics”
(Hairston, 1978, pp. 107–108, quoted in Reiff, 2004, p. 17). This approach to audience was
essentially demographic, the assumption being that if a writer understood the external charac-
teristics of an audience, such as education, occupation, or religious belief, he or she would be
able to persuade that audience more effectively. Similar to Aristotle’s perspective, this concept
of audience presumes that the audience consists of real people whose ideas and values can be
known and understood by a writer.
Cognitive Perspectives
The cognitive perspective on audience, building on the work of cognitive theorists such as
Jean Piaget (The Language and Thought of the Child, 1926/1959) and Lev Vygotsky (Thought
and Language, 1934/1962), viewed the ability to understand audience as a mark of cognitive
maturity. They maintained that a writer’s ability to consider the ideas and views of others—
that is, to move beyond the egocentricity of early childhood—reflected a more developed
form of thinking. Piaget’s work discussed various stages in cognitive development, showing
that younger children are less able to consider a listener’s point of view than older ones, and
in a related approach, Vygotsky used the term “inner speech” to refer to the uncontextualized
transformation of thought into language. Vygotsky contrasted the difference between an audi-
ence for speech with the audience for writing, noting that the task of writing for an unknown
abstract audience is a more complex task than that of a speaker addressing listeners who
are physically present. Vygotsky’s concept of “inner speech” influenced the work of Linda
Flower, whose cognitive perspective on writing was very important in the late 1970s and
1980s. In “Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing” (1979), Flower
used the term “egocentric or writer-based prose” to characterize writing that does not con-
sider audience, and “reader-based prose” to characterize writing that does. Writer-based prose
often omits contextual information or elaboration that an audience would need or includes
information that an audience would not be able to understand without further explanation.
The idea of writer-based versus reader-based prose is a useful one to address in a writing
class because it helps students understand that the first drafts of all writers, even experienced
and accomplished writers, may be characterized by writer-based prose. First drafts often con-
tain initial thoughts about a topic, and it is only when the draft has been written that a writer
may be able to consider the needs of an audience and add necessary explanation, elaboration,
or examples. In fact, Peter Elbow (1987), in “Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for
Ignoring Audience,” maintained that first drafts should ignore audience altogether. This “weak
writing,” Elbow argued, “can help us in the end to better writing than we would have writ-
ten if we’d kept readers in mind from the start” (p. 50). Some audiences may be inviting or
enabling; others may be inhibiting. If writers are too aware of such an audience, they may
experience writer’s block. Therefore, it can be liberating for writers to forget about audience
altogether during the writing of a first draft.
122 Irene L. Clark

1 How do you consider audience in your own writing?
2 Classical rhetoricians conceived of audience in terms of oral discourse, a model that
has only limited applicability to the concept of audience in the Composition class.
List as many differences as you can think of between an audience that “hears” a
speech and an audience that “reads” an essay.
3 How can the concept of audience help a writer explore a topic?
4 How does your concept of audience change when you post on a blog or contribute
to an online discussion?
The Fictionalized Audience

An important perspective on audience that is sometimes more difficult for students to under-
stand is that although an audience may exist outside of a text in the form of actual readers
or listeners, an author also creates an audience and provides cues within a text about who
that audience might be. This idea is the basis of a widely anthologized essay, “The Writer’s
Audience is Always a Fiction” (1975), in which Walter Ong maintained that “the historian,
the scholar or scientist, and the simple letter writer all fictionalize their audiences, casting
them in a made-up role and calling on them to play the role assigned” (p. 17). Claiming that
all writers, even student writers, must fictionalize their audience, Ong illustrated his point by
citing the following passage from A Farewell to Arms: “In the late summer of that year we lived
in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains” (p. 15).
This passage, Ong pointed out, fictionalizes a reader who is close to the writer, close enough
to know which year is meant by “that” year, which river, which plain, and which mountains,
thereby fostering a “you and me” relationship between writer and reader that the writer
develops and the reader reacts to when he or she “reads” the text. All authors, Ong claimed,
fictionalize their audience, even Homer, who constructed his audience through a “once upon
a time” framework. Ong’s main position is that student writers will be more successful if they,
too, can learn to fictionalize their audiences.
How can a student envision an audience when he or she is assigned to write an essay
for a class? Ong suggested that to develop awareness of audience for a particular writing
task, student writers should not begin with the traditional question “Who is my audience?”
but, rather, with the question “Who do I choose as my audience?” This question, of course,
becomes more complicated when students are posting texts over the Internet.
Ong’s view of audience as being created by the writer has been supported by a number
of scholars, among them, Douglas Park (1982), who noted in his essay “The Meanings of
Audience” that even when an audience really exists outside of the text, the argumentative
context or situation requires the writer to “invent” an audience that goes beyond a specific
individual to encompass a set of attitudes toward or acquaintance with the subject. Park
cited the example of an article concerned with how to plant asparagus root, which postulates
an audience as an enthusiastic “home gardener, eager for hard work and fresh vegetables”
(p. 249). Park also noted that even when the audience seems to be a particular person who
really exists: a state senator, for example, the audience is not only the senator as an individual
that the text addresses but also the senator in his professional position, someone who repre-
sents a set of attitudes toward the subject. Writing a request to a senator, thus, involves an act
of imagination beyond that of simply knowing that particular senator’s attitudes and political
Audiences 123
position, although this information is important to know. In the text, though, the writer must
also “create” a senator, who, under the right circumstances will be receptive to the request, a
senator who is concerned about the subject and is open to new suggestions. Were the senator
not perceived as receptive, concerned, and open, there would be no rhetorical aim in writing
to him or her. But once the writer conceives of these qualities, he or she must then address
that conception of the senator by indicating through cues in the text that the audience is
perceived in this way. Thus, regardless of whether a real reader exists, most writing tasks, and
particularly argumentative or persuasive writing, require the writer to create a fictionalized
audience that embodies “a complex set of conventions, estimations, implied responses, and
attitudes” (Park, 1982, p. 251).
Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: Fictionalized and Real Audiences

The idea that audience can be both real and imagined was clarified and elaborated on in an
award-winning article published in 1984 titled “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked:
The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy,” by Lisa Ede and Andrea
Lunsford. Distinguishing between what they term the “audience addressed” and the “audi-
ence invoked,” Ede and Lunsford maintained that writers must both analyze a possible real
audience and invent a chosen one, that the two are not incompatible, and that the concept of
audience encompasses a synthesis of both:
The addressed audience, the actual or intended readers of a discourse, exists outside of
the text. Writers may analyze these readers’ needs, anticipate their biases, even defer to
their wishes. But it is only through the text, through language, that writers embody or
give life to their conception of the reader. In so doing, they do not so much create a role
for the reader—a phrase which implies that the writer somehow creates a mold to which
the reader adjusts—as invoke it.
(p. 169)
Citing the example of a student who wishes to persuade her neighbors that a proposed home
for mentally disabled adults would not be a disaster for the neighborhood, Ede and Lunsford
pointed out that the student must not only analyze the real audience—that is, not only know
demographic factors such as age, race, and class—but also assess how much the real audience
actually knows about mental disability, in particular, what fears the subject might raise and
what values might be used in making an appeal to change the audience’s beliefs or attitudes.
But beyond learning as much as possible about the real audience and tailoring the text to
suit the needs of that real audience, the student might also invite that audience to see itself
in an especially admirable light, that is, to create a role for that audience as enlightened and
humanitarian; an audience who would be inclined to behave charitably once it was properly
informed. Ede and Lunsford also pointed out that writers play the additionally creative roles
as the readers of their own writing, testing the effectiveness of the cues within the text dur-
ing rereading. They maintained that “it is the writer who, as writer and reader of his or her
own text, one guided by a sense of purpose and by the particularities of a specific rhetorical
situation, establishes the range of potential roles an audience may play” (Ede & Lunsford,
1984, p. 166).
This dual concept of real and created audience was further problematized by Barbara
Tomlinson (1990), in “Ong May Be Wrong: Negotiating with Non-fictional Readers.”
Tomlinson agreed that writers must both address actual readers as well as invoke fuller rep-
resentations of audiences, but she emphasized that writers must first consider real readers on
whom we depend for esteem and approval. “It is only because we have those idiosyncratic,
124 Irene L. Clark
individual readers that we can ever learn to generalize about readers, to fictionalize our audi-
ences effectively,” Tomlinson observed. “These are the readers we learn to generalize from”
(p. 88). This idea that the fictionalized audience derives from one that a writer has had
acquaintance with was supported by Jack Selzer (2000), who noted that “like the intended
reader . . . and like other fictional characters, narratees and implied readers can be based on
real people, can be idealizations of real people, or can be pure creations” (p. 78). More con-
crete is the term “informed reader,” suggested by Stanley Fish (1980), denoting “neither
an abstraction nor an actual living reader but a hybrid—a real reader (me) who does every-
thing within his power to make himself informed” (p. 49). The informed reader is both the
communal reader of the discourse community and an individual real reader who is actively
engaged in understanding the text.
Mary Jo Reiff (1996) similarly endorsed the idea of multiple audiences, arguing that a writ-
er’s “invoked” audience is shaped by participation in a particular community. That commu-
nity may be horizontal—a community of peers who share an equal status—as when students
write for one another—or vertical, as when a text is intended for someone in a position of
authority, such as the teacher. Reiff also points out that in the workplace, a text may involve
primary and secondary audiences. She cites the example of a graphic designer in an advertising
firm who believes “that the department is losing some important clients due to the use of out-
dated equipment.” He therefore writes to a middle-level manager, suggesting the purchase of
new equipment. In this case, the manager is the “immediate” or primary audience. However,
the manager cannot authorize large expenditures and must recommend the idea to her boss,
who becomes the “secondary” audience (Reiff, 1996, p. 415).
For Discussion
In small groups, create a scenario in which someone has to address a primary and sec-
ondary audience. In what way are these audiences different? How would you be able
to juggle the text to have on impact on both of these audiences?
Additional Articles by Ede and Lunsford on the Topic of Audience

Ede and Lunsford followed up their seminal article “Audience Addressed, Audience Invoked:
The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy” (1984) with two additional
articles published in 1996 and 2009. The 1996 article, “Representing Audience: ‘Successful’
Discourse and Disciplinary Critique,” reflected on the original article, reaffirming the impor-
tance of considering audience in the context of the rhetorical situation. However, it also
noted that the original article privileged the tradition of individualism inherent in classical
rhetoric and ignored potential tensions between the audience addressed and the audience
invoked when a power imbalance exists between the two, which is certainly the case when
a student writes to a teacher. Classrooms are permeated with ideologies that construct both
writers and readers, Lunsford and Ede argued, inhibiting the range of possibilities for assum-
ing a writer identity and invoking potential readers. “Teachers and students are . . . not free
individual agents writing their own destinies but rather constructed subjects embedded in
multiple discourses, and the classroom is not a magic circle free of ideological and institutional
influence” (Lunsford & Ede, 1996, p. 172).
Audiences 125
In their 2009 article, “Among the Audience: On Audience in an Age of New Literacies,”
Lunsford and Ede questioned what relevance the term “audience” might have in “a world
of participatory media” (p. 43) and the extent to which the invoked and addressed audiences
discussed in the “1984 essay need to be revised and expanded” (p. 44). The article reaffirmed
the importance of the term “audience,” but acknowledged the need for a more flexible and
complex perspective: “In a digital world . . . speakers and audiences communicate in mul-
tiple ways and across multiple channels, often reciprocally” (p. 48). Anyone and everyone
can be both an author and an audience, and the concepts of audience and collaboration will
merge, particularly in blogs and interactive sites such as Wikipedia. The most significant
changes, the article suggested, will be reflected in new approaches to intellectual property
and common knowledge:
If you go to the Web with a question and get thousands of “hits” in answer to
it . . . shouldn’t that answer be considered as common knowledge that doesn’t need to
be cited? And even if we answer “no” to that question, which one of the thousands of
sources should be the one to be cited?
(p. 62)
Connections between the Writer and the Audience

The 2009 article by Lunsford and Ede emphasized the increased interactivity and collabora-
tive interaction between writer and audience with the use of new media. However, although
we may not have been as aware of it, such interactivity and involvement have always char-
acterized the writer–audience relationship. Writers and audiences have always been dynami-
cally linked, working cooperatively to make meaning; the writer creates an audience within
the text during composing and readers recreate that text when they read it. Peter Elbow,
in Writing with Power (1981), suggested that we picture readers and writers as two riders on
the same bicycle. As writers, we can steer, but the readers have to pedal. If we don’t explain
where we are going and why, and convince our readers that they should keep pedaling, the
bicycle will stop and both will tumble off. This is still the case, whether we are reading online
or perusing a dusty tome in a library.
This interactive relationship between writers and readers was described by George Dillon
(1981) through a metaphor of musical notation. He noted that: “The written marks on the
page more resemble a musical score than a computer program: they are marks cueing or
prompting an enactment or realization by the reader, rather than a code requiring deciphering”
(p. xi). Other models of composing depicting this interactivity included one that was devel-
oped by James Kinneavy (1971) who, in A Theory of Discourse, constructed a dynamic model
of communication between the writer, topic, and audience interacting dynamically with one
another and Wayne Booth’s concept of the rhetorical triangle. Booth (1963) maintained that
audience exerts a formative influence on the text, because whether one emphasizes the writer,
subject, or audience determines one’s “rhetorical stance,” which Booth defined as follows:
What makes the differences between effective communication and mere wasted
effort . . . is something I shall call the rhetorical stance, a stance which depends on dis-
covering and maintaining in any writing situation a proper balance among the three ele-
ments that are at work in any communicative effort, the available arguments about the
subject itself, the interests and peculiarities of the audience, and the voice, the implied
character, of the speaker.
(pp. 139–145)
126 Irene L. Clark

Which metaphor depicting the relationship between writer and audience do you feel
is most useful? Write a paragraph indicating which one you prefer, considering how
this model can be helpful to novice writers or to you. Are these metaphors pertinent to
writing with new media?
The Work of James Moffett

James Moffett’s Teaching the Universe of Discourse (1968) presented a view of audience based
on an interrelationship between the writer, subject, and reader. According to Moffett, com-
munication involves two relationships: how the writer views the subject, which he calls the
“I–it” relation, and how the writer views the reader, which he calls the “I–you” relation.
Moffett characterizes the “I–it” relationship as a continuum between reporting an event at
the time it occurs and generalizing about that event at a more distant time. This continuum
between the concrete and the abstract “indicate when events occurred in relation to when
the speaker is speaking about them” (p. 244) and the main points along this continuum are
conceived of in terms of four levels of increasing abstraction:
What is happening?
What happened?
What happens?
What may happen?
To give an example, suppose you were standing in the post office with a friend, comment-
ing on how long the lines were. As you observed the lines, you would not be very distant
from your subject matter—that is, the experience of standing in the line. Later on, you might
recall those lines in narrative form to another friend, a process that would require you to
select and incorporate details of the experience from memory. Still later, recalling those lines,
you might write a report in expository form about the line at the post office, a process that
would involve further generalization and abstraction, and then, months or years later, you
might use that experience of waiting in line and other experiences occurring since then to
argue a position about those long lines, a process that would involve still greater abstraction
and generalization.
In terms of the “I–you” relation, Moffett defines degrees of distance not between the
writer and the subject, but, rather, between the writer and the audience. Students might
begin by writing for themselves and then move beyond to write for increasingly abstract
audiences, from the known to the unknown. Moffett maintains that an effective writing cur-
riculum would enable students to write about “what is happening” for a variety of audiences,
from recreating an experience for oneself, to narrating the experience to a close friend, to
writing formally about the experience for a public audience whom the writer does not know.
Moffett’s curriculum, then, is based on a “universe of discourse,” which moves the student
from concrete experience to abstract idea, and from the self to the world. The teacher’s role
within this universe is to construct writing assignments that enable students to move in this
progression and to gain consciousness of how different audiences require different conceptual
and textual strategies.
Audiences 127

Moffett’s Teaching the Universe of Discourse was published in 1968. To what extent is his
concept of the I–you and I–it relationships relevant to working in new media?
Student Perspectives on Audience

Writing teachers frequently encourage students to consider their intended audience and
sometimes they specify a particular audience such as a congressperson, a principal, or the
director of a particular organization. Students, however, understand the concept quite simply:
the audience is the teacher who will evaluate their work and assign a grade. Indeed, teachers
do read their students’ essays, acting as a type of audience that exists in no other rhetorical
context. School-based writing constructs a reader–writer relationship that is unlike any com-
munication in the real world because as Reid and Kroll (1995) have noted, its purpose “is
not to inform, persuade, or entertain the teacher—it is to demonstrate understanding of the
assignment in ways that the teacher-reader already anticipates” (p. 18). The type of relation-
ship that exists in a school setting, is thus unlike any other:
Instead of an expert-to-expert relationship or a colleague-to-colleague relationship

between the writer and the reader (as in “real” writing–reading events), the relationship
is skewed: the expert (teacher-reader) assessing the novice (student-writer) in ways that
have consequences for the writer’s life.
(p. 18)
Academic writing tasks are tests and students understand this. They ask themselves, “what
does the teacher want?” and they view their audience as the person who wields the corrective
pen and assigns the grade.
College writing assignments, however, are not intended to teach students to write directly
to their teacher. Rather, their goal is to enable students to construct discourse for a wider
academic audience and to master the text genres that such audiences expect. Therefore,
although the teacher is a significant actual reader, he or she serves as a representative of the audi-
ence toward which the writing is oriented. Before the Internet enabled students to write for
a wider audience, college writing assignments required students to “pretend” that they were
writing for a more encompassing, general audience and to address their discourse toward that
audience even though the only “reader” of the discourse was usually the teacher.
Actually, as Paretti (2009) pointed out, “the teacher is always the wrong audience with the
wrong needs and the wrong goals”:
For example, a letter to the editor submitted only to a Composition instructor for a grade
would be “inauthentic” because the stated purpose (to express one’s views to a newspaper
audience) and the actual purpose (to have one’s writing ability evaluated) do not match.
(p. 173)
Moreover, no matter what audience they are supposed to be writing for, students know
“that they are always writing for the teacher, and that the teacher who is grading them has
expectations, standards, and preferences that may or may not overlap with those they will find
elsewhere” (p. 176).
128 Irene L. Clark
However, if students think of audience solely in terms of their teacher, the nature of
the discourse instantly changes. Sometimes, students may omit necessary explanations,
definitions, or support, because they assume, quite reasonably, that the teacher is already
familiar with the topic and, therefore, does not need such information. In fact, in some
instances, students may actually address the teacher directly, almost as if they were writing
personal letters instead of formal essays. One of my students, for example, began his paper
as follows:
My paper is about how the traditional family will not be a workable social entity in the
twenty-first century. When we discussed Stephanie Coontz’s book in class, it showed
that the idea of the ideal traditional family is only a myth.
Other problems associated with students’ obliviousness to audience are the assumption of
an inappropriate tone or, when students write about controversial topics, the presentation
of only one side of an issue. Seemingly insensible to the rhetorical goals of college writing,
students may write blatantly opinionated, aggressive, or poorly reasoned diatribes on the
topic, rather than an appropriately thoughtful, reasoned response. They don’t seem to realize
that an outrageous or insulting statement such as “Anyone who believes this is just a racist,”
or “Women are naturally inferior to men,” might have a negative, rather than a persuasive,
effect on a reader. Of course, if a student wrote a blatantly offensive statement on a blog, the
outraged responses of the wider audience would immediately indicate its effect.
Actually, as Joseph Harris has observed in Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts (2006),
although writing is often depicted as a conversation, “academic writing is almost always
intended to persuade a third reader” (p. 36):
One scholar will criticize the work of another less in the hope of having her rival recant
than in persuading other readers to see the good sense of her (rather than his) views. Even
an indignant author writing to protest a wrong-headed review of his latest book addresses
his letter “To the Editor.”
(p. 36)
Understanding the role of audience in the production of discourse, then, means that stu-
dents need to choose a discoursal role that is appropriate for the intended audience and the
genre for which the text is written, which requires them to anticipate as much as possible
who would be likely to read that genre. A posting on a classroom blog will be read by stu-
dents in that class; but it is also possible that others beyond the class will read it as well. The
potential of new media to expand the audience has the advantage of involving students in
a wider community, but it also makes it impossible for them to envision an audience with
the same precision one might have had in the past. In the context of academic writing,
then, it is useful to imagine a range of possible readers and construct a text with that range
in mind.
Using Fictional Characters and Dialogue to Focus Student Attention

on the Concept of Audience
A classroom strategy that is useful in helping students gain awareness of audience involves
having students create a fictional character who is likely to have a strong position on the
topic they are writing about. Students try to understand that character’s opinion on the
topic, and they then write a hypothetical dialogue between this character and themselves
in which they discuss the issue for the paper. Having students create a fictional audience
Audiences 129
and engage in a dialogue with that audience not only makes the class interesting and lively
as students share their creations but it also fosters several important insights associated with
audience, in particular:
1 It helps students understand that the teacher is not the only audience for an assigned essay.
2 It serves as a heuristic to generate ideas.
3 Because it fosters respect for an audience’s humanity and opinions, it helps students
understand that an essay is not simply a vehicle for the writer to express his or her own
ideas, but, rather, that its goal is for the writer to engage in a cooperative activity with
the reader. In this context, rhetoric is conceived of as inherently social.
4 It enables students to distinguish when it is appropriate to confront an opponent directly
and when it is appropriate to strive for change through mutual acceptance and under-
standing by each party of the other’s views.
5 It helps students determine which cues in their own text are likely to be effective in
addressing their created audience.
When students create their characters and attempt to imitate these characters’ voices in writ-
ing, they gain a more immediate sense of their potential audience and a greater insight into
the audience’s beliefs, attitudes, and values. Such understanding enables students to become
sensitive to when such an audience would experience a sense of threat and anticipate poten-
tial areas of conflict. It also helps students understand the complexity of the issues involved.
Working with dialogue also has the advantage of tapping into students’ skills at speaking and
listening, which are often better developed than their writing skills. Students can, thus, use
their knowledge of what is appropriate in oral discourse to detect what may be inappropriate
in their writing. The inappropriateness of statements such as “this idea is just ridiculous” or
“that idea is just crazy” or “anyone who believes that is just a racist” is more easily discerned
if students imagine themselves actually saying them to real people; they are better able to gage
the effect of extreme statements on the persuasiveness of their papers. The term “audience,”
then, becomes something real for them, not just an abstract concept.
The following section includes an exercise based on the idea of fictionalizing an audience.
I suggest that you work through this exercise yourself and also adapt it for your students.
Imagining and Creating Real Characters

Although new media greatly expands and complicates the concept of audience, the creation
of specific, potentially recognizable real characters can help students gain an understanding of
how audience shapes discourse. To use this strategy, imagine that you are at a gathering (e.g.,
a party, dinner, or meeting) where the subject of your assignment is being discussed. You
listen to the conversation for a while and then notice someone who has a particularly strong
opinion about it. Study this character and pay close attention to what he or she is saying.
Try to gain insight into his or her values and ideas and to understand the feelings behind the
words. Then answer the following questions:
1 What is this person’s name, age, and profession? Describe this person’s physical appearance.
2 What is this person’s current attitude toward this topic?
3 How much does this person know about the topic?
4 Describe this person’s value system.
5 How does this person’s value system influence his or her attitude toward the topic?
6 What aspect of the topic does this character find most important?
7 What aspect of the topic does this character find most disturbing?
130 Irene L. Clark
Writing a Dialogue
To utilize dialogue in the exploration of a topic, recall the character you created through the
above “character prompts.” Then, assume that after listening to the character you have imag-
ined, you decide to enter the discussion and engage in a dialogue with him or her. Script this
exchange in a dialogue of one to two pages, remembering that both participants should be
presented as polite and intelligent people. In this interchange, no one should make outrageous
or insulting statements and no one should win. The aim is to generate an exchange of ideas,
not to score points over an adversary.

The following assignment will enable you to practice creating characters and writing
dialogues as a means of focusing attention on audience.
The Controversy over School Uniforms

At Madison High School, located in a large American city, Principal Martin Blair has drafted
a memo to the Board of Education arguing in favor of requiring all students to wear school
uniforms beginning next year. Principal Blair is concerned primarily with the issue of safety,
and he feels that the uniform requirement will protect children from attacks by gang members.
He also believes that requiring all students to dress alike will focus their attention on their stud-
ies, rather than on their clothes. The President of the Parent–Teachers Association, Beverly
Woodson, however, opposes the uniform requirement and thinks that whether a child wears
a uniform to a public school should be the parents’ and even the children’s choice. President
Woodson feels that schools should not be allowed to dictate personal decisions regarding cloth-
ing and that the imposition of such a requirement would stifle children’s creativity.
How do you (or your students) feel about the issue of school uniforms? Were you (or
your students) required to wear a uniform in school? If so, how did you (or they) feel
about it? Do you perhaps have children of your own who are required to wear a uni-
form to school? If so, are you in favor of such a policy? If not, do you wish they had
such a requirement?
Choose a position in this controversy and write a dialogue between yourself and
either Principal Blair or President Woodson discussing this issue.
Other possibilities: start a blog on the topic of school uniforms or locate one on the
Internet and summarize the discussion.
Multiple Concepts of Audience in the Context of New Media

Recent scholarship concerned with audience, such as the 2009 article by Lunsford and Ede,
recognizes that the concept has become more complex in the context of new media. But
even before the widespread use of technology, the concept was considered more complicated
than students realize. Peter Elbow (1987) observed that “there are many different entities
called audience” (p. 50), among them actual readers of the text, the writer’s conception of
those readers (which may or may not be accurate), and the audience that the genre of the
text implies, to name a few. Barry Kroll (1984), in “Writing for Readers: Three Perspectives
Audiences 131
on Audience,” examined three types of audience: the rhetorical, the informational, and the
social. The rhetorical, which Kroll maintained is the traditional view of many Composition
textbooks, is addressed to a speaker whom one wants to persuade, a process that means find-
ing out as much as possible about this particular audience. Kroll noted a number of prob-
lems with this approach to audience: that students will then see all discourse as antagonistic,
encouraging them to become overly strident and ultimately unpersuasive, that the belief in a
completely knowable audience is simplistic, and that this model encompasses only a limited
account of the relationship between writer and reader.
Kroll’s second perspective conceived of audience “as a process of conveying information,
a process in which the writer’s goal is to transmit, as effectively as possible, a message to the
reader” (p. 176). However, this perspective is also limited in that it doesn’t acknowledge the
role of the reader in constructing the text. As Kroll phrases it, “filling a reader’s head with
information is not nearly as simple as filling a glass of water” (p. 176). Writing is not simply
encoding, nor is reading simply decoding.
Kroll’s third perspective conceived of writing as social interaction, a view that emphasizes
the importance of peer response and cooperative learning. The social perspective suggests that:
novice writers need to experience the satisfactions and conflicts of reader response—both
the satisfaction that comes from having successfully shaped the reader’s understanding and
experience, and the conflict that arises when a concept that seemed clear to the writer
baffles the reader, when a phrase which held special meaning for the writer evokes no
response, or when an omitted detail—clear enough in the writer’s mind—causes the reader
to stumble.
(p. 181)
This emphasis on writing as social interaction is made apparent when students write for one
another in a classroom chat room, such as Canvas, and is greatly expanded when students post
ideas on a blog.
In terms of classroom pedagogy, a particularly useful means of categorizing different types
of writer–audience relationship was presented by Ryder, Vander Lei, and Roen (1999), who
based their distinction on whether a writer is writing solely for oneself, for an actual person
or persons, or for a third party. These distinctions were explained as follows:
The student who writes to express herself might imagine that she is in a monadic writ-
ing situation. She is both the writer and the audience; no one else need be involved.
A second writing/speaking situation is dyadic. Such cases, where the writer/speaker is
addressing a particular person, are often seen as the most important kinds of persuasion
because of the relationship between the author/speaker and reader/listener . . . . A third
option is a triadic situation. Here, the author/speaker is one of two opponents before an
audience. We see this happen during public debates, when two candidates spar before a
crowd. The two are not trying to persuade each other; rather, each is trying to persuade
the audience, the third party.
(p. 55)
Ryder, Vander Lei, and Roen claimed that the triadic situation is the one that is most suited
to college writing assignments, and that it is, therefore, important for teachers to articulate
their expectations in their assignments, because students will otherwise assume a dyadic rela-
tionship between student and teacher. Persuasive topics, they suggest, forefront the impor-
tance of audience and lend themselves to audience analysis more effectively than other types
of writing assignments.
132 Irene L. Clark
Audience and the Expanded Discourse Community
Another perspective on how writers and audience interact with one another can be obtained
through the concept of discourse community. Discourse communities consist of members
who share language, values, generic conventions, and a set of expectations of the require-
ments for an effective text. Lawyers, English teachers, and doctors all belong to different
discourse communities and each adheres to different ideas about how a text should be writ-
ten. Thus, if a student wishes to become an attorney, he or she will have to learn how to
write and “sound like” an attorney. Otherwise, that person will always be perceived as an
outsider, and his or her opinion will not be considered credible. Bennet Rafoth (1988) sug-
gested that the term “discourse community” may be more helpful for students because it is
more encompassing than the term “audience.” Rafoth noted that “discourse community”
more effectively captures:
the language phenomena that relate writers, readers, and texts. Whereas the audience
metaphor tends naturally to represent readers or listeners as primary, and to admit writ-
ers and texts only as derivatives, discourse community admits writers, readers and texts
all together. Instead of forcing the question “Who is the audience for this writer or this
text” . . . discourse community directs attention to the contexts that give rise to a text,
including the range of conventions that govern different kinds of writing.
(p. 132)

Do you prefer the term “discourse community” to “audience”? Why or why not?
Which term do you think would be most helpful for students?
Distinguishing Between New and Common Knowledge:

Complications
The term “discourse community” can provide insight into purpose, genre, language, and
convention, and this remains true even if the text appears online. However, when students
write essays for college classes, especially when they are in their first year, they are unlikely to
be actual members of the discourse communities for which they are writing, and, in fact, must
try, or even pretend to be so, doing the best they can to imagine a discourse community and
fictionalizing their own insider status within it. This problem becomes particularly apparent
when students must decide what information they should include in a text as “new” knowl-
edge, as opposed to what can be omitted because it is assumed to be “common knowledge.”
This distinction is confusing not only because students are not true members of the academic
discourse communities for which they are writing, and are therefore unfamiliar with what
members of that community are likely to know or need to know, but also because they are
frequently given ambiguous advice. They are told to omit what might be considered “shared”
or “common” knowledge, yet the knowledge that students “share” is changing on a daily
basis. Two weeks ago, for example, students may not have heard of the term “discourse com-
munity,” but now they are supposed to write as if the term is quite familiar to them and does
not need explanation. Moreover, in terms of shared knowledge, students are often told “not
to assume that the reader knows what the writer is talking about,” but also “not to tell the
Audiences 133
reader what he or she already knows.” Of course, this confusion becomes compounded when
students utilize new media.
Students’ inability to distinguish between shared and new knowledge within a discourse
community may be manifested in an opening line such as, “Shakespeare was a well-known
English playwright” or “Abraham Lincoln was the President of the United States during the
Civil War”—information that members of an English-speaking academic discourse com-
munity would be expected to know. But this issue is difficult to address in terms of a failsafe
classroom strategy or maxim, because we learn to interact in any community only by observ-
ing the conventions of discourse within that group over a long period of time.
Addressing Audience in Standardized Essay Exams

An issue concerned with audience that has received only limited attention in Writing Studies
scholarship is the question of what sort of audience should be addressed on an essay writ-
ten for a standardized exam, such as the Scholastic Aptitude test, the Advanced Placement
exam, or the Common Core state standards (CCSS). As Peter Khost (2016) points out, “the
Common Core Standards (CCSS) now influence argumentation in primary and secondary
school curricula and may thereby shape students’ composing habits” (p. 47). Khost objects to
the concept of audience presumed in this test because he feels that “it risks training students
over many years to adopt a reductive and potentially unethical attitude toward audiences by
privileging a monologic, agonistic brand of argumentation” (p. 47). Khost maintains that this
type of argumentation “makes some of the moves of genuine debate with others in the name
of winning (e.g. stating claims, offering evidence) without genuinely engaging anyone. It is a
monologue without an audience” (p. 47).
Khost poses the following question: “who is this ubiquitous ‘reader’ supposedly receiving
millions of students’ arguments year after year, and is there any reason for students to engage
this audience in discourse other than being required to do so?” (p. 48). Khost’s further objec-
tion to these types of tests is that what is regarded as an effective argument, the kind required
by these tests, focuses only on “the perceived merit and reasonableness of the claims and proofs
offered rather than either the emotions the writing evokes in the audience or the character or
credentials of the writer” (p. 50). Such arguments, he maintains, are unrealistic and inauthentic.
These objections are worth considering, and I would agree that it is more realistic, authen-
tic, and desirable for students to engage with an actual issue and orient their arguments toward
an audience that has genuine involvement with that issue. However, what also needs to be
acknowledged is that an essay written for a standardized test is not intended to be authentic,
only to seem so. An essay written for a standardized exam is simply a test, and most students
understand that quite well. If the writing task concerned an actual issue, perhaps in the
workplace, students would have a deeper understanding of its purpose and would craft their
arguments appropriately, whereas in a test situation, this scenario is unlikely to happen. How,
then, should instructors help their students envision an audience when they write an essay
for a standardized test? To begin, I would suggest that teachers raise the issue of audience in
class frequently so that students can think about who they believe they are writing for when
they write their essays. I would also remind students that when they write an essay for a
standardized test, they are not writing for their peers. Rather they are writing for someone
associated with the academy, whose characteristics, according a survey across many disciplines
conducted by Thaiss and Zawacki (2006) are as follows:
1 They are convinced by evidence.

2 They tend to privilege reason over emotion or sensual perception.
3 They value rationality.
134 Irene L. Clark
Therefore, in preparing students to write an essay for a standardized test, especially one that
has high stakes, I would urge students to consider what these characteristics mean and provide
illustrative examples of essays that are intended for such an audience. I would also discuss
alternative strategies and approaches that might be effective. It can also be useful to give stu-
dents opportunities to envision an audience that adheres to these values—perhaps a teacher
they have known or a character in a film or work of fiction—and, of course, they can also
create an audience by imagining one.
In writing for such an audience, in essence, the student is writing for a “mock reader,”
which Walker Gibson defined as “a fictionalized version of oneself who plays roles posed by
texts in order to experience them in certain ways.” The epigraph at the beginning of this
chapter is from Gibston’s article, which was written in 1950, but is still relevant. According
to Gibson (1950), readers will generally play along with roles assigned to them, as long as the
writer has convincingly constructed them.

Recall an essay you wrote for a standardized test. How did you envision the audience
for that essay? Were you given instructions about how to write for that audience, per-
haps how to create one?
Fostering Audience Awareness in the Writing Class

To help students develop greater audience awareness, Composition instructors have used a
variety of consciousness-raising approaches for the classroom. One approach involves focus-
ing student attention on the audience in assigned readings, the assumption being that when
students examine how experienced writers consider their audience, they will then be able
to apply their insights to their own writing. Usually, though, this hoped-for carryover
rarely happens when students write their own essays. A slightly more successful approach
has been to provide students with broad demographic characteristics of a specified audi-
ence, a strategy that has been criticized, not only because it encourages stereotypes but also
because it is questionable whether students gain sufficient insight into a potential audience
when information is simply fed to them in the form of lists or facts. Finally, some instruc-
tors require students to write to “real” audiences, people who actually exist—such as the
school principal or a community leader, for example. This approach will sometimes result in
writing that is, indeed, directed to a specific audience. Its limitation is that it does not foster
student awareness of audience as a generic construct—that is, it does not enable students
to understand that the projection of an audience pertains to all writing tasks, regardless of
whether the writer can define a so-called “real” one. The other limit of this approach is that
it gives students the impression that the “audience” always exists independently of the text,
the “sender-to-recipient model.” Students, therefore, gain little insight into the role that
envisioned or created audiences play in generating text and in determining the role of the
writer within that text.
My recommendation is that whatever strategies a teacher may try, a focus on audience
is most useful during revision (and before students send their texts out into cyberspace). A
study by Roen and Willey conducted in 1988 indicated that it is during revision that atten-
tion to audience can most contribute to the quality of a text. In that study, 60 students were
randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: no attention to audience, attention
Audiences 135
to audience before and during drafting, and attention to audience before and during revision.
The treatment consisted of four questions:
1 Make a list of things your readers most likely already know.

2 List what they don’t know and most likely need to know.
3 Explain how you decided what the audience’s prior knowledge or lack of prior knowl-
edge was about the topic.
4 Consider responses to 1, 2, and 3. How will you adapt your essay to accommodate
readers?
The results of this study indicated that the essays for which students addressed audience before
and during revision were rated the highest, suggesting that an audience analysis guide sheet
can be an effective intervention tool for student writers. The worksheet that follows can be
used for this purpose, even when students are using new media.
Audience Analysis Sheet

1 Who is my audience? Who do I want my audience to be? What knowledge about
the subject does my audience already have?
2 What does my audience think, believe, or understand about this topic before he or
she reads my essay?
3 What do I want my audience to think, believe, or understand about this topic after
he or she reads my essay?
4 How do I want my audience to think of me? What role do I want to play in
addressing my audience?
Invoking Audience Cues in a Text

In the Composition class, examining texts for audience-based cues can help students under-
stand the concept more fully, whether the text is in print or electronic. Obviously, in a text
written only for oneself, as in a diary or list, no audience cues need be provided. If the writer
is writing for a specific person or organization, such as NOW or the Audubon Society, he or
she can signal those readers directly about which position they are expected to take. Ryder,
Vander Lei, and Roen (1999) refer to these cues as “naming moves,” which “involve par-
ticular pronouns, such as you/your or we/our” (p. 57). They also name those groups their
readers belong to, using phrases such as “those of us at Defenders of Wildlife,” or refer to
positions that their readers are likely to hold, such as “those of us who care about preserving
wildlife.” “Naming moves” specify an intended audience, enabling other audiences to realize
that the text was not intended for them and to situate themselves in relation to the writer and
the intended audience.
Another cueing device concerns how much background information or context to include
or exclude. This is an aspect of writing with which students often have considerable difficulty
if they are under the impression that they are writing solely for their teacher, causing them
to omit necessary information or explanation. How much background information should
be included in a college essay? When students ask me whether they should include contex-
tual information in their essays, I tell them that if it is a print essay, they should pretend that
136 Irene L. Clark
they have left their essay on a table in the college library where it can be read by any student
who happens to find it. If they have explained and supported their ideas adequately and have
included sufficient background and context for the topic, an intelligent student who comes
upon the essay would be able to understand its central point, even if he or she were not
thoroughly familiar with the topic or the assignment. If the student is posting online, similar
contextual information would have to be included, depending on the genre. A blog, for
example, would contain necessary introductory material, and the thread of the blog would
provide additional cues for a reader.
Peer Feedback
Peer feedback is one of the most useful strategies I know of for helping students gain awareness
of audience, one that lends itself easily to online exchange of papers through class discussion
lists or Canvas. Students can also bring in several hard copies of their first (not rough!) draft and
devote class time for peer review. Wherever the peer review workshop takes place, however,
it is crucial to distribute a list of specific questions; otherwise, students are likely either to focus
on stylistic or grammatical concerns or simply to offer praise (It flows. I can relate to it. It
speaks to me.). The questions you hand out or post can be tailored to the particular assignment
or can be sufficiently general to apply to many different assignments. Ryder, Vander Lei, and
Roen (1999) offer the following set of questions to structure a peer response session:
1 I identify with _____ in your writing.

This is a way for peer readers to tell the writer that they have had a common experi-
ence. It is a way of beginning the conversation.
2 I like _____ about your writing.
A little praise is always reassuring.
3 I have these questions about what you have written.
This enables the writer to understand what readers need to know that might not be
included in the text. Additional information might include additional detail, definition of
terms, narration of background, or establishing a context for a controversy.
4 I have these suggestions.
Suggestions are likely to develop from the questions.
Audience and the Potential of New Media

In an online article dated July 9, 2010 titled “Can the Internet Save the Book?” Andrew Keen
discusses the value of using the Internet to help students improve as writers, helping them
understand that writing is, in essence, a communicative act:
I’ll tell you two things I’ve done here at NYU with the writing my students do for me.
One, I assign them to write for each other. So they think, “My peers are going to read
this and also my professor is going to read this.” You’d think they’d be more concerned
about me reading it, but the quality goes up when they know their friends are going to
read it.
The other thing I do, with some of their stuff, is publish it online. I took a whole
bunch of papers by my students from a class we did on the effect of the Internet on
the 2008 Presidential election, and I just put them in a big folder and put them online.
People’s reaction to this was: “Oh, I may actually be communicating something; I’d bet-
ter get it together here.”
(Keen, 2010)
Audiences 137
Audience awareness is a crucial component of learning to write. Helping students understand
multiple notions of audience, incorporating the concept of audience into writing assignments,
and spending time in class examining audience cues in texts will enable students to write for
a broad range of readers in both their educational and professional lives. I suggest that it be
discussed frequently in class both in the context of print and new media texts.

Read the student essay “PC is Ridiculous!” in Chapter 3. How would attention to
audience have improved this essay? Construct a peer review sheet that would generate
revision of this essay.

Respond to Peter Elbow’s (1987) essay “Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for
Ignoring Audience.” To what extent do you agree with Elbow’s position on the role
of audience during early stages in the composing process?

Buck, E. (2015). Facebook, Instagram, and twitter—oh my: Assessing the efficacy of the rhetori-
cal composing situation with FYC students as advanced social media practitioners. Kairos: a
Journal of Rhetoric,Technology, and Pedagogy, 19(3(: n.p.
This article argues for Composition teachers who hope to utilize social media to support student
writing need to recognize the students’ use of multiple media sites, not just Facebook, but other
sites such as Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and others.
DePalma, M-J., & Alexander, K. P. (2015). A bag full of snakes: Negotiating the challenges of
multimodal composition. Computers and Composition, 37: 182–200.
Forgette, K., Dunkin, C., & Davis, A. (2014). The multimodal remix: One solution to the double-
audience dilemma in service-learning composition. BWe: Basic Writing eJournal, 13(1).
This article notes that when students write for an authentic audience in service-learning
Composition courses, they often face a double-audience dilemma. They are writing for the real
world audience in the project, but they also must meet the expectations of an academic audience.
Harris, J. (2006). Rewriting: How to do things with words. Logan, UT: Utah State UP.
Although not concerned specifically with audience, it examines various “moves” one can make
with texts and the functions each aspect of a text fulfills. The writer–audience relationship pro-
vides a basis for these various moves.
Khost, P. P., & Khost, P. H. (2016). Alas not yours to have: Problems with audiences in high stakes
tests, and the promise of felt sense. Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning,
2(1): 47–68.This essay offers a conceptual basis and strategy for teaching an expanded applica-
tion of felt-sense theory to avoid a standardized approach to written argumentation.
(continued)
138 Irene L. Clark
(continued)
Kirsch, G., & Roen, D. H. (1990). A sense of audience in written communication. Newbury Park, CA:
Sage Publications.
This collection consists of 16 essays on the subject of audience, ten concerned with the history
and theory of audience as a rhetorical concern and six discussing empirical studies.
Kroll, B. M. (1984, May). Writing for readers: Three perspectives on audience. College Composition
and Communication, 35: 172–185.
Kroll presents three conceptions of audience that have influenced Composition teaching: the
rhetorical, the informational, and the social. The article also raises issues about whether the
effectiveness of a text is more fully connected to genre and convention than to social knowledge.
Long, R. C. (1980, May). Writer–audience relationships. CCC, 31: 221–226.
Long distinguishes readers from audience, noting that audience exists within the text as well as
external to it.
Park, D. B. (1982). The meanings of audience. College English, 44: 246–257.
Park advocates the importance of the created rather than real audience.The question to ask is not
“Who is my audience?” but, rather, “Who do I want my audience to be?”
Porter, J. E. (1992). Audience and rhetoric: An archeological composition of the discourse community.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Porter surveys conceptions of audience from Aristotle through the new rhetoric, discussing a
number of theoretical positions that impact audience, such as reader-response criticism and social
constructionism. His focus tends to be on social constructionist perspectives in which the audi-
ence collaborates with the writer in composing a text.
Powell, B., Kara P. A., & Borton, S. (2011). Interaction of author, audience, and purpose in
multimodal texts: Students’ discovery of their role as composer. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric,
Technology, and Pedagogy, 15(2).
Reiff, M. J. (2004). Approaches to audience: An overview of the major perspectives. Superior, WI: Parlay
Press.
As its title indicates, this book provides an overview of major perspectives on audience: rhetori-
cal, cognitive, textual, contextual, and social constructionist. The book concludes with a chapter
that advocates the value of acknowledging multiple audiences.
Rossen-Knill, D. F. (2013). Refining the given-New expectation for classroom use: A lesson in the
importance of audience. Journal of Teaching Writing, 28(1): 31–51.
Discussing the effectiveness of the given-new principle in sentence level revision, this article
argues that the importance of this principle varies with audience, purpose, and genre.
Shilb, J. (2007). Rhetorical refusals: Defying audiences’ expectations. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press.
This book defines “rhetorical refusal” as an act of speaking or writing in which the rhetor refuses
to do what the audience considers rhetorically normal. Analysis of how such refusals function is
applied to several case studies.
Weiser, M. E., Fehler, B. M., & Gonzales, A. M. (Eds.). (2009). Engaging audience: Writing in an age
of new literacies. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
This excellent collection of essays brings together theorists and practitioners to examine the
concept of audience from multiple perspectives. It begins with Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford’s
seminal essay, “Audience Addressed, Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition
Theory and Pedagogy,” followed by two additional articles by these authors. Subsequent articles
draw from a variety of fields: communication, history, professional writing, and new media stud-
ies, all building on and engaging with the work of Lunsford and Ede.
Wilson, W. D. (1981). Readers in texts. PMLA, 96: 848–863.
Wilson isolates three distinct kinds of reading presences: the real reader, the implied reader, and
the characterized reader.
Audiences 139
References
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Reading
Closing My Eyes as I Speak
An Argument for Ignoring Audience
Peter Elbow
Very often people don’t listen to you when you speak to them. It’s only when you talk to yourself
that they prick up their ears.
John Ashbery
When I am talking to a person or a group and struggling to find words or thoughts, I often
find myself involuntarily closing my eyes as I speak. I realize now that this behavior is an
instinctive attempt to blot out awareness of audience when I need all my concentration for
just trying to figure out or express what I want to say. Because the audience is so imperiously
present in a speaking situation, my instinct reacts with this active attempt to avoid audience
awareness. This behavior—in a sense impolite or anti-social—is not so uncommon. Even
when we write, alone in a room to an absent audience, there are occasions when we are
struggling to figure something out and need to push aside awareness of those absent read-
ers. As Donald Murray puts it, “My sense of audience is so strong that I have to suppress my
conscious awareness of audience to hear what the text demands” (Berkenkotter and Murray
171). In recognition of how pervasive the role of audience is in writing, I write to celebrate the
benefits of ignoring audience.1
It will be clear that my argument for writing without audience awareness is not meant to
undermine the many good reasons for writing with audience awareness some of the time.
(For example, that we are liable to neglect audience because we write in solitude; that young
people often need more practice in taking into account points of view different from their own;
and that students often have an impoverished sense of writing as communication because
they have only written in a school setting to teachers.) Indeed I would claim some part in
these arguments for audience awareness—which now seem to be getting out of hand.
I start with a limited claim: even though ignoring audience will usually lead to weak writing
at first—to what Linda Flower calls “writer-based prose,” this weak writing can help us in the
end to better writing than we would have written if we’d kept readers in mind from the start.
Then I will make a more ambitious claim: writer-based prose is sometimes better than reader-
based prose. Finally I will explore some of the theory underlying these issues of audience.
A Limited Claim
It’s not that writers should never think about their audience. It’s a question of when. An audi-
ence is a field of force. The closer we come—the more we think about these readers—the
stronger the pull they exert on the contents of our minds. The practical question, then, is
always whether a particular audience functions as a helpful field of force or one that confuses
or inhibits us.
Some audiences, for example, are inviting or enabling. When we think about them as we
write, we think of more and better things to say—and what we think somehow arrives more
142 Peter Elbow
coherently structured than usual. It’s like talking to the perfect listener; we feel smart and
come up with ideas we didn’t know we had. Such audiences are helpful to keep in mind right
from the start.
Other audiences, however, are powerfully inhibiting—so much so, in certain cases, that
awareness of them as we write blocks writing altogether. There are certain people who always
make us feel dumb when we try to speak to them: we can’t find words or thoughts. As soon as
we get out of their presence, all the things we wanted to say pop back into our minds. Here is
a student telling what happens when she tries to follow the traditional advice about audience:
You know ____ [author of a text] tells us to pay attention to the audience that will be
reading our papers, and I gave that a try. I ended up without putting a word on paper
until I decided the hell with____; I’m going to write to who I damn well want to; otherwise
I can hardly write at all.
Admittedly, there are some occasions when we benefit from keeping a threatening audience
in mind from the start. We’ve been putting off writing that letter to that person who intimidates
us. When we finally sit down and write to them—walk right up to them, as it were, and look
them in the eye—we may manage to stand up to the threat and grasp the nettle and thereby
find just what we need to write.
Most commonly, however, the effect of audience awareness is somewhere between
the two extremes: the awareness disturbs or disrupts our writing and thinking without com-
pletely blocking it. For example, when we have to write to someone we find intimidating (and
of course students often perceive teachers as intimidating), we often start thinking wholly
defensively. As we write down each thought or sentence, our mind fills with thoughts of how
the intended reader will criticize or object to it. So we try to qualify or soften what we’ve just
written—or write out some answer to a possible objection. Our writing becomes tangled.
Sometimes we get so tied in knots that we cannot even figure out what we think. We may
not realize how often audience awareness has this effect on our students when we don’t see
the writing processes behind their papers: we just see texts that are either tangled or empty.
Another example. When we have to write to readers with whom we have an awkward
relationship, we often start beating around the bush and feeling shy or scared, or start to
write in a stilted, overly careful style or voice. (Think about the cute, too-clever style of many
memos we get in our departmental mailboxes—the awkward self-consciousness academics
experience when writing to other academics.) When students are asked to write to readers
they have not met or cannot imagine, such as “the general reader” or “the educated public,”
they often find nothing to say except clichés they know they don’t even quite believe.
When we realize that an audience is somehow confusing or inhibiting us, the solution is
fairly obvious. We can ignore that audience altogether during the early stages of writing and
direct our words only to ourselves or to no one in particular—or even to the “wrong” audi-
ence, that is, to an inviting audience of trusted friends or allies. This strategy often dissipates
the confusion; the clenched, defensive discourse starts to run clear. Putting audience out of
mind is of course a traditional practice; serious writers have long used private journals for
early explorations of feeling, thinking, or language. But many writing teachers seem to think
that students can get along without the private writing serious writers find so crucial—or even
that students will benefit from keeping their audience in mind for the whole time. Things often
don’t work out that way.
Closing My Eyes as I Speak 143
After we have figured out our thinking in copious exploratory or draft writing—perhaps
finding the right voice or stance as well—then we can follow the traditional rhetorical advice:
think about readers and revise carefully to adjust our words and thoughts to our intended
audience. For a particular audience it may even turn out that we need to disguise our point
of view. But it’s hard to disguise something while engaged in trying to figure it out. As writers,
then, we need to learn when to think about audience and when to put readers out of mind.
Many people are too quick to see Flower’s “writer-based prose” as an analysis of what’s
wrong with this type of writing and miss the substantial degree to which she was celebrating
a natural, and indeed developmentally enabling, response to cognitive overload. What she
doesn’t say, however, despite her emphasis on planning and conscious control in the writ-
ing process, is that we can teach students to notice when audience awareness is getting in
their way—and when this happens, consciously to put aside the needs of readers for a while.
She seems to assume that when an overload occurs, the writer-based gear will, as it were,
automatically kick into action to relieve it. In truth, of course, writers often persist in using a
malfunctioning reader-based gear despite the overload—thereby mangling their language or
thinking. Though Flower likes to rap the knuckles of people who suggest a “correct” or “natu-
ral” order for steps in the writing process, she implies such an order here: when attention to
audience causes an overload, start out by ignoring them while you attend to your thinking;
after you work out your thinking, turn your attention to audience.
Thus if we ignore audience while writing on a topic about which we are not expert or about
which our thinking is still evolving, we are likely to produce exploratory writing that is unclear
to anyone else—perhaps even inconsistent or a complete mess. Yet by doing this explora-
tory “swamp work” in conditions of safety, we can often coax our thinking through a process
of new discovery and development. In this way we can end up with something better than we
could have produced if we’d tried to write to our audience all along. In short, ignoring audi-
ence can lead to worse drafts but better revisions. (Because we are professionals and adults,
we often write in the role of expert: we may know what we think without new exploratory
writing; we may even be able to speak confidently to critical readers. But students seldom
experience this confident professional stance in their writing. And think how much richer our
writing would be if we defined ourselves as inexpert and allowed ourselves private writing for
new explorations of those views we are allegedly sure of.)
Notice then that two pieties of composition theory are often in conflict:
1 Think about audience as you write (this stemming from the classical rhetorical tradition).
2 Use writing for making new meaning, not just transmitting old meanings already worked
out (this stemming from the newer epistemic tradition I associate with Ann Berthoff’s
classic explorations).
It’s often difficult to work out new meaning while thinking about readers.
A More Ambitious Claim

I go further now and argue that ignoring audience can lead to better writing—immediately. In
effect, writer-based prose can be better than reader-based prose. This might seem a more
controversial claim, but is there a teacher who has not had the experience of struggling
and struggling to no avail to help a student untangle his writing, only to discover that the
144 Peter Elbow
student’s casual journal writing or freewriting is untangled and strong? Sometimes freewrit-
ing is stronger than the essays we get only because it is expressive, narrative, or descriptive
writing and the student was not constrained by a topic. But teachers who collect drafts with
completed assignments often see passages of freewriting that are strikingly stronger even
when they are expository and constrained by the assigned topic. In some of these passages
we can sense that the strength derives from the student’s unawareness of readers.
It’s not just unskilled, tangled writers, though, who sometimes write better by forgetting
about readers. Many competent and even professional writers produce mediocre pieces
because they are thinking too much about how their readers will receive their words. They
are acting too much like a salesman trained to look the customer in the eye and to think at
all times about the characteristics of the “target audience.” There is something too staged or
planned or self-aware about such writing. We see this quality in much second-rate newspa-
per or magazine or business writing: “good-student writing” in the awful sense of the term.
Writing produced this way reminds us of the ineffective actor whose consciousness of self
distracts us: he makes us too aware of his own awareness of us. When we read such prose,
we wish the writer would stop thinking about us—would stop trying to “adjust” or “fit” what he
is saying to our frame of reference. “Damn it, put all your attention on what you are saying,”
we want to say, “and forget about us and how we are reacting.”
When we examine really good student or professional writing, we can often see that its
goodness comes from the writer’s having gotten sufficiently wrapped up in her meaning and
her language as to forget all about audience needs: the writer manages to “break through.”
The Earl of Shaftesbury talked about writers needing to escape their audience in order to find
their own ideas (Cooper 1:109; see also Griffin). It is characteristic of much truly good writing
to be, as it were, on fire with its meaning. Consciousness of readers is burned away; involve-
ment in subject determines all. Such writing is analogous to the performance of the actor who
has managed to stop attracting attention to her awareness of the audience watching her.
The arresting power in some writing by small children comes from their obliviousness to
audience. As readers, we are somehow sucked into a more-than-usual connection with the
meaning itself because of the child’s gift for more-than-usual concentration on what she is
saying. In short, we can feel some pieces of children’s writing as being very writer-based.
Yet it’s precisely that quality which makes it powerful for us as readers. After all, why should
we settle for a writer’s entering our point of view, if we can have the more powerful experi-
ence of being sucked out of our point of view and into her world? This is just the experience
that children are peculiarly capable of giving because they are so expert at total absorption
in their world as they are writing. It’s not just a matter of whether the writer “decenters,” but
of whether the writer has a sufficiently strong focus of attention to make the reader decenter.
This quality of concentration is what D. H. Lawrence so admires in Melville:
[Melville] was a real American in that he always felt his audience in front of him. But
when he ceases to be American, when he forgets all audience, and gives us his sheer
apprehension of the world, then he is wonderful, his book [Moby Dick] commands a still-
ness in the soul, an awe.
(158)
What most readers value in really excellent writing is not prose that is right for readers but
prose that is right for thinking, right for language, or right for the subject being written about.
If, in addition, it is clear and well suited to readers, we appreciate that. Indeed we feel
insulted if the writer did not somehow try to make the writing available to us before delivering
it. But if it succeeds at being really true to language and thinking and “things,” we are willing
to put up with much difficulty as readers:
[G]ood writing is not always or necessarily an adaptation to communal norms (in the
Fish/Bruffee sense) but may be an attempt to construct (and instruct) a reader capable
of reading the text in question. The literary history of the “difficult” work—from Mallarmé
to Pound, Zukofsky, Olson, etc.—seems to say that much of what we value in writing
we’ve had to learn to value by learning how to read it.
(Trimbur)
The effect of audience awareness on voice is particularly striking—if paradoxical. Even

though we often develop our voice by finally “speaking up” to an audience or “speaking out”
to others, and even though much dead student writing comes from students’ not really treat-
ing their writing as a communication with real readers, nevertheless, the opposite effect is
also common: we often do not really develop a strong, authentic voice in our writing till we
find important occasions for ignoring audience—saying, in effect, “To hell with whether they
like it or not. I’ve got to say this the way I want to say it.” Admittedly, the voice that emerges
when we ignore audience is sometimes odd or idiosyncratic in some way, but usually it is
stronger. Indeed, teachers sometimes complain that student writing is “writer-based” when
the problem is simply the idiosyncracy—and sometimes in fact the power—of the voice.
They would value this odd but resonant voice if they found it in a published writer (see “Real
Voice,” Elbow, Writing with Power). Usually we cannot trust a voice unless it is unaware of
us and our needs and speaks out in its own terms (see the Ashbery epigraph). To celebrate
writer-based prose is to risk the charge of romanticism: just warbling one’s woodnotes wild.
But my position also contains the austere classic view that we must nevertheless revise with
conscious awareness of audience in order to figure out which pieces of writer-based prose
are good as they are—and how to discard or revise the rest.
To point out that writer-based prose can be better for readers than reader-based prose is
to reveal problems in these two terms. Does writer-based mean:
1 That the text doesn’t work for readers because it is too much oriented to the writer’s point
of view?
2 Or that the writer was not thinking about readers as she wrote, although the text may
work for readers?
Does reader-based mean:
3 That the text works for readers—meets their needs?

4 Or that the writer was attending to readers as she wrote although her text may not work
for readers?
In order to do justice to the reality and complexity of what actually happens in both writers
and readers, I was going to suggest four terms for the four conditions listed above, but I
gradually realized that things are even too complex for that. We really need to ask about
146 Peter Elbow
what’s going on in three dimensions—in the writer, in the reader, and in the text—and realize
that the answers can occur in virtually any combination:
−− Was the writer thinking about readers or oblivious to them?

−− Is the text oriented toward the writer’s frame of reference or point of view, or oriented
toward that of readers? (A writer may be thinking about readers and still write a text that
is largely oriented towards her own frame of reference.)
−− Are the readers’ needs being met? (The text may meet the needs of readers whether
the writer was thinking about them or not, and whether the text is oriented toward them
or not.)
Two Models of Cognitive Development

Some of the current emphasis on audience awareness probably derives from a model of
cognitive development that needs to be questioned. According to this model, if you keep your
readers in mind as you write, you are operating at a higher level of psychological develop-
ment than if you ignore readers. Directing words to readers is “more mature” than directing
them to no one in particular or to yourself. Flower relates writer-based prose to the inability
to “decenter” which is characteristic of Piaget’s early stages of development, and she relates
reader-based prose to later more mature stages of development.
On the one hand, of course this view must be right. Children do decenter as they develop.
As they mature they get better at suiting their discourse to the needs of listeners, particu-
larly to listeners very different from themselves. Especially, they get better at doing so
consciously—thinking awarely—about how things appear to people with different viewpoints.
Thus much unskilled writing is unclear or awkward because the writer was doing what it is
so easy to do—unthinkingly taking her own frame of reference for granted and not attending
to the needs of readers who might have a different frame of reference. And of course this
failure is more common in younger, immature, “egocentric” students (and also more common
in writing than in speaking since we have no audience present when we write).
But on the other hand, we need the contrary model that affirms what is also obvious once
we reflect on it, namely that the ability to turn off audience awareness—especially when it
confuses thinking or blocks discourse—is also a “higher” skill. I am talking about an ability
to use language in “the desert island mode,” an ability that tends to require learning, growth,
and psychological development. Children, and even adults who have not learned the art of
quiet, thoughtful, inner reflection, are often unable to get much cognitive action going in their
heads unless there are other people present to have action with. They are dependent on
live audience and the social dimension to get their discourse rolling or to get their thinking
off the ground.
For in contrast to a roughly Piagetian model of cognitive development that says we start
out as private, egocentric little monads and grow up to be public and social, it is important
to invoke the opposite model that derives variously from Vygotsky, Bakhtin, and Meade.
According to this model, we start out social and plugged into others and only gradually,
through learning and development, come to “unplug” to any significant degree so as to func-
tion in a more private, individual and differentiated fashion: “Development in thinking is not
from the individual to the socialized, but from the social to the individual” (Vygotsky 20). The
important general principle in this model is that we tend to develop our important cognitive
capacities by means of social interaction with others, and having done so we gradually learn
to perform them alone. We fold the “simple” back-and-forth of dialogue into the “complexity”
(literally, “foldedness”) of individual, private reflection.
Where the Piagetian (individual psychology) model calls our attention to the obvious need
to learn to enter into viewpoints other than our own, the Vygotskian (social psychology)
model calls our attention to the equally important need to learn to produce good thinking and
discourse while alone. A rich and enfolded mental life is something that people achieve only
gradually through growth, learning, and practice. We tend to associate this achievement with
the fruits of higher education.
Thus we see plenty of students who lack this skill, who have nothing to say when asked
to free-write or to write in a journal. They can dutifully “reply” to a question or a topic, but
they cannot seem to initiate or sustain a train of thought on their own. Because so many
adolescent students have this difficulty, many teachers chime in: “Adolescents have noth-
ing to write about. They are too young. They haven’t had significant experience.” In truth,
adolescents don’t lack experience or material, no matter how “sheltered” their lives. What
they lack is practice and help. Desert island discourse is a learned cognitive process. It’s a
mistake to think of private writing (journal writing and freewriting) as merely “easy”—merely
a relief from trying to write right. It’s also hard. Some exercises and strategies that help are
Ira Progoff’s “Intensive Journal” process, Sondra Perl’s “Composing Guidelines,” or Elbow’s
“Loop Writing” and “Open Ended Writing” processes (Writing with Power 50–77).
The Piagetian and Vygotskian developmental models (language-begins-as-private vs.
language-begins-as-social) give us two different lenses through which to look at a common
weakness in student writing, a certain kind of “thin” writing where the thought is insufficiently
developed or where the language doesn’t really explain what the writing implies or gestures
toward. Using the Piagetian model, as Flower does, one can specify the problem as a weak-
ness in audience orientation. Perhaps the writer has immaturely taken too much for granted
and unthinkingly assumed that her limited explanations carry as much meaning for readers
as they do for herself. The cure or treatment is for the writer to think more about readers.
Through the Vygotskian lens, however, the problem and the “immaturity” look altogether
different. Yes, the writing isn’t particularly clear or satisfying for readers, but this alternative
diagnosis suggests a failure of the private desert island dimension: the writer’s explanation
is too thin because she didn’t work out her train of thought fully enough for herself. The sug-
gested cure or treatment is not to think more about readers but to think more for herself, to
practice exploratory writing in order to learn to engage in that reflective discourse so central
to mastery of the writing process. How can she engage readers more till she has engaged
herself more?
The current emphasis on audience awareness may be particularly strong now for being
fueled by both psychological models. From one side, the Piagetians say, in effect, “The ego-
centric little critters, we’ve got to socialize ‘em! Ergo, make them think about audience when
they write!” From the other side, the Vygotskians say, in effect, “No wonder they’re having
trouble writing. They’ve been bamboozled by the Piagetian heresy. They think they’re soli-
tary individuals with private selves when really they’re just congeries of voices that derive
from their discourse community. Ergo, let’s intensify the social context—use peer groups
and publication: make them think about audience when they write! (And while we’re at it,
let’s hook them up with a better class of discourse community.)” To advocate ignoring audi-
ence is to risk getting caught in the crossfire from two opposed camps.
148 Peter Elbow
Two Models of Discourse: Discourse as Communication and Discourse as
Poesis or Play
We cannot talk about writing without at least implying a psychological or developmental
model. But we’d better make sure it’s a complex, paradoxical, or spiral model. Better yet, we
should be deft enough to use two contrary models or lenses. (Bruner pictures the develop-
mental process as a complex movement in an upward reiterative spiral—not a simple move-
ment in one direction.)
According to one model, it is characteristic of the youngest children to direct their dis-
course to an audience. They learn discourse because they have an audience; without an
audience they remain mute, like “the wild child.” Language is social from the start. But we
need the other model to show us what is also true, namely that it is characteristic of the
youngest children to use language in a non-social way. They use language not only because
people talk to them but also because they have such a strong propensity to play and to
build—often in a non-social or non-audience-oriented fashion. Thus although one paradigm
for discourse is social communication, another is private exploration or solitary play. Babies
and toddlers tend to babble in an exploratory and reflective way—to themselves and not to
an audience—often even with no one else near. This archetypally private use of discourse is
strikingly illustrated when we see a pair of toddlers in “parallel play” alongside each other—
each busily talking but not at all trying to communicate with the other.
Therefore, when we choose paradigms for discourse, we should think not only about
children using language to communicate, but also about children building sandcastles or
drawing pictures. Though children characteristically show their castles or pictures to others,
they just as characteristically trample or crumple them before anyone else can see them. Of
course sculptures and pictures are different from words. Yet discourse implies more media
than words; and even if you restrict discourse to words, one of our most mature uses of
language is for building verbal pictures and structures for their own sake—not just for com-
municating with others.
Consider this same kind of behavior at the other end of the life cycle: Brahms staggering
from his deathbed to his study to rip up a dozen or more completed but unpublished and
unheard string quartets that dissatisfied him. How was he relating to audience here—worrying
too much about audience or not giving a damn? It’s not easy to say. Consider Glenn Gould
deciding to renounce performances before an audience. He used his private studio to produce
recorded performances for an audience, but to produce ones that satisfied himself he clearly
needed to suppress audience awareness. Consider the more extreme example of Kerouac
typing page after page—burning each as soon as he completed it. The language behavior of
humans is slippery. Surely we are well advised to avoid positions that say it is “always X” or
“essentially Y.”
James Britton makes a powerful argument that the “making” or poesis function of lan-
guage grows out of the expressive function. Expressive language is often for the sake of
communication with an audience, but just as often it is only for the sake of the speaker—
working something out for herself (66–67, 74ff.). Note also that “writing to learn,” which
writing-across-the-curriculum programs are discovering to be so important, tends to be writ-
ing for the self or even for no one att all rather than for an outside reader. You throw away
the writing, often unread, and keep the mental changes it has engendered.
I hope this emphasis on the complexity of the developmental process—the limits of our
models and of our understanding of it—will serve as a rebuke to the tendency to label students
as being at a lower stage of cognitive development just because they don’t yet write well.
(Occasionally they do write well—in a way—but not in the way that the labeler finds appropri-
ate.) Obviously the psychologistic labeling impulse started out charitably. Shaughnessy was
fighting those who called basic writers stupid by saying they weren’t dumb, just at an earlier
developmental stage. Flower was arguing that writer-based prose is a natural response to a
cognitive overload and indeed developmentally enabling. But this kind of talk can be danger-
ous since it labels students as literally “retarded” and makes teachers and administrators
start to think of them as such. Instead of calling poor writers either dumb or slow (two forms
of blaming the victim), why not simply call them poor writers? If years of schooling haven’t yet
made them good writers, perhaps they haven’t gotten the kind of teaching and support they
need. Poor students are often deprived of the very thing they need most to write well (which
is given to good students): lots of extended and adventuresome writing for self and for audi-
ence. Poor students are often asked to write only answers to fill-in exercises.
As children get older, the developmental story remains complex or spiral. Though the first
model makes us notice that babies start out with a natural gift for using language in a social
and communicative fashion, the second model makes us notice that children and adoles-
cents must continually learn to relate their discourse better to an audience—must struggle to
decenter better. And though the second model makes us notice that babies also start out with
a natural gift for using language in a private, exploratory and playful way, the first model makes
us notice that children and adolescents must continually learn to master this solitary, desert
island, poesis mode better. Thus we mustn’t think of language only as communication—nor
allow communication to claim dominance either as the earliest or as the most “mature” form of
discourse. It’s true that language is inherently communicative (and without communication we
don’t develop language), yet language is just as inherently the stringing together of exploratory
discourse for the self—or for the creation of objects (play, poesis, making) for their own sake.
In considering this important poesis function of language, we need not discount (as
Berkenkotter does) the striking testimony of so many witnesses who think and care most
about language: professional poets, writers, and philosophers. Many of them maintain that
their most serious work is making, not communicating, and that their commitment is to lan-
guage, reality, logic, experience, not to readers. Only in their willingness to cut loose from
the demands or needs of readers, they insist, can they do their best work. Here is William
Stafford on this matter:
I don’t want to overstate this . . . but . . . my impulse is to say I don’t think of an audience

at all. When I’m writing, the satisfactions in the process of writing are my satisfactions in
dealing with the language, in being surprised by phrasings that occur to me, in finding
that this miraculous kind of convergent focus begins to happen. That’s my satisfaction,
and to think about an audience would be a distraction. I try to keep from thinking about
an audience.
(Cicotello 176)
And Chomsky:
I can be using language in the strictest sense with no intention of communicating. . . . As

a graduate student, I spent two years writing a lengthy manuscript, assuming throughout
that it would never be published or read by anyone. I meant everything I wrote, intending
150 Peter Elbow
nothing as to what anyone would [understand], in fact taking it for granted that there
would be no audience . . . . [C]ommunication is only one function of language, and by no
means an essential one.
(Qtd. in Feldman 5–6)
It’s interesting to see how poets come together with philosophers on this point—and
even with mathematicians. All are emphasizing the “poetic” function of language in its
literal sense—“poesis” as “making.” They describe their writing process as more like
“getting something right” or even “solving a problem” for its own sake than as communi-
cating with readers or addressing an audience. The task is not to satisfy readers but to
satisfy the rules of the system: “[T]he writer is not thinking of a reader at all; he makes it
‘clear’ as a contract with language.”
(Goodman 164)
Shall we conclude, then, that solving an equation or working out a piece of symbolic logic
is at the opposite end of the spectrum from communicating with readers or addressing an
audience? No. To draw that conclusion would be to fall again into a one-sided position.
Sometimes people write mathematics for an audience, sometimes not. The central point in
this essay is that we cannot answer audience questions in an a priori fashion based on the
“nature” of discourse or of language or of cognition—only in terms of the different uses or
purposes to which humans put discourse, language, or cognition on different occasions. If
most people have a restricted repertoire of uses for writing—if most people use writing only
to send messages to readers, that’s no argument for constricting the definition of writing. It’s
an argument for helping people expand their repertoire of uses.
The value of learning to ignore audience while writing, then, is the value of learning to cul-
tivate the private dimension: the value of writing in order to make meaning to oneself, not just
to others. This involves learning to free oneself (to some extent, anyway) from the enormous
power exerted by society and others, to unhook oneself from external prompts and social
stimuli. We’ve grown accustomed to theorists and writing teachers puritanically stressing the
problem of writing: the tendency to neglect the needs of readers because we usually write
in solitude. But let’s also celebrate this same feature of writing as one of its glories: writing
invites disengagement too, the inward turn of mind, and the dialogue with self. Though writ-
ing is deeply social and though we usually help things by enhancing its social dimension,
writing is also the mode of discourse best suited to helping us develop the reflective and
private dimension of our mental lives.
“But Wait a Minute, ALL Discourse Is Social”

Some readers who see all discourse as social will object to my opposition between public
and private writing (the “trap of oppositional thinking”) and insist that there is no such thing
as private discourse. What looks like private, solitary mental work, they would say, is really
social. Even on the desert island I am in a crowd.
[B]y ignoring audience in the conventional sense, we return to it in another sense. What
I get from Vygotsky and Bakhtin is the notion that audience is not really out there at
all but is in fact “always already” (to use that poststructuralist mannerism . . .) inside,
interiorized in the conflicting languages of others—parents, former teachers, peers, pro-
spective readers, whomever—that writers have to negotiate to write, and that we do
negotiate when we write whether we’re aware of it or not. The audience we’ve got to
satisfy in order to feel good about our writing is as much in the past as in the present or
future. But we experience it (it’s so internalized) as ourselves.
(Trimbur)
(Ken Bruffee likes to quote from Frost: “ ‘Men work together, . . . /Whether they work together
or apart’ ” [“The Tuft of Flowers”]). Or—putting it slightly differently—when I engage in what
seems like private non-audience-directed writing, I am really engaged in communication with
the “audience of self.” For the self is multiple, not single, and discourse to self is communica-
tion from one entity to another. As Feldman argues, “The self functions as audience in much
the same way that others do” (290).
Suppose I accept this theory that all discourse is really social—including what I’ve been
calling “private writing” or writing I don’t intend to show to any reader. Suppose I agree that
all language is essentially communication directed toward an audience—whether some past
internalized voice or (what may be the same thing) some aspect of the self. What would this
theory say to my interest in “private writing”?
The theory would seem to destroy my main argument. It would tell me that there’s no such
thing as “private writing”; it’s impossible not to address audience; there are no vacations from
audience. But the theory might try to console me by saying not to worry, because we don’t
need vacations from audience. Addressing audience is as easy, natural, and unaware as
breathing—and we’ve been at it since the cradle. Even young, unskilled writers are already
expert at addressing audiences.
But if we look closely we can see that in fact this theory doesn’t touch my central
practical argument. For even if all discourse is naturally addressed to some audience, it’s
not naturally addressed to the right audience—the living readers we are actually trying
to reach. Indeed the pervasiveness of past audiences in our heads is one more reason
for the difficulty of reaching present audiences with our texts. Thus even if I concede the
theoretical point, there still remains an enormous practical and phenomenological differ-
ence between writing “public” words for others to read and writing “private” words for no
one to read.
Even if “private writing” is “deep down” social, the fact remains that, as we engage in it, we
don’t have to worry about whether it works on readers or even makes sense. We can refrain
from doing all the things that audience-awareness advocates advise us to do (“keeping our
audience in mind as we write” and trying to “decenter”). Therefore this social-discourse the-
ory doesn’t undermine the benefits of “private writing” and thus provides no support at all for
the traditional rhetorical advice that we should “always try to think about (intended) audience
as we write.”
In fact this social-discourse theory reinforces two subsidiary arguments I have been mak-
ing. First, even if there is no getting away from some audience, we can get relief from an
inhibiting audience by writing to a more inviting one. Second, audience problems don’t come
only from actual audiences but also from phantom “audiences in the head” (Elbow, Writing
with Power 186ff.). Once we learn how to be more aware of the effects of both external and
internal readers and how to direct our words elsewhere, we can get out of the shadow even
of a troublesome phantom reader.
152 Peter Elbow
And even if all our discourse is directed to or shaped by past audiences or voices, it
doesn’t follow that our discourse is well directed to or successfully shaped for those audi-
ences or voices. Small children direct much talk to others, but that doesn’t mean they always
suit their talk to others. They often fail. When adults discover that a piece of their writing has
been “heavily shaped” by some audience, this is bad news as much as good: often the writ-
ing is crippled by defensive moves that try to fend off criticism from this reader.
As teachers, particularly, we need to distinguish and emphasize “private writing” in order
to teach it, to teach that crucial cognitive capacity to engage in extended and productive
thinking that doesn’t depend on audience prompts or social stimuli. It’s sad to see so many
students who can reply to live voices but cannot engage in productive dialogue with voices
in their heads. Such students often lose interest in an issue that had intrigued them—just
because they don’t find other people who are interested in talking about it and haven’t learned
to talk reflectively to themselves about it.
For these reasons, then, I believe my main argument holds force even if I accept the the-
ory that all discourse is social. But, perhaps more tentatively, I resist this theory. I don’t know
all the data from developmental linguistics, but I cannot help suspecting that babies engage
in some private poesis—or “play-language”—some private babbling in addition to social bab-
bling. Of course Vygotsky must be right when he points to so much social language in chil-
dren, but can we really trust him when he denies all private or non-social language (which
Piaget and Chomsky see)? I am always suspicious when someone argues for the total non-
existence of a certain kind of behavior or event. Such an argument is almost invariably an act
of definitional aggrandizement, not empirical searching. To say that all language is social is
to flop over into the opposite one-sidedness that we need Vygotsky’s model to save us from.
And even if all language is originally social, Vygotsky himself emphasizes how “inner
speech” becomes more individuated and private as the child matures. “[E]gocentric speech
is relatively accessible in three-year-olds but quite inscrutable in seven-year-olds: the older
the child, the more thoroughly has his thought become inner speech” (Emerson 254; see
also Vygotsky 134). “The inner speech of the adult represents his ‘thinking for himself’ rather
than social adaptation . . . Out of context, it would be incomprehensible to others because it
omits to mention what is obvious to the ‘speaker’ ” (Vygotsky 18).
I also resist the theory that all private writing is really communication with the “audience
of self.” (“When we represent the objects of our thought in language, we intend to make use
of these representations at a later time . . . [T]he speaker-self must have audience directed
intentions toward a listener-self” [Feldman 289].) Of course private language often is a com-
munication with the audience of self:
−− When we make a shopping list. (It’s obvious when we can’t decipher that third item that
we’re confronting failed communication with the self.)
−− When we make a rough draft for ourselves but not for others’ eyes. Here we are seek-
ing to clarify our thinking with the leverage that comes from standing outside and read-
ing our own utterance as audience—experiencing our discourse as receiver instead of
as sender.
−− When we experience ourselves as slightly split. Sometimes we experience ourselves as
witness to ourselves and hear our own words from the outside—sometimes with great
detachment, as on some occasions of pressure or stress.
But there are other times when private language is not communication with audience of self:
−− Freewriting to no one: for the sake of self but not to the self. The goal is not to com-
municate but to follow a train of thinking or feeling to see where it leads. In doing this
kind of freewriting (and many people have not learned it), you don’t particularly plan to
come back and read what you’ve written. You just write along and the written product
falls away to be ignored, while only the “real product”—any new perceptions, thoughts,
or feelings produced in the mind by the freewriting—is saved and looked at again. (It’s
not that you don’t experience your words at all but you experience them only as speaker,
sender, or emitter—not as receiver or audience. To say that’s the same as being audi-
ence is denying the very distinction between ‘speaker’ and ‘audience.’)
As this kind of freewriting actually works, it often leads to writing we look at. That is,
we freewrite along to no one, following discourse in hopes of getting somewhere, and
then at a certain point we often sense that we have gotten somewhere: we can tell (but
not because we stop and read) that what we are now writing seems new or intriguing
or important. At this point we may stop writing; or we may keep on writing, but in a new
audience-relationship, realizing that we will come back to this passage and read it as
audience. Or we may take a new sheet (symbolizing the new audience-relationship) and
try to write out for ourselves what’s interesting.
−− Writing as exorcism is a more extreme example of private writing not for the audience
of self. Some people have learned to write in order to get rid of thoughts or feelings. By
freewriting what’s obsessively going round and round in our head we can finally let it go
and move on.
I am suggesting that some people (and especially poets and freewriters) engage in a kind
of discourse that Feldman, defending what she calls a “communication-intention” view, has
never learned and thus has a hard time imagining and understanding. Instead of always
using language in an audience-directed fashion for the sake of communication, these writers
unleash language for its own sake and let it function a bit on its own, without much intention
and without much need for communication, to see where it leads—and thereby end up with
some intentions and potential communications they didn’t have before.
It’s hard to turn off the audience of self in writing—and thus hard to imagine writing to no
one (just as it’s hard to turn off the audience of outside readers when writing an audience-
directed piece). Consider “invisible writing” as an intriguing technique that helps you become
less of an audience of self for your writing. Invisible writing prevents you from seeing what
you have written: you write on a computer with the screen turned down, or you write with
a spent ball-point pen on paper with carbon paper and another sheet underneath. Invisible
writing tends to get people not only to write faster than they normally do, but often better (see
Blau). I mean to be tentative about this slippery issue of whether we can really stop being
audience to our own discourse, but I cannot help drawing the following conclusion: just as
in freewriting, suppressing the other as audience tends to enhance quantity and sometimes
even quality of writing; so in invisible writing, suppressing the self as audience tends to
enhance quantity and sometimes even quality.
Contraries in Teaching
So what does all this mean for teaching? It means that we are stuck with two contrary tasks.
On the one hand, we need to help our students enhance the social dimension of writing: to
learn to be more aware of audience, to decenter better and learn to fit their discourse better
154 Peter Elbow
to the needs of readers. Yet it is every bit as important to help them learn the private dimen-
sion of writing: to learn to be less aware of audience, to put audience needs aside, to use
discourse in the desert island mode. And if we are trying to advance contraries, we must be
prepared for paradoxes.
For instance, if we emphasize the social dimension in our teaching (for example, by
getting students to write to each other, to read and comment on each others’ writing in
pairs and groups, and by staging public discussions and even debates on the topics they
are to write about), we will obviously help the social, public, communicative dimension of
writing—help students experience writing not just as jumping through hoops for a grade
but rather as taking part in the life of a community of discourse. But “social discourse” can
also help private writing by getting students sufficiently involved or invested in an issue
so that they finally want to carry on producing discourse alone and in private—and for
themselves.
Correlatively, if we emphasize the private dimension in our teaching (for example, by
using lots of private exploratory writing, freewriting, and journal writing and by helping stu-
dents realize that of course they may need practice with this “easy” mode of discourse before
they can use it fruitfully), we will obviously help students learn to write better reflectively for
themselves without the need for others to interact with. Yet this private discourse can also
help public, social writing—help students finally feel full enough of their own thoughts to have
some genuine desire to tell them to others. Students often feel they “don’t have anything
to say” until they finally succeed in engaging themselves in private desert island writing for
themselves alone.
Another paradox: whether we want to teach greater audience awareness or the ability to
ignore audience, we must help students learn not only to “try harder” but also to “just relax.”
That is, sometimes students fail to produce reader-based prose because they don’t try hard
enough to think about audience needs. But sometimes the problem is cured if they just relax
and write to people—as though in a letter or in talking to a trusted adult. By unclenching, they
effortlessly call on social-discourse skills of immense sophistication. Sometimes, indeed, the
problem is cured if the student simply writes in a more social setting—in a classroom where
it is habitual to share lots of writing. Similarly, sometimes students can’t produce sustained
private discourse because they don’t try hard enough to keep the pen moving and forget
about readers. They must persist and doggedly push aside those feelings of, “My head is
empty, I have run out of anything to say.” But sometimes what they need to learn through all
that persistence is how to relax and let go—to unclench.
As teachers, we need to think about what it means to be an audience rather than just
be a teacher, critic, assessor, or editor. If our only response is to tell students what’s
strong, what’s weak, and how to improve it (diagnosis, assessment, and advice), we actu-
ally undermine their sense of writing as a social act. We reinforce their sense that writ-
ing means doing school exercises, producing for authorities what they already know—not
actually trying to say things to readers. To help students experience us as audience rather
than as assessment machines, it helps to respond by “replying” (as in a letter) rather than
always “giving feedback.”
Paradoxically enough, one of the best ways teachers can help students learn to turn off
audience awareness and write in the desert island mode—to turn off the babble of outside
voices in the head and listen better to quiet inner voices—is to be a special kind of pri-
vate audience to them, to be a reader who nurtures by trusting and believing in the writer.
Britton has drawn attention to the importance of teacher as “trusted adult” for school children
(67–68). No one can be good at private, reflective writing without some confidence and trust
in self. A nurturing reader can give a writer a kind of permission to forget about other read-
ers or to be one’s own reader. I have benefitted from this special kind of audience and have
seen it prove useful to others. When I had a teacher who believed in me, who was interested
in me and interested in what I had to say, I wrote well. When I had a teacher who thought I
was naive, dumb, silly, and in need of being “straightened out,” I wrote badly and sometimes
couldn’t write at all. Here is an interestingly paradoxical instance of the social-to-private prin-
ciple from Vygotsky and Meade: we learn to listen better and more trustingly to ourselves
through interaction with trusting others.
Look for a moment at lyric poets as paradigm writers (instead of seing them as aberrant),
and see how they heighten both the public and private dimensions of writing. Bakhtin says
that lyric poetry implies “the absolute certainty of the listener’s sympathy” (113). I think it’s
more helpful to say that lyric poets learn to create more-than-usual privacy in which to write
for themselves—and then they turn around and let others overhear. Notice how poets tend to
argue for the importance of no-audience writing, yet they are especially gifted at being public
about what they produce in private. Poets are revealers—sometimes even grandstanders
or showoffs. Poets illustrate the need for opposite or paradoxical or double audience skills:
on the one hand, the ability to be private and solitary and tune out others—to write only for
oneself and not give a damn about readers, yet on the other hand, the ability to be more than
usually interested in audience and even to be a ham.
If writers really need these two audience skills, notice how bad most conventional school-
ing is on both counts. Schools offer virtually no privacy for writing: everything students write
is collected and read by a teacher, a situation so ingrained students will tend to complain
if you don’t collect and read every word they write. Yet on the other hand, schools charac-
teristically offer little or no social dimension for writing. It is only the teacher who reads, and
students seldom feel that in giving their writing to a teacher they are actually communicating
something they really want to say to a real person. Notice how often they are happy to turn
in to teachers something perfunctory and fake that they would be embarrassed to show to
classmates. Often they feel shocked and insulted if we want to distribute to classmates the
assigned writing they hand in to us. (I think of Richard Wright’s realization that the naked
white prostitutes didn’t bother to cover themselves when he brought them coffee as a black
bellboy because they didn’t really think of him as a man or even a person.) Thus the con-
ventional school setting for writing tends to be the least private and the least public—when
what students need, like all of us, is practice in writing that is the most private and also the
most public.
Practical Guidelines about Audience

The theoretical relationships between discourse and audience are complex and paradoxical,
but the practical morals are simple:
1 Seek ways to heighten both the public and private dimensions of writing. (For activities,
see the previous section.)
2 When working on important audience-directed writing, we must try to emphasize audi-
ence awareness sometimes. A useful rule of thumb is to start by putting the readers in
156 Peter Elbow
mind and carry on as long as things go well. If difficulties arise, try putting readers out of
mind and write either to no audience, to self, or to an inviting audience. Finally, always
revise with readers in mind. (Here’s another occasion when orthodox advice about writ-
ing is wrong—but turns out right if applied to revising.)
3 Seek ways to heighten awareness of one’s writing process (through process writing and
discussion) to get better at taking control and deciding when to keep readers in mind and
when to ignore them. Learn to discriminate factors like these:
(a) The writing task. Is this piece of writing really for an audience? More often than we
realize, it is not. It is a draft that only we will see, though the final version will be for
an audience; or exploratory writing for figuring something out; or some kind of per-
sonal private writing meant only for ourselves.
(b) Actual readers. When we put them in mind, are we helped or hindered?
(c) One’s own temperament. Am I the sort of person who tends to think of what to say
and how to say it when I keep readers in mind? Or someone (as I am) who needs
long stretches of forgetting all about readers?
(d) Has some powerful “audience-in-the-head” tricked me into talking to it when I’m
really trying to talk to someone else—distorting new business into old business?
(I may be an inviting teacher-audience to my students, but they may not be able to
pick up a pen without falling under the spell of a former, intimidating teacher.)
(e) Is double audience getting in my way? When I write a memo or report, I prob-
ably have to suit it not only to my “target audience” but also to some colleagues or
supervisor. When I write something for publication, it must be right for readers, but it
won’t be published unless it is also right for the editors—and if it’s a book it won’t be
much read unless it’s right for reviewers. Children’s stories won’t be bought unless
they are right for editors and reviewers and parents. We often tell students to write
to a particular “real-life” audience—or to peers in the class—but of course they are
also writing for us as graders. (This problem is more common as more teachers get
interested in audience and suggest “second” audiences.)
(f) Is teacher-audience getting in the way of my students’ writing? As teachers we must
often read in an odd fashion: in stacks of 25 or 50 pieces all on the same topic; on
topics we know better than the writer; not for pleasure or learning but to grade or find
problems (see Elbow, Writing with Power 216–36).
To list all these audience pitfalls is to show again the need for thinking about audience needs
yet also the need for vacations from readers to think in peace.
Note
1 There are many different entities called audience: (a) The actual readers to whom the text will
be given; (b) the writer’s conception of those readers—which may be mistaken (see Ong; Park;
Ede and Lunsford); (c) the audience that the text implies—which may be different still (see Booth);
(d) the discourse community or even genre addressed or implied by the text (see Walzer); (e)
ghost or phantom “readers in the head” that the writer may unconsciously address or try to please
(see Elbow, Writing with Power 186ff. Classically, this is a powerful former teacher. Often such an
audience is so ghostly as not to show up as actually “implied” by the text). For the essay I am writ-
ing here, these differences don’t much matter: I’m celebrating the ability to put aside the needs or
demands of any or all of these audiences. I recognize, however, that we sometimes cannot fight
our way free of unconscious or tacit audiences (as in b or e above) unless we bring them to greater
conscious awareness.
Works Cited
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Poetry.” Appendix. Freudianism: A Marxist Critique.
By V. N. Volosinov. Trans. I. R. Titunik. Ed. Neal H. Bruss. New York: Academic, 1976. (Holquist’s
attribution of this work to Bakhtin is generally accepted.)
Berkenkotter, Carol, and Donald Murray. “Decisions and Revisions: The Planning Strategies of a
Publishing Writer and the Response of Being a Rat—or Being Protocoled.” College Composition
and Communication 34 (1983): 156–72.
Blau, Sheridan. “Invisible Writing.” College Composition and Communication 34 (1983): 297–312.
Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.
Britton, James. The Development of Writing Abilities, 11–18. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1977.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Liberal Education and the Social Justification of Belief.” Liberal Education 68
(1982): 95–114.
Bruner, Jerome. Beyond the Information Given: Studies in the Psychology of Knowing. Ed. Jeremy
Anglin. New York: Norton, 1973.
––—.On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand. Expanded ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1979.
Chomsky, Noam. Reflections on Language. New York: Random, 1975.
Cicotello, David M. “The Art of Writing: An Interview with William Stafford.” College Composition and
Communication 34 (1983): 173–77.
Clarke, Jennifer, and Peter Elbow. “Desert Island Discourse: On the Benefits of Ignoring Audience.” The
Journal Book. Ed. Toby Fulwiler. Montclair, NJ: Boynton, 1987.
Cooper, Anthony Ashley, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,
Etc. Ed. John M. Robertson. 2 vols. Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1963.
Ede, Lisa, and Andrea Lunsford. “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in
Composition Theory and Pedagogy.” College Composition and Communication 35 (1984): 140–54.
Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power. New York: Oxford UP, 1981.
––—. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.
Emerson, Caryl. “The Outer Word and Inner Speech: Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and the Internalization of
Language.” Critical Inquiry 10 (1983): 245–64.
Feldman, Carol Fleisher. “Two Functions of Language.” Harvard Education Review 47 (1977):
282–93.
Flower, Linda. “Writer-Based Prose: A Cognitive Basis for Problems in Writing,” College English 41
(1979): 19–37.
Goodman, Paul. Speaking and Language: Defense of Poetry. New York: Random, 1972.
Griffin, Susan. “The Internal Voices of Invention: Shaftesbury’s Soliloquy.” Unpublished. 1986.
Lawrence, D. H. Studies in Classic American Literature. Garden City: Doubleday, 1951.
Ong, Walter. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9–21.
Park, Douglas B. “The Meanings of ‘Audience’ .” College English 44 (1982): 247–57.
Perl, Sondra. “Guidelines for Composing.” Appendix A. Through Teachers’ Eyes: Portraits of Writing
Teachers at Work. By Sondra Perl and Nancy Wilson. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1986.
Progoff, Ira. At A Journal Workshop. New York: Dialogue, 1975.
Shaughnessy, Mina. Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing. New York:
Oxford UP, 1977.
Trimbur, John. Letter to the author. September 1985.
––—. “Beyond Cognition: Voices in Inner Speech.” Forthcoming in Rhetoric Review.
158 Peter Elbow
Vygotsky, L. S. Thought and Language. Trans. and ed. E. Hanfmann and G. Vakar. 1934. Cambridge:
MIT P, 1962.
Walzer, Arthur E. “Articles from the ‘California Divorce Project’: A Case Study of the Concept of
Audience.” College Composition and Communication 36 (1985): 150–59.
Wright, Richard. Black Boy. New York: Harper, 1945.
I benefited from much help from audiences in writing various drafts of this piece. I am grateful
to Jennifer Clarke, with whom I wrote a collaborative piece containing a case study on this
subject. I am also grateful for extensive feedback from Pat Belanoff, Paul Connolly, Sheryl
Fontaine, John Trimbur, and members of the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Writing Seminar.
5 Genre, Transfer, and Related Issues
Irene L. Clark
Writing speaks to situations through recognizable forms.

(Bazerman, 2015)
I first became aware of how the concept of genre can help students at various levels engage with
writing tasks more successfully when I was teaching a course at the University of Utrecht in
the Netherlands. The primary objective of the course was to help Ph.D. students in the field of
geography use their dissertation research to write potentially publishable articles in English, and
because these students were all high achievers academically and spoke English quite well, I did
not expect that the task would be daunting for them. However, after receiving their first drafts,
I was surprised to discover that many students had experienced considerable difficulty when
they attempted to write an article, not because of poor language skills, and not because they
didn’t know the subject matter, but because they were unfamiliar with the “genre” of scholar-
ship in the social sciences. Of course, in their dissertation research, they had read many scholarly
articles; nevertheless, they lacked analytic strategies for understanding the genre in terms of situ-
ation, purpose, audience, rhetorical structure, and style. Coincidentally, at that time, I became
acquainted with genre theory, initially, with the work of John Swales (1990), who discussed
the rhetorical “moves” in academic writing, and when I explained the concept of genre to my
students and helped them apply it to their own work, their writing improved remarkably. Since
that time, I have used genre theory in all my classes to help students fulfill the expectations of
various writing tasks, and it continues to be beneficial to my own writing as well.
Chapter Overview
This chapter will discuss how the concept of genre has been reconceptualized in Writing
Studies and explain its importance in helping students fulfill the expectations of writing
assignments more effectively, not only in a Composition course, but also in other venues,
both academic and professional. The chapter will also include topics that are often discussed
in the context of genre, such as the relationship between genre and identity, the issue of trans-
fer, and the role of threshold concepts in facilitating transfer. It will also address controversies
associated with genre—the issue of whether genre can be taught explicitly, the question con-
cerning which genres should be taught in writing classes, the relationship between genre and
creativity, and the possibilities for transfer between print and new media genres.
Reflection to Access Prior Knowledge and Experience

Think about a genre that is important in your academic or professional life. If possible, find
an example of this genre. Then respond to the following questions:
160 Irene L. Clark
1 Why is this genre important to you?
2 How did you learn about this genre?
3 How is this genre used? What is its purpose?
4 Where is it used?
5 For whom is it intended?
6 How is this genre usually structured?
7 What type of language is usually used in this genre?
The Rhetorical Concept of Genre: An Overview

Genre has been a subject of scholarly interest at least since Aristotle, who defined literary
genres in The Poetics and characterized various types of oratory in the Rhetoric. For Aristotle,
genre was simply a way of classifying text types, and it is this concept of genre that has per-
sisted until only fairly recently. As Freedman and Medway (1994) noted in their introduction
to Learning and Teaching Genre, the traditional view was that genres were (a) primarily literary,
(b) entirely defined by textual regularities in form and content, (c) fixed and immutable, and
(d) classifiable into neat and mutually exclusive categories and subcategories (p. 1). Defined in
this way, the concept of genre was perceived as unrelated to, and even incompatible with, the
new ideology of Composition and the pedagogy that evolved from it. In fact, during the early
days of the process movement, articles in Composition journals rarely addressed the concept
of “genre” at all. Because the movement focused on self-expression and the discovery of
personal voice as a means of empowering marginalized populations, “genre” was viewed as
an old-fashioned, traditional, and outmoded concept, associated with an emphasis on literary
texts, rigidity, and formalist conventions. As represented in the work of Elbow, Emig, and
Murray (discussed in Chapter 1), process and expressivist pedagogy defined effective learning
in terms of its relevance to the individual, rather than through the imposition of institutional
goals, certainly not through learning particular genres.
However, in the discipline of Writing Studies, the word “genre” has been redefined in terms
of function rather than particular forms. This conception reflects the idea that genre is associated
with the work and values associated with particular discourse communities and disciplines, that
familiarity with those genres constitutes a mark of membership or “belonging,” and that privi-
leged genres are correlated with educational and professional accomplishment. This more recent
insight into how genres function has brought the recognition that students are more likely to
achieve academic, professional and economic success if they have acquired genre awareness.
Scholarship in rhetorical genre theory focuses on this perspective and explores its implica-
tions (see Bawarshi, 2000; Bazerman, 1991; Devitt, 1993; Miller, 1984; Swales, 1990, among
many others). Miller’s article, titled “Genre as Social Action” (1984), often cited as a seminal
text, builds on earlier work in 20thcentury rhetorical theory, such as Kenneth Burke’s (1969)
discussion of rhetorical acts as a response to particular situations and Lloyd Bitzer’s (1968)
definition of the rhetorical situation as a “complex of persons, events, objects, and relations”
presenting an “exigence” or necessity (Miller, 1984, p. 152). In that article, Miller redefined
genre as typified social action that responds to a recurring situation, or as Devitt explains,
“that people use genres to do things in the world (social action and purpose) and that these
ways of acting become typified through occurring under what is perceived as recurring cir-
cumstances” (Devitt, 2000, p. 698). This reconceptualized view of genre thus extended it
beyond its association with a relatively stable set of discourse conventions, defining them in
terms of purpose and action—in other words, genres are defined by what they do.
To help both undergraduate and graduate students understand how a genre can be viewed
in terms of function, I often begin by holding up a copy of a course syllabus and ask students
what a syllabus does (its purpose), where it is used (the setting or scene), and for whom it is
Genre,Transfer, and Related Issues 161
intended (the audience or community). I then ask the students to consider whether that func-
tion could be fulfilled in other ways—using a different form or a different medium, for exam-
ple, such as an online hypertext syllabus. Of course, students always answer in the affirmative,
and the discussion helps students understand how a genre can be defined in terms of function
rather than form. They recognize that a syllabus might be written in a variety of forms and still
fulfill its function, although it is likely that some forms and structures would be less appropri-
ate than others (I have difficulty imagining a syllabus presented as a song, for example).
Another example I have used is of a genre that many of us receive frequently in the mail—
a fundraising letter for a charity. In analyzing this genre, one can discern a number of rela-
tively stable and easily identifiable textual features: the heart-rending sketch of the situation
or cause in need of additional funds (often presented in terms of an individual case selected
for its potential in eliciting an emotional response), praise of the recipient’s presumed charita-
ble impulses and humanitarian concerns, a reference to other citizens who have contributed
to this worthy cause, and a concluding section in which the request for a donation is made.
From a traditional perspective on genre, one might examine this type of letter in terms of its
formal features—structure, tone, and style—whereas the current conception of genre would
view the letter as a typical rhetorical action (the request for money) in response to a recur-
ring situation (the need of charitable organizations for contributions), in which the structure,
tone, and style contribute to the genre’s effectiveness, which is the reason it became typical.
This way of understanding a genre in terms of its social context provides a perspective that
has potential for examining many different genres: real-world genres such as business letters
or greeting cards as well as academic genres such as lab reports or school essays. Because gen-
res develop through writers’ effective responses to those situations, the rhetorical concept of
genre views generic conventions as arising from suitability and appropriateness, rather than
from arbitrary formal conventions. As Devitt (1993) explained:
Genres develop . . . because they respond appropriately to situations that writers encoun-

ter repeatedly. In principle, that is, writers first respond in fitting ways and hence similarly
to recurring situations; then the similarities among those appropriate responses become
established as generic conventions.
(p. 576)
Although as Pare and Smart (1994) point out, genres often have “repeated patterns in the struc-
ture, rhetorical moves, and style of texts” (p. 147) genres are not simply forms. As Medway
and Freedman explain, regularities in form develop from the situation, or as Bazerman (1997)
states, “Genres are not just forms. Genres are forms of life.” They are “the familiar places we
go to create intelligible communicative action with each other and the guideposts we use to
explore the unfamiliar” (p. 19).
Genre in the Composition Course

The title of the first chapter in Deborah Dean’s book, Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being
(2008) is “Why Study Genre Theory,” which is a useful question for anyone who writes or
teaches writing. Dean maintains that although the emphasis on process in most writing class-
rooms is certainly worthwhile, a generalized writing process may not address specific elements
of a writing task, such as purpose, situation, and “social considerations.” “Genre theory . . . chal-
lenges students’ assumptions that good writing is always the same,” Dean argues, helping stu-
dents understand “the need to adapt writing to situations and the problems that might result if
they choose not to adapt” (p. 4). In addition, a focus on genre awareness in the classroom enables
teachers to connect reading and writing, to prepare students for standardized writing tests, to
162 Irene L. Clark
enable students to engage more insightfully with writing assignments in other courses, to work
with multimedia texts—in essence, to function in our increasingly complex world. In fact,
Swales and Feak’s book titled Navigating Academia: Writing Supporting Genres (2011) discusses a
variety of genres that have only peripheral connections to any discipline or class—among them,
emails, personal statements, letters of recommendation, and apologies. Genres inform everything
we do, and my experience in working in Holland many years ago, and in the many classes I have
taught since then, has reaffirmed my enthusiasm for teaching and learning genre.
Genre Theory and Other Rhetorical Perspectives

Although the rhetorical view of genre has become important only recently, it has signifi-
cant roots in previous concepts of how texts interact with experience. In Counterstatement,
philosopher Kenneth Burke (1968) observed that texts can be viewed as symbolic actions
that have meaning only in terms of situation and motive. Burke noted that although there
are “stock patterns of experience which seem to arise out of any system of living” (p. 171),
such as the return of youth as in Faust, or betrayal, as in Brutus conspiring against Caesar, the
effect of these patterns as manifested in literature are strongly influenced by formal elements
of the particular time and scene. “Elizabethan audiences, through expecting the bluster of the
proscenium speech, found it readily acceptable—but a modern audience not schooled in this
expectation will object to it as ‘unreal’,” Burke stated, arguing that what is perceived as effec-
tive or eloquent is strongly influenced by audience expectation: “The distinction between
style and manner is also fluctuant, as a change in conventional form can make one aspect of
a style very noticeable and thus give it the effect of manner” (p. 173). Burke’s perspective
emphasized connections between genre expectations and situation—that is, as writing has
been increasingly perceived as a way of responding to readers within a given context, the
resulting texts have correspondingly been viewed as incorporating strategies and approaches
that have proven effective under similar circumstances.
Genre theory, then, views texts in a social context, a perspective that parallels other socially
oriented theories that emphasize the rhetorical goal of text. Because genre theory conceives
of writing as a way of responding to a specific reader or readers within a specific context on a
specific occasion (Freedman & Medway, 1994, p. 5), it is consistent with the social construc-
tionist privileging of context, audience, and occasion as well as with speech act theory, which
emphasizes the function of language as a way of acting in the world and the importance of
context in creating meaning.
Genre Scholarship
An important goal of this chapter is to suggest possibilities for helping both students and
teachers acquire genre awareness, a topic that will be discussed later in this chapter. But genre
scholarship has also been directed toward issues that extend beyond Composition pedagogy.
A significant scholarly concern has been with the potential ideological and cultural aspects of
genre, particularly with issues of power and identity. Other scholarship has focused on the
application of genre theory to specific “real-world” genres, such as lab reports or tax forms,
and more recently with the issue of transfer—that is, the extent to which genre awareness can
enable the transfer of learning from one genre to another.
Genre and Ideology—Identity Issues

The examples of the syllabus and the charity letter I discussed earlier in this chapter illustrate
how genres develop and can assume different text forms. However, we also understand that
genres help shape and maintain the ways that writers and readers act in particular situations—
that is, genres enable both readers and writers to function within those situations—in a sense,
genres can create those who use them. A compelling example of how this works is discussed
in Bawarshi’s seminal article “The Genre Function” (2000). Citing Kathleen Jamieson’s
study of George Washington’s first State of the Union Address, Bawarshi explains that when
George Washington, in writing this address, was confronted with a situation that had never
been encountered before (an American president addressing Congress). Because Washington
had no idea of what a State of the Union Address was supposed to be, he based his speech on
those given by British kings to parliament, even though Washington and Congress were both
opposed to the very notion of kings and the concept of inequality from which the notion
derived. (In fact, Washington had led a successful rebellion against the British monarchy.)
As a result, Washington’s speech, reminiscent of the king’s authority, elicited in Congress a
response characterized by homage and subservience, an example that illustrates the powerful
role that genre plays in influencing not only the text itself but also the roles played by both
writers and readers as they are constructed by that text within a social context.
The way that a genre can impact identity can also be seen in the example of the syllabus.
When I distribute my course syllabus in class or send it online, I am assigning those receiving
it to the role of “student,” a role that generates perspectives and behaviors that are associated
with that identity. Of course, everyone plays multiple roles in their lives, and some of my
students are also parents, managers of businesses, health professionals, etc. However, when
they receive my syllabus, they are thrust into the role of “student” and they may begin to
feel and act like students: feeling anxious about fulfilling teacher expectations, asking about
page lengths and deadlines, looking around the room to see how other students are reacting,
worrying about their rank in the class, etc. The syllabus, then, although created for a specific
use in a specific scene, also helps create that scene and the roles people assume within it, and
in a sense, it creates a power dynamic: I become the teacher who determines curriculum and
assigns grades and the people in my class become students, who must master that curricu-
lum to earn a good grade. Even if I attempt to share power with my students (encouraging
students to select readings and determine standards or creating a comfortable collaborative
classroom environment), the power dynamic still exists, supported by the genres associated
with “school.”
As Bazerman (2010) observes, genres have considerable impact on those who use them:
The longer you work with genre, the more it reveals and the more it connects with—
perhaps because genre is at a central nexus of human sense-making, where typifica-
tion meets utterance in pursuit of human action. To communicate effectively we need
to know what kind of situation we are in, what kinds of things are being said, and
what kinds of things we want to accomplish. . . . Many aspects of communication, social
arrangements, and human meaning-making are packaged in genre recognition.
(p. xi)
Genres then can have an impact on who you become, or as Bazerman (2002) more playfully
phrases it, “If you hang around the race track long enough, you become one of those race
track characters” (p. 14)—using their language and perhaps adopting their values.
Many genre scholars, noting the interaction between genre and identity, have raised
ethical questions about the effect of various academic and professional genres on previously
marginalized or underprivileged groups. Because genres can influence identity, conflict can
occur when the cultural values associated with a genre differ from those of students’ home
cultures. Pare (2002) recounts a situation in which Inuit social workers, who value close
familial, informal relationships, are required to imitate the more technical, bureaucratic
164 Irene L. Clark
conventions of the social work profession. As Bawarshi (2000) noted in his discussion of
the “genre function,” genres exert an influence over readers and writers, causing them to
behave or “perform” in a particular way, influencing how they act and think—potentially
generating change in who they become or want to be—possibly alienating them from their
own cultures.
The Ethics of Privileging Academic Writing

The idea that genres can have a significant impact on cultural identity has direct relevance to
the ethical concern about the privileging of “academic writing” at colleges and universities.
Many college and university writing courses focus on academic writing, which is sometimes
referred to as academic “argument,” which seems to be relevant, in some form, across disci-
plines. Although it is recognized that disciplines across the curriculum may define “argument”
differently (Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014), nevertheless, as Graff (2003) asserted, “one
of the most closely guarded secrets that academia unwittingly keeps from students and eve-
rybody else is that all academics, despite their many differences, play a version of the same
game of persuasive argument” (p. 22), which he referred to as “arguespeak.” In earlier work,
MacDonald (1987) argued for the pervasiveness of “problem definition” in multiple academic
venues, noting that “the subject of academic writing either already is or is soon turned into a
problem before the writer proceeds. No matter how tentative the solutions are, it is problem-
solving that generates all academic writing” (p. 316). Similarly, in a comparative study of
200 essays, Ellen Barton (1993) discussed the importance of “evidentials” as a distinguishing
mark between arguments written by experienced academic writers and those written by stu-
dents. Barton maintained that “argument is more unified than is commonly understood and
far more unified than the fragmentation of academic fields might imply. Every scientist or
scholar, regardless of field, relies on common devices of rhetoric, on metaphors, invocations
of authority, and appeals to audiences” (p. 4). More recently, Soliday (2011) has similarly
noted the importance of “evidence” in academic writing.
Although not everyone agrees on how to define “academic” writing, Thaiss and Zawacki,
in their book Engaged Writers, Dynamic Disciplines (2006), presented three criteria derived
from a study they conducted from faculty in various disciplines. These were:
1 Clear evidence that the writer(s) have been persistent, open-minded, and disciplined in
study.
2 Dominance of reason over emotion or sensual perception.
3 An imagined reader who is coolly rational, reading for information, and intending to
formulate a reasoned response.
Actually, these criteria are similar to a statement by Peter Elbow (1991) about the value of
teaching what he refers to as “academic writing in general,” which he characterized as:
the giving of reasons and evidence rather than just opinions, feelings, experiences: being
clear about claims and assertions rather than just employing or insinuating; getting think-
ing to stand on its own two feet rather than leaning on the authority of who advances it
or the fit with who hears it. In describing academic discourse in this general way, surely
I am describing a major goal of literacy, broadly defined. Are we not engaged in schools
and colleges in trying to teach students to produce reasons and evidence which hold up
on their own rather than just in terms of the tastes or prejudices of readers or how attrac-
tively they are packaged?
(p. 140)
Elbow’s definition implied that students are more likely to acquire academic literacy through
exposure to argumentation.
Elbow’s definition of academic literacy and the criteria noted by Thaiss and Zawacki
suggest the importance of a type of discourse that is associated with the academy, and it is
the perspective of this book that a genre that includes these criteria is useful for students to
understand and be able to produce. Nevertheless, it is important to consider the viewpoints of
those who consider academic writing as inherently elitist, because it endorses a particular set
of values that may be alien to those who come from a working-class background or another
culture. If we require students to write in an established academic genre that is associated
with particular attitudes, beliefs and values, are we engaging in a form of colonization? Can
students become proficient in an academic genre without necessarily embracing the values
associated with that genre?
The Alienation Narrative

Concern about “identity threat” through immersion in the genres of academic discourse
has been referred to by LeCourt (2006) as the “alienation narrative” (p. 33). According to
this narrative,
Working-class and academic discourses exist in dichotomous relationship where one

discourse is depicted as in almost complete opposition to the other. Following this logic,
working-class students succeed only if their class identity is stripped away in favor of a
middle-class habitus, generating the feelings of loss and alienation depicted so vividly in
the narratives of working-class academics.
(pp. 30–31)
This perspective views the teaching of academic writing as a means of colonizing marginal-
ized groups, and the writing class therefore becomes a scene in which students are required
to change their identity. “You must think and write like us,” is the approach that is used,
according to this narrative. “Otherwise you cannot succeed.”
Certainly, this concern is worth considering. Given what is now understood about genre,
we acknowledge that academic writing is not simply a particular form. It is based on a way
of thinking, incorporates particular ideologies and values, and influences not only people’s
actions but also people’s identities. Are we, as educators, in our desire to help students suc-
ceed, actually squelching students’ cultural identities?
Autobiographical versus Discoursal Identity

Le Court (2006) countered concerns about the potential colonization of our students by
referring to her own background. She argued that people can adopt a discoursal self with-
out rejecting the self that is associated with autobiographical experiences, noting that her
father, a high school dropout, held a subscription to two academic political science journals
and that for most of his life derived “his argumentative performance from such academic
sources. To actually acknowledge citations from them, however, would be anathema. He
understands how such citations would ‘mark him in the context of a working-class bar’”
(p. 42). LeCourt’s position, then, was that although all learning is likely to have an impact
on a learner’s identity, the idea that a person’s “authentic identity” is in danger of being
obliterated by an emphasis on a particular academic genre underestimates the strength of that
original identity. As Ivanic (1998) pointed out, all writers bring an “autobiographical self” to
any act of writing, which continues to influence whatever “discoursal” selves a writer may
166 Irene L. Clark
choose to project. A discoursal self, according to Ivanic, is created through the “discourse
characteristics of a text, which relate to values, beliefs, and power relations in the social con-
text in which they were written” (p. 25). Moreover, neither the autobiographical nor the
discoursal self is fixed and static. Both are subject to change over time and circumstance, and
if writers have self-awareness and insight into the concept of genre, they will be able to choose
which self they project in a text and decide what identity they wish to have.1

We now understand that the concept of genre functions within a social context and there-
fore can reveal a great deal about a community’s or culture’s attitudes, values, and beliefs.
1 Select a genre (or two, if you wish to compare one with the other) and analyze it for
what it tells us about the people and/or culture or community who use it and the
situation to which it responds. Your thesis for this assignment, then, will be a claim about
what a particular genre tells us about how people respond to and experience a particular situation.
You may select any written genre that interests you, although you should not
choose a broad topic about which many books have been written (such as novels
or plays). Some examples might be greeting cards, letters of recommendation, per-
sonal letters, billboards, and the like. Whichever genre you use, you should make
sure that you describe what the genre is, paying special attention to its features
(physical and textual), who uses it, and when and why it is used. Here are some
questions to consider:
•• What is the history of this genre?

•• What do the genre conventions reveal about the culture, community, and people?
•• What is its primary function?
•• What textual and formal features are associated with it?
•• What style is associated with it?
2 Write an essay arguing a position on the ethics of privileging academic writing.

Choose a particular audience for this essay (an educator, a friend, a family member).
3 Find a genre that utilizes new media. What is its primary function? To what extent
do new media enable that genre to fulfill its function? If you work in new media,
do you assume a different identity than when you work with print?

1 Compare a conversation you have with someone at your college or university and
a conversation on a similar topic with your family or close friends. Can you note
differences in the language you use and the identity you assume?
2 Using an example from your own writing, locate differences between your auto-
biographical and discoursal identity. Can you detect differences? To what extent
can you control these identities?
Controversies Associated with Genre
In my work with students at various levels, both undergraduate and graduate, in the United
States as well as in England, Holland, New Zealand, and Spain, in the classroom as well as
in the writing center, I have found the concept of genre to be extremely helpful in ena-
bling students to understand and produce both academic and “real-world” writing genres.
Nevertheless, the idea of applying the concept of genre to writing in Composition pedagogy
has generated considerable scholarly debate. Two of the most important areas of controversy
pertaining particularly to the first-year writing class concerns the extent to which a genre can
be taught explicitly and curricular decisions concerning which genres should be emphasized
in that course. Other controversies I will address in this chapter focus on the extent to which
genre knowledge enables or inhibits creativity, and the issue of whether an understanding
of genre can enable students to learn new genres—that is, to transfer genre knowledge from
one genre to another.
The Debate about Explicit Teaching

A significant topic in early genre scholarship concerned whether the explicit teaching of a
genre is likely to be useful in helping students acquire and apply genre knowledge. Freedman
(1995), in particular, maintained that the explicit teaching of genre is not even possible,
because genre knowledge requires immersion into a discourse community, which will enable
students to “ventriloquate the social language, to respond dialogically to the appropriate cues
from this context” (p. 134). Freedman argued that:
The accomplishment of school genres is achieved without either the writers or those
eliciting the writing being able to articulate the sophisticated rules that underlie them.
These rules are complex, nuanced, variable, context-specific, and as yet unamenable to
complete reconstruction even by skilled researchers.
(pp. 130–131)
Only in the disciplinary classroom, an environment that provides a rich context of reading,
lecture, and discussion, does Freedman perceive that students can acquire the necessary “felt
sense” of the genre that will yield successful writing.
Freedman argued that people acquire genres below the conscious level, and therefore,
the teaching of explicit features of a genre, modeling, or a focus on particular strategies for
learning to write in that genre are unlikely to be helpful for students. In “Learning to Write
Again,” she advocated an “implicit pedagogical model” that involves the following:
1 The learners approach the task with a “dimly felt sense of the new genre they are
attempting.”
2 They begin composing by focusing on the specific content to be embodied in this genre.
3 In the course of the composing, this “dimly felt sense” of the genre is both formulated
and modified by the act of composing.
4 On the basis of external feedback (the grade assigned), the learners either confirm or
modify their map of the genre (1987, p. 102).
The idea that explicit teaching is both desirable and possible, however, also has its advocates.
Responding to Freedman, Williams and Colomb (1993) supported the explicit teaching of
genre because “what you don’t know won’t help you,” and Swales (1990), one of the most
widely known of the early genre theorists, applied genre theory to what he referred to as the
168 Irene L. Clark
characteristic “moves” within a scientific article. Working in the area of ESP (English for
Special Purposes), Swales defined genre primarily by its common communicative purposes,
arguing that a genre-centered approach to teaching would enable students to understand why
a particular genre had acquired its characteristic features and ultimately help them to create
that genre more successfully.
The Sydney School Genre-Based Curriculum

An early pedagogical approach that advocated the explicit teaching of genre, particularly in
primary and secondary schools and adult education, was developed in Sydney, Australia, and
was referred to as the Sydney School. This approach, while acknowledging the value of the
process movement, questioned whether process pedagogy had been helpful for all students.
Sydney School advocates maintained that despite its original goal of validating culturally mar-
ginalized groups, the process approach had done nothing to empower those groups or break
entrenched class divisions in Western culture. Outlining what they referred to as an education
experiment that has international significance, Cope and Kalantzis (1993) argued that:
Many working-class, migrant and Aboriginal children have been systematically barred
from competence with those texts, knowledges, and “genres” that enable access to social
and material resources. The culprits, they argue, are not limited to traditional pedagogies
that disregard children’s cultural and linguistic resources and set out to assimilate them
into the fictions of mainstream culture. But the problem is also located in progressive
“process” and “child-centered” approaches that appear to “value differences” but in so
doing leave social relations of inequity fundamentally unquestioned.
(p. vii)
Contributors to Cope and Kalantzis’s book The Powers of Literacy: A Genre Approach to Teaching
Writing, which was intended to explain the Australian genre approach to non-Australians,
maintained that the “progressivist” stress on text ownership and personal voice and the cor-
responding reluctance of teachers to intervene directly in changing students’ texts had, ironi-
cally, promoted a situation in which only the brightest middle-class children, who are already
familiar with the genres of privilege, would be able to learn what is needed for social, and,
ultimately, economic success. Noting that “by the 1980’s it was clear that . . . the new pro-
gressivist curriculum was not producing any noticeable improvement in patterns of educa-
tional attainment” (Cope & Kalantzis, 1993, p. 1), these critics also pointed out that such a
curriculum “encourages students to produce texts in a limited range of written genres, mostly
personalised recounts” (p. 6).
A key point in the Australian perspective on genre was that school genres should be taught
more explicitly, and that a more directive approach is not incompatible with helping students
acquire a workable writing process. In fact, it may yield more fruitful results in terms of help-
ing students master unfamiliar genres. The rationale was explained as follows:
For those outside the discourses and cultures of certain realms of power and access, acquir-
ing these discourses requires explicit explanation: the ways in which the “hows” of text
structure produce the “whys” of social effect. If you live with the “hows”—if you have
a seventh sense of how the “hows” do their social job by virtue of having been brought
up with those discourses—then they will come to you more or less “naturally.” Students
from historically marginalised groups, however, need explicit teaching more than stu-
dents who seem destined for a comfortable ride into the genres and cultures of power.
(Cope & Kalantzis, 1993, p. 8)
To help these marginalized groups, the Australian School of genre, explored in The Powers of
Literacy, edited by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, advocated the following principles:
•• Genres of writing are identifiable and fixed and boundaries can be drawn around them.
•• Genres ought to be consciously chosen by writers and their writing should conform to
the particular genre’s structure.
•• Structures of genres ought to be taught to pupils so that they will model their writing on
the genre structure.
•• There is too much emphasis on narrative forms in primary school and this is poor prepa-
ration for working in expository modes in secondary school, especially because such
modes are characterized by an impersonal, neutral tone not provided for in most primary
school narrative.
Two more recent publications that also advocate the explicit teaching of genre are J. R.
Martin and David Rose’s book Genre Relations: Mapping Culture (2008) and Mary Macken-
Horarik’s “Something to Shoot For: A Systemic Functional Approach to teaching Genre in
Secondary School Science” (2002). Martin and Rose presented an overview of a scaffolded
curriculum and staged genre-based pedagogy; Macken-Horarik presented what she referred
to as the “teaching-learning cycle,” which consists of three stages: modeling, joint negotia-
tion of text in which teachers and learners work together, and an independent construction
of text, in which learners work independently (p. 26).

1 Reflect on how you learned a genre that you use in your academic or professional
life. Can you recall how you learned that genre?
2 Select a text genre, print- or media-based, with which you are familiar but with
which at least some of your classmates may not be—perhaps a genre associated with
a sport, hobby, or report. Try to write a set of instructions for your classmates about
how to write in that genre and see how well your instructions can be followed.
3 Consider your position on the controversy concerned with the explicit teaching of
genre and compare your ideas with those of other students or colleagues.
Personal Narrative in the Writing Class

Related to the controversy concerning explicit teaching is the curricular issue concern-
ing which writing genres should be privileged in a stand-alone writing class. One idea that
informed the Australian genre-based curriculum was that the early days of the process move-
ment placed too much emphasis on narrative forms and that narrative writing does not pre-
pare students for working in expository modes. Victor Villanueva (1997), however, viewed
personal writing as a means of generating student self-awareness, a perspective that is associ-
ated with the work of Paulo Freire, who emphasized the idea of “critical consciousness” as
a means of bridging the gap between the private and the public. Freire (1968) stressed the
importance of having students look at their individual histories and cultures, to compare
them with what they have been led to believe are their social places in the world—that is, to
distinguish myth from reality. For Freire, the more students are aware of how their personal
environment has been affected by social, political, and economic factors, the more they will
170 Irene L. Clark
be able to institute necessary change, both in themselves and in their environment. From
Freire’s political perspective, the self-awareness generated through writing personal narratives
becomes an important source of political empowerment.
The use of personal narrative has also been justified in terms of helping novice writers find
their “voice,” a position that is often associated with the work of Peter Elbow. In his article
“Being a Writer vs. Being an Academic: A Conflict in Goals,” Elbow (1995) maintained that
the goals of the “writer” conflict with the goals of the “academic,” because academics “carry
on an unending conversation, not just with colleagues, but with the dead and unborn—the
Burkean Parlor metaphor.” Elbow acknowledged that students, eventually, will need to enter
that conversation as academics; however, in the Composition class, students must first be
writers. Toward this end, Elbow argued the value of having his students write from a personal
perspective, pretending that no one has written about their subject before:
I invite them to write as though they are a central speaker at the center of the universe—
rather than feeling, as they often do, that they must summarize what others have said and
only make modest rejoinders from the edge of the conversation.
(p. 80)
Elbow emphasized that for students to be writers (rather than academics), they must write
about something that they know better than the teacher, and that “something” is usually
their own experience. Otherwise, they are writing as test-takers, not as writers. For Elbow,
the writing of first-person narrative is empowering, celebrating a world approached from a
private perspective.
Others, of course, have disagreed. In a published interchange with Peter Elbow, David
Bartholomae (1995) argued that academic writing, not narrative, is the real work of the
university; if the goal is to help students understand how power, tradition, and authority are
transmitted, then we must ask students to do what academics do—work with the past; work
with key texts; work with others’ terms; and struggle with the problems of quotation, cita-
tion, and paraphrase. Bartholomae maintained that although many students will not feel the
pleasure of power of authorship unless we provide them with opportunities to write in the
first person, they will ultimately need to engage in “critical writing,” which, he maintained,
is “at the heart of academic writing.”
Robert Connors and Mike Rose assumed a middle position between those of Elbow and
Bartholomae. Connors (1987) traced the question of what students are supposed to know and
write about from classical times until the present, showing that there have always been two
positions on the subject. In the ancient world, lines of argument were all impersonal, “the
idea being that until a speaker had established his own ethos, usually through community ser-
vice or previous rhetorical success, his own experiences were not important to the discourse”
(p. 167). “Ancient rhetoric was a public discipline,” Connors (1987) pointed out, “devoted to
examining and arguing questions that could be shared by all members of the polity” (p. 167).
He noted that proofs of argument were impersonal and that “to argue from personal opinion
was both hubristic and stupid” (p. 167). This was a perspective on rhetoric that persisted up
until the middle of the 19th century—when interest in impersonal abstract topics was replaced
by a strong emphasis on personal experience, novelty, and the use of the senses. Connors
noted that recent history of rhetoric has been characterized by a revival of the “romantic”
notion of authorship, exemplified in the work of Peter Elbow, Ken Macrorie, and James
Britton, and that the controversy over what sort of writing should be taught in school, “hon-
est personal writing” or “writing that gets the world’s work done,” has yet to be resolved.
Addressing this question, Mike Rose, whose internationally known books, Lives on the
Boundary and Possible Lives, discussed the needs of at-risk students in the context of the writing
genres privileged in college writing classes. In “Remedial Writing Courses: A Critique and a
Proposal,” Rose argued personal topics are not necessarily more relevant than academic ones
and that some students, particularly those from minority cultures, “might not feel comfortable
revealing highly personal experiences” (1983, p. 113). Rose also problematized the notion
of “authenticity” that is often associated with expressivist writing, questioning whether per-
sonal genres are any more “authentic” than non-personal ones. Moreover, in the context of
remedial writing courses—which frequently assign fairly simple topics to put students at ease
and help them avoid error—Rose observed that such assignments do not prepare students for
their “university lives” (p. 110). He advocated a remedial curriculum that “slowly but stead-
ily and systematically introduce[s] remedial writers to transactional/expositional academic
discourse” (p. 112), the genre that students will need to be familiar with as they proceed in
their academic and professional careers.
Both sides of this debate have merit, and I have come to endorse a middle position. I
agree with Rose and others that to be successful in many academic and professional venues,
students ultimately have to be able to write a text that argues a main point or thesis and to
support that thesis with appropriate evidence. However, I also recognize the effect of having
students write literacy narratives (see Chapter 6) because they often generate students’ interest
in writing, enabling them to become aware of their own literacy history and motivating them
to work on their writing. I also use narrative to introduce students to a topic in a writing
assignment. When students explore their previous acquaintance with a topic, they are able
to access prior knowledge and beliefs, insights that can help them develop ideas and discover
what additional information they need.

Read the Following Essays:
Rose, M. (1983). Remedial writing courses: A critique and a proposal. College English, 45(2):
109–122.
Elbow, P. (1995). Being a writer vs. being an academic: A conflict in goals. CCC, 46(1): 72–83.
Bartholomae, D. (1995). Writing with teachers: A conversation with Peter Elbow. College
Compare the perspectives in each essay. Then write an essay that addresses the follow-
ing question:
To what extent should the personal essay be included in the freshman writing class?
Topics Related to the Concept of Genre
Genre and Creativity

An issue that frequently arises in a discussion of genre is that of creativity and the extent
to which attention to genre could produce formulaic, mechanical texts, all of them alike.
This potential problem is exemplified in the importance given to the five-paragraph essay
that many students have been taught in high school and continue to write, whatever the
assignment happens to be. However, there is no evidence to suggest that helping students
172 Irene L. Clark
understand the purpose and conventions of academic discourse will necessarily result in dull,
formulaic writing, or preclude creative exploration of a topic.
In fact, a number of scholars argue that genre awareness may actually contribute to crea-
tivity, fostering, rather than inhibiting, creative variation. Christie (1987) argued that genre
enables choice and that “choice is enhanced by constraint, made possible by constraint”
(p. 53). Devitt (1997) similarly maintained that “meaning is enhanced by both choice and
constraint . . . in genre no less than in words” (p. 53) and that “within any genre there is a
great deal of free variation” (p. 52). In fact, one might make the case that creativity can exist
only within the context of genre, that genre awareness is actually a prerequisite for creativity,
and that students will be unable to engage in creative adaptation of a genre if they are unaware
of what the genre is.
This association between genre and creativity suggests that for any text to be considered
“creative,” it must push across the boundaries that define it, but that at least some of those
boundaries must be present for creativity to occur. A work is designated “creative” when it
incorporates both constraint and choice. Thus, Mozart’s achievement in the sonata form had
to occur within the context of that form, as did Picasso’s visual juxtapositions within an estab-
lished tradition of form and color. Because creativity rattles established certitudes, it cannot
occur without some element of certitude. This association suggests that in order for any piece
of writing to be considered “creative,” it must be recognizable for what it is—a school essay,
poem, short story, and the like—as opposed to some other genre.
If one assumes a connection between creativity and genre, then it is likely that the explicit
teaching of genre, accompanied by a focus on genre awareness, can enable, rather than stifle,
opportunities for creative variation. As Bakhtin (1986) pointed out:
Where there is style, there is genre. The transfer of style from one genre to another not
only alters the way a style sounds under conditions of a genre unnatural to it but also
violates or renews the given genre.
(p. 66)
This idea that genre awareness facilitates rather than constrains creativity was implicit in
Bishop’s criticism of how academic writing is presented in the writing classroom. Bishop
(1997) noted that writing teachers tend to accept only one rigidly defined genre of writing
from their students, even though their own scholarship utilizes “alternative styles, mixed gen-
res, co-authored texts” (p. 5). Referring to teachers who do not encourage experimentation
with genre as “discourse autocrats” (p. 5), Bishop argued that excellence in writing occurs
when resources from one genre are superimposed on another and pointed out that scholars in
Composition have recently learned to broaden their writing and thinking so that “thesis and
data driven work now thrives side by side with narrative and metaphor-rich investigations”
(p. 4). Good writing is characterized by both “control and carnival,” Bishop maintained;
moreover, it is important for Composition teachers to rethink “the ways we teach conven-
tion making and convention breaking in first-year writing classrooms” (p. 4). And such a
rethinking, Bishop argued, requires understanding of genre.
In fact, a study in creativity by Clark, Hale, and Neff-Lippmann (2010) indicated that
the definition of creativity varies a great deal according to the depth of understanding one
has with a genre. On the basis of questionnaires that were administered to lower-division
students, upper-division students, and faculty, Clark, Hale, and Lippman found that notions
of creativity held by students changed as they gained expertise within a field, becoming more
similar to perspectives expressed by faculty. Lower-division students tended to view creativ-
ity as tied to external stylistic features of a text, such as an exciting or thought-provoking
introduction or the use of imaginative metaphors; they did not see creativity as a way of
making “new” meaning within a disciplinary community. These students had only vague
notions of “genre awareness” but because they wanted to be creative, they tended to add
creativity in the only way they knew how: as an add-on. In contrast, juniors and seniors,
more deeply involved in their majors, had a different understanding of the relationship
between creativity and genre, understanding it not as a stylistic add-on, but as growing out
of connections among ideas—framing an interesting research question, presenting a good
argument, or thinking “outside the box.” Their perspectives were close to those expressed
by faculty, who viewed creativity as closely linked to immersion in a field and aligned with
genre expectations.
The conclusions of the Clark, Hale, and Neff-Lippman study were as follows:
•• that creativity and genre are compatible

•• that creativity requires understanding of and familiarity with genre
•• that insight into the interconnections between genre and creativity increases with
•• genre knowledge
•• that novice students define creativity differently from more advanced students and
faculty.

How do you define creativity? What do you think is the relationship between genre
awareness and creativity?
Write an essay that explores the extent to which creativity should be considered
important in the writing class. In your own writing, how much do you consider crea-
tivity? At what point in the writing process does creativity become important to you? If
you are teaching a class yourself, discuss the extent to which you reward creative papers
with higher grades.

Gunter Kress, in Learning to Write (1982), argued that “there is a small and fixed number
of genres in any written tradition” and that “the individual can no more create a new
genre type than he or she can create a new sentence type” (pp. 98–99). Kress went
on to say that “the creativity which is permitted to the individual exists in deciding in
which type or sentence or genre to encode the idea” (p. 99), thereby limiting the pos-
sibilities of creativity to those of form and the choice of form.
Discuss this perspective among fellow students and/or colleagues. Then write an
essay in which you respond to Kress’s perspective.
Imitation and Modeling

Related to the interconnections between genre and creativity and concerns about the possi-
bility of producing formulaic writing is the use of imitation and modeling in the writing class,
a topic that has generated controversy. This topic will be discussed in Chapter 6.
174 Irene L. Clark
Genre Awareness and the Issue of Transfer
Genre Awareness
The issue of how a first-year writing class can prepare students to engage with writing in
other classes has generated interest in helping students acquire “genre awareness” (Devitt, 2007,
p. 225) —that is—to understand texts in terms of genre, to view texts in terms of their rhe-
torical and social purpose(s), and to recognize how various elements of texts derive from their
rhetorical function. Presumably, this insight will enable students to abstract principles from
one rhetorical situation and apply them to other situations—that is, to transfer knowledge
from one genre to another.
Genre awareness and its association with transfer is quite different from the explicit teaching
of a particular genre. Explicit teaching involves instructing students to write in a prescribed
way, a sort of “do it like this” approach that can be formulaic and often omits analysis
of underlying rhetorical and ideological elements. In contrast, when students acquire genre
awareness, they are not only learning the genre, but they are also gaining insight into how the
genre fulfills a rhetorical purpose and how its various components, the writer, the intended
reader, and the text itself, are informed by that purpose. Explicit teaching of a genre may
enable students to create a text that imitates its form and style—sometimes quite successfully.
But without genre awareness, they will not understand how the text “works” to fulfill its
purpose, and when they encounter a new genre in another course, they may lack the tools
to work with it effectively. Explicit teaching focuses on “how” to write a particular genre.
Genre awareness focuses on “why” the genre is constructed the way it is.
The Issue of Transfer

Concern with how a first-year writing course can or should prepare students for writing they
will encounter in other classes raises the issue of “transfer,” a topic that has become extremely
important in Writing Studies scholarship, both pedagogically and theoretically. In fact, at
the time of this writing, I would say that “transfer” is probably the key issue. As articulated
in the Elon Statement on Writing Transfer (Anson, C. & Moore, J. L., 2017, APPENDIX A),
which was developed in a multi-institutional international research seminar titled Critical
Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer, “transfer refers to how previous learning
influences current and future learning and how past or current learning is applied or adapted
to similar or novel situations” (Elon Statement, p. 1). Moreover, as is discussed in the work
of Perkins and Saloman (1988), the concept of transfer may be viewed along a continuum
that spans near and far transfer. Near transfer refers to transporting prior knowledge or skill
across similar contexts (e.g. driving a truck after driving a car) whereas far transfer refers to
transporting knowledge across different contexts that have little, if any, overlap (e.g. applying
chess principles to a political campaign) (Moore & Bass, 2017, p. 2).
In addition, Perkins and Salomon (1988, 1992) distinguish between high-road and low-
road transfer. In low-road transfer, similarities between a new context and prior situations
trigger extensively practiced (nearly automatic) skills. Melzer’s concept of “lateral transfer”
also pertains here, which involves transfer to related tasks that do not require new skills or
more complex learning” (Melzer, “Vertical,” 2014, p. 81). In contrast, high-road transfer
requires mindful abstraction of principles to apply them in new situations.
Whatever definitions and qualifications one may use, it is important to understand what
transfer is not. As Devet (2015) explains, transfer, as it applies to writing, should not be con-
fused with knowledge transfer,” nor is it “just another way of to say ‘learning’” (p. 121). As
an example, Devet points out that a number of students have completed “endless exercises
on punctuation” but have been unable to apply grammar rules to their own writing. These
students have learned information about grammar, but were not able to transfer that learning.
Other scholars argue that the word “transfer” itself is too simplistic. Wardle (2012) prefers
“repurposing,” “transforming,” “generalizing, or reconceptualizing” (cited in Devet, p. 3).
In genre scholarship, the concept of genre awareness seems to hold promise for promot-
ing transfer. Beaufort (2007) maintained that enabling students to acquire a meta-cognitive
understanding of how the elements of a familiar writing context can apply to another
less familiar one can maximize the possibility of transfer. In her longitudinal study of one
writer’s transfer of skills, Beaufort advocated the importance of “genre knowledge as one
of the domains or mental schema that writers invoke as they analyze new writing tasks in
new contexts—a domain that can bridge rhetorical and social knowledge” (2007, p. 188).
Beaufort argued that “talking about genres can facilitate students’ meta-cognitive reflec-
tion” (p. 188, see also Clark and Hernandez, 2010).
However, there is also the question of whether transfer is even possible, since each dis-
cipline and subdiscipline has its own rhetorical moves and understandings that can have a
profound influence on genre. In a metaphor that has now become well known in scholar-
ship concerned with transfer, Russell (1995), situating his ideas in activity theory, claimed
that although genre awareness is a desirable goal for a writing class, the goal of facilitating
transfer is “over ambitious.” Activity theory is concerned with various systems that involve
“goal-directed, historically situated, cooperative human interactions” (p. 52), and an activity
“system” is characterized by particular goals and ideologies. In the context of activity theory,
Russell maintained that any attempt to teach students to improve their writing by taking
a General Writing Skills Improvement (GWSI) course, “is something like trying to teach
people to improve their ping-pong, jacks, volleyball, basketball, field hockey, and so on by
attending a course in general ball using” (p. 58). According to Russell, the only way a novice
writer will learn a new genre is to participate in the activity systems in which that genre func-
tions. In other words, unless students are immersed in a discipline, they cannot learn how to
write in the genres of that discipline. All they will be doing is mimicking a form, not engaging
with the genre.
Russell’s perspective was echoed in Downs and Wardle’s article “Teaching about Writing,
Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning ‘First Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to
Writing Studies’” (2007). Although Downs and Wardle acknowledge that transfer of writ-
ing knowledge can happen, they argue, nevertheless, that it is difficult to achieve. Wardle
in “‘Mutt Genres’ and the Goal of FYC: Can We Help Students Write the Genres of the
University?” affirmed the difficulty of using the first-year writing class to prepare “students to
write at the university and beyond” (2009, p. 765). Referencing a number of Composition
scholars, Wardle argued that genres are context-specific and “cannot be easily or meaning-
fully mimicked outside their naturally occurring rhetorical situations and exigencies” (p. 767).
The Cognitive Perspective

Early research in transfer derived from the fields of psychology and education, which was
“conducted in research environments and measuring subjects’ ability to replicate specific
behavior from one context to another” (Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014, pp. 6–7), and
scholarship from these fields continues to be relevant to the debate about genre awareness and
transfer. Foertsch (1995), for example, cited research in cognitive psychology, arguing that:
a teaching approach that uses higher-level abstractions and specific examples in combination
will be more effective in promoting transfer-of-learning than will either method alone.
Most cognitive psychologists now agree that generalized, decontextualized knowledge
176 Irene L. Clark
and specialized, context-dependent knowledge are intertwined, differing not so much in
character as in degree. According to this perspective, general knowledge and specialized
knowledge arise from the same pool of memories, the same set of learning experiences.
(p. 364, emphasis in original)
Foertsch maintained that it is valuable to “teach developing writers generic principles as well
as strategies for transferring and generalizing their knowledge when faced with new tasks”
(p. 370), allowing students to apply “high road” or abstract principles to new problems (see
Perkins & Salomon, 1988, p. 6). Wardle, in fact, cited several pedagogical approaches that can
generate this type of awareness: These included:
•• Explicitly abstracting principles from a situation (Gick & Holyoak, 1983, cited in Wardle,
2009, p. 771).
•• Self-reflection—asking subjects not simply to apply a strategy but to monitor their own
thinking processes (Belmont, Butterfield, & Ferretti, 1982, cited in Wardle, 2009, p. 771).
•• Mindfulness—defined as “a generalized state of alertness to the activities one is engaged
in and to one’s surroundings, in contrast with a passive reactive mode in which cogni-
tions, behaviors and other responses unfold automatically” (Perkins & Salomon, 1988,
p. 19, cited in Wardle, 2009, p. 771).
Wardle’s precepts suggest that “transfer isn’t so much an instructional learning technique as
a way of thinking, perceiving and processing information” (Haskell 23)—in essence, it is a
practice of paying thoughtful attention that can enable students to examine unfamiliar genres
more insightfully and adapt what they know more successfully.

1 Think about the writing classes you have taken. To what extent did they enable
you to acquire genre awareness and/or understanding of how rhetorical elements
impact a text?
2 Locate a text from the discipline with which you are most familiar. How might you
use the concept of genre awareness to help a student learn to write in that discipline?
The Transfer of Process

As is discussed in Chapter 1, the field of Composition, now known as Writing Studies, shifted
its pedagogy toward process-based approaches that are included in most writing courses
today, and one aspect of the “transfer” issue concerns the extent to which students are able
to transfer the writing processes they have developed when they are assigned writing in other
courses. Research into this issue suggests that students do use and adapt the process they were
taught and began to develop in their first-year writing class, although they sometimes lack the
language to describe adequately their process. Jarratt et al.’s study (2005) based on interviews
with upper-division students indicates that two forms of process transfer had occurred: the
idea of a writing process and the practice of that process. However, because students lacked
terminology for explaining their process or recalling in detail what they had learned in their
first-year writing class, the Jarratt et al. study suggests the importance of “cultivating a peda-
gogical memory of writing terminology” (pp. 8–9).
Threshold Concepts
The issue of transfer has also focused attention on the idea of “threshold concepts,” defined by
Meyers and Land (2006) as concepts that are critical for participation in a discipline or a com-
munity. As is explained in Adler-Kassner et al., (2017), threshold concepts have a significant
impact on learning because they, “act as portals that learners pass through; in doing so, learn-
ers change their understandings of something. Threshold concepts are, then, transformative;
they are often irreversible” (p.18). The idea of threshold concepts originated in the econom-
ics strand of a British national research project into “the characteristics of strong teaching and
learning environments in the disciplines for undergraduate education” (Cousin, 2010, p. 1),
characteristics that Cousin describes as follows:
1 Transformative
A threshold concept is transformative because it involves a “conceptual shift in the
learner” (Cousin, 2010, p. 2). Cousin cites the example of a student of architecture who
begins to think less like a student and more like an actual architect.
2 Irreversible
Cousin maintains that a threshold concept is irreversible because once a learner knows
or understands, he or she is unlikely to forget it. An example in algebra is the idea that
letters can be used to stand for numbers.
3 Integrative
This term refers to how a threshold concept allows the learner to make connections
that were hitherto hidden from their view. Things start to click into place. An example
in Writing Studies is what occurs when students learn that different disciplines value dif-
ferent genres.
4 Bounded
This term refers to the borders between one threshold concept and another. According
to Cousin, interdisciplinary subjects are likely to have complex boundaries.
5 Troublesome
According to Perkins (2006), threshold concepts are likely to involve “troublesome
knowledge” (p. 7) because new information sometimes seems counterintuitive. As an
example, when students in a first-year college class discover that not all school essays have
five paragraphs, they may find that realization “troublesome.”
Liminality
Another characteristic of a threshold concept is what Meyers and Land (2006) refer to as “limi-
nality,” which refers to a transitional, in-between space—where one understands the concept,
but then, a bit later, one does not, or “Now I have it. Now I don’t.” In the context of a first-
year writing class, the state of liminality can cause students a great deal of anxiety, and according
to Cousin (2010), “Common ways in which students try to overcome “their state of liminality
is through quasi-plagiarism, plagiarism, or mimicry.” To help students move through this state
of liminality, Cousin urges teachers to encourage students to discuss their difficulties and give
them “full permission to flounder, fail and forget” (p. 3). This recommendation is in accord
with the student centered approach to learning that is endorsed by Writing Studies pedagogy.
Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies

In Writing Studies, recent scholarship concerned with transfer has focused on the role of
threshold concepts in helping students gain insight into how writing is used in different
178 Irene L. Clark
communities of practice. In a chapter titled “Assembling Knowledge: The Role of Threshold
Concepts in Facilitating Transfer,” which was based on the Elon transfer seminar, Adler-
Kassner et al. (2017) defined five threshold concepts of Writing Studies which, they argue,
“are critical for cultivating students’ abilities to assemble and reassemble knowledge-making
practices within and across communities of practice” (p. 20). These are as follows:
1 Writing Is an Activity and a Subject of Study

Viewing writing as a subject of study and not just an activity can enable students to
gain a more complex understanding of how texts develop and function. Studying and
analyzing writing, not just producing prescribed formulaic texts, can help students gen-
erate questions about how writing is constituted by the values and ideologies in various
communities, how good and bad writing is assessed, and “what consequences or implica-
tions extend from definitions of good (and bad) writing, for whom and why?” (p. 20).
As is noted in the Elon Statement, writing classes that “focus on study and practice with
concepts that enable students to analyze expectations for writing and learning within
specific contexts” (p. 5) contribute significantly to the possibility of transfer.
2 Writing Always Occurs in Context, and No Two Contexts Are Exactly Alike
In professional contexts and content area courses, the idea that writing is situational
seems obvious. But even in a general writing course, it is likely that students will be asked
to write in a variety of genres.
3 Reflection Is Critical for Writers’ Development
Because reflection involves cognition and metacognition, it enables writers to “tap
into their writing processes, practices, attitudes, and beliefs” (Taczak, 2015), helping
students access prior knowledge and also look forward to how that knowledge can be
repurposed. Reflection thus becomes a mode of inquiry that helps writers “develop a
theory of writing based on prior and new knowledge” (Adler-Kassner et al., 2017, p. 31).
4 Genre Awareness Contributes to Successful Transfer
Because a first-year writing course is not an introduction to a specific content area,
such as Introductory Biology, it is important for students to recognize that all genres are
shaped within their communities of practices, which includes disciplines, professions, and
other communal groups. A study conducted by Clark and Hernandez (2011) indicated
that students had found the concept of genre helpful when they wrote papers in other
classes, although some focused primarily on superficial aspects, such as style and struc-
ture. Nevertheless, “awareness of even superficial similarities and differences constitutes a
fledgling state of genre awareness that ultimately can result in effective transfer” (Adler-
Kassner et al., 2016, p. 36).
5 Prior Knowledge, Experience Attitudes, and Beliefs Set the State for Writing and Shape New
Writing Experiences and Learning
Because all new learning involves transfer based on previous learning” (Bransfod et al.,
2000, p. 53), understanding prior knowledge can help all writers gain insight into how
they approach writing and “be more intentional in all writing situations” (Adler-Kassner
et al., 2017, p. 37). Awareness of prior knowledge can be particularly helpful for students
entering a new writing environment, such as a first-year writing course, enabling them
to compare their previous understandings, attitudes, and beliefs about writing with those
in the new venue.
In addition to the five concepts discussed above, a book titled, Naming What We Know:
Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015) discusses other threshold
concepts, all of which can be useful in helping students deepen their understanding of writing
and transfer that understanding to other writing venues.

Review the threshold concepts discussed by Adler-Kassner et al. discussed above and
consider how you and/or your students might use them to become more effective writ-
ers. After you have reflected on your prior experience with a genre that is meaningful
to you, share what you have discovered.
Genre and Multimedia

The topic of multimedia will be addressed in detail in Chapter 10, but in the context of genre
and transfer, it is important to consider the extent to which our understanding and assessment
of academic print genres will impact how we view academic media genres. Will academic
writing genres change significantly under the influence of new media? Or will new media
become just another tool, merely an adaptation of one format to another?
Outlining two major perspectives on this issue, Knobel and Lankshear (2007) have argued
that new technologies can be used simply to “replicate longstanding literacy practices”
(p. 7), but, on the other hand, new literacies may “mobilize very different kinds of values and
priorities and sensibilities than the literacies we are familiar with, changing the nature of the
academic genres we want our students to acquire” (p. 7). At the point of this writing, new
media are already playing an increasingly important role in the writing class. Many instructors
allow or require their students to submit their work on blogs, create websites, and incorporate
visual and interactive elements, and it is certainly possible that the expectations of academic
writing genres will change as these media-oriented genres become commonplace.
Many instructors already include blogs to generate discussion outside of the classroom, and
Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd, examining a large corpus of blogs, have studied blogging
in terms of substance, form, and rhetorical action. In their article, “Blogging as Social Action:
A Genre Analysis of the Weblog,” Miller and Shepherd argue that the blog is a hybrid genre
that derives from other antecedent genres, such as the diary, commonplace books and ship
logs (2004, p. 11, cited in Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010, p. 164). They conclude that the blog is an
emergent genre that combines the personal and public in its rhetorical form and allows blog-
gers to cultivate the self in a public way (p. 164).
The Influence of Antecedent Genres

Other scholars have studied interaction between print and media genres in the writing
course, or as Yancey phrases this interconnection, “move across contexts, between media,
across time” (p. 312). A classroom-based study of web-based writing assignments conducted
by Edwards and McKee (2005) asked students to develop a persuasive essay as a multipage
website that incorporated links and graphics, and when students produced their essays,
some tended to be more like argument essays associated with print while others were more
multilinear, challenging the thought progression and reasoning patterns associated with
argument. Both teachers discovered, however, that the choices students made and the effec-
tiveness of those choices depended on their prior genre knowledge of the web genres—the
antecedent genres—they were using. They also found that the web genres and websites that
students were most familiar with were often not the same as those with which teachers were
familiar—unsurprising but important to remember when considering the use of multimedia
in a writing class.
180 Irene L. Clark
In a more recent study, Clark (2014) examined whether students in a first-year writing
class, a class that emphasized rhetoric and genre awareness, would be able to transfer their
ability to write an effective print-based text to a text that incorporated multimedia. These
students had received high scores on the placement exam they took when they entered
the university (The English Placement Test or EPT), and had responded affirmatively and
insightfully to surveys that addressed the usefulness of the genre and rhetoric-based writing
curriculum. Clark therefore expected that when they were asked to enhance their essays with
multimedia that they would be able to do so effectively. However, the results of the study
indicated that “unlike the print essays, in which all sources pertained directly and appropri-
ately to the idea being argued and were adequately introduced and discussed,” their multime-
dia essays “included items that were only peripherally related to the idea being addressed and
some of them were inappropriate for formal academic writing because they consisted simply
of unsupported assertions” (p. 36). An important question that emerged from this study was
whether the media genres with which students were most familiar were not suitable for aca-
demic writing, resulting in essays that were less effective than the print essays they had written
earlier in the semester. Clark concluded by emphasizing “the necessity for teachers to prepare
students for using new media” in their writing, “in particular to help students understand how
these elements should function in an academic text” (p. 38).
Other Genres in the Writing Class
Creative Nonfiction
In some academic writing scenes, teachers and scholars have focused on “creative nonfic-
tion,” a genre that combines the scholarly rigor and public concerns of academic writing with
the energy and personal involvement of personal narrative. Because this genre often utilizes
first-person perspectives as a means of developing a topic, creative nonfiction enables students
to include relevant personal experience and opinion within an academic context. An advo-
cate of introducing creative nonfiction to the Composition class, Wendy Bishop (1997) noted
that many of the journal articles in Rhetoric and Composition now include personal opinion
and examples based on lived experience, allowing the writer to move back and forth between
an informal, casual tone to the more formal, depersonalized tone associated with academic
discourse. As rigid standards for academic writing are being examined, the text strategies asso-
ciated with creative nonfiction are appearing with increasing frequency in the writing class.
Literary Genres
In a thought-provoking article, Devitt (2000) called for rhetorical and literary genre theorists
to recognize commonalities. Whereas literary genres tended to be regarded as a static catego-
rization of textual features, recent concern with the “interactive nature of textual meaning”
suggests that both rhetorical and literary genres “can be defined as a dynamic concept created
through the interaction of writers, readers, past texts, and contexts” (p. 699). Devitt sug-
gested that genre provides an important approach for examining all kinds of texts, because,
as Derrida (1980) maintained, “every text participates in one or several genres, there is no
genreless text; there is always a genre and genres, yet such participation never amounts to
belonging” (p. 65). Similarly, Marjorie Perloff (1989), addressing the question of whether
genre is a necessary term in a postmodern world, observed that “even as we pronounce on
the ‘irrelevance’ of genre in a time of postmodern openness, inclusiveness, and flexibility, we
are all the while applying generic markers to the subjects of our discussion” (pp. 5–6).
Terms Associated with Genre
Bawarshi and Reiff’s book Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research and Pedagogy
(2010) concludes with a detailed glossary of terms associated with the concept of genre. For
the purposes of this book, however, I will refer only to terms that are particularly relevant for
teaching college Composition.
Antecedent Genres. These are genres of the past that often influence a rhetorical response. The
term is associated with Jamieson’s article, “Antecedent Genre as Rhetorical Constraint” (1975),
which discusses several instances in which antecedent genres imposed inappropriate responses.
Antecedent genres can help students learn new genres, but sometimes they may lead students
in an inappropriate direction. Students’ tendency to cling to the five-paragraph essay in all aca-
demic contexts is an example of how an antecedent genre can impose an incorrect response.
Discourse Community. The term “discourse” refers to all kinds of communication, and a dis-
course community refers to the people who utilize a particular type of discourse to achieve com-
mon goals. Swales (1990) found that a discourse community utilizes genres to achieve those goals
and that membership in a discourse community is strongly connected to a member’s familiarity
and expertise with these genres.
Exigence. A term associated with Lloyd Bitzer’s article, “The Rhetorical Situation” (1968),
which refers to a problem, situation, or need that can be impacted or changed in some way
through writing. Bitzer used the word “exigence” to refer to a defect, an obstacle, or “some-
thing that is other than it should be.” In discovering a topic for writing, students should be
encouraged to locate an exigence.
Genre Awareness. A pedagogical approach that aims to foster a critical understanding of
genres, in terms of both their rhetorical purposes and ideological effects. Genre awareness
focuses on developing insight into how a genre functions. It is not the same as explicitly
teaching a particular genre.
Pedagogical Memory. The term “pedagogical memory” derives from a research study con-
ducted at UC Irvine by Susan Jarratt and her colleagues. The study involved interviews with
students several semesters after they had completed a first-year writing course to determine
the extent to which they were able to transfer what they had learned to other writing tasks.
What Jarratt discovered through the interviews is that although many students across the
disciplines had “internalized the idea of writing as a process and a mode of learning . . . even
the most successful . . . lacked fluency in basic writing terminology” (Jarratt, Mack, Sartor,
& Watson, 2009, p. 48). On the basis of this study, the authors recommend helping students
translate discourse about writing from one site to another.
Rhetoric. The term “rhetoric” refers to the effective use of language to persuade, inform,
or educate. Although people sometimes use the term to mean words that mean nothing, as
in “that is just rhetoric,” ancient Greek philosophers considered it a serious form of com-
munication that is oriented toward influencing an audience. Helping students understand the
importance of rhetoric is essential to enabling them to write effectively, both academically
and professionally.
The Rhetorical Situation. Lloyd Bitzer defined a rhetorical situation as “a complex of per-
sons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be
completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain
human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence”
(p. 18). The recognition of a rhetorical situation can enable students to develop ideas for writ-
ing, helping them understand how the writer, audience, context, and purpose can be utilized
in addressing it effectively.
Uptake. The term “uptake” was originally associated with speech act theory, referring
to how an act or a statement can result in a subsequent action. For example, the statement
182 Irene L. Clark
“it is hot in here” may be said in order to get someone to get someone to open a window.
Extending the concept, Anne Freadman (1994) maintained that genres can be defined by the
uptake they generate, that uptakes are learned, and that appropriate uptakes are necessary for
membership in a discourse community. In the context of teaching writing, a writing assign-
ment prompt generates a particular uptake in the form of an academic essay, and the ability
to respond appropriately is associated with academic success.

Essay Collections
Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin. T. N. (1995). Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication. Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Bishop,W., & Ostrom, H. (Eds.) (1997). Genre and writing: Issues, arguments, alternatives. Portsmouth,
NH: Boynton/Cook.
Freedman, A., & Medway, P. (Eds.).(1994). Learning and teaching genre. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/
Cook.
Freedman, A., & Medway, P. (Eds.) (1994). Genre and the new rhetoric. London: Taylor & Francis.
Johns, Ann M. (Ed.) (2002). Genre in the classroom: Multiple perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
The Explicit Teaching of Genre

Fahnestock, J. (1993). Genre and rhetorical craft. Research in the teaching of English, 27(3): 265–271.
Fahnestock responds to Aviva Freedman’s article on explicit instruction of genre, which appears
in the same issue of the journal. She questions Freedman’s conclusions by asking how explicit
instruction and genre should be defined and considers how craft, as opposed to a body of knowl-
edge, can be learned.
Freedman, A. (1993). Show and tell? The role of explicit teaching in learning new genres. Research
in the Teaching of English, 27(3): 222–251.
Freedman maintains that genre knowledge cannot be taught explicitly because it is only through
immersion in a discourse community that students can develop a “felt sense” of a genre.
Mustafa, Z. (1995). Effect of genre awareness on linguistic transfer. English for Specific Purposes,
14(3): 247–256.
This article examines the effect of raising university students’ awareness of term paper conven-
tions through formal instruction in the second language in producing this genre in the same
language or another language. The results indicate that although formal instruction is important,
variation in professors’ evaluation of these aspects is the main factor affecting whether this aware-
ness is put into practice.
Williams, J., & Colomb, G. (1993). The case for explicit teaching: Why what you don’t know
won’t help you. Research in the Teaching of English, 27(3): 252–264.
Academic versus Personal Writing

Bawarshi, A. S. (1997). Beyond dichotomy: Toward a theory of divergence in composition studies.
JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition Theory, 17(1): 69–82.
Bawarshi examines the dichotomy posited by Bartholomae and Elbow between institutional
and personal writing, or, more generally, between social constructivism and expressivism. He
attempts to propose a means of mediation between the two positions that goes beyond previous
attempts.
Glasgow, J. (1995). Surface tension between two paradigms of writing instruction. Teaching English
in the Two-Year College, 22(2): 102–109.
Glasgow reviews the tensions between discourse-centered writing instruction and expressivist
approaches, considering the conflict that occurs when the writing instructor’s approach differs
from the writing tutor’s approach. The article explores the possibilities of a reflective-response
style of writing instruction and advocates that such an approach is a useful means of fostering
writing development.
MacDonald, S. P. (1987). Problem definition in academic writing. College English, 49(3):
315–331.
MacDonald maintains that problem-solving generates all academic writing and that, in this
regard, writing about literature shares the same assumptions as other academic writing tasks. On
the continuum of problem definition, the scientist is at one end and literary interpretation is at
the other with its relatively undefined problems. Yet it is important for Composition teachers to
construct assignments that adequately define a problem.
Creativity in the Composition Class

Bawarshi, A. S. (1997). Beyond dichotomy: Toward a theory of divergence in composition studies.
JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition Theory, 17(1): 69–82.
Bawarshi critiques the notion of creativity as unprecedented or passing, arguing instead that there
can be no transcendence without derivation.
Bloom, L. Z. (1998). Composition studies as a creative art. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Bloom discusses the role of creativity in the Composition class through narratives of her own
history as a compositionist. Advocates that compositionists write in the genres they teach.
Christie, F. (1987). Genres as choice. In I. Reid (Ed.), The place of genre in learning: Current debates
(pp. 22–34). Geelong,Vic: Deakin University Press.
Christie maintains that creativity and genre are not incompatible, and that genre awareness is a
prerequisite for creative variation.
Dacey, J. S., & Lennon, K. H. (1998). Understanding creativity. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Discusses various components of “creativity” as it has been defined, focusing on the interplay
between biological, psychological, and social factors.
Devitt, Amy J. (2004). Writing Genres. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Weiner, R. P. (2000). Creativity and beyond. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Discusses the importance given to creativity in Western culture and traces the concept from
medieval times until the present in several societies.
Examining Particular Genres

Bazerman, C. (1991). Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in
science. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Berkenkotter, C., & Huckin, T. N. (1995). Gatekeeping at an academic convention. In C.
Berkenkotter, & T. N. Huckin (Eds.), Genre knowledge in disciplinary communication. Hillsdale,
Coe, R. M., Lingard, L, & Teslenko, T. (2002). The rhetoric and ideology of genre: Strategies for stability
and change. Creskill, NJ: Jampton Press.
Paley, K. S. (1996).The college application essay: A rhetorical paradox. Assessing Writing, 3: 85–105.
Soven, M., & Sullivan, W. M. (1990). Demystifying the academy: Can exploratory writing help?
Freshman English News, 19(1): 13–16.
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills.
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
(continued)
184 Irene L. Clark
(continued)
Genre and Multimedia
Beach, R., Anson, C., Breuch, L. K., & Swiss, T. (2009). Teaching writing using blogs, wikis, and other
digital tools. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.
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Transfer and Threshold Concepts

Adler-Kassner, L., & Wardle, E. (2015): Naming what we know: Threshold concepts in writings studies.
Anson, C., & Moore, J. L. (2017). Critical transitions: Writing and the question of transfer. Fort Collins,
CO: WAC Clearinghouse, University of Colorado.
Moore, J. L. & Bass, R. (2017). Understanding writing transfer: Implications for transformative student
learning in higher education. Sterling,VA: Stylus.
Yancey, K. B., Roberston, L., & Taczak, K. (2014). Writing across contexts: Transfer, composition, and
sites of writing. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
Note
1 The relationship between genre and identity is explored in further detail in
Clark, I. (2016). Genre, identity and the brain: Insights from neuropsychology. Journal of General
Education, 65(1): 1–19.
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Clifton Justice, who is now a lecturer at California State University, Channel Islands, wrote
this essay when he was an undergraduate student at California State University, Northridge.
Clifton had had previous experience in fundraising, and his essay shows how his knowledge
of the fundraising genre enable him to raise funds successfully.
Essay
Clifton Justice
How Do You Raise That Money?

Without ever intending to become one, I have become an expert on soliciting and receiving founda-
tion support for charitable programs. Over a four-year period of time I raised from both public and
private sources more than $100,000.00 each year for a small nonprofit performing arts group. Arts
organizations often get short shrift by foundations because they are not able to substantiate their
community impact, but with issues of literacy dominating the field in the 1990s, I was able to find
a way of blending foundation concerns and arts programming. To be successful in this arena, it was
necessary that I learn to write the two-page request for support letter. This letter is the instrument
whereby a nonprofit organization solicits money from a charitable foundation. This mechanism
brings together features from academic writing and business writing in order to make a compelling
case for funding an organization’s project. The genre reveals a system that favors structured man-
agement, clear outcomes for complex problems, and measured advances in changing people’s lives.
It is conservative, like the people who established the foundations.
In the early part of the 20th century the U.S. developed tax codes that placed federal taxes on
each citizen or resident of the country. The federal tax was a progressive act that allowed the federal
government to raise additional revenue. Since there were no government services for those who faced
personal or economic catastrophe, the government used the increased funds from taxes to lead the
way in providing a social safety net for its citizens who had fallen on hard times. But conserva-
tives in the government did not want citizens to look just to the government for assistance. Private
individuals were encouraged to participate in the enterprise and if they did, their taxes would be
(continued)
188 Irene L. Clark
(continued)
exempted or reduced. The most popular method used by the wealthy to assist those less fortunate
than themselves was to establish foundations designed to fund worthy enterprises by nonprofit
organizations. Nonprofit organizations provide services to the community through their programs,
and since their programs are offered free or at a reduced cost to the community, outside funds must
be solicited in order to continue operations. Because of the federal government’s tax codes, wealthy
individuals and their foundations have financial as well as humanitarian reasons to give money to
nonprofit organizations.
Now the two entities, foundation and nonprofit, have a reason to talk with one another, but
how will they communicate? The last thing a wealthy individual wants is every director of a charity
banging on his door with a personal appeal. In the beginning of a foundation, the man (some-
times a woman) with the money has pet projects, such as Carnegie and his libraries, and as long
as the philanthropist is alive, giving his money away is a relatively simple task. The foundation
donates to whatever organizations the gentleman (sometimes gentlewoman) prefers. But after that
individual’s passing, a professional staff and board of directors must decide each year how to give
away a percentage of the founder’s lifetime accumulation of wealth as mandated by the tax code.
The staff and the board of foundations are usually well educated, often holding advanced degrees,
so asking nonprofits to put their requests in writing made sense and it was an easy solution to a
pressing problem. From the 1960s forward, nonprofit growth skyrocketed and pleas to foundations
increased each year. Foundations wanted an orderly way of communicating with nonprofits to be
imposed. Personal visits and telephone calls could take up too much of the staff’s day. Comfortable
with academic writing, the grantsmakers borrowed the concept of “thesis” and “support” and
merged it into “problem to be addressed” and “community impact,” then imposed that all requests
must be in writing. To assist fundraisers in conforming to the requirements, pamphlets, such as the
PP & PG (Program Planning and Proposal Guide), were printed and widely distributed.
Another prominent reason for demanding that requests be in writing is to avoid personal involve-
ment in projects. With the internal structure based in academic writing, the two-page request for
support letter serves the foundation’s need of creating a space between themselves and the nonprofit.
Since a substantial percentage of the proposals, well over 50%, will be rejected, foundations want
to maintain distance from the organizations. Distance allows them a more careful and objective
examination. It also forces both sides to take a “cool” approach to the problem, viewing it with a
dispassionate nature.
Of course, this style of discourse has its vagaries that favor college-educated, economically
advantaged grant writers. These individuals, particularly those who come from a composition back-
ground, are able to communicate in a manner society has determined superior. Thus, their programs
are deemed superior and receive funding. Rarely do you see awards given to organizations run by
individuals without a strong writing background. At the time, I was one of those few exceptions.
The components of the two-page request for support letter are: (1) mission of the organization
or the purpose of the group, (2) history of the organization focusing on recent accomplishments by
the organization, (3) the community problem to be addressed—and you never say the problem
is lack of money (even though it often is), (4) the actions your organization will take to address
the problem, (5) the long term impact of your program and their money on the community to be
addressed, and (6) how much money you want from the foundation along with who else is sup-
porting the project. Funders rarely go it alone.
While the genre’s internal structure is derived from academia, its appearance is similar to that
of a business letter. It is most often single-spaced, printed on organization letterhead, and has a
clean, no-fuss appearance. This appearance somehow conveys to the foundation strong manage-
ment, fiscal responsibility, and community involvement. It does this through paragraphs borrowed
from the business world that are ten to twelve lines long, often with a space between them and
no indentation. On the page, the paragraphs form powerful-looking blocks meant to inspire trust
in the organization. Letterhead, in and of itself, indicates the serious intent of the organization.
It is printed, not photocopied, on heavy stock, and may include wood pulp mixed with cotton or
linen. Generally, letterhead includes a listing of the board of directors, which indicates a system of
hierarchy similar to the foundation’s own structure. Familiarity, in this instance, breeds confidence
rather than contempt.
Certainly the limit of two pages is derived from the genre’s attachment to the business letter. In
that form the writer needs to get to the point quickly and move on. Two pages are a limited amount
of space to describe the project; great care must be taken with each word and phrase. Confusion
is disastrous. If the foundation looks favorably on the request letter then the next step is usually
to require a more formal proposal that can run many pages. The essence of that well-thought out
proposal must be synthesized within the two-page appeal. This is challenging since the project is
almost always over two years away from starting. Foundation’s move at such a slow pace that even
an affirmative response to a funding request can take over a year and a half. Negative responses to
the request for support letter come quicker, usually within a few weeks or months, so no news can
be good news to the grantwriter.
The organization I wrote grants for presented programs that were based on classic stories or
poems—The Walrus and the Carpenter; Jabberwocky—and folk tales from Mexico, Africa,
and Asia. I partnered with larger organizations, such as the Los Angeles City Library, to bring
further attention to the company’s work by local foundations. With support from the Parsons
Foundation, the Weingart Foundation and the Norris Foundation, the company twice visited
all 89 library sites in Los Angeles providing them with family programs designed to encourage
reading. I believe much of my success came from knowing how to tailor my program to the founda-
tion’s goals of literacy, particularly for children. The more the nonprofit advances the goals of the
foundation in their request, the more likely the organization will receive funding. This can have a
detrimental aspect; organizations can lose their own sense of mission when they are chasing funds
from a foundation. I believe, for the most part, I was able to avoid this error.
The skill I learned in writing two-page requests for support letters has served me well in college.
First, it provided me a way to earn a living. By working part-time out of my home, I have been
able to pursue a career in teaching. My reputation as a grantwriter is such that I have numerous
organizations desiring my services and I can choose for whom I want to write. Second, I find that
determining what a professor wants and then giving it to them is remarkably similar to structuring a
program that a foundation will fund. The ability to mold your idea to the vision of another without
losing your way is central to success, not only in college, but also in life.
Reading
“Emphasizing Similarity” but Not “Eliding Difference”
Exploring Sub-Disciplinary Differences as a Way to Teach Genre Flexibly
Katherine L. Schaefer
Rebecca Nowacek, in her 2009 paper, “Why Is Being Interdisciplinary so Very Hard to Do?
Thoughts on the Perils and Promise of Interdisciplinary Pedagogy,” suggests that instructors
can highlight disciplinary differences in genre expectations as a way to help students under-
stand writing more deeply. In this paper, Nowacek describes her observations of a writing-
intensive, team-taught general education course composed of three overlapping course
units, each drawing on one of three disciplines: literature, history, or religion. She noted that
the three disciplinary instructors thought that they were assigning the same genre, an essay,
but had very different views on what an essay should do, or indeed, what it meant to have
a thesis. Furthermore, she observed that students noticed this issue, and that instructors,
when called upon to respond, tended to focus on “emphasizing similarity, [and] eliding differ-
ence” (p. 505). Drawing on cultural-historical-activity theory (Engeström, 1987; Roth & Lee,
2007; Russell, 1995), she analyzes the reasons for the disagreement, and the “double binds”
that the students found themselves in when they could not resolve the conflicts. She further
explores how the instructors might have responded. In the end, she says:
Both students and instructors, I argue, must negotiate double binds placed upon them
when various disciplines conflict. These double binds can limit and constrain the work of
individuals, but if made an object of reflection, the double bind can also facilitate higher-
order thinking about disciplines and the role of writing within them.
(p. 494)
When I discovered this paper, I responded strongly to the idea of eliding differences. I—once
an assistant professor specializing in cellular immunology and now an immunologist working
as a “writing in the disciplines” (WID) specialist within a writing program—have, for four years
running, co-taught a biology laboratory course with Cheeptip Benyajati, a faculty member in
the biology department. We initially planned to co-teach every writing instruction session but
emphasized to ourselves and to the students that she would maintain responsibility for biol-
ogy content questions, while I would focus on attention to writing principles. However, this
plan was complicated by my years as a practicing biologist; I frequently found myself speak-
ing with biology insider knowledge in response to student questions, and Tip encouraged this
tendency, arguing that it helped model scientific discussion. Furthermore, when I did speak
as a biologist, she sometimes disagreed and asked questions—and I found myself almost
reflexively trying to claim that we were in agreement. In short, I was “emphasizing similarity”
and “eliding differences.”
Furthermore, I noticed that we didn’t disagree about writing principles or, as Tip said,
about “what it means to do good science”; we had similar epistemological orientations. Nor
did we disagree about the essentials of the genre we asked them to use: the Introduction-
Methods-Result-Discussion (IMRD) research article, or the rhetorical moves (Swales,
1990, 2004) within this structure. Instead, I thought our choices might be traced to subtle
“Emphasizing Similarity” 191
differences in rhetorical exigencies and conventions typical of particular sub-disciplinary
communities (Thaiss & Zawacki, 2006); although we are both biologists, molecular biolo-
gists and cellular immunologists are somewhat different. While there could of course be
other reasons than disciplinary specialization for our disagreement, this line of reason-
ing got me thinking: could our experience, combined with Nowacek’s suggestions about
creating opportunities for reflections on differences, point at a way of emphasizing genre
flexibility and the ways that different disciplinary sub-communities use the genre within a
scientific discipline?
Put more broadly, might Nowacek’s suggestion be applicable even when the instructors
are from the same discipline? In the rest of this essay, I will attempt to answer this ques-
tion, drawing on both published literature and our own experience, and argue that widely
disparate disciplines are not necessary to set up conflicts that can be made the object of
reflection. Professors within a discipline may well have areas of disagreement within a
single genre that can be exploited. If made the focus of reflection and discussion, these
differences can help faculty members to make explicit their implicit knowledge of com-
munication within their specialty areas (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Berkenkotter & Huckin,
1995b; Duff, 2010; Prior, 1995, 1998; Russell, 1995) and relate communicative choices to
disciplinary rhetorical exigencies. In addition, they can help students to understand what it
means to be a part of a wide-ranging discipline containing several areas of specialization
and subtly different types of writing tasks, as well as to see how disciplines, and the rhetori-
cal situations and choices associated with them, change over time (Bazerman, 1984, 1988;
Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995a; Vande Kopple, 2000). This approach should help students
see genres not as static recipes, but as tools that both shape researchers and are shaped
by researchers in response to evolving needs (Bazerman, 1988; Berkenkotter & Huckin,
1993; Prior, 1998).
Disciplines, Sub-Disciplines, and Overlapping Activity Systems

While there are many possible definitions of disciplines and sub-disciplines (Thaiss &
Zawacki, 2006), I will use Becher & Trowler’s (2001) approach, which captures three epis-
temological attributes. A first involves the fundamental disciplinary questions (MacDonald,
1987). The second is one of disciplinary stance, or whether the members of the discipline
want to know how a phenomenon works or envision applying the knowledge to solve a
problem (Biglan, 1973). Finally, it is important to consider whether the practitioners espouse
a normalized viewpoint, attempting to accumulate knowledge that has been “proven,” using
agreed-upon theoretical frameworks, or tend toward a more reflexive approach that consist-
ently questions these frameworks (Kuhn, 1977). While this is a reductionist approach that
risks reifying fluid situations (Hyland, 2004a), it does provide a useful framework. As such,
research disciplines are often classified according to where they fall on the Biglan classifica-
tion scale (Biglan, 1973), which consists of three axes that roughly correspond, respectively,
to these epistemological dimensions: life/non-life, pure/applied, and hard/soft.
Disciplinary communities can be further divided into sub-disciplines. In the simplest for-
mulation, a sub-discipline is simply an area of specialization originally found within a parent
discipline (Thaiss & Zawacki, 2006). However, as a result of specialization, the sub-discipline
has adopted a recognizable focus on a particular type of question and/or epistemologies
and methodologies and exhibits its own culture (Becher & Trowler, 2001). For the purposes
192 Katherine L. Schaefer
of this paper, I describe (sub-)disciplines largely in terms of their Biglan characteristics.
However, I do not mean this definition to be limiting, and suspect that the teaching applica-
tions and research questions that my work suggests could be applied within a wide variety
of definitions.
Disciplines and sub-disciplines can also roughly map onto the activity systems described
by cultural-historical-activity theory, making the connection to Nowacek’s (2009) work
clearer. In its simplest formulation (Nowacek, 2009; Russell, 1995), an activity system con-
sists of a subject (person(s); here, the investigators), the object (what they are studying),
the motives for their activity (their reasons for study), and the tools that they use to accom-
plish the work (disciplinary and discursive). Specializations or sub-disciplines that differ in
object, motives, and/or tools from others are working within similar but not identical activity
systems. However, while I think it is useful to think of sub-disciplines as overlapping activity
systems within a larger disciplinary grouping, I do not mean to entirely equate sub-disciplines
and activity systems. Even a disciplinary specialization is a large activity group; within any
activity group that roughly shares object, motive, and tools, there are still smaller possible
activity groups: investigators at a particular university, in a particular time, or from a particular
research group—even down to a partnership between two researchers.
Several cautionary tales (Beaufort, 2007; Nowacek, 2009; Russell & Yañez, 2003) make
it clear that students with writing experience in one discipline (activity system) have difficulty
transferring that knowledge to another discipline (activity system) when they are asked to
write using a particular discursive tool or genre (e.g., a thesis-driven essay, or a book-report)
that looks superficially identical to the one from the first discipline. A major source of their
difficulty lies in the fact that they do not have sufficient disciplinary knowledge to understand
how the superficially similar form normally serves a very different purpose, to look at different
objects and/or for different motives. In this paper, I also explore how the same issue might be
true when making smaller changes: when moving from one sub-discipline or activity group
to another.
Disciplinary and Sub-Disciplinary Choices within the

IMRD Structure
Because epistemological considerations have important implications for the way that inves-
tigators communicate (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995b; Hyland, 2004b; Petraglia, 1995;
Russell, 1995; Swales, 1990), it is not surprising that discourse communities (as defined by
Bizzell, 1992) that use the Intro-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) genre make recogniz-
ably different choices depending on the precise (sub-)discipline. These differential choices
occur because the exigencies of a particular type of inquiry lead to recurring rhetorical situa-
tions (Miller, 1984) that can be addressed in similar ways (Bazerman, 1988; Berkenkotter &
Huckin, 1995b; Prior, 1998; Swales, 1990). These similarities lead to particular types of solu-
tions that include patterns of reasoning that draw on the epistemologies and values of the
particular discipline (Toulmin, 1958) and, over time, give rise in turn to genres and choices
within the genres that “signal a discourse community’s norms, epistemology, ideology, and
social ontology” (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1993, p. 497).
Below, I review two types of signals that have been especially well-characterized with
respect to differences between disciplines and sub-disciplines: rhetorical moves and the
linguistic mechanisms that authors use to signal stance and engagement. These signals are
especially accessible to instructors considering highlighting differences.
Rhetorical Moves
Drawing on multiple previous corpus analyses, Swales (1990) argued that research arti-
cles across a great range of disciplines could be characterized in terms of a limited num-
ber of canonical rhetorical moves. Initially, this idea was best elaborated with respect to
Introductions, using the Create-A-Research-Space (CARS) series of rhetorical moves
(p. 141). Move 1 is used in “establishing territory”; move 2 in “establishing a niche”; and
move 3 in “occupying a niche.” Within the moves, there are further canonical “step” choices;
for instance, an author “establishing territory” might do so by “claiming centrality” or “making
topic generalizations.” Introductions can use simple M1-M2-M3 structure (Swales, 1990), or
cycle, as in M1-M2-M1-M3 (Swales, 2004). This initial framework inspired Swales and others
to codify a similar series of moves for the methods, results, and discussion sections, as well
as to examine variation within those sections. The outcomes of these analyses suggest that
both disciplines and sub-disciplines make recognizable choices in all of these areas, in ways
that reflect their rhetorical needs.
Swales (1990) summarized broad disciplinary differences in the introductions, noting that
the move 1, step 1 option of “establishing centrality” (p. 141) is less common in the hard sci-
ences. The tendency to outline purposes versus principal results, to explain the importance
of the findings, or road-map the paper (move 3) also varies by discipline. In addition to these
disciplinary differences, several studies suggest recognizable differences in sub-disciplines.
Samraj (2002, 2005) found that writers in two sub-disciplines of biology make different step
choices within the M1-M2-M3 structure, as do writers in three engineering sub-disciplines
(Kanoksilapatham, 2012). Similarly, Ozturk (2007) showed that two applied linguistics sub-
disciplines chose different move cycling patterns. In all cases, the authors argued that the
stereotypical differences were related to underlying differences in the sub-disciplines’ Biglan
classifications.
Swales (2004) noted that the biggest disciplinary differences appear in the methods and
results sections. Methods sections contain very “clipped” descriptions in hard fields with well-
established methodology, but use an “elaborated” version in softer fields with more variation
(p. 220). Similarly, in the results sections, writers in disciplines in which the methodologies
and interpretational methods are not well-established are more prone to use persuasive
moves to justify their choices. And while all writers review their findings and integrate them
into the larger field in the discussion section, the amount of self-promotion varies widely by
discipline. Kanoksilapatham (2012) also codified rhetorical move and step choices in the
methods, results, and discussion sections within three engineering sub-disciplines and found
recognizable sub-disciplinary differences in all three sections.
Stance and Engagement
Drawing on a decade of his own work, as well as earlier work by Swales (1990), Hyland
(2005) proposed that interactions with the audience can be mediated by two classes of
linguistic resources: stance and engagement features. Stance refers to the ways in which
“writers present themselves and convey their judgments, opinions, and commitments,”
while engagement refers to the ways in which writers “acknowledge and connect to others”
(p. 176). Engagement strategies are those that include the reader in some way, and are
designed to “meet readers’ expectations of inclusion and disciplinary solidarity” or to “rhe-
torically position the audience” (p. 182). Stance markers include hedges, boosters, attitude
markers, and self-mention; engagement markers include reader pronouns, personal asides,
appeals to shared knowledge, directives, and questions.
Using this classification scheme, Hyland (2005) examined research articles from eight dis-
ciplines, two of which were sub-disciplines of a larger engineering discipline. Hyland found that
the hard disciplines had a lower level of both stance and engagement markers than the soft
disciplines. Hedges were the most frequently used stance resource in all disciplines, but the
soft disciplines used nearly twice as many. Hyland speculated that these differences reflect
variation in the degree to which a discipline has agreed-upon ways of making claims; when
the criteria for acceptance are less clear, it pays to hedge and also to try to use engagement
markers to persuade through “sympathetic understanding, promoting tolerance in readers
through an ethical rather than a cognitive progression” (p. 187). Notably, electrical engineer-
ing and mechanical engineering writing showed differences in both stance and engagement
markers, suggesting that even disciplines that are in roughly the same space on the hard/soft
and pure/applied axes may have cultures and needs that promote different choices.
A Case Study: A Molecular Biologist Co-Teaches with a Cellular

Immunologist
At least within the level of specificity appropriate for writing at the undergraduate level, Tip
and I did not have serious disagreements about rhetorical moves or stance and engagement
markers (although other co-instructors might well have). However, we encountered other
areas of disagreement. After systematically exploring the differences between writing in our
sub-disciplines and discussing the reasons for our preferences, we uncovered several possi-
ble explanations. I offer this reflection on our experience as a way to explore how instructors
might use initially disparate expectations as a starting point for articulating their own reasons
for their writing choices.
Background of the Instructors and Course
During our PhD work, both Tip and I were pure molecular biologists; post-PhD, I switched to
cellular immunology. These two fields share a common hard epistemology, and have con-
siderable overlap in experimental techniques and some specialist journals. However, they
differ in the fundamental problems being studied, some of the methodologies and specialist
journals, the funding mechanisms, the speed of the research, and the histories of their fields
(Levin, 2006), as well as in their position on the pure/applied scale (my approach to cellular
immunology, at least, was well into the applied realm).
Our course served juniors and seniors with a declared biology major, many of whom go on
to health-professions or graduate schools. The biology major at our small R1 university encom-
passes six different specialist tracks (e.g., biochemistry, ecology and evolution, etc.), and this
course could be used to partially satisfy the requirement for laboratory research for three of the
six tracks. Many, but not all, of the students had prior or concurrent experience doing independ-
ent research in some aspect of biology or an allied discipline like epidemiology or chemistry.
This course included writing for both “writing-to-learn” and “learning-to-write” (Russell, 2002,
p. 311) purposes. We hoped that by writing, students would explore the underlying scientific
concepts more deeply; we also wanted them to learn to communicate the process of science
using a widely-accepted genre: the research article. In the instructions for their three research
write-ups, we explicitly asked the students to write as if they were writing a scientific research
article, and our explanations, while they did not explicitly use Swales’ (1990) terminology,
heavily reflected his concepts of rhetorical moves within an Intro-Methods-Results-Discussion
(IMRD) structure. For instance, while we did not use the words rhetorical move we did tell
students that, in the introduction, the first paragraph gives background (a.k.a. move 1); the
second identifies a question or gap in the literature (move 2); and the third provides a preview
of the paper (move 3). We asked for an elaborated methods style; similarly, in the results, we
asked students to outline their methodology and interpret their findings, as generally happens
in disciplines with sufficient heterogeneity to make this necessary (Swales, 2004).
We offered writing instruction in the form of three genre analysis-based workshops with
peer discussion. The first workshop focused on figures and figure legends, as these were
the fundamental reporting units from each laboratory session. The second, in preparation for
writing the first full laboratory report, involved discussing the reasons for the IMRD structure,
as well as identifying key rhetorical moves in one sample paper. The third focused on identi-
fying rhetorical moves within all IMRD sections in multiple papers, and integrating what stu-
dents discovered with comments that teaching assistants (acting as disciplinary insiders) had
made on the student lab reports. All workshops drew on examples from a four-paper sample
paper set, picked with several ideas in mind. First, the paper set represented the depart-
mental discourse community; it contained papers from three biology department professors
(including Tip) and one from me. In addition, the set contained necessary background knowl-
edge about procedures, materials, and methods. Finally, the papers were meant to serve as
general models for the type of report the students were writing, and also contain examples
of specialized types of writing tasks (e.g., derivation of equations). All papers were published
between 1997 and 2001 (Benyajati et al., 1997; Culver & Noller, 1999; Schaefer & McClure,
1997; Sia, Dominska, Stefanovic, & Petes, 2001).
Example #1: Different Expectations about Figure Legend Titles
Figure legends in scientific research articles convey a great deal of critical information in a
small space. Ideally, a disciplinary insider should be able to understand the paper’s important
information just based on the visual elements in a figure and the associated figure legends,
without recourse to the larger text.
Tip (Benyajati, 2012) wrote explicit instructions on how to write the figure legend titles:
A descriptive title that refers to the general type of experiment done. This should give
the reader a good idea of the experiment and the technique, but not the details (e.g.:
“Restriction digest analysis of TOP transformants on an agarose gel,” NOT “2% agarose
gel run at 100V”). (p. 10)
This style has two key elements, as executed in most research papers: (1) focus on the
methodology, not the result and (2) a sentence fragment form.
When I saw this instruction, I didn’t question it. It seemed reasonable, as I had indeed writ-
ten (in 1997) figure legend titles in this form and the sample paper set contained one of my
papers written with that style. However, I was also aware that alternatives existed; in papers
that I published after 1997, I used a different form: one that emphasizes the experimental
logic and conclusion of the experiment and is formed as a complete sentence.
The difference is illustrated below, in an excerpt of figure legends taken from a paper that
Tip wrote (Benyajati et al., 1997):
Figure 2: Western blot analysis using domain-specific antibodies.
Figure 3: GAGA-519 and GAGA-581 factors bind a single GAGA sequence forming
multiple-related nucleoprotein complexes.
Figure 2 is a clear example of the first methodological type; it focuses on the technique
(italicized) and does not contain information about the results of that analysis. In contrast,
figure 3 is in conclusion style; while it hints about the method (something about binding and
complexes), it primarily states a conclusion, expressed as a complete sentence: factors bind,
forming complexes.
While I didn’t question the instructions, I did notice that I tended to have off-the-cuff
answers to student questions that took the conclusion style; I would almost always answer in
a complete sentence, as in “Western blot analysis shows protein expression.” But rather than
explore this issue, I simply corrected myself and moved on, even though the excerpt above
suggests that there might be considerable variation in this choice, even within a single paper.
What was going on? I initially assumed that this was a sub-disciplinary matter, because I
had used the experimental focus form exclusively in my two papers that I had written as a
molecular biologist; a scant two years later, as an immunologist, six of my eight figure leg-
ends were in conclusion style. My idea was further supported by an analysis of the sample
paper set—all from molecular biologists—that we gave the students to analyze. In those four
papers, with twenty experimental figure legends, only two were of the conclusion style, and
three of the four papers in the set had no conclusion-style legends.
However, while my hunch was not unreasonable, I could imagine other possible fac-
tors, including publication date, the author’s home country, the difficulty of encapsulating the
whole take-home message, the ease with which the author thinks the audience can identify
the take-home message, the sub-disciplinary experimental logic, and individual stylistic pref-
erence. To my knowledge, a corpus analysis of figure legend choices has not yet been done
in any discipline, so it was hard to say if disciplines or sub-disciplines make recognizably
different choices in these areas. Thus, I did a rudimentary analysis of these two extremes
in figure legend title formats. (It is not my intention here to do a formal corpus analysis but
simply to reflect on a major source of variation that I was able to easily pick out.)
I analyzed figure legend titles from Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) and from the Journal
of Immunology (JI). Both journals are well-regarded specialist journals for, respectively, the
molecular biology and immunology communities. In order to examine trends over time, I
month-and-year-matched both my and Tip’s sample paper set papers in both journals, as
well as examining the most recent issue. I then collated all of the figure legends, excluding
purely schematic (data-free) figures, and identified those with titles in the conclusion-style
complete sentence format, asking a scientist colleague to randomly spot-check five percent
of my assignments (we scored the same way one hundred percent of the time). The results
are shown in Table I:
This analysis suggested that my hunch was correct: there are sub-disciplinary differences
in the tendency to express the figure legend title as a complete, conclusion-style sentence.
However, it also appears that this tendency has been increasing over time in both commu-
nities and that there can be significant variation even within a paper. While there are sub-
disciplinary factors affecting the choice, there are clearly additional ones.
Table I Both publication year and journal affect likelihood of expressing the figure legend as a
complete sentence.
Journal Year Volume (Issue) No. Papers No. Legends % C Form % Papers with
Legends 100% C Style
Nucleic Acids 1997 25(16) 28 114 5.3 7.1

Research
1999 27(3) 28 120 10.8 3.6
2015 43(10) 34 195 47.2 26.5
Journal of 1997 159(3) 60 381 19.2 5.0
Immunology
1999 162(3) 80 475 27.6 5.0
2015 194(11) 49 319 63.0 38.8
All data-driven articles (excluding commentary, summary, and reviews) appearing within the print volume were ana-
lyzed; figure (but not table) legends were included if they contained data (schematic figures excluded). C style refers
to a conclusion style, with subject and verb.
When I showed Tip this analysis, she noted that she had expected the trend toward
conclusion-style legends in both sub-disciplines. Her explanation—one that I agree with—
was that this preference reflects the increasing speed of scientific research in all biology
sub-disciplines. When readers have to get through a lot, it speeds processing if the author
states the result right up front. Similarly, the rapid growth of research techniques, even within
a specialty area, necessitates helping the readership draw conclusions, as the author can’t
be sure that the reader is familiar with any particular technique. She also noted that competi-
tion for funding has increased over time, making it more desirable to describe each finding
as an exciting conclusion. To explain the fact that, despite the overall increase, NAR writers
still use fewer conclusion-style legend titles than JI writers, she suggested that the NAR
community has a more constrained set of techniques, and possibly less competitive funding
sources, perhaps reducing the need for clearly stated (and exciting) conclusions.
Tip’s analysis is highly congruent with Berkenkotter and Huckin’s (1995a) analysis of how
physicists and biologists read and write IMRD research articles: as a search for “news value”
(p. 28). They found that experienced scientists reading in their specialty area first scanned
for important new information, by reading the title, abstract, and results sections (including
figures and tables). They further argue, based on an analysis of the evolution of elements
within the IMRD structure over time, that writers—under pressure from an ever-increasing
volume of scientific knowledge as well as real promotional needs related to funding—have
made changes to the form that help readers perform this scanning function and see the
information as newsworthy. These changes include more informative titles, addition and then
expansion of the abstract, sub-headers, and a statement of results at the end of the introduc-
tion. While their analysis did not extend to figure legend titles, the increasing trend toward
providing a complete sentence mini-summary in the figure legend title can easily be seen
as part of the adaptation to pressures for newsworthiness (one that seems to have gained
speed after 1995).
It is clear that our difference of opinion—and, as is clear after our discussions, the dispar-
ity between our instructions and the way we ourselves read and write research articles—
were interesting from a rhetorical point of view, and we were probably doing the students a
disservice by not exploring the difference. Not only were students seeing this sort of variation
in one of the papers that we provided as a model, but they were additionally almost certainly
seeing similar variation in papers they were reading for other classes or their independent
research projects. Our choice, both to codify and to fail to follow up on a difference in choices
that I was clearly finding difficult to suppress, may well have confused the students (although
I don’t have that information). In addition, we had in effect treated genres as static, rather
than fluid (Ramanathan & Kaplan, 2000; Smit, 2004) and missed an opportunity to discuss
how the field and affiliated writing choices had changed over time (Bazerman, 1984, 1988;
Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995a; Vande Kopple, 2000). We also missed the opportunity to dis-
cuss how sub-disciplinary specialties may have different rhetorical needs and conventions/
preferences that reflect those needs.
Example #2: Different Expectations about Titles
Titles in scientific research articles are also key elements, as readers frequently decide on
the basis of the title and the abstract whether it is worthwhile to read the paper (Berkenkotter
& Huckin, 1995a; Hyland, 2003). We said that the title should be “brief and informative”—and
interpreted that instruction differently.
Our differences stemmed from unexpected results. The students were trying a new system
for cloning a gene and expressing the protein, and the instructors did not know in advance
if this approach would work. As it turned out, parts of it did, and parts of it didn’t. The stu-
dents then wanted to know how to represent this complicated situation in the title. The most
informative answer is that part A worked but part B didn’t, and I first advocated saying pre-
cisely that. However, Tip quickly brought up a complication: today, there is a clear preference
for “positive results,” or results that confirm one’s expectation or hypothesis (Fanelli, 2012,
p. 891). In addition, most scientists find reports of methods more interesting if the method
actually works, as they want to know about possible improvements to their own methodol-
ogy. Thus, Tip argued that students should make a hedged claim that emphasized the posi-
tive but with limits: the first part worked, while the second part worked minimally.
Once again, I found myself emphasizing agreement. We agreed that titles should be
informative, and also that you should make the best possible case for something being inter-
esting, and I emphasized that common ground. However, we didn’t have the deeper conver-
sation about when one might want to admit that something didn’t work. When we discussed it
later, it turned out that one consideration involved the difference between my and Tip’s views
on what genre and purposes the student laboratory reports were approximating. Were they
approaching a very technical methods research paper (my thought), in which case it might
be appropriate to say that something didn’t work in order to save others from trying the same
approach? Or were they approximating a research paper (her thought)—a paper that reports
only after all difficulties have been ironed out?
In effect, this disagreement stemmed from a common issue in assignment design that
we had not made explicit for the students. The lab report is frequently an artificial genre that
reflects an attempt to teach at least two skills simultaneously during a laboratory course: the
basics of the research report genre and the use of disciplinary technical protocols. It thus
suffers from a serious internal complication: it uses the structure of a genuine research report
while asking students to report on work that differs significantly from true investigation, in that
it focuses on successfully replicating accepted knowledge and/or techniques (Moskovitz &
Kellogg, 2011). This issue leads to at least two complexities. First, it makes for difficulties in
writing the introduction, as the normal progression from known information to the question
at hand requires that students pretend that the question has not already been answered.
Second, it can confuse students about the true nature of research, as they are asked to
evaluate their work on how well they replicated others’ work, rather than finding and integrat-
ing something new.
We attempted to address at least the first issue by incorporating a relative unknown that
is common in science: would the new system that has worked for similar tasks work in this
particular situation? However, this choice created a new problem, as we continued to ask
the students to write their introductory material as if they were framing a question about the
biological process at hand rather than the technical details necessary to explore the bio-
logical process. The lab report instructions had, as Russell & Yañez (2003) put it, “strategic
ambiguity” about this complication (p. 342), and students duly queried us. We helped them
bridge the difference by instructing them to frame their question/purpose in these terms: “as
a first step toward answering the interesting biological question, we need to first determine
whether we can experimentally express the protein.” However, this solution did not answer
the question of which overlapping activity system with different motives they belonged to:
one interested in technical details, or one interested in the biological process—and in fact
could not, as we wanted them to be interested in both.
This reflection highlights the difficulties inherent in what Wardle (2009) calls “mutt genres”
(p.765), or genres that use the forms that are authentic discursive tools in some activity sys-
tems but that fail to match the object and motives of the actual student activity system. By
failing to follow up on our differences about titles, we missed an opportunity to discuss our
mixed purposes and the difficulties inherent in the lab report genre, as well as how, in other
situations, the same set of experiments could belong to two different activity systems, and
thus be presented differently.
In addition, sub-disciplinary preferences for self-promotion may also have played a role in
Tip’s greater tendency to accentuate the positive. In a context when positive results are more
highly valued, the desire to frame one’s work in terms of the parts that worked is part of the
promotional picture. Hyland (2003) noted disciplinary differences in the tendency to cite one’s
own work (a form of self-promotion). Similarly, Swales (2004) and Kanoksilapatham (2012)
outlined disciplinary and sub-disciplinary preferences for explicitly promoting the importance
of the work in the discussion sections. In addition, Fanelli (2010) directly addressed the
question of disciplinary tendency to report a positive result, showing that the predisposition to
report positive results correlates with one’s position on the hard/soft and pure/applied axes.
Additionally, in a comparison of four different biology sub-disciplines (Fanelli, 2010, 2012),
she found important sub-disciplinary differences, although the magnitude of the difference
depended on which time period she examined. In papers from 1990–2007, immunologists
tended to be less likely to report positive results than molecular biologists (mirroring my
preference); however, in papers from 2000–2007, immunologists were more likely to report
positive results.
Taking all of this into account, Tip and I may be reflecting our different opinions about
the particular activity system under consideration, our sub-disciplinary biases, or perhaps
the age at which we first learned to write fluently as members of a scientific community.
We might be also reflecting individual attitudes toward publication and self-promotion; many
reviewers over the course of my career have said that I am too blunt. The truth may in fact
be “all of the above.” Regardless of the precise reasons, it is clear that, as with the figure
legend situation, I lost the opportunity to engage my collaborator in a discussion that might
show students how writing choices are driven by many interacting factors including rhetorical
situation, sub-disciplinary norms, and individual preferences.
Engineering Teachable Moments
These examples show that my initial hunch contained elements of truth—sub-disciplinary
expectations probably did influence our choices—but was incomplete in that it underesti-
mated the effect of many other rhetorical considerations. What it really showed me was the
importance of exploring and articulating the reasons for one’s writing choices and sharing
those reasons with students.
How might professors engage in this process and harness difference when teaching?
I offer some suggestions to choose from that are probably most applicable to upper-level
or capstone courses. These draw heavily on Bawarshi & Reiff’s (2010) genre analysis rec-
ommendations, with an increased focus on designing the genre set and discussion of the
rhetorical situation to highlight systematic sub-disciplinary differences, as well as on Thaiss
& Zawacki’s (2006) suggestions for making clear how classroom writing instructions reflect
academic, disciplinary, sub-disciplinary, institutional, and personal exigencies.
During preparation:
1 Examine genre variations within your discipline. Actively look for areas of disagreement
within your discipline. Compare your writing and your colleague’s, and discuss: how
are your writing choices different from your colleagues’? To what do you attribute this
difference? Examine the instructions for authors from journals that you publish in, and
compare to the instructions in your colleagues’ journals. What can this tell you about
the relationship between sub-discipline and genre usage? Consider whether or how to
include this knowledge in your teaching. For instance, can you represent different sub-
disciplines through readings or explicit mentions during activities?
2 Explore how rhetorical purpose changes the basic genre forms. Actively consider
how the rhetorical purpose affects form. For instance, a research article meant to
highlight a minor improvement in methodology can be very different from one meant
to answer to a gap in the literature. If your writing assignment only approximates a
specialist genre, consider how the approximation will affect rhetorical choices within
the genre, or how you might achieve the same learning goals with a more authentic
writing task (Bean, 2011).
While teaching:
3 Assign explicit rhetorical genre analysis. Before the first draft of your writing assignment,
ask students to do genre analysis (Swales 1990, 2004) and compare their analyses with
their peers’. (This would have made sense as preparation for our second workshop
on the IMRD structure, and might have made the third workshop unnecessary.) Resist
the urge to assign samples that fit some mental ideal and instead actively look for dif-
ferences to explore. If your course includes papers from a wide time period, consider
having students explore differences over time. If it includes a range of sub-disciplines,
select journals representing these overlapping specialties, give students a little informa-
tion about the areas, and then ask them to see if they can identify which elements seem
to be common and which vary depending on sub-discipline. This approach, growing
out of the extensive body of literature on genre analysis, is a potential point of contact
with first-year composition (FYC), especially if FYC has been taught with a comparative
genre analysis approach (Wolfe, Olson, & Wilder, 2014).
4 Assign reflection about how choice relates to discipline or sub-discipline. If students
originally write the report targeted to a particular disciplinary or sub-disciplinary commu-
nity, have them include a reflection describing what they learned during genre analysis
about the (sub-)disciplinary community to which it was targeted, and what rhetorical
choices they made within the overall framework to appeal to the community’s particular
needs and values. Or, ask students to re-write part of the report as if they were members
of a second sub-discipline, and then have them reflect on what choices they had to make
to appeal to the second audience.
5 Map the discipline and its communicative practices. If your departmental curriculum or
course draws on multiple sub-disciplines, consider mapping the sub-disciplines for the
student. Then ask them to reflect on the reading and writing tasks that they have been
asked to do in other courses and note whether they can identify any sub-disciplinary dif-
ferences. While this activity could take place as an extended discussion over a semes-
ter, using a writing-about-writing approach similar to one that might take place in a FYC
course (Downs & Wardle, 2007), it could also work as a single workshop, especially if
students are asked to do some genre analysis in preparation.
6 Embrace disagreement. If you are team-teaching, allow time to explore any differences
that the students notice. In addition, encourage students to reflect on places where your
suggestions sound contrary to something they have heard before. By all means, high-
light any underlying areas of agree-ment—but don’t “elide difference.” Instead, explore
the reasons for the difference, and try to articulate reasons that link to the rhetorical
needs of the particular community in a particular time.
The above suggestions focus on what an individual instructor can do or what WID specialists
might offer workshops on doing. It is also important to consider how these elements fit in with
the overall curriculum. Student writers develop over their four years in college, and writing
instruction—both at the level of FYC and in disciplinary writing—must consider how to facili-
tate writing transfer, or the ability to take skills from FYC and use them to develop greater
facility with disciplinary writing (Beaufort, 2007; Bergmann & Zepernick, 2007; Driscoll, 2011;
Nowacek, 2011; Wardle, 2009).
Based on the increasing recognition that students are having difficulty with transfer, the
past decade has seen an increasing number of calls for development of vertical curricula
for writing (Beaufort, 2007; Hall, 2006; Jamieson, 2009; Melzer, 2014; Miles et al., 2008;
Rhoades & Carroll, 2012; Smit, 2004; Yancey, Robertson, & Taczak, 2014). A vertical (or
integrated or connected) curriculum considers what disciplinary reading and writing skills are
desirable or required by graduation, and then designs a series of courses, starting with FYC
and extending into the disciplines. Ideally, these courses should fully integrate the disciplinary
content, sequence writing tasks appropriately, use consistent terminology for writing skills,
and integrate metacognitive thinking about writing as well as peer feedback (Melzer, 2014).
While this is still an ideal rather than a widespread, fully integrated practice, some
aspects of my experience may be applicable to the emerging design of such curricula. In
particular, disciplinary departments might consider how different sub-disciplines are rep-
resented in their department and how the writing tasks and conventions differ within those
sub-disciplines. Using this information, they can organize some writing instruction around
discovering these differences and developing facility with discovering when one has entered
a new disciplinary sub-community.
Acknowledgments
First, I want to thank my colleague and co-teacher, Dr. Cheeptip Benyajati, for many happy
years teaching and learning together, as well as for her ideas that went into this paper and
her thoughtful commentary on multiple drafts. I also thank Dr. Alexander Rosenberg for spot-
checking the figure legend identifications and Drs. Jacqueline Cason, Rachel Lee, Sarah
Perrault, Kathryn Phillips, and Deborah Rossen-Knill for helpful discussions and suggestions
while I was developing this paper.
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vidual use.
6 Reading/Writing Connections
Irene L. Clark
Consuming and producing discourse are inseparable and reciprocal acts.

(Brent, 1992)
Although it is now generally recognized that writing courses are important for most college
students, the idea that reading and writing are interconnected is not as widely understood. An
assumption is that college students already know how to read because they learned (or should
have learned) to “read” in high school. And then there are those who question why reading
should be taught in a course that is primarily concerned with the teaching of writing.
These perspectives are understandable. When the subject of reading instruction is men-
tioned, people usually think about when they learned to read, probably in elementary school.
They may remember that they often read aloud, either to the teacher or in a group, feeling
proud of their new accomplishment, or maybe worrying about making a mistake. They recall
colorful illustrations, spelling words to be memorized—perhaps smiley faces stamped on a
worksheet. Reading, for most people, means being able to pronounce or decode words on a
page, “extracting information from text” (Gibson and Levin, p. 5), or as “comprehension,”
the term used by Frank Smith in Understanding Reading (6th ed.) (2004). These perspectives
consider reading primarily in terms of imparting information from the text to the reader and
that reading ability means being able to understand what the author of the text intended the
text to mean.
Gaining information from a text and being able to comprehend what one reads are, of
course, important elements of reading and many students do acquire this ability in high
school. However, it is also the case that reading, even in terms of the definitions cited above,
can be a problem for many students, even those who are considered well prepared for col-
lege level work. Readings assigned in college courses are usually longer and more complex
than many students have previously encountered. Moreover, the interconnections between
reading and writing are not often addressed in high school. As a result, many college students
struggle with assigned readings, and sometimes avoid completing them. Professors teaching
courses across the curriculum complain that students either do not read well enough to com-
plete assigned reading adequately or simply refuse to do it. As the director of the Composition
Program, I receive frequent complaints about students’ inability to engage successfully with
assigned reading.
Nevertheless, although in the field of Writing Studies, many books and articles have been
published that are concerned with students’ difficulty with writing, comparatively few have
discussed the topic of reading. During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a limited spurt of articles
and books that did address reading, emphasizing that reading involved a great deal more than
being able to pronounce words on a page. The work of Frank Smith emphasized that written
language makes sense only when readers can relate it to what they already know or to what
readers want to know, and several publications during this time did discuss its interconnection
206 Irene L. Clark
with writing. But then interest seems to have waned. In fact, the first two editions of Concepts
in Composition, although they acknowledged that reading, like writing, is a process, and briefly
discussed critical and rhetorical reading, did not include a chapter that focused specifically on
reading. Neither edition discussed reading either theoretically or pedagogically, nor did either
one explore the interconnection between reading and writing, or suggest classroom strategies
for helping students engage with assigned readings more effectively. As David Jolliffe (2007)
observed, “reading as a concept is largely absent from the theory and practice of college com-
position” (p. 473). “Students have to read in college composition, but rarely does anyone tell
them why or how they should read” (p. 474).
Jolliffe pointed out that “the days are past when students could write all their composi-
tions solely on the basis of their own ideas, observations, and experiences without referring
to texts” (p. 471), but many students are poorly prepared for engaging meaningfully with
those texts. In fact, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) reading scores have dropped for high school students (p. 471). Jolliffe noted that
although it would be desirable for students to have had experience in high school learning
to read non-fiction texts critically and carefully, many of them have not had reading instruc-
tion for many years. Reading, he pointed out, is often presented as “a search-and-capture
strategy,” an exercise in which the author’s meaning is a fixed entity that the students are
somehow unable to “get” (p. 474). Jolliffe’s 2007 review of several texts concerned with
reading affirmed that reading, as a topic for scholarly discussion, had been neglected in recent
Composition scholarship.
Recently, however, almost eleven years after Jolliffe’s review, “reading” has re-emerged as
an important issue in the field of Writing Studies, raising important questions for those of us
who teach writing. These include the following:
—Why should reading be assigned in a first-year writing course? What is its

purpose? How much time should be spent on readings, rather than on helping students
improve as writers?
—What type of readings should be assigned? Should literature be included? Should
political readings be assigned? Should readings be chosen primarily because they are likely
to engage students’ interest? Should students be allowed to choose their own readings?
—What is an appropriate length and level of difficulty for assigned readings?
Should they be relatively short and easily paraphrased so that students can focus primarily
on writing? Or should assigned readings be challenging and complex, requiring students
to grapple with more difficult ideas?
—What strategies can writing instructors use to help students become more effective
readers?
—How can we help students understand the interconnection between reading and
writing?
—Should readings be used as models?
—How can the needs of students with learning disabilities be addressed when readings
are included in writing assignments?
Chapter Overview
This chapter will discuss the complex topic of incorporating reading into first-year
Composition. Although it cannot include the tremendous amount of scholarship concerned
Reading/Writing Connections 207
with reading as it has been addressed in various disciplines, such as Education, Psychology,
or Linguistics, the chapter will emphasize how reading can and should be used in the teach-
ing of writing, and toward that goal, it will summarize some of the most important ideas and
controversies that have been addressed in recent scholarship, suggest possibilities for helping
students become more mindful of how they read, and present strategies that writing instruc-
tors can incorporate into their classroom teaching.

Think about your previous experience with reading as a student and write a reflection about
that experience. Here are some questions to consider:
1 Are you someone for whom reading is a pleasure? What sort of texts do you especially
like to read?
2 Do you consider yourself a competent reader? What does “competence” in reading mean
to you?
3 When you are assigned reading in various courses, what strategies or approaches do you use?
4 How well do these strategies and approaches work for you? If you are, or plan to be, a
teacher, do you think it would be useful to share them with your students?
5 How do you think reading should be incorporated into a course that is primarily con-
cerned with writing?
These are questions that you can use to gain insight into your own reading process and can
also be used in classes you teach.
Scholarship Concerned with Reading in First-Year

Composition: A Brief Overview
In Ways of Reading: An Anthology for Writers, which is now in its 11th edition, Bartholomae,
Petrosky, and Waite (2017) referred to a phenomenon that is discussed in a number of
recent publications concerned with reading or, as it is now sometimes referred to, “Literacy
Studies.” They noted that when people say that college students have “problems” with
reading, they don’t usually mean that students are unable to pronounce words or sentences
that they see on a paper or screen—that is, they are not referring to students’ inability to
“decode” a text. Most college students do know “how to move from one page to the
next,” are able to “read sentences,” and in high school have “been able to carry out many
of the versions of reading required for their education—skimming textbooks, cramming
for tests, strip-mining books for term papers” (p. v). Nevertheless, it is also true that many
students “feel powerless in the face of serious writing, in the face of long and complicated
texts” (p. v). As Chris Anson (2017) described what for many teachers has become a
common scenario:
A teacher has assigned students some reading material for homework—an article, a chap-
ter, a story, a webtext. When they show up in class, they’re supposed to be prepared to
discuss the reading or apply it during an activity the teacher has set up. Valiantly, the
teacher struggles to draw out the students’ reading knowledge. . . .But nothing happens.
The students sit mutely, hoping the awkward silence will pass quickly and that, as usual,
the teacher will end up telling them all the things they were supposed to figure out and
discuss on their own.
(p. 21)
208 Irene L. Clark
Unfortunately, this has become a familiar scene, which raises the question of why Writing
Studies scholars have not devoted more attention to helping students learn to read college
texts more effectively. In her discussion of this question, Ellen Carillo maintained that this
lack of attention to reading has its roots in the past, when Composition was establishing
itself as a discipline and identified itself primarily with writing, not reading, which presum-
ably was the responsibility of literary studies or education. The focus on personal writing,
self-actualization, the importance of helping students find their authentic “voice,” or the
prevalence of what Beth Neman (1995) referred to as the “affect-centered classroom,” one
that “defines the purpose of the Composition class solely in terms of the personal develop-
ment of the learner” (p. 6), may also have contributed to the lack of attention to reading
in the Composition course. In addition, according to Carillo, the focus on social/cultural/
political issues in the writing class, which increasingly addressed issues of race, ethnicity, gen-
der, sexual identity, and immigration left little classroom time for helping students develop
effective reading strategies. Teachers spent a great deal of time discussing ideas in the readings,
rather than on helping students learn how to read actively or adapt what they have read into
their own writing.
During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a burst of publications concerned with reading,
some of them journal articles, others collections of essays. According to Carillo’s excellent
overview of how reading was addressed in Writing Studies scholarship, the year 1980 was
a significant year, in that it marked the publication of “Charles Bazerman’s groundbreaking
article ‘A Relationship Between Reading and Writing: The Conversation Model,’” which
encouraged instructors to “consider each piece of writing as a contribution to an on-going
written conversation” (p. 657). Bazerman’s essay (1980) apparently generated renewed inter-
est in how reading should be integrated into writing classes.
Another explanation for the interest in reading during the 1980s and 1990s, which was
suggested by Salvatori and Donahue (2012), is that the development of reader-response theo-
ries which became prominent at that time, focused theoretical attention “from what texts
mean to how readers make them mean” (p. 202). Whereas previously the focus was essen-
tially on authorial intention, reader-response theory fostered understanding of how readers
influence the meaning of a text. “Thanks to readers, texts snap into life. Without readers, texts are
inert, expressionless, empty, mute” (Salvatori and Donahue, 2012, p. 202). In other words,
scholars understood that the meaning of a text is not fixed; it is, at least to some extent, deter-
mined by readers, a perspective that focused attention on reading.
In addition, during the 1980s and 1990s, insights from the fields of Psychology and
Education appeared in publications concerned with reading. Frank Smith’s Understanding
Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read (1994), originally published
in 1971, discussed various theories of reading derived from the fields of Linguistics, psychol-
ogy, and physiology. Smith maintained that in order to teach reading, teachers must become
familiar with research from these fields. In another theoretical text, Kenneth Goodman’s On
Reading (1996) described reading as a “psycholinguistic guessing game” that requires readers
to predict what comes next in a text. Goodman’s work emphasized that reading is not a mat-
ter of recognizing letters and words, but rather involves the construction of meaning.
Early reading scholarship raised a number of relevant issues, many of which are discussed
in Carillo’s recent book, Securing a Place for Reading in Composition: The Importance of Teaching
for Transfer (2015) which provides an excellent historical overview of articles concerned
with reading/writing connections that were published in the major Writing Studies journals,
such as College English and College Composition and Communication and several essay collec-
tions that addressed reading-writing connections from both theoretical and practical per-
spectives. These include Understanding Readers’ Understanding: Theory and Practice (Robert J.
Tierney, Patricia L. Anders, & Judy Nichols Mitchell, eds, (1987): New York, Routledge) or
Bruce T. Petersen’s edited collection titled Convergence:s Transactions in Reading and Writing
(ed. NCTE, Urbana 1986), both of which are still useful for preparing teachers today.
The Relationship between Reading and Writing

Tierney and Leys (1986), in a chapter titled “What Is the Value of Connecting Reading and
Writing?” pose the following questions, which are still important to consider:
1 Do gains in overall reading performance contribute to gains in overall writing perfor-

mance, and do gains in overall writing performance contribute to gains in overall reading
performance?
2 How does writing influence reading and how does reading influence writing? (p. 17).
Tierney and Leys’s response to the first question was inconclusive. They cited a number of
studies showing that “reading and writing appear to be either strongly or weakly related for
some individuals, depending on the measures which are employed to assess reading and writing
performance” (p. 17), and they noted other factors such as instructional history, opportunities
to read and write, and attitudinal factors that are also important. In their response to the second
question, Tierney and Leys argued for involving students in what they refer to as a “rich writing
curriculum” (p. 19) and for the interconnection between reading and writing. “Students who
write frequently and discuss their writing,” they maintained, “will approach reading with what
might be termed the ‘eye of a writer’” (p. 19)—perhaps an unsurprising observation, but, nev-
ertheless, one that remains important for teachers to address in a writing class. Moreover, their
research also indicated that the relationship was reciprocal—that reading influences writing and
that writing influences reading. They noted that “students of all ages exhibited evidence of
acquiring rhetorical knowledge from their reading” (pp. 19–20), and that “students will initiate
writing in a certain genre or write a certain report, or use an alternative format based on what
they have read” (p. 22). This latter observation is particularly relevant for how writing is often
approached in courses focused primarily on literature. Students read stories and novels, but are
asked to write analyses or arguments; genres with which they are unfamiliar. In fact, students
sometimes refer to non-fiction essays as “stories” and when asked to write an analysis, they have
no idea what that genre is intended to do. Their essays, then, often consist merely of plot sum-
maries (this also happens when students are asked to analyze a film). It seems self-evident that
when students are familiar with a particular genre, they are better prepared to think in terms
of that genre and are more likely to be able to write in that genre. The problem is that in high
school English classes, students primarily read literature and write literary analyses. Then they
come to college, read non-fiction texts, and are assigned to write argumentative essays!
Tierney and Leys’s observations concerning the interconnection between reading and
writing is similar to the “conversational model,” discussed by Bazerman (1980), who argued
that “the connection between what a person reads and what that person then writes is so
obvious as to be truistic” (p. 656). Similarly, in a later article (1985), in which Bazerman stud-
ied the reading of physicists, he similarly argued that reading and writing within a particular
discipline or field is shaped by an understanding of the schema and genres of the field.
Another term used to characterize the relationship between authorship and reading that
was used during the 1980s and 1990s is the “constructivist model,” which is explored in the
work of Stuart Greene (1993). A constructivist approach focuses on how “a sense of author-
ship can motivate and influence reading” (p. 33)—that is, “readers use what they know
together with textual cues to organize meaning in a text” (p. 33). Greene pointed out that
successful authors read the writing of others as a means of adapting rhetorical techniques that
they might be able to use in their own writing. The phrase Greene used is “mining texts,”
210 Irene L. Clark
which, he maintained, can be useful to teach student writers. This idea of reading like a writer
was also discussed in Charles Moran’s chapter “Reading like a Writer” (1990), which focuses
on helping students figure out the rhetorical choices writers make.
Questions to Foster Understanding and Application

1 What does Bazerman mean by the “conversational” model of reading?
2 To what extent have you modeled your own writing on strategies and moves used in
texts you have read? Can you cite an example?
Debates about the Role of Literature in the

Writing Class
A significant topic addressed in the reading/writing scholarship published in the 1980s and
1990s concerned whether literature (poetry, short stories, novels, plays) should be assigned
in a Composition course, whether literature and Composition should be forever separate, or
whether the two should somehow be brought together as a field. This debate was highlighted
in what is sometimes referred to as the Lindemann/Tate Debate, published in 1993 in the
journal, College English. Lindemann in “Freshman Composition: No Place for Literature”
(311–316), argued that first-year writing courses should assign primarily non-literary texts
that students would most likely be write in other courses. In addition, Lindemann main-
tained, because most writing instructors were deeply interested in literature and had been
trained in literary analysis, they would tend to spend more time in class discussing literary
texts than teaching students about writing. On the other side of the debate, Tate, in “A
Place for Literature in Freshman Composition” (317–321), argued that literary texts should
be included in Composition courses because they represented “excellent writing” (317) that
would contribute to improvement in students’ writing, even if students were never assigned
to write a literary text. Attempting to reconcile literature and Composition, Winifred Bryan
Horner’s edited collection Bridging the Gap (1983) perceived the unification of the two fields
as a primary goal, as did Ann Berthoff’s Forming/Thinking/Writing (1981) which focused on
the importance of uniting writing and reading as a way of constructing meaning. This debate
about how or whether literature should be assigned in a writing course continues even today.
Several years ago, I taught in a writing program that absolutely forbade the inclusion of lit-
erature in the first-year Composition course. The rationale for this restriction was based on
the assumption that because most writing instructors secretly yearned to teach literature, not
writing, they would spend more time “chatting up the readings,” as it was referred to, rather
than teaching students about writing. Of course, I doubt that this concern was relevant for
all instructors, but I think it pertained to at least some. However, in the program in which I
currently teach, although we do not allow literature to be assigned exclusively, we do allow
some literary texts to be used. We do, however, caution not to focus on literary analysis or
teach the class as if it were a literature course. Students often enjoy reading literature, which
can often stimulate their interest in a topic. Moreover, literature can serve as a springboard for
further research. Jolliffe refers to this use of literature as the “bounce-off function” (p. 477),
the goal being to generate discussion about a topic and motivate further exploration of non-
literary texts. For example, several years ago, when I assigned Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The
Glass Castle—in which the protagonist’s father was alcoholic and the mother too absorbed in
her art to care for or even feed her children—the book served as a springboard for research
into topics such as alcoholism, parenting, and child abuse.
Nancy Morrow’s essay “The Role of Reading in the Composition Classroom” (1997)
surveys some of the debates concerned with reading, including the issue of what texts to
teach and a discussion of various models of reading, such as reading for genre conventions
and reading for models. Her goal was to help teachers become aware of their expectations in
assigning reading in their classes.
The 1980s and 1990s were obviously a fruitful period for scholarship concerned with
reading/writing connections. But after that, little scholarship on that topic was published.
According to Carillo, Marguerite Helmers’s collection of essays entitled Intertexts: Reading
Pedagogy in College Writing Classrooms (2002), which offered various perspectives on the sepa-
ration of reading from writing, was the last collection of essays concerned with reading in the
writing class until the recent renewal.

Think about writing courses you have taken as an undergraduate student. Did those courses
include literature? If so, how were literary texts incorporated into the course? Did you simply
discuss them as you would in a literature course? Were they used to stimulate thinking and
understanding of particular issues or ideas? Do you think that literature should be part of a
writing course?
Recent Publication Concerned with Reading

Recently, the topic of how writing instructors can help students improve their reading skills
and incorporate reading into their writing has been revived in Writing Studies scholar-
ship. David Jolliffe’s review essay, discussed above, titled “Learning to Read as Continuing
Education” discusses several more recent texts concerned with the teaching of reading in a
first-year writing class, arguing that writing teachers should—in fact—teach reading in their
writing classes. Mike Bunn’s “How to Read like a Writer,” a chapter in Writing Spaces:
Readings on Writing, volume 2, encourages student writers to pay attention to the writ-
ing techniques they encounter in their reading—in essence, to learn to read like a writer.
Horning and Kraemer’s Reconnecting Reading and Writing (2013) is an edited collection that
discusses various perspectives on the rationale for writing teachers to teach reading, empha-
sizing the benefit to particular student populations, such as English Language Learners and
developmental writers. In chapter 4 of that book, titled “Writing and Reading Across the
Curriculum: Best Practices and Practical Guidelines,” Horning references an earlier article
(1987), in which she proposed that learning to write academic prose is, for some students like
learning a foreign language. “Whether in language learning or in learning to write, students
need to have the sound patterns and sentence structures of the language they are trying to
learn in their heads, through listening and especially through reading” (Horning & Kraemer,
p. 72). Horning and Kraemer’s text is available online at (https://wac.colostate.edu/books/
reconnecting/reading.pdf).
Approaches to Incorporating Reading into the Writing Class

In the context of how to incorporate reading/writing connections into the Composition
course, several approaches are often used, including rhetorical reading, critical reading, mind-
ful reading, and close reading. These are discussed below:
212 Irene L. Clark
Rhetorical Reading
In a 2012 online survey of how reading is approached in first-year writing classes, (“Reading
in the First-Year Writing Classroom: A National Survey of Classroom Practices and Students’
Experiences,” 2012—cited in Carillo, 2015), Ellen Carillo queried first-year writing instruc-
tors at both two-year/community colleges and four-year colleges and universities. She found
that although respondents used a variety of terms, 48% used the term “rhetorical reading” and
that 96% of respondents indicated that their syllabi described reading and writing as connected
practices. The use of a rhetorical approach to reading supports the idea of a rhetorical approach
to writing, which is advocated by David Jolliffe (2007), who advocated the use of rhetorical
strategies such as comparison/contrast, definition, cause and effect, John Bean (2011), Bean
et al. (2005), and Doug Brent (1992) among many other compositionists and rhetoricians.
Mindful Reading
The recent work of Ellen C. Carillo (2015), using a cognitively based approach, advocates
what she refers to as “mindful” reading. Mindful reading, as defined by Carillo, involves a
metacognitive approach to reading that enables students to become “knowledgeable, deliberate,
and reflective [italics in original] about how they read” (p. 117). Carillo explains that “the term
‘mindful,’ when modifying reading, describes a particular stance on the part of the reader,
one that is characterized by intentional awareness of and attention to the present moment
its context and one’s perspective” (p. 118). How to implement “mindful reading” into the
writing class is further explored in Carillo’s most recent text, A Writer’s Guide to Mindful
Reading (2017). The book offers a number of suggestions to help students read “mindfully,”
among them, paying attention to genre, which enables a reader to decide the type of text
being read—informational or literary, a play, a newspaper, a blog, etc. and becoming aware of
what she refers to as “schemas,” which she defines as “elements or frameworks that structure
or impact how you read” (p. 11). Carillo explains that “schemas depend upon readers draw-
ing on prior knowledge and experiences to help understand what and how the text means,”
enabling a reader to “become more aware of how reading works” in order to make “reading
more productive” (p. 11) and comprehensible. An example that Carillio cites is when some-
one reads a story that begins, “Once upon a time.” That familiar beginning enables a reader
to access prior knowledge and predict the elements in the text—the prince and princess, per-
haps a dragon, and a happily ever after ending. Carillo’s text includes many helpful ideas for
incorporating reading into a writing class and is available at https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/
books/mindful/front.pdf.
Critical Reading
The rhetorical philosopher Wayne C. Booth, in Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent
(1974) asks the question, “When should I change my mind?” a question that in the context
of today’s information overload might also be phrased, “How can I know what to believe?”
or “How can I know when an idea is worth considering?” In writing classes, the term “criti-
cal reading” refers to the process of reading that involves carefully considering and evaluat-
ing the reading in terms of its strengths and weaknesses and the extent to which you find it
worthwhile. Because some students, particularly those just entering a college or university,
may think that whatever is printed either in hard copy or online, must be true, it is important
to provide students with strategies for reading critically.
To help students become critical readers, a useful strategy is to explain the importance of
finding out as much as possible about a text, including its purpose (why it was written), main
point or claim, the evidence used (fact or opinion?), the logical connections between the
claim and the evidence, and the nature of the text itself in terms of genre (a scholarly article?
a newspaper? a website?). It is also important for students to investigate the qualifications of
the author, if possible (academic or professional qualifications? An established expert in his or
her field? Someone with an obvious agenda?).
Another useful direction for helping students read a text critically is for them to consider
what they already know about a topic. The questions below can generate reflection that can
generate critical awareness:
1 Why is this topic important? To whom does it matter?

2 Are there multiple perspectives or controversies associated with this topic?
3 Is this author “entering a conversation?” What is the nature of the conversation and why
is that conversation important?
It is also useful for students to think about what they already believe about the topic addressed
in the text, considering their own family and cultural background, and world view. Many
textbooks intended for students in writing classes include chapters concerned with critical
reading (see Irene L. Clark, 2012), which includes a chapter titled “Engaging with Ideas: A
Three-Pass Approach to Critical Reading.”
Using Reading as Models

A particularly effective approach to foster connections between reading and writing is for
students to read texts that they can imitate for both rhetorical moves, as well as stylistic
strategies. Imitation and modeling, however, have not occupied a prominent position in the
field of Writing Studies, and, in fact, have been not only neglected, but strongly disdained.
As Paul Butler (2001) points out in “Toward a Pedagogy of Immersion: Using Imitation in
the Composition Classroom,” using imitation and modeling in the writing class has drawn
criticism from “two sites of composition theory: the process movement and the expressivist
idea of individual genius” (p. 108). Process-oriented views have argued that offering stu-
dents examples or models simply gives them a “product” to analyze, without enabling them
to develop a writing “process” that they can apply to other writing tasks, and expressivist
views privilege individual self-expression in order to help students find their own voice.
The common objection seems to be that a pedagogy that includes imitation and modeling is
inconsistent with rhetorical invention and squelches possibilities for creation and discovery.
In addition, 20th- and 21st-century compositions may feel squeamish about encouraging
imitation and modeling because they are concerned about its potential for plagiarism.
Nevertheless, in the context of fostering interconnections between reading and writing,
if imitation and modeling are incorporated thoughtfully, mindfully, and reflectively into the
Composition classroom, and combined with a focus on genre awareness, such an approach
can help students engage more effectively with assigned writing, and enable them to trans-
fer prior knowledge about writing when they are assigned to write in an unfamiliar genre.
Actually, all of us who write learn through imitation—we imitate ideas, approaches structures,
and styles. So why shouldn’t we help our students do what most, if not all, writers often do?
Actually, at one time, imitation and modeling were considered legitimate and important
strategies for helping novice writers learn. Going as far back as ancient Rome, Quintillian,
in Institutio Oratoria, suggests that emulating models “is a necessary and important part of the
invention process” (Butler, p. 108). “The labor of writing,” Quintillian says, “ if left destitute
of models from reading, passes away without effect, as having no director” (125). Moreover,
as Paul Butler notes, even Longinus, in his rhetorical treatise On the Sublime argues that:
214 Irene L. Clark
another road to sublimity . . . is the way of imitation and emulation of great writers of the
past . . . The genius of the ancients acts as a kind of oracular cavern, and effluences flow
from it into the minds of their imitators.
(19)
As David Bartholomae argued more recently, mastering academic discourse is “more a mat-
ter of imitation or parody than a matter of invention or discovery,” and as Edward Corbett
maintained 50 years ago, it is the internalization of structures that unlocks our powers and sets
us free to be creative, original, and ultimately effective. Imitate that you may be different”
(Corbett 190).
Imitation is also consistent with more recent social approaches to Composition, which
have shown that we gain from interaction with other texts, people, and environments. One
might look to Bakhtin, who states that “the word in language is always half someone else’s.
Everything we speak or write is in some sense an imitation, a transformation of what others
say, do, or write.” Moving into the arena of form and structure and its relationship to genre,
Richard Coe argues that generic forms are factors in the creative processes of speaking and
writing. A consistent approach must take into account how speakers’ and writers’ individual
creative processes are influenced and socialized by their awareness of genres both as available
strategies and as reader expectations (p. 183).
In a study I conducted recently, several experienced writing instructors developed
classroom materials concerned with imitation, modeling, and genre awareness which they
then incorporated into their classes. Some of the materials were derived from the scant
suggestions provided in Composition textbooks (not many, and most concerned only
with sentence structure or use of adjectives or active verbs to develop style), and some
were created directly by the instructors—in fact, several instructors “confessed” that they
had been using imitation and modeling already and were pleased to have been given
“permission” to do so. The project also involved surveys distributed both to students and
instructors, who also wrote reflections in which they discussed the value of this approach
to writing instruction.
Overall, the instructors in the project indicated that they were pleased that they had
incorporated these approaches into their curriculum. Many of them reported that their
students’ papers were “discernibly better once they had seen models, particularly in organi-
zation, scope, in-text citations, and the Works Cited page.” They all felt that the approach
was not only helpful, but necessary if the student had not written that type of essay before.
A few expressed concern that some of the less able students imitated the models too
closely. However, my perspective on this is that even when students adhere too closely
to a model, instructors can use that example as a “teachable moment,” showing students
how exact their imitation was and then having them alter and change what they produced.
Questions to discuss would include how much change would be appropriate or how much
change would require other changes. Imitation in this case would generate discussion and
awareness—certainly useful for helping students understand the genres they are being asked
to produce.
Students’ reflections all indicated enthusiasm for this approach. Some said that imitating
a model enabled them to learn a variety of organizational strategies as well as possibilities for
stylistic variation. Many indicated that their writing had improved as a result of this approach
and that they felt less anxious when they are assigned writing in other classes.
Using Imitation and Modeling in the Classroom: Some Suggestions

What sort of imitation would be most useful for students? Here are a few suggestions.
Modeling the Writing and Reading Process
One approach might be to model process behaviors, a strategy suggested by Mickey Harris
several years ago as a way to focus students’ attention on the processes to be used in the act of
writing. Harris maintained that learning a process is accomplished by observation or feedback
during practice, rather than by trial and error, that both writing and reading occur through
learning various behaviors. Think about what you do when you begin to read a challenging
text. Do you think about why the text was written, what “conversation” it was entering? Do
you get an overview of the text by reading the first few paragraphs and then skimming ahead,
noting headings and sub-headings, if they are included? Do you skip to the conclusion?
Think about how you might learn a process that is new to you—knitting, cooking, play-
ing an instrument, drawing. Surely, it would be helpful for you to observe and imitate how
someone actually does it: an insight that would enable you imitate that behavior and which
might lead to a deeper understanding. Understanding and behavior inform one another, and
the modeling of behavior can be very helpful in the classroom.
Focusing Students’ Attention on Structure

This approach provides students with an annotated example in which various structural and
functional elements are identified. Students then imitate these structures, incorporating them
into their own essays. Peer review sessions can also utilize this idea by focusing students’
attention on how other
Reading Aloud, Copying, and Transcription

One of the participants in the study I conducted had her students engage in transcription—that
is, students selected a text to read aloud, then record, and rewrite. As they recorded them-
selves reading sections of the text, they were encouraged to pay attention to phraseology
and vocabulary that they would then incorporate into their own writing. This is actually a
technique that was suggested several years ago by both Sharon Crowley and Edward Corbett,
the idea being to have students copy sections of a text by hand, as a means of helping students
internalize rhetorical forms and strategies.

Have you ever analyzed a text and then imitated it in some way? Perhaps you imitated the
form, or maybe the style of sentence structure. If so, please describe that experience.
Discussing a Reading in Groups (Developed from Panek, 2004)

An effective strategy for fostering classroom discussion of an assigned reading is to have stu-
dents discuss the reading in groups, assigning particular roles to individual students. These
roles can be defined as follows:
Discussion Director: The Discussion Director identifies important aspects of the

assigned text and develops questions for group discussion.
Passage Master: The Passage Master locates particular passages to read aloud. These
may be puzzling, confusing, funny, or important. These quotations should be written
separately and include the reasons for choosing them.
Paragraph Expert: The Paragraph Expert identities effective or not-so-effective para-
graphs with a clear definition of how they have been evaluated. Notes should include
216 Irene L. Clark
information about what kind of paragraph each one is (a narrative? a definition? an argu-
ment? a description? a comparison?) and identification of the function of that paragraph
within the essay.
Connector: The Connector connects the reading with the topic or assignment that the
reading addresses.
Word Watcher: The Word Watcher finds words worth defining or discussing.
Visual Rhetorician (if appropriate): The Visual Rhetorician considers what kind of
visual content would provide evidential or thought-provoking support to an author’s
argument or perspective.
Learning Disabilities
In considering how to address reading in a writing class, it is important to be aware that a
number of college students may have learning disabilities that can interfere with their abil-
ity to read assigned texts effectively. Some of these students may be sitting in your own
classroom, hoping that they will be able to manage—or that you won’t notice. Although in
the past, most students with disabilities tended not to enroll in post-secondary institutions,
increased insight into how to help students with learning disabilities and legislation such as
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of
1990, which assured children with disabilities the right to public education at the K-12 level,
has resulted in an increasing number of students with disabilities of various types sitting in
college classrooms (7–9% in four-year colleges, substantially higher in two-year colleges),
figures that are probably higher because “many students choose not to self-identify for fear
of stigma” (Lewiecki-Wilson and Brenda Ho Brueggemann, Eds., Disability and the Teaching
of Writing. 2008. p. 2).
It is therefore important to find out as much as possible about your students’ backgrounds,
asking questions tactfully so as not to make students feel uncomfortable. Although some stu-
dents will inform you without hesitation that they have been diagnosed with dyslexia and are
therefore entitled to additional time on tests and perhaps to specialized tutoring, others may
find it awkward to talk about problems they may have had with reading and may still have.
A delicate approach is therefore recommended, emphasizing that students are more likely to
benefit from available services when they understand that having difficulty with reading does
not mean that they are unintelligent, lazy, or unmotivated. Many of these students may have
had negative school experiences that can generate anxiety even when the teacher is sympa-
thetic and the classroom environment is nurturing.
To help students with disabilities engage with reading assigned in your course, it is impor-
tant to find out where to send them for help. Most colleges and universities have facilities
on campus that provide support, such as an office of disability services where disabilities of
various kinds can be diagnosed and treated. Students with documented disabilities are often
entitled to assistance, such as extra time to complete writing assignments or exams, or extra
tutoring. As a writing teacher (or a student), it is important to know about available services
and encourage students to make use of them.
To summarize the major ideas concerned with reading-writing connections discussed in
this chapter: it is important for students to become aware of the interconnections between
reading and writing and understand that reading as a writer is different from general reading
to gain information or for pleasure. When you assign a reading in a writing class, it is useful to
explain to students why you have assigned it and how it relates to other aspects of your course
(to imitate its moves or style? to provide content?). It is also useful to show students how to
read and annotate a text—highlighting significant passages, interacting with the text in the
margins, gaining an overview of the text, versus reading it closely, depending on the purpose
of the reading. Students can also be encouraged to keep a reading journal, documenting the
various practices and strategies they use when they read. Assigning reading in a writing course
means teaching students to read mindfully, focusing on the rhetorical and stylistic choices a
writer has made, the goal being to adapt those choices in one’s own writing. When students
understand that writing and reading are interconnected, both their writing and reading abili-
ties will improve and their anxiety level will decrease.
Reading in the Writing Class: Selected Annotated Bibliography

(Written by Dru Felix and Patrick Lewis)
Bunn, M. (2013). Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading (and Writing) in the Composition
Classroom. CCC, 64(3): 496–516.
In this article, author Michael Bunn focuses on “examining the ways that writing instructors think
about and teach reading – how they perceive connections between the processes of reading and writ-
ing and attempt to teach those connections to students” (498). Bunn conducts a research study that
works to gather information from both students, and teachers, in order to better understand the topic,
and to discover what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to reading in the writing class. He
concludes that explicitly teaching students reading/writing connections, while utilizing and explain-
ing how to work with model texts, are excellent ways to keep students engaged in their reading for
the writing class.
Falk-Ross, F. C. (2001). Toward the new literacy: Changes in college students’ reading comprehension
strategies following reading/writing projects: students enrolled in a college developmental reading
class used critical literacy techniques to improve reading and writing skills. Journal of Adolescent &
Adult Literacy, 45(4): 278ff.
Falk-Ross utilizes New Literacy tenets as a means for constructing a class meant to improve upon
her college student’s ability to read and write in the Composition class. She writes of her three-
pronged approach to teaching her class, where she incorporates I-Search (self-selected inquiry),
independent and shared reading, and direct-instruction activities. Upon completion of her class,
she notes that all four of her students that participated, made notable progress with their reading
and writing.
Gunobgunob-Mirasol, R. (2015). The Relative Effect of Glossing Instruction on College Students’
Reading Comprehension. Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences, 208: 82–90.
Through a controlled experiment involving first-year writing students, the article concludes that: (1)
glossing instruction is effective in improving readers’ comprehension, (2) glossing promotes deeper
level interaction between readers and the text as well as active interaction between reader and him-
self/herself, (3) glossing fosters readers’ awareness of their own process of learning thus paving better
understanding of the content of the text and the relationship of the text to the students’ personal
lives, (4) glossing instruction seems not to be effective in improving students’ ability to write a sum-
mary, and (5) the more glossing is done in reading, the better performance in the summary output
can be observed [sic]” (86). Moreover, the article argues that the relationship between the reader
and the text should be emphasized in the writing classroom, including fostering students’ ability to
change reading strategies based on the text’s format, the nature of the assignment, and the purpose
for their reading.
Horning, A. (2017). Neuroscience of Reading: Developing Expertise in Reading and Writing. In
P. Portanova, J. M. Rifenburg, & D. Roen, (Eds.), Contemporary Perspectives on Cognition and Writing.
Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse.
This chapter discusses the relevance of reading research for writing. It then surveys key studies on
reading that “reveal the cognitive and psycholinguistic features of the process,” including research that
shows how the brain works during reading.
218 Irene L. Clark
Horning, A. S., & Kraemer, E. W. (Eds.) (2013). Reconnecting reading and writing. Fort Collins, CO:
Parlor Press. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/referenceguides/reconnecting
Lei, Simon A., et al. (2010). Resistance to Reading Compliance among College Students: Instructors
& Apos; Perspectives. College Student Journal, 44(2): 219–229.
Lei maintains that, “Low student self-confidence, disinterest in the research topic and subject mat-
ter, and underestimating the significance of completing the required reading are the main reasons
students are resistant to reading” (p. 219). Potential remedies for these challenges include “admin-
istering pop or announced quizzes, increasing class work and homework assignments, promoting
reading research journal articles, and incorporating participation points or extra credit points during
class discussion times” (p. 219). Moreover, Lei argues that teachers who actively promote and reward
student reading ultimately “have higher semester grades [and that] students have positive comments
regarding [the course]” because “instead of simply sitting in classes and performing the limited
amount of work in order to pass [. . .] students have reported learning and understanding course
materials” (p. 227).
Poole, A. (2014). The Strategy Use of Struggling Readers in the First-Year Composition Classroom:
What We Know and How We Can Help Them. CEA Forum, 43(1): 3–20.
Using information from a survey titled the Metacognitive Assessment of Reading Strategies Inventory
(MARSI), this article argues for the teaching of reading with purpose. Based on the nature of the text
and/or assignment, Poole offers strategies such as “taking notes,” “checking understanding” (includ-
ing a tentative hypothesis), “highlighting information to remember it,” “asking oneself questions about
text,” “paying closer attention to difficult text,” “stopping and thinking about reading,” and other
general strategic recommendations such as the “think-aloud technique.” Poole also notes that first-year
Composition teachers are currently disadvantaged by the dearth of research on successful versus unsuc-
cessful freshman readers; thus, fewer pedagogical solutions exist.
Schoenbach, R., et al. (2012) Reading for Understanding: How Reading Apprenticeship Improves Disciplinary
Learning in Secondary and College Classrooms, 2nd ed., pp. 17–42. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/csun/detail.action?docID=837583
In chapter 2, Schoenbach and her fellow contributors introduce what they call the “Reading
Apprenticeship Framework.” The framework relies on four dimensions of classroom life for its success:
the social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge-building dimensions all work to create the proper class-
room space for reading development. Once the framework is in place, students and teachers will carry
out metacognitive conversations that will take place both internally, and externally. The authors assert
that this approach works to “develop greater proficiency in all four of the language domains: reading,
writing, speaking and listening” (26).
Scholes, R. (2002). The Transition to College Reading. Pedagogy, 2(2): 165–172.
This article describes the difficulty many students have when they are assigned reading at the college
level, noting that students often interpret the meaning of texts according to what they expect the texts
to mean. To counter this tendency, Scholes suggests that texts should be selected with which students
are not familiar and cannot easily identify.
Shafer, G. (2000). Reading and Writing in the Developmental English Class. English Journal, 89(4): 33–39.
Shafer, experiencing a “contentious atmosphere” in his 11th-grade developmental English class,
details his decision to revise a curriculum that assigned “great literature, but hardly the fare that would
interest students who rarely had anything good to say about English” (p. 33). In an attempt to turn
reading and writing into “active, personal processes [that] grow and evolve from [students’] inter-
ests, desires, fears, and concerns,” Schafer concocted a collaborative, fictional letter-writing assignment
(p. 33). Ultimately, Shafer’s more democratic, fun, and relevant approach to reading and writing
(combined with “empowerment” and “freedom”) made his class a success.
Taub, G. E., & Benson, N. (2013). Identifying the Effects of Specific CHC Factors on College Students
& Apos; Reading Comprehension. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,
7(2): Article 10.
In this article, the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theoretical model, “one of the most empiri-
cally supported and theoretically sound models of intelligence,” is applied to college students’
reading comprehension for the first time (p. 2). Seven factors comprise the CHC model:
(1) Auditory Processing, (2) Crystallized Intelligence, (3) Fluid Reasoning, (4) Long-Term
Retrieval, (5) Processing Speed, (6) Short-term Memory, and (7) Visual-spatial Thinking. Based
on the study, only crystallized intelligence and visual-spatial thinking had a “direct effect on read-
ing comprehension [and] the effect of general intelligence on reading comprehension was indirect”
(p. 7). By working with students’ crystallized intelligence (background knowledge on a subject)
and visual-spatial understanding (by “drawing attention to areas which may be visually confusing
such as charts, columns, maps, and webpages [and/or] the use of visual imagery rather than words
to connect ideas”), Taub argues that teachers will be better equipped to increase students’ reading
comprehension levels (p. 10).
Recent Books Concerned with Reading/Writing Connections

Horning, A.S., & Kraemer, E. (Eds.) (2013). Reconnecting reading and writing. Fort Collins, CA: Parlor
Press.
This collection of essays focuses on various perspectives on why and how reading and writing should
be interconnected. It references a number of student populations: high school and college students, as
well as English Language Learners.
Horning, A.S., Gollnitz, D., & Haller, C. R. (Eds.) (2017). What Is College Reading? Fort Collins, CO:
The WAC Clearinghouse. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/atd/collegereading
Keller, D. (2014). Chasing Literacy: Reading and Writing in an Age of Acceleration. Logan, UT: Utah State
University Press.
Keller argues for reconnecting reading and writing in the first-year Composition course, with particular
emphasis to multi-modal texts. It maintains that this interconnection is vital to enhancing our under-
standing of how “the rhetorical canon of delivery has changed with new media.”
Salvatori, M. R., & Donahue, P. (2005). The Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty. New York: Longman.
Intended for students in English Studies, this book emphasizes the value of assigning texts with complex
ideas as a means of enabling students to develop intellectually. The book contains a variety of genres,
including poetry, prose narratives, and personal essays.
Online Reading
Cetrone, S. Winthrop Professor Uses Kindle to Spark New Age of Learning: But Response to e-Reader
Lukewarm. McClatchy—Tribune Business News, ProQuest, 5 Oct. 2009.
In this article, writer Shawn Cetrone discusses both the potential, and the pitfalls, that come with hav-
ing college students utilize e-readers for their studies. Initially, the e-readers are met with resistance,
as Cetrone relays the information he’s gathered from Professor Mark Herring, an instructor that has
utilized school funds to implement and promote the use of e-readers on campus. However, some of
the students participating in the study feel that the reader is highly beneficial: One student articulates,
“It’s a hard disk drive with a screen that offers the possibility to read whatever you want whenever
you want. It consumes less paper. It’s where we’re going” (p. 1). Ted Humphrey, the organizer of
the study, asserts that once student familiarize themselves with the device, it will become an asset to
their reading.
Griffin, J., & Minter, D. (2013). The Rise of the Online Writing Classroom: Reflecting on the Material
Conditions of College Composition Teaching. CCC, 65(1): 140–161.
Griffin and Minter discuss both the benefits, and the burdens, of the use of technology in the online
writing course as it relates to student learning. They place emphasis on how certain online classrooms,
depending on how technology is utilized, can either improve, or weaken the student’s capacity to read
and write. With regard to the improvement of reading in the online writing class, they noted a study
that showed success when the student was able to provide their own reading materials for discussion.
In addition, the authors provide research that depicts the inconsistencies between the face-to-face, and
220 Irene L. Clark
online course ‘literacy load.’ This workload was almost three times higher in the online course, which
prompts the authors to recommend a re-analysis of how professors assign their reading, as well as, advo-
cating for more online resources to help students with their reading and writing.
Discussion Questions
1 Is it better for students to read and write what they want to read and write, or is it
better for them to read and write what the teacher wants them to read and write?
2 Do you think it is a good idea to create peer group discussions in which students
with a higher degree of reading would be paired with those of lower skill?
3 How do you feel, as either a student or a teacher, about allowing students to pro-
vide their own reading materials for a discussion, analysis, or even an essay assign-
ment? What are some potential benefits and downfalls of utilizing this method?
4 Why do you think that students often do not complete assigned reading? To what
extent should we reward and/or punish students that do/don’t do the assigned
reading?
5 What are some of the potential benefits of utilizing e-texts/e-readers in your own
classrooms with regards to critical reading? With its compact design, and ease of
accessibility, do you feel that e-readers could make reading in the writing class an
easier task for students? Why, or why not?
References
Anson, C. (2017). Writing to read, revisited. In A. S. Horning, D. L. Gollnitz, & C. R. Haller, (Eds.),
What Is College Reading? pp. 21–39. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse.
Bartholomae, D., Petrosky, A., & Waite, S. (2017). Ways of reading (11th ed.). New York: Bedford,
St. Martin’s.
Bartholomae, D. (1986). Inventing the university. Journal of Basic Writing, 5(1): 4–23.
Bazerman, C. (1980). A relationship between reading and writing: The conversational model. College
English, 41(6): 656–661.
Bazerman, C. (1986). Physicists reading physics. Written Communication, 2(1): 3–23.
Bean, J. C. (2011). Engaging ideas, Second Edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Bean, J.C. Chappell, V.A., & Gillam, A.M. (2005). Reading rhetorically: A reader for writers. New York:
Pearson Longman.
Booth, W. (1974). Modern dogma and the rhetoric of assent. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Brent, D. (1992). Reading as rhetorical invention. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Butler, P. (2001). Toward a pedagogy of writing immersion: Using imitation in the composition class-
room. Journal of College Writing, 4(1): 107–114.
Carillo, E. C. (2015). Securing a place for reading in composition: The importance of teaching for transfer. Logan,
UT: Utah State University Press.
Carillo, E. C. (2017) A Writer’s Guide to Mindful Reading. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse.
Clark, I. College arguments: Understanding the genres, (2nd ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt.
Coe, R. M. (1994). An arousing and fulfilment of desires: The rhetoric of genre in the process era—and
beyond. In A. Freedman, & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the new rhetoric. London: Taylor and Francis.
Corbett, E. P. J. (1965). Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. New York: Oxford University Press.
Crowley, S., & Hawhee, D. (1999). Ancient rhetoric for contemporary students (2nd ed.). Boston, MA:
Allyn and Bacon.
Gibson, E. J., & Levin, H. (1975). The psychology of reading. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Goodman, K. (1996). On reading. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Greene, S. (1993). Exploring the relationship between authorship and reading. In A. Penrose, &
B. Sitko (Eds.), Hearing ourselves think, pp. 35–51. New York: Oxford University Press.
Horning, A. S., & Kraemer, W.W. (Eds.) (2013). Reconnecting reading and writing. Fort Collins, CO:
Parlor Press, WAC Clearinghouse.
Jolliffe, D. A. (2007). Learning to read as continuing education. CCC, 58(3): 470–494.
Lewiecki-Wilson, C., & Brueggermann, B. J. (2007). Disability and the teaching of writing: A critical sour-
cebook. New York: Bedford St. Martins.
Petersen, B.T. (Ed.) (1986). Convergences: Transactions in reading and writing. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Panek, M. (2004). Active reading in the multicultural composition classroom. Composition Studies, 32:
49–72.
Quintillian (1987). Quintilian on the teaching of speaking and writing. Translations from book one, two, and
ten of the Institutio Oratoria. In J. Murphy (Ed.). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Salvatori, M. R., & Donahue, P. (2005). The elements (and pleasures) of difficulty. New York: Longman.
Smith, F. (2004). Understanding reading (6th ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Tierney, R. J., & Leys, M. (1986). In Convergences: Transactions in reading and writing. Petersen, B. T.
(Ed.). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Tierney, R.J., Anders, P.L., & Mitchell, J.N. (Eds.) (1987). Understanding readers’ understanding:
Understanding theory and practice. New York: Routledge.
Reading
Motivation and Connection
Teaching Reading (and Writing) in the Composition Classroom
Michael Bunn
Many college students see writing courses as a chore—a hurdle on the track toward gradu-
ation. At the same time, many of these students recognize the value of writing and learning
to write. In extensive interviews conducted with Harvard students in the 1990s, Richard Light
found that “[o]f all skills students say they want to strengthen, writing is mentioned three
times more than any other. Most know they will be asked to write an enormous amount at col-
lege. Most expect this to continue after they graduate” (54). Around the same time, Thomas
Hilgers and his colleagues interviewed students enrolled in upper-division writing-intensive
classes in their majors at a large state university and discovered that these students valued
assigned writing tasks for various reasons, most notably as an opportunity to “pursue per-
sonal goals” such as “satisfying a burning curiosity about a particular topic” or as a form of
“preparation for postcollege employment” (Hilgers, Hussey, and Stitt-Bergh 330–32).
In her 2009 book, The College Fear Factor, Rebecca D. Cox draws on five years of inter-
views and observations at community colleges to demonstrate that many of the students
she observed value writing and writing classes even if they don’t enjoy them. Cox writes that
“the distinction between getting an education and enjoying it emerged as a basic theme for
the vast majority of students,” and among the evidence she offers is the following passage
from Joy, who Cox claims “drew an explicit distinction between learning from the class and
enjoying it”:
This class, I would say, is an excellent class. I think it’s a necessary class that all stu-
dents should have as a freshman, because it prepares you for writing papers in all dif-
ferent classes . . . It is a necessary evil, pretty much, because I don’t know anybody who
likes this class, but it is necessary if you want to be successful in your other classes with
the papers that you have to write. So I like the class on a learning standpoint.
On a fun standpoint, I hate it.
(53)
The students Cox followed placed a high value on writing and learning to write, even though
at times they may have hated it from a “fun standpoint.”
In a 2007 study of composition courses conducted at Purdue University aimed at better
understanding the extent to which students transfer knowledge from one context to another,
Dana Driscoll found that many students—including “students who are not in humanities-
based majors but instead from majors across the curriculum”—not only value writing but
also may “share some of our most basic philosophies about writing—that is, that writing is
a lifelong skill and that practice with writing is the best way to improve” (89). Driscoll found
that many students entered their composition courses already “positive about the value of
their writing course,” particularly in terms of how the work of those courses might be useful
beyond college.
Whether writing is perceived as the opportunity to investigate a topic of personal interest or
viewed primarily as a “necessary evil” to help with future coursework and career aspirations,
Motivation and Connection 223
there is little doubt that many students— whether enrolled in prestigious liberal arts institu-
tions, large state universities, or community colleges—value writing and learning to write.
But what about reading?
While many students enrolled in composition courses seem to recognize the value of
learning to write, it’s unclear whether students experience this same level of motivation
toward assigned course reading. As Jeanne Henry notes of her own experiences of teaching
reading at the collegiate level, “My freshmen were very much able to read; they were simply
disinclined to read” (64, emphasis in original). David Jolliffe and Allison Harl make a similar
point regarding their research on student reading at the University of Arkansas: “In short, we
discovered students who were extremely engaged with their reading, but not with the read-
ing their classes required” (600). Thus a pressing question for writing instructors is, how can
we teach reading in ways that motivate students to engage with assigned course reading?
Further, how can we draw upon students’ own recognition of the importance of writing as a
way to motivate them to read in our classes?
While many students enrolled in composition courses seem to recognize the

value of learning to write, it’s unclear whether students experience this same
level of motivation toward assigned course reading.
Over the past two decades, a handful of scholar-practitioners have explored the role that
reading plays in both collegiate writing courses and composition scholarship.1 Particularly
useful are the ways that these scholars present rationales for including reading instruc-
tion in writing courses (Helmers; Horning; Salvatori), suggest reasons that reading isn’t
being adequately addressed within the field (Harkin; Morrow), articulate challenges that
instructors—including graduate instructors—might face when trying to teach reading in the
writing classroom (Adler-Kassner and Estrem; Carillo; Ettari and Easterling; Tetreault and
Center), explore approaches to reading promoted in composition textbooks (Huffman),
and provide an example of how researchers might utilize qualitative methods to explore
the issue of reading (Jolliffe and Harl).
What this article adds to this growing body of research is attention to some of the ways
that instructors theorize and teach reading-writing connections in composition courses and
how such theorization and teaching practices may affect students’ motivation to complete
assigned reading. As Linda Adler-Kassner and Heidi Estrem note, “Studies that focus on
the contexts that instructors create for students’ reading . . . are few and far between” (36,
emphasis in original). This article is intended to help fill that gap. Examining the ways that
writing instructors think about and teach reading—how they perceive connections between
the processes of reading and writing and attempt to teach those connections to students—
provides a more complete picture of what is happening in composition classrooms. These
findings can also inform the important discussions we need to be having about which
approaches to teaching reading will motivate students to engage with assigned texts and
help them to read and write better.
I recently conducted qualitative research at the University of Michigan in order to examine
some of the ways that instructors theorize and teach reading in composition courses and to
better understand how students perceive and respond to assigned course reading. An online
224 Michael Bunn
survey (Appendix A) was sent to instructors who were teaching, or had taught, first-year
writing at the university, presenting them with a range of questions about the ways they theo-
rize and teach reading. In total, 114 instructors were invited to complete the online survey;
these instructors were all graduate students or lecturers teaching for the English Department
Writing Program (EDWP) during the semester of data collection, and each of these instruc-
tors had taught at least one section of first-year writing in the past or were doing so at the
time of the survey. The response rate was exactly 50 percent—57 of the 114 instructors
invited to complete the online survey did so.
This article puts instructor survey and interview responses in conversation with
student survey responses to shed some light on how both instructors and stu-
dents think about reading as it operates in the writing classroom.
Next, interviews were conducted with 8 instructors who were teaching first-year writing at
the time of our interview and who indicated on their survey that they would be willing to speak
with me. Five of the interviewees were graduate student instructors (2 studying literature, 2
studying English and education, and 1 studying linguistics), and 2 were full-time faculty lec-
turers (who had all earned M.F.A. degrees in creative writing from the university).
After holding these interviews, I observed 4 of these interviewed instructors’ classrooms
during two different class sessions. In each of these four courses a four-question survey
(Appendix B) was distributed to students asking for their views on the reading that they were
doing for the course. In total, I received survey responses from all 66 students present dur-
ing the four class sessions—17 students each in three of the courses and 15 students in the
other. Though students were given the option to decline the survey, none did so.
This article puts instructor survey and interview responses in conversation with student
survey responses to shed some light on how both instructors and students think about
reading as it operates in the writing classroom. Specifically, the article addresses four
related questions:
1 To what extent do instructors theorize reading and writing as connected activities?

2 To what extent are instructors explicitly teaching reading-writing connections in their
composition courses?
3 What effect (if any) does students’ understanding of reading-writing connections have on
their motivation to complete assigned reading?
4 For instructors who are explicitly teaching reading-writing connections, what are some of
the specific ways they are doing it?
More fully understanding the ways that instructors theorize and teach reading-writing con-
nections is important because, as my findings suggest, explicitly teaching such connections
can influence the extent to which students find course reading valuable and can affect their
motivation to complete assigned reading.
In the remainder of this article I discuss a few lessons we can learn and conclusions we
might draw about teaching reading based on my research findings. I begin by proposing
a definition of reading that emphasizes the cooperation between readers and writers and
stresses the importance of conceptualizing reading and writing as connected processes.
I then examine the extent to which participating instructors at the University of Michigan
theorize reading and writing as connected activities and document the ways they do (and
don’t) teach such connections to students. I supplement this section with responses from
the student surveys to reveal whether teaching reading-writing connections explicitly seems
to have any effect on student motivation to read. Next, I present and discuss the method
of teaching reading-writing connections mentioned most often by instructors at Michigan:
assigning model texts with the hope that students will read to identify particular techniques
to try out in their own writing or read to recognize genre conventions. I conclude the article
by offering a few suggestions for ways instructors might teach reading-writing connections
effectively in composition courses.
Reading Defined as “Negotiation”

Readers construct meaning (at least in part) by drawing on their own personal experiences
(Stein; Lindberg) and by drawing on other types of prior knowledge (Hayes; Lemke). As
Deborah Brandt puts it, “readers bring to a text stores of prior knowledge about the world
and about the nature of discourse that allow them to fill in the inferences and make the
predictions necessary for comprehension” (119). Such interaction between reader and text
suggests that the process of reading is a negotiation between the knowledge and purposes
of the writer and the knowledge and purposes of the reader. In “A Social-Interactive Model of
Writing,” Martin Nystrand describes this type of negotiation: “when the respective purposes
of the writer and the reader intersect as they must when the reader comprehends the writer’s
text, the meaning that the reader gives to the text is a unique result—a distinctive conver-
gence or interaction—of reader and writer purpose (74).2 The understanding and meaning
derived from texts are based not only on the characteristics of the text itself and on the
reader’s recognition and understanding of those characteristics, but also by a connection
between writers and readers that links the knowledge and purposes of the author with the
knowledge and purposes of the reader (as well as the properties of the text itself) together
into a broader meaning-making activity. This negotiated meaning of texts illuminates crucial
connections between the activities of reading and writing. As Nystrand puts it, “meaning is
between writer and reader” (78, emphasis in original).
In response to this understanding of reading and writing as connected activities, a key
focus of my research was to discern whether instructors conceive of reading and writing as
connected activities, and the degree to which they are (or aren’t) teaching reading and writ-
ing as connected processes in the classroom.
Reading-Writing Connections: Instructor Perceptions

and Assumptions
Nearly 100 percent of instructors who completed the online survey (56 of 57) report that
they conceptualize reading and writing as connected activities (one instructor didn’t respond
to the related question). Not all of those instructors explain or teach those connections to
students, however. This creates a potential disconnect between instructor theorization (rec-
ognizing important connections between the processes of reading and writing) and instructor
pedagogy (not teaching those same connections to students).
226 Michael Bunn
In reply to the open-ended survey question Do you believe that reading and writing are
connected activities? all 56 instructors who answered the question express the belief that
reading and writing are connected. Their answers distribute as follows:
Yes 25
Absolutely 15
Of course 6
Yes (or absolutely), but . . . 4
Definitely 2
Certainly 1
It is a fact, not a belief 1
They are fundamentally the same act 1
Often, but not always 1
As this distribution indicates, only 5 instructors express any form of reservation or qualify
their answer in any way. For example, 2 of those instructors make a point to note that it s not
always the case that good readers are good writers, and vice versa:
Yes. But I have also seen struggling readers write wonderful things and struggling writers
read and interpret challenging text.
Yes. They influence each other recursively. However, in my personal life, there are people
who challenge this belief for me . . . people I know who write very well, but don’t read
much . . .
This type of qualification doesn’t really challenge the idea that reading and writing are con-
nected, but offers a useful reminder that, in the words of 1 of these 5 instructors, it’s not
always an exact “one-to-one ratio.”
While all 56 of the participating instructors express the belief that reading and
writing are connected activities (with 5 offering some form of qualification), this
belief doesn’t always translate into pedagogy.
While all 56 of the participating instructors express the belief that reading and writing are
connected activities (with 5 offering some form of qualification), this belief doesn’t always
translate into pedagogy. In response to the question How (if at all) do you teach a con-
nection between reading and writing to students in first-year writing? 10 instructors report
that they don’t explicitly teach those connections to students. This survey question elicited
responses such as the following:
Good question. I don’t think I have addressed this connection explicitly.
I don’t draw connections explicitly, but I constantly tell them that the best way to improve
their writing in a given genre is to read a lot in that genre.
I’m not sure I teach that connection explicitly, though I believe the connection is made
obvious by writing assignments and studies of texts.
I’m not sure that it’s something I teach directly. This may be a fault on my part. Instead of
telling them the connection is important, I assume they already know or they’ll see the
connection as we work toward reading texts objectively.
A sentiment expressed in these responses is that instructors don’t need to teach reading-
writing connections explicitly or that such connections are already clear to students. As one
instructor claims:
This connection is not something necessary to parse. First of all, the students real-
ize that by reading and questioning texts, they will better engage in analysis which will
directly translate into their own writing.
This instructor’s response not only assumes that students will automatically recognize how
certain reading practices influence their writing, but also that such reading practices “directly
translate” to student writing—both without any intervention on the part of instructors.
Another instructor discusses the assumption that students will automatically recognize
connections between course reading assignments and course writing assignments. During
our interview, Sally, a graduate student studying English and education, elaborated on this
assumption: “I assumed today, since we’re talking about narrative and they’re going to be
writing narratives, I assumed that [a connection between the course reading and course writ-
ing assignments] was evident. But I think we assume a lot of things, and shouldn’t.”3
The Benefit of Explicitly Teaching Reading-Writing Connections

In our interview, Sally went on to say a bit more about why it’s important for instructors to
make connections between reading and writing assignments explicit to students. As she
makes clear in the following excerpt, Sally believes that if instructors explicitly teach reading
and writing as connected activities, students are more likely to complete assigned reading
because they recognize its value in relation to the rest of the course.
Sally: The reading, I believe, should always tie into what we’re doing.
MB: And when you say “what we’re doing” you mean the writing assignments?
Sally: The writing assignments. I don’t think that I always make that explicit to the stu-
dents? . . . I think earlier on I made it more explicit, but I think that that’s something
that I should continue to make explicit.
MB: Why? Why do you think that’s worth doing or important?
Sally: . . . Well, one: Buy-in. . . I mean student motivation, and in terms of doing the read-
ing, they can understand why it’s valuable because I’ve made that explicit to them.
It’s not valuable just because I’ve told them to do it. It’s valuable because it’s going
to be applied.
In other words, students don’t have to settle for the instructor’s suggestion that reading is
worthwhile. When reading-writing connections are made clear, students see that the reading
they do will “be applied” in their writing; this helps them “buy in” to the work of the course.
Sally’s view that students may be more motivated to complete assigned reading if they
recognize how that reading relates to their writing is supported by the survey responses of
several students. In response to the question Are you motivated to read for this course?
Why or why not? 5 students specifically mentioned being motivated to read because the
228 Michael Bunn
reading helped them with their writing assignments, while 9 other students mentioned that
they weren’t motivated to read because the texts seemed unrelated to the rest of the course.
The following excerpts convey the range of those responses:
Yes, I am motivated [to read] because all of the readings relate very directly to the essays
that we are assigned.
Yes, because I believe the readings really help me with writing my own paper . . .
Yes, but only to help my writing . . .
I am not motivated to read for the course because I feel the reading does not relate to what
we talk about in class. It does not help me improve my writing so I am not interested in it.
I sometimes know that the reading will not connect to the class, which makes it harder
for me to focus and concentrate on the reading.
I am not motivated to read for this course because the readings are unrelated to what we
are writing about.
These responses suggest that the degree to which students are motivated to read assigned
texts is influenced by whether or not they perceive connections between that reading and
other aspects of the course, especially their writing assignments. Such motivation is cru-
cial, for as Jill Fitzgerald, professor of literacy at the University of North Carolina, explains,
“People must feel some urge, some motivation, some reason to read or write. If there is no
urge, there is no reading and writing” (84). John Guthrie and Allan Wigfield, faculty members
at the University of Maryland College of Education whose research focuses on motivation,
make a similar point, that “a person reads a word or comprehends a text not only because
she can do it, but because she is motivated to do it” (404).
lf instructors explicitly teach reading and writing as connected activities rather

than assuming that Students will identify such connections on their own, stu-
dents stand a far better chance of recognizing how assigned course reading
relates to and can help them with their writing tasks.
Instructors appear to have a genuine opportunity to motivate students to complete assigned

course reading. What this requires, however, is that students believe the assigned readings
directly relate to, or will help them to produce, their writing assignments. If instructors explic-
itly teach reading and writing as connected activities rather than assuming that students will
identify such connections on their own, students stand a far better chance of recognizing how
assigned course reading relates to and can help them with their writing tasks.
The Use of Model Texts

An important strategy for teaching reading-writing connections surfaced again and again
as instructors answered a range of survey questions, and most notably in responses to
the question How (if at all) do you teach a connection between reading and writing to
students in first-year writing? Assigning model texts is discussed by 17 different instruc-
tors and referred to a total of 27 times throughout the surveys.4 These model texts—mostly
published pieces, though sample student papers are occasionally mentioned as well—are
primarily discussed in two different ways: as displays of writing techniques and strategies
that students can identify and then try in their own writing, or as examples of the specific
genre that students will eventually be assigned to write.5 What distinguishes these two
types of reading—which both utilize model texts selected and assigned by the instructor—
from many other approaches is that they emphasize reading as a means to learn about
writing, not as a means to better understand a topic, issue, or worldview. These two uses of
model texts call on students to study the text with an eye toward their own eventual writing,
to read in a way that greatly resembles what I have described elsewhere as reading like a
writer (“How”).
Several survey respondents mention the first of these two purposes for assigning model
texts: wanting students to identify specific writerly techniques or writing strategies that they
can try out in their own writing. Here is a sampling of those responses:
I ask students to pay attention to various techniques utilized by the authors and “steal”
the ones they find helpful for their own writing.
I ask them to engage with the texts they read by responding to them in writing (chal-
lenging them, asking questions, etc.) and then to pull out strategies to use in their
own writing.
We ask a lot of questions of texts that are relevant to the essay they are in the process of
writing to help them ask questions from which they can write. I also focus heavily on the
structure and rhetorical approaches used in the published essays we read, pointing out
that these are models for them to use in their own essays.
We’ll examine the strategies used in introductions and conclusions in the published
texts to get students thinking about what strategies they may want to use in their essay.
Students should use the published readings as models, essentially looking for things
they appreciate and want to use in their own work.
In each of these responses the instructor describes using model texts to demonstrate strate-
gies and structural techniques that students can adopt in their own writing. The idea is that
students will recognize elements to which they responded as a reader and use these ele-
ments in their own assigned writings.
Sally presents a specific classroom activity intended to encourage students to read for
what they can use in their own writing:
[W]e’ve been sort of informally keeping a personal style journal where after we read a
text and we’ve examined it for structure and we’ve looked at the argument, we also talk
about the aesthetic piece. What did they notice that they like, and what can they take
from that text to try out in their own writing?
So, if we found a really good example of a parallel sentence, if they have never tried
that before, then they make a note of it and they’ve got it in the text so that they can refer
back to it.
230 Michael Bunn
This exercise prompts students to read with an eye toward their own writing by locating spe-
cific strategies and techniques that they intend to use and reinforces the idea that both texts
and reading serve purposes beyond the transmission of content.
Another instructor describes in a survey response how he or she encourages students to
reflect upon the specific ways that they imitate assigned texts:
I have students analyze claims, evidence, organization, metaphors, and language in arti-
cles we read. I encourage them to adopt one or two strategies in their papers using imita-
tion in their writing. I ask them to try to make it seamless (to not let me see it). However,
I ask them to write a submission note about their writing process, and in this, they are
invited to explain how they mimicked a writer we have read and what the experience felt
like as well as if they believe the result is rhetorically effective.
By requiring students to reflect on their adoption of techniques and strategies they locate in
the model text and compose a submission note in which they assess the effectiveness of
this borrowing, this instructor prompts students to identify and consider direct connections
between their course reading and writing.6 The submission note and student paper serve as
tangible proof that the reading done for the course has influenced the student’s writing.
The other primary reason that instructors offer for assigning model texts is that they want
to provide students with an example of a genre in which the students will eventually be asked
to write.7 This use of model texts asks students to look at the overall structure of the text or
the conventions associated with a particular genre, rather than focus on individual writerly
techniques and strategies that they can adopt, as we see in the following two examples from
the instructors’ surveys:
We read examples of the kinds of essays they would be writing—descriptive narratives,

researched arguments, etc. I subscribe to the theory that students should read models
of the genre in which they will be writing.
If I’m teaching prosody, it makes sense to use metered poetry. If I’m teaching the
personal essay, it makes sense to use other personal essays as models. The same can
be said for the teaching of other genres.
Instructors assign these texts intending for students to read them as models of genre, but
it remains unclear whether instructors are actually teaching students how to do this. While
the majority of instructors who report assigning model texts so that students can adopt tech-
niques and strategies mention taking time in class to show students how to read for them,
this is not the case for most of the instructors who reported assigning model texts as exam-
ples of genre. This is a potential disconnect in the course: instructors want students to read
for genre conventions but fail to explain this to students or teach them how to do it.
During our interview, Don, a full-time lecturer, noted that this is a potential problem
because students don’t necessarily know how to read for genre conventions or how to use
the texts to improve their own writing:
It can’t be like whoa, look at these four models. Let’s just do what they’re doing. They
can’t really—can’t really see what’s happening in those pieces. I think they see an ana-
lytical essay and like—I use the word analytical essay because you know it is a kind of
genre. You know but to them it’s totally not a genre, and I think they’re kind of blind to
most of what is happening.
Don suggests that students are ill-equipped to use model texts effectively on their own. This
view is confirmed by at least one student who explained in a survey response, “I am not very
motivated to read for this course because I never really know what to look for in the read-
ing.” If instructors can teach students how to read and use model texts, they may be able to
combat this sort of lack of motivation on the part of students. It’s not enough to merely assign
certain kinds of texts. After conducting his own study of student writers using model texts,
Peter Smagorinsky reached a similar conclusion, warning, “Simply reading a model piece
of writing . . . is insufficient to teach young writers how to produce compositions . . . most
novices need more direct instruction” (174).
Teaching Model Texts Effectively: An Example

One of the instructors I interviewed and observed, Tawnya, a graduate student studying lit-
erature, attempts to provide the kind of “direct instruction” that Smagorinsky recommends by
being very explicit with students about potential connections between their assigned reading
and their writing assignments:
Tawnya: For both of the papers they’ve done so far, I’ve given them readings that do what
I’m asking them to do, with the hopes that when they sit down . . . they can reread
it and say “Okay, how can I use this as a template for my writing?”
MB: And when you say “ask them to do,” you mean readings that are demonstrating a
genre or something?
Tawnya: Right, so the first one was a descriptive analysis, and the second one was the
review, due tomorrow. And then for the third one as well, which is more of a
standard argumentative paper, I will do the same, so that they can use it as a
template . . .
By encouraging students to use these texts as models and read with an eye toward their
own eventual writing—to read them as examples of the specific genre in which they will be
writing—Tawnya helps students to connect the assigned reading to their writing tasks.
By encouraging students to use these texts as models and read with an eye
toward their own eventual writing—to read them as examples of the specific genre
in which they will be writing—Tawnya helps students to connect the assigned
reading to their writing tasks.
Her belief that reading in this way helps students improve their writing is a belief shared
by many of her students. In response to the question Do you find the reading that you do for
this course helpful in improving your writing? Tawnya had the highest total number (14) and
percentage (82 percent) of students who said yes. The following three responses represent
232 Michael Bunn
how nearly every student in her class mentioned the benefit of reading texts that serve as
models for their writing assignments:
The readings are useful because they typically display the style of writing that needs to
be utilized in the upcoming paper. For example: in preparation for writing a critique of a
live performance, we will read different styles of critiques from various periodicals.
The reading done for this class is helpful because it usually relates to a paper we are
going to write. This makes the process of writing papers easier by giving students
a reference.
Yes, I do because the readings we do are often the same as the paper we are writing.
When we discuss the readings we look at things they have done well and we might want
to do in our papers.
This third comment suggests that at least some of the students in Tawnya’s course are
developing their understanding of specific writerly strategies and techniques in addition to
understanding genre conventions: they are locating things in the assigned texts that the
author has “done well” and that they “might want to do” in their papers.
A key to Tawnya’s success is that beyond simply assigning models of specific genres, she
talks with students about how they should be reading the model texts. Tawnya’s students get
direct instruction in how to read model texts for both writerly strategies they can adopt and
for genre conventions.8 While observing Tawnya’s course, I witnessed this kind of explicit
instruction first-hand. Tawnya initiated discussion of the assigned essay by telling students,
“I thought maybe we could go through this part-by-part and talk about . . . [how] he is doing
an analysis and his use of detail, his ability to state his thesis and what he’s thinking. It should
hopefully help you.” She then directed the students to reread the first paragraph. When they
were finished, she asked the class, “What did you think of this introduction? Why was it either
effective or ineffective at pulling you in as a reader?”
Throughout the discussion that ensued, Tawnya pushed the students to explain in specific
detail why they did or didn’t find the introduction effective. She also led students to examine
some of the specific choices the author had made. For example, she asked the class to con-
sider the pros and cons of only discussing two areas of the country in an essay dealing with
the polarization of America. Two students offered responses to her question:
I thought the pros were because he only focused on two places he could go into more
in-depth analysis of the places, but because he only focused on two places, while maybe
fundamentally red and blue states are still there, there are still differences everywhere.
So if he wanted to make a more specific essay he should focus on those two, but if he
wanted to get a really good grasp of the difference between red and blue he should have
covered more ground.
I think it works for his purposes because these places are so polar opposite.
Both of these students responded insightfully to the author’s strategy of only covering two
locations in the essay, particularly the first student who offered an alternative strategy that the
author might have used (as well as a rationale for that alternative). In proposing an alternative
strategy for composing the essay, this student displays the kind of understanding about writing
strategy that can develop when instructors take the time to teach students to read in this way.
A bit later in the same discussion, Tawnya asked the students to look at a specific meta-
phor operating in the text and told them that they too could use a metaphor to help structure
their next paper: “This is another kind of strategy you can use in papers is coming up with
a metaphor that describes what you’re trying to say. So you analyze your performance,
and then you come up with a clever way of expressing it to your audience.” With this move,
Tawnya directs students’ attention to a specific technique operating in the model text and
tells them explicitly that they can make a similar move in their own writing. It’s difficult to
imagine a more straightforward way of connecting the reading and writing that students do.
“Let’s say we were going to bring you to campus and arrange for you to speak
with all of our writing instructors. What would you tell them? What would you say
that could help us improve the ways we teach reading?”
I present Tawnya’s approach as a successful example of teaching reading through the

use of model texts for a couple of important reasons. First, she assigns students to read
model texts with the dual purpose of reading for individual writing techniques and strategies
that they can try out, and of reading the text as an example of the genre that they will be
working in themselves. She prompts students to use the model texts in both ways simultane-
ously; this means that students get direct instruction in how to use the model texts for both
purposes, each of which can be helpful as they think about their own writing. Second, she
demonstrates for her students how she would like them to read, and while doing so she
emphasizes connections between the reading they are doing and their writing assignments.
She has carefully considered how her reading and writing assignments connect and makes
an effort to help students recognize those connections.
Conclusion
A few weeks after I finished analyzing my data, I had the opportunity talk about my research
with the director of writing from another midwestern university and one of his faculty col-
leagues. As I told them about my findings and about the apparent need for instructors to
teach reading-writing connections explicitly, his colleague looked over at me and asked,
“Let’s say we were going to bring you to campus and arrange for you to speak with all of our
writing instructors. What would you tell them? What would you say that could help us improve
the ways we teach reading?”
There are several suggestions I would like to make to a room full of writing instructors
about how to teach reading. Here is where I might start:
•• I’d think about the extent to which and the ways in which I perceive reading and writing
to be connected activities. This pedagogical awareness can help me to design a course
in which the reading and writing assignments build upon and reinforce each other. It’s
clear from the interviews with instructors at Michigan and from several years of work-
ing with new writing instructors at three different institutions that many instructors begin
designing their course by first selecting the texts to be read, often with little consideration
for how those texts connect to course writing assignments.
234 Michael Bunn
Selecting the readings first—independent of the course writing tasks—makes it far
harder for us to conceive of how the reading and writing tasks connect and increases
the likelihood that they won’t connect. If instead we select readings and design writing
prompts simultaneously, there is a far greater chance that we will be aware of connec-
tions between the two and be able to articulate those connections to students.
•• I’d talk with students during class about the connections between assignments. Students
indicated in their survey responses that they were more or less motivated to read
assigned texts depending upon whether they viewed that reading as relevant to their
writing assignments. This simple step to explain the scaffolding we’ve done can help
generate motivation on the part of students to complete assigned reading and can help
them to understand that reading and writing are connected activities.
•• Assigning students to read model texts isn’t enough; students usually don’t know how
to read for writerly techniques or for genre conventions on their own. We must teach
students how to read model texts in ways that will inform the eventual writing that they
will do and teach them to read in ways that help them to develop their understanding of
writerly strategies and techniques and that help them to identify genre conventions so
that they are better prepared to write in those genres.
Teaching reading in terms of its connections to writing can motivate students to read and
increase the likelihood that they find success in both activities. It can lead students to value
reading as an integral aspect of learning to write. It can help students develop their understand-
ing of writerly strategies and techniques. Most of us firmly believe that reading improves writ-
ing. Let’s make sure that we are teaching reading in ways that make this happen for students.
Appendix A: Instructor Survey

1 How many semesters of first-year writing have you taught, including this one?
2 How many total writing courses have you taught, including this one?
3 Do students arrive (at the university) prepared to read at the college level?
4 What kinds of reading do students do for your first-year writing course?
5 Do you teach students to read visual images or non-written texts? If so, what do you do?
6 What is the reading skill, or particular reading approach, that is most important or ben-
eficial for students to learn in first-year writing?
7 Do you teach students to do a particular kind of reading or adopt a particular reading
approach?
8 Do you believe that reading and writing are connected activities?
9 How (if at all) do you teach a connection between reading and writing to students in first-
year writing?
10 Are there any differences between the ways that you ask students to read the writing
produced by their classmates and the ways you ask them to read published texts? If so,
what are the differences?
11 Are there any classroom activities or assignments that are better suited to use one type
of text as opposed to the other—either published writing or student-produced writing?
Please explain your answer.
12 Please discuss a few of the factors that have most influenced your ideas about how to
teach, or not to teach, reading in first-year writing.
Appendix B: Student Survey
1 Do you find the reading that you do for this course helpful in improving your writing? Why
or why not?
2 Do you have a preference between reading published writing or the writing produced by
your classmates? Please explain your answer.
3 Are you motivated to read for this course? Why or why not?
4 Have you learned about possible connection(s) between reading and writing in this
course? If yes, what have you learned?
Notes
1 The topic of reading has received increased attention in the past few years. In 2009, the journal Open
Words: Access and English Studies devoted its entire spring issue to articles exploring college-level
reading—including some discussion of reading’s place within collegiate writing courses. In 2010, the
journal Reader: Essays in Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy devoted its fall issue to
exploring disciplinary ways of teaching reading, including attention to some of the ways that read-
ing is taught in composition. Most recently, at the 2012 Conference on College Composition and
Communication in St. Louis, a new annual Special Interest Group dedicated to exploring “The Role of
Reading in Composition Studies” met for the first time.
2 Kathleen McCormick prefers an “interactive” model of reading that she believes stresses that “first,
both readers and texts contribute to the reading process and second, that both texts and readers
are themselves ideologically situated” (69). However, I prefer Nystrand’s description of reading as a
“negotiation” over other conceptions of reading, including Louise Rosenblatts’ notion of “transaction,”
because negotiation—more than any other term—implies the degree of cooperation and even com-
promise needed for writers and readers to make meaning effectively from a text. Negotiation implies
that two parties—in this case the writer and reader—are approaching the enterprise with the mutual
goal of creating meaning.
3 All instructor and student names are pseudonyms.
4 This emphasis on model texts maybe common at other institutions as well. While conducting a com-
prehensive study of writing in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Pittsburgh, David
Bartholomae and Beth Matway found a similar use of model texts among faculty from a variety of dis-
ciplines: “Many of those interviewed use models in their teaching—either examples of student papers
or examples of professional writing—in order to give students a point of reference for genre, format,
and style.”
5 Although they don’t specifically mention the use of model texts, Linda Adler-Kassner and Heidi Estrem
found that writing instructors at Eastern Michigan University had “three relatively clear purposes for
reading within the program. Content-based reading . . . asks students to summarize and interpret, to
consider connections between ideas, and to use reading to develop ideas. Process-based reading
focuses on the work of the writer/researcher, scrutinizing the text to look at the decisions made by the
writer in the process of textual production as a possible model for students’ own writing/research work.
Structure-based reading asks students to focus on the conventions reflected in and used to shape
content; the emphasis is on developing genre awareness so that student writers can make conscious
decisions about how to use different genres and conventions, and can make conscious choices about
how, when, or whether to use them” (40–41). The second two of these purposes—process-based
and structure-based reading—seem nearly identical to the two primary ways that instructors partici-
pating in my research describe wanting students to read in conjunction with model texts.
6 These submission notes are similar to Jeffrey Sommers’s “student-teacher memos’ in that they are
each “intended to take both student and teacher behind the paper, into the composing process which
produced the draft” (77). Sommers asks students to submit a memo with each writing assignment
236 Michael Bunn
aimed at helping students to “describe and comment on their composing processes” (78). This sur-
veyed instructor’s “submission note” may actually do more, however, to help students connect the
process of reading with the process of writing, since Sommers’s questions focus almost exclusively
on writing and the student’s written text.
7 Throughout this article I use the term genre to indicate a category or type of text (e.g., a review, an
opinion column, an argumentative essay) in the traditional literary sense. While I’m aware that other
conceptions of genre transcend this limited conception and construct genre as a way to define various
situations and social actions, it’s clear that instructor participants (such as Don) were using the term
exclusively to indicate forms and types of writing.
8 Although Tawnya shows that these two uses of model texts—as providing techniques to adopt and as
examples of genre—aren’t mutually exclusive, nearly every instructor who mentions using model texts
refers to either one use or the other, but not both.
Works Cited
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(2007): 35–47. Print.
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2010). Web.
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and Writing. Ed. Bruce Petersen. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1986.115–26. Print.
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Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, 2011.71–86. Web.
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Print.
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1990.81–97. Print.
Guthrie, John, and Allan Wigfield. “Engagement and Motivation in Reading.” Handbook of Reading
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Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000. Print.
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Hayes, John. “A New Framework for Understanding Cognition and Affect in Writing.” Ruddell and Unrau
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Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003. Print.
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These Epiphanies’: What College Students Say about Writing and Learning in Their Majors.” Written
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4 (May 2007). Web.
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Are Our Students Reading and Why?” College English 70.6 (2008): 599–617. Print.
Lemke, Jay. “Social Semiotics: A New Model for Literacy Education.” Classrooms and Literacy. Ed.
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McCormick, Kathleen. The Culture of Reading/ The Teaching of English. Manchester: University of
Manchester Press, 1994. Print.
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Michael Bunn
Michael Bunn is a full-time faculty member in the University of Southern California Writing
Program and co-founder of the CCCC Special Interest Group “The Role of Reading in
Composition Studies.”
7 Assessment
Issues and Controversies
Julie Neff-Lippman
Writing Assessment should place priority on the improvement of teaching and learning.
(NCTE-WPA White Paper 2009)
While I was working on this chapter, I attended a dinner party with a group of faculty
members from Latin American studies, Asian studies, history, biology, classics, and political
science. When I mentioned writing assessment, eyes glazed over, but when I became specific
about placement and exit exams, labor grading, and indirect writing assessment, the table
erupted in heated conversation. Later I realized the arguments about writing assessment at
dinner reflected the debates that are going on in colleges and universities across the country.
The controversies are not new. In Reframing Writing Assessment (2010), Kassner and O’Neill
explain that assessing writing whether within a classroom, a department, or an entire univer-
sity system is constant, complex, political, and fraught with controversy.
Chapter Overview
Whether assessment is occurring in the classroom or on a programmatic scale, whether it
involves the work of an individual or the entire campus, whether it is low stakes or high,
evaluation of student writing continues to present administrators and teachers of writing
with a plethora of challenges. Assessment is a complex (Sommers, 2006) and often political
topic (Poe, Inoue, & Elliot, 2018) that has been debated at every level from the individual
classroom to state legislatures. This chapter will provide a review of the language of writing
assessment in historical and programmatic contexts as a way of understanding current contro-
versies. It will provide strategies for helping teachers of writing assess and respond to student
writing and will present best practices and alternatives to traditional summative assessment
connected with grading.
Reflection to assess prior knowledge and experience:
1 Write a reflection on your experiences with assessment. Have you ever been part of
program-wide writing assessment or assessment for placement purposes? If so, please
describe the assessment as you experienced it. What was your attitude toward it? Did it
have consequences for you? In the end, how did you feel about the assessment and your
involvement in it? Please discuss your reflection with your writing group or class.
2 Consider the writing you have done that has been turned in for a grade and your
instructor’s response to it. Did you feel that you received an adequate response? Did
you feel encouraged? Discouraged? Was the assessment useful? In your view, were you
treated fairly?
3 If you have had the opportunity to respond to the writing of others, what issues did you
struggle with? Share your response with the class.
Assessment 239
Writing Assessment: An Overview
Writing Assessment: Principles and Values

In 2005, the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) and the National Council
of Teachers of English (NCTE) issued the NCTE-WPA White Paper on Writing Assessment
in Colleges and Universities (2005–2014). The White Paper is intended to help all of those
involved with assessment articulate the principles, values, and assumptions that should guide
appropriate, fair, valid, and reliable writing assessment. Because assessment can have the
power to make potentially life-changing decisions that affect students, curriculum, and teach-
ers, it should be shaped to meet the local needs of all of those affected by the results. The
White Paper also explains the necessity of using assessment to put emphasis on improvement
of teaching, learning, pedagogy, and curriculum, to provide evidence for decision-making,
and to give students the opportunity for appropriate feedback and input (NCTE White Paper
on Writing Assessment in Colleges and Universities, 2005–2014). Three broad questions
should guide assessment:
1 What is the purpose of an assessment?

2 Who is (or are) the primary audiences(s) for an assessment and its results?
3 What decisions might, or will result from an assessment?
(Adler-Kassner. & O’Neill, 2010)
Beginnings: Indirect Writing Assessment/Objective Tests

Over the years, writing assessment has changed dramatically, in many ways reflecting the
changes in the field of writing studies and in the societal pressure for accountability and a
penchant for measurement. Trends in assessment seem to come in waves that are sometimes
overlapping (Yancey, 1999). Putting assessment practices in a historical context illustrates the
ebb and flow of how assessment has changed and at the same time stayed the same.
As early as the late 19th century, Harvard University and other highly selective colleges
used objective tests (indirect assessment) to place students in appropriate classes. Growing out
of the notion that the current students were ill-prepared for college-level work, these early
assessments, which attempted to ferret out deficits in student preparation, continue to influ-
ence assessment in the 21st century (Huot, 2002). In the l950s, writing assessment continued
to focus on objective testing and was used to determine who would take the pre-college writ-
ing courses and who would be excused from required composition courses. During the 1950s
and 1960s, this indirect assessment of writing reflected ideas about composition that were cur-
rent at the time—that is, that writing ability could be measured by having students answer
questions about grammar, usage, and punctuation in a multiple-choice test. The objective
tests were popular with teachers and administrators because they were easy and inexpensive
to administer and score. Perhaps most importantly, they were reliable; in other words, test
administrators could easily control the test (answers were either right or wrong) and testing
situation. However, the problem became obvious: the objective tests were not valid in that
they did not measure what they purported to measure—the student’s ability to write (Yancey,
1999, pp. 484–485). A student’s score on a grammar test could not predict whether the stu-
dent could write an essay any more than the written drivers’ test can predict whether a person
can drive a car.
Because the objective tests decontextualize knowledge and meaning-making, indirect
assessment has been widely criticized by groups such as the National Council of Teachers of
English (NCTE), Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA), and the International
Reading Association (IRA). Critics claim the tests pay too much attention to lower-order skills
240 Julie Neff-Lippman
and usurp classroom time (teaching to the test) that could be used for more relevant instruc-
tion. Despite the compelling case WPA and NCTE have made for more responsible and reli-
able assessment practices (NCTE-WPA White Paper on Writing Assessment in Colleges and
Universities, 2014), indirect assessment is still used on many campuses (Toth, 2018).
Direct Assessment: Essay Tests

From about 1970 to the mid-1980s, assessment relied primarily on essay tests that students
wrote in a single session (Yancey, 1999, p. 484). Like the objective tests, these tests continue
to be used in many colleges to place students in writing classes when they enter college and
later to determine who wrote sufficiently well to receive a diploma. Most composition-
ists considered these tests, called direct assessment, an improvement over the objective tests
because the writing tests were valid; they measured what they were intended to measure—
writing. By writing essay tests for assessment purposes, students demonstrate writing compe-
tence rather than recognizing the correct answer on an objective test; teachers exercise their
judgment, which replaces machine scoring (Wolcott, 1998, p. 5).
However, even the supporters of the change to direct assessment questioned the efficacy of
timed essay tests written in a single setting. Direct assessment does not reflect recent thinking
about process (Flower & Hayes, 1981) or social constructivist theory (Bruffee, 1986). Were
students who had been trained in invention and revision put at a disadvantage by a timed
test that did not allow for process or take the rhetorical situation into account? The advan-
tage to writing tests was that they measured writing performance rather than grammar pro-
ficiency, but they defined writing in a narrow, reductive way. Lee Odell (1981) has argued
that direct writing assessment defines competence too narrowly. Students should be able to
demonstrate “the ability to discover what one wishes to say and to convey one’s message
through language, syntax and content that are appropriate for one’s audience and purpose”
(p. 103). Direct assessment does not give writers the opportunity to demonstrate these rhetor-
ical abilities or to revise over time, nor does it consider the rhetorical situation and classroom
context. Despite the objections to essay tests, they continue to be used in many colleges and
universities because of the relative ease of administration and compilation. Those who design
prompts for this type of assessment understand that audience and purpose should be clear, and
students do their best writing when they care about their topics (Atwell, 1987; Graves, 1983;
Sommers, 2006) and when they have a clearly defined audience and purpose. Therefore, top-
ics for direct assessment should be
•• accessible
•• stated clearly
•• broad based
•• engaging, but not so emotional that students lose control of their writing
•• encouraging of the type of writing sought by the curriculum (Wolcott, 1998, pp. 24–25).
While these are useful goals for creating essay prompts, they are not easily attained if we
consider the many kinds of difference that students bring to any testing prompt—ethnicity,
gender, religion, culture, disability, and economic disparity.
Other Problems with Indirect and Direct Assessment

Some, however, claim these attempts at fairness do not go far enough (Poe, Inoue, & Elliot,
2018), Sternglass (1997). They argue that the systems of writing assessment we now use work
“against entire groups of people to maintain the unequal distribution of opportunity, wealth,
Assessment 241
and justice” (Poe, Inoue, & Elliot, p.3, 2018). Increasingly, both direct and indirect assess-
ment are seen as discriminatory.
In 1997, Marilyn Sternglass studied undergraduates at the City University of New York
(CUNY), many of whom were from disadvantaged groups. In A Time to Know Them,
Sternglass explains that placement and exit exams set unreasonable hurdles for student of
color, second-language learners, and those from working-class backgrounds. The timed
placement tests ask incoming students to know most of the concepts that are part of the cur-
riculum for first-year writing classes. When the students don’t know the concepts, they are
placed in remedial classes. The exit exams, also timed, disregard the process for writing that
the students developed in their college writing classes (Sternglass, pp. 206–207). A Time to
Know Them reveals a system of discrimination that works against the success of the students
the college is trying to help.
Around 2010, Columbia University’s Community College Research Center (CCRC)
published a set of papers that show standardized testing was placing many students in reme-
dial courses who did not need to be there. The tests (often ACT’s COMPASS) consistently
under-place students in remedial or ESL classes when the students could be successful in
college-level writing classes (Clayton-Powell, 2012). Under-placement negatively affects the
following: students must pay for classes that do not lead to a degree; progress toward a degree
is slowed; and students are less likely to persist degree completion if they have been forced into
remedial classes (Bailey, 2009; Bailey, Jeong, & Cho, 2010; Community College Research
Center, Columbia University, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c; Hughes & Scott-Clayton, 2011). The
tests put whole groups—students of color, second-language learners, first-generation college
students, veterans, and people with disabilities—at a disadvantage (Toth, p. 138). In 2010,
as a result of the studies, ACT began phasing out COMPASS, a standardized test that meas-
ured ability with writing and reading among other things (Hughes & Scott-Clayton, 2011).
Those who advocate against placement tests argue that the tests do not adequately predict
who will succeed and who won’t. Furthermore, the community college students often do not
understand the purpose and stakes of the placement test, are shamed by the test, and bored
and insulted by developmental classes (Toth, p. 139). Lederman and Warwick (2018) claim
that some students feel that tests for writing assessment are an act of violence against them as
it discourages them and confirms the historic messages that suggest that they are incapable of
academic success, especially with writing (p. 230).
Directed Self-Placement (DSP)/Multi-Measure Assessment (MMA)

In 2017, ACT’S COMPASS, a standardized placement test, ceased to exist (Fain, 2017)
because of growing concerns about under-placement, discrimination, and issues of social
justice. On August 3, 2017, the Chancellor of the State University of California System
eliminated placement testing for all California State Universities (Poe, M, Inoue, A. &
Elliot, N.) (2018).
With the demise of COMPASS, community colleges and four-year schools across the
country began developing and implementing Directed Self-Placement (DSP) also called
Multi-Measure Assessment (MMA). For instance, in Washington State, English Department
faculty at several community colleges began work on "multi-measures" for placement—high
school GPA, the best indicator of success in college; scores on GEDs, high school proficiency
exams; self-assessment; and/or portfolios of previous work (Toth, 2018). Faculty at ten col-
leges in Minnesota and Wisconsin (Cullinan et al., 2018) were also piloting DPS projects.
The initial results have been positive. At one community college, 20 % more students were
placed into the college-level writing classes with no drop in rates of failure (Klausman, 2016).
The California Acceleration Project reports similar success. At Long Beach Community
College, the standardized tests placed 15 % of students into college writing courses. Using
MMA for placement, 60% were placed into college-level courses with no drop in completion
rates (California Acceleration Project, 2018).
Critics of eliminating placement testing claim that the system is not at fault, but the under-
prepared students are. If these students are not required to enroll in developmental classes,
they are not being prepared for success in college (Poe, Inoue, & Elliot, 2018). Furthermore,
underprepared students, eager to get on with their education and wanting to save face, may
not understand the consequences of choosing classes they are not prepared for (Bedore &
Rosen-Knill, 2004; Condon et al., 2001; Neal & Huot, 2003; Nicolay, 2002; Schendel &
O’Neill, 1999). Faculty teaching college-level writing courses have also voiced concerns
about the time it could take to have numbers of underprepared students in class with the pos-
sibility of lowering standards. Others claim that high school grade point average, a criterion
often used in MMA, is not a reliable measure of success because of grade inflation. In spite of
criticisms, there seems to be no interest in going back to standardized, high-stakes tests like
COMPASS for placement.

1 Have you experienced Placement Tests or DSP/MMA? Write about your experi-
ences for 5–10 minutes.
2 Share your writing with the class. As a class, make a list of pros and cons for each
type of placement.
3 Write a proposal for DSP/MMA or argue to maintain Placement Tests.
PORTFOLIOS
In the late 1980s, in answer to the problems with direct assessment and to reflect changing
theory and research in the field of composition, portfolios became an increasingly common
assessment tool (Yancey, 1999, p. 485) and have continued to be important in the 21st cen-
tury. Portfolios are a collection of student work, paper, or digital, chosen by the student at
the end of a course or at the end of a college career and are used for both large-scale and
classroom assessment. Many instructors regularly use portfolios to build assessment into their
classroom practices. Portfolio assessment responds to the need for the generation of ideas and
thoughtful revision over time and allows the student to choose what goes into the portfo-
lio. In addition to the content of the portfolio, the student usually writes a reflective piece,
making the portfolio even more effective because it involves students in their own learning
(Yancey, 1992). Ed White (2005) argued that we regard the reflective piece as a central piece
of portfolio scoring, asking students to use their reflective essay to make an argument for why
their selections for the portfolio meet the goals for the course. A portfolio can play an impor-
tant role in helping students take responsibility for their own writing and learning, something
that is important to student growth (Huot, 2002). Increasingly, colleges use portfolios to
showcase student work. Many universities, such as Virginia Tech, have put resources into the
development of e-portfolios across the curriculum, encouraging the use of e-portfolios within
departments or schools (Zaldivar, 2010). Other schools (University of Georgia and Portland
State University) use e-portfolios to provide assessment data that are deep and complex and
can be useful for multiple constituencies (Yancey, Cambridge, & Cambridge, 2009). Because
Assessment 243
they may include a range of products including performances, artistic compositions, and
evidence of proficiency in foreign languages, electronic portfolios go far beyond tests in dem-
onstrating a student’s learning or programmatic accomplishments. In addition, the portfolios
involve students in significant self-reflection that can be carried across the curriculum and
extended throughout the student’s college career (Yancey, Cambridge, & Cambridge, 2009).
While portfolios are unlikely to replace testing completely, they solve many of the problems
related to writing assessment. E-portfolios are likely to become increasingly popular as a tool
for promoting student learning (Yancey, Cambridge, & Cambridge, 2009).
Many instructors find the portfolio the ideal assessment tool because it allows them to act
as “coaches,” rather than judges. Blind scoring of portfolios produces results that can pro-
vide assessment information to the student, the teacher, and the institution. But some critics
question the reliability of portfolios. Pointing to the number of times a paper can be revised
before it goes into the portfolio, they claim it is often impossible to determine how compe-
tent the student writer is or how much help a student has received during the revision process
(Wolcott, 1998, p. 52). Within individual classrooms or programs, critics note that some stu-
dents do not take early assignments seriously because they know they will have opportunities
for revision later in the course. Critics also note that portfolio scores because of the number of
variables cannot provide useful programmatic information or statistics that can be compared
from year to year or across campuses. Portfolios are useful as summative assessment at the end
of a course or college career, but not useful for placement because most students coming into
college have not yet created a portfolio of their written work. As a campus-wide initiative,
the implementation of portfolio writing assessment takes vision, commitment, and finesse.
Despite the criticisms, most compositionists believe the benefits of portfolios far outweigh
the problems: portfolios are valid because they measure students’ ability to write and revise
in a rhetorical setting, they involve student choice and reflection, and they are authentic—that
is, the assessment, as much as possible, occurs in a meaningful, real-life context. Supporters
of portfolios believe that the validity of portfolio assessment and the student involvement in
it outweigh the reliability problems. With appropriate safeguards, the advantages of portfolios
for students and stakeholders far outweigh the risks and provide a balance between process
and product.

1 Have you had the opportunity to create a portfolio of your work? Share your expe-
riences both positive and negative with your group.
2 What would be your ideal portfolio situation? Write a position paper in which you
argue for your ideal portfolio system. Share your papers with others in your group.
Scoring
Whether the assessment is being done through evaluating timed writing samples or portfolios,
the texts will go through a process called scoring. The two most common kinds of scoring
are holistic and multiple-trait scoring( sometimes referred to as analytical scoring). Which
method is chosen will be dependent on the situation and goals of the assessment. Holistic
scoring sees the whole as greater than the sum of its parts (Myers, 1980, p. 1). John Mellon
in The National Assessment and the Teaching of English (1975) and Charles Cooper (1977, p. 19)
in Evaluating Writing: Describing, Measuring, Judging have found holistic scoring to be a reliable
way to measure writing samples when well-trained readers from similar backgrounds use it
to evaluate student writing. Holistic scoring may be the best method for scoring because it is
valid and reliable and requires each scorer to look at the essay or portfolio as a whole (White,
1994, 2000; Wolcott, 1998).
But Liz Hamp-Lyons (2016) argues we should consider multiple-traits scoring, which looks
at particular aspects of a text, as a more nuanced alternative to holistic scoring. For instance,
using multiple-trait scoring, a paper may score a 5 for a strong argument, a 3 for organization,
a 5 for use of sources, and a 2 for syntax and grammar. The paper would receive a score that
is a total of these numbers; in this case, the score would be 15 out of 20 points. The choice of
scoring method will be dependent on the situation and goals of the assessment. While holistic
scoring works well in certain instances, it does not always fit the goal of the assessment.
Ideally, scoring is done by the instructors who teach within the program (Yancey, 1992).
Many (White, 1994; Wolcott, 1998) believe that the scorers must develop their own rubric
for the assessment to be successful. Others have argued that if the group agrees to the rubric,
the scoring can proceed with equal success (Cooper, 1977). Whether the rubric is developed
by the group or not, all the scorers must agree to the rubric and the criteria that characterize
papers at each level. Before beginning holistic scoring, scorers are trained in a norming session
to apply the rubric to a variety of papers. Norming sessions are often difficult and intense,
but if the norming has been successful, the scorers will be able to rate the students’ work reli-
ably (White, 2002). The reliability of raters’ scores can be checked through a process called
inter-rater reliability. Mixed among the papers being assessed are “sample” papers. If each team
gives those papers the same score, inter-rater reliability has been achieved and the scoring is
consistent and reliable. If inter-rater scores do not correspond within acceptable limits, raters
must go back to norming to resolve disagreements.

1 Have you been involved with scoring papers for a large-scale assessment? Share
your experiences with the class.
2 Whether you have been part of a scoring session or not, what challenges would you
anticipate? Share your reflections with the class.
Internal and External Assessment

We can also divide assessment into internal and external. Internal assessment, whether by papers,
tests, or portfolios, focuses on the individual’s learning and will be tied to the curriculum for
the class. Internal assessment has two main advantages. First, if an essay test is being given, the
teacher will be able to give extra help to students who do not understand the test directions,
and she can extend the time if students have not finished. Second, when the student has fin-
ished a paper or test, the evaluation is usually given to the student. With internal assessment,
teachers have a great deal of control over the evaluation process; they can even throw out a
whole set of results if they see a problem with the test or the testing situation (Wolcott, 1998).
External assessment, considered top–down because it is initiated by those outside the
classroom, is not tied to a class and instructors are not involved in the writing assess-
ment. Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) and the Collegiate Assessment of Academic
Proficiency (CAAP) are examples of external learning assessments. The tests are used to
prove an institution’s success with student outcomes rather than to measure the learning of
Assessment 245
individual students (Adler-Kassner & Harrington, 2010). Proponents of external assessment
claim that the test’s directions and the prompts have been created with great care to improve
the validity of the sample. In addition, external assessment gives administrators an opportu-
nity to compare student achievement among campuses. The results are often published or
available online. Students may not see the results of the tests (Wolcott, 1998, p. 3). Two
more terms—High-Stakes and Low-Stakes assessment—are related to internal and external
assessment. High-Stakes assessment generally refers to the impact on students, teachers, and
curriculum. If a student must pass a writing test or submit a portfolio to graduate, the assess-
ment is considered “high stakes.” If the assessment uses students’ papers anonymously to
assess the success of a class or program, the assessment is low stakes because the assessment
does not have consequences for the student. Placement tests, exit exams, and even heavily
weighted projects or exams in individual classes are high stakes because they have serious
consequences for individual students.
Programmatic Assessment
Over the last 50 years in many universities, the focus of large-scale assessment has shifted from
the individual learner to the program (Yancey, 1999). Measuring how well the program is
working, programmatic assessment focuses on the outcomes that the program can demonstrate
rather than on the accomplishments of the individual student. For example, over the past
19 years, the University of Puget Sound has been using “folders” with random sampling to
gather information for programmatic assessment. Faculty, from across the disciplines, score
the writing samples to measure the success of the writing program, rather than the writing
development of individual students. The study produces statistical results which have been
enhanced by student questionnaires and focus groups. The assessment provides quantitative
and qualitative data about the writing program that can be used to adjust the program and
provide information about the writing program for faculty, administrators, and accreditors.
Yancey (1999) has challenged us to think about how programmatic assessment can be used to
help the individual as well as the institution.
Outcomes Assessment
Outcomes assessment, an increasingly popular term in political and educational circles, has
also influenced how writing teachers think about assessment. William Spady (1994) defined
outcomes assessment in the following way: “Outcomes are high-quality, culminating demon-
strations of significant learning in context” (p. 18). Outcomes, based on clearly defined goals
at the beginning of a course or an educational experience, measure students’ achievement of
the goals at the end of the course or a college career.
Summative and Formative Assessment

When and why assessment is conducted and what is done with the results will help determine
whether it will be summative or formative. Summative assessment aims to measure the success
of a writing endeavor after it is completed, and there is no opportunity for revision. End-of-
term grades provide summative assessment because they measure writing performance at a
certain point. Outcomes assessment is summative. External assessment is always summative.
All instructors who are obligated to give grades engage in summative assessment. In contrast,
formative assessment puts emphasis on shaping students’ writing and thinking while they are still
in the process of producing text. The goal of most formative assessment is to help students’
writing performance, and we hope their writing ability (Huot, 2002).
Assessment and Social Justice: The Next/Current Wave
In the 21st century, the call for social justice in colleges and universities has become increas-
ingly loud and strong as evidenced by the development of DSP/MMA to end the dis-
crimination caused by standardized testing. Asao Inoue has been an influential voice in the
movement which links social justice and writing assessment. Read the excerpt at the end of
this chapter from the “Introduction” of Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement
of Opportunity. (The book in its entirety can be found online for no charge at https://wac.
colostate.edu/books/perspectives/assessment.) In it Poe, Inoue, and Elliot argue for changing
the system in higher education assessment to promote social justice.

1 After reading the excerpt from “The End of Isolation,” summarize the authors’
arguments in 1–2 pages. Share your summaries with others in the class.
2 In your small groups, discuss whether the student at the beginning of the chapter is
representative of a whole group of students?
3 In your experience, is racial or class inequality a serious problem in higher educa-
tion? Write a few paragraphs answering the question. Ground your paragraphs in
specific examples.
Assessment is often political and contentious because the stakeholders, those who have an
interest in assessment, have agendas that are sometimes at odds. For some, using assessment
to create equality of opportunity for all students is of primary importance (Poe, Inoue, &
Elliot, 2018.) Others favor assessment that is reliable, valid, and authentic with outcomes
that can be shown in tables and graphs and compared among campuses and over time. For
others, the cost of writing assessment is primary. Students want assessment that is fair and not
too time-consuming. Legislators and members of State Boards of Education want to see that
their investment in education is paying off in terms of improved scores and graduation rates.
With so many people having competing agendas, the challenge with any kind of assessment is
bringing together all the stakeholders to develop a plan that instructors, students, administra-
tors, community groups, and state legislators can all agree on (Banta, 2002; Wolcott, 1998).
Adler-Kassner and Harrington (2010) call for a new era of responsibility that includes three
components: “Identifying and working from principle and best practice, building alliances
with others, and engaging in (and assessing) shared actions based on common interest” (p. 86).
Assessment in the Classroom
Good Assignments Beget Better Papers

No matter what the assignment—blog, webpage, argumentative essay, literacy narrative,
research paper, written by a single author or multiple authors—it is difficult to imagine writ-
ing a response or giving a grade without a clear assignment. Responding to the student and
grading the paper will be easier for the instructor and will contribute to student learning if the
writing prompt specifies audience, purpose, situation, and length: Cooper (1999); Lindemann
(1995); Ryder, Vander Lei, and Roen (1999); White (1994); and many more. Information
about the genre is also important. (See Chapter 5 “Genre, Transfer, and Related Issues” in
this volume.) Some teachers object to specificity in assignments, claiming that the students
Assessment 247
should have the freedom to be creative and to approach the assignment as they see fit. But a
rhetorical situation is inherent in most of the writing we do. For instance, when I agreed to
write this chapter, I knew the approximate length, the audience, the purpose of the book, and
the purpose of my chapter. I also had an outline of the book so I could see how my chapter
would complement the others and fit into the genre. And I had a sample chapter that gave me
ideas about voice, tone, stance, format, and level of detail. Shouldn’t students have the benefit
of similar details about audience, purpose, and reader expectations?
The writing teacher need not, however, spell out every variable of an assignment. In fact,
doing so would take away the students’ agency and make writing a rote activity.
Designing Good Assignments

1 What do I want the writer to do? Is it worth doing? Why? Is it interesting and appropri-
ate? What will it teach—specifically? What will the assignment tell me?
2 How do I want the writer to do the assignment? Will the writers collaborate or work
alone? Will there be drafts? What are the due dates?
3 Does the assignment give enough information about required length and the use of
sources?
4 For whom are the writers writing? Are there multiple audiences? What do they know
about the topic? What are their predispositions toward it? Is the teacher the only audi-
ence or part of the audience?
5 How much time do the writers need for the assignment? How much class time is needed
for the process? How much time outside of class is necessary?

1 Write for 5–10 minutes about what you value most in a writing assignment. Share
your writing with your group.
2 Evaluate a prompt that you have received for a writing assignment in one of your
classes. What additional information would have been useful? What tacit under-
standing, if any, did you bring to the assignment? Did the prompt contain too
much information or too little? Discuss the prompts with others in a small group.
3 Exchange a writing prompt that you have created for your students with another
member of the class. As you evaluate your colleague’s prompt, take on the role
of a first-year student. What questions do you have? What rhetorical or cultural
assumptions might you, the student, bring to the assignment? Share your response
with your partner. Revise your prompt based on your partner’s response.
Invention, or pre-writing known as scaffolding (See Chapter 2 “Invention” in this collec-

tion), will also have a positive influence on the quality of the final product or paper. Richard
Haswell (2006) writes, “Shrewd preparation of students for a writing assignment saves the
teacher time in responding to it” (p. 12).
Providing Formative Assessment

When writers receive formative assessment, they can see opportunities and problems along the
way. Formative assessment is often not graded and frees the instructor or other respondents to
be a coach before the text receives summative assessment. Formative assessment that provides
specific ideas for improving the text will help students revise their essays in substantial ways.
Chris Anson (1999) stated, “Hearing other people’s response to their work helps writers to
develop a kind of internal monitor, a ‘reading self,’ which informs their decisions as they
enter new and more sophisticated worlds of writing” (p. 302). To give students a reason for
deep revision, instructors should first focus on global issues—thesis or argument, appropriate
development and analysis of the evidence, organization, appropriateness of tone, and atten-
tion to audience and purpose. Focusing on the “big issues” helps ensure that students’ ideas
are being taken seriously. The instructor’s attention to the author’s ideas and the communi-
cation of those ideas is more likely to motivate student writers (Sommers, 2006). Comments
often put too much attention on surface errors and stress fixing the paper to satisfy the teacher,
seldom giving the student a reason to engage in deep revision (Sommers, 1982). Researchers
have found many of these comments are ineffective because they are harsh, mean spirited,
and vague (Connors & Lunsford, 1988, 1993; Straub, 1997). To put inordinate emphasis on
correctness takes the focus off the students’ thinking and analysis and gives the instructor the
role of copy-editor rather than coach or mentor.
Sometimes problems with local issues indicate a larger problem with the text. For instance,
a transitional problem might indicate a structural issue rather than the need for a transitional
phrase. Similarly, a sentence that lacks clarity because of syntactical problems may indicate
problems with content. But generally, if we think about the compelling, insightful writing
that we read, we are likely to overlook a small error, but if the writing is dull, unfocused, or
pointless, we are likely to dismiss it entirely.

1 Read the essay “Across the Drafts” at the end of this chapter. Break into small
groups and discuss the ways in which the article extends the notions of how we
respond to student writers.
2 Do your own experiences with teacherly comments mirror what Sommers has
found? Explain in a few paragraphs. Be sure to be specific. Share with your group.
3 Sommers’s research was conducted at Harvard. How might Harvard’s student pop-
ulation have influenced the study? Do you believe a similar study conducted at
another institution would come to the same conclusions?
4 Read the assignment for “Asian Families” and then the draft below. Using the
Sommers article, write comments to the author of “Asian Families.” Share your
comments with someone else in the class.
Assignment 5: The Researched Argument

Over the past weeks, we’ve been reading and writing about cultural differences. For this
last paper, you have the opportunity to develop an argument about a topic of interest to
you in the context of a culture—marriage, dating, familial responsibilities, child-rearing,
educational expectations, attitudes toward death or another topic. Your audience is the
class; your purpose is to extend their knowledge and insights about some aspect of culture.
The essays should be about four pages in length and incorporate information from at
least five outside sources.
Assessment 249
Due dates:
Topic with tentative thesis:
Draft of paper:
Final copy of paper:
Asian Families
The environment in which family live and the culture that surrounds them play a large
role in establish parental beliefs, child rearing goals, parenting methods, thus, parenting
styles and attitudes can vary widely between cultures. For this reason, it is important
to look at underlying family value when studying and evaluating parenting measures
in different cultures. For instance, Asian American culture define love differently than
Western culture, and therefore the two tend to show warmth and affection in differ-
ent way (Van Campen & Russell, 2010, p. 1). There are two main style of parenting:
authoritative and authoritarian. Authoritative parenting is a firm and warm parenting
style, which is associated with intimate parent-child relations and positive child out-
come. Authoritarian parenting, on the other hand, is define by strict and restrictive
parental control and lack of warmth, and is typically associated with higher parent-child
conflict and negative youth behaviors. But interesting, these negative consequences of
authoritarian parenting techniques are mostly seen only in Western cultures. (Choi,
Kim, Kim, & Park, 2013, p. 20). Asian American parenting is often seen as over con-
trolling and harsh, but when looked at in terms of Asian family values and cultural
beliefs, rather than Western conjectures of valid parenting, it is supportive, loving, and
wholly effective.
Asian families tend to emphasize interdependence, conformity to the group, emo-
tional self-control, and humility (Choi, Kim, Kim, & Park, 2013, p. 22). At first glance,
Asian American parents seem more controlling over children and seem to show less
warmth, but Asian American children do just as well as their European counterparts –
they do well in school and succeed in life. For example, my brother is in medical
school. To Asian families, being a strict authority figure is a necessary and key role for
parents. Many Asian American parents are strict in an attempt to protect children, and
not inhibit them. Because control and warmth are defined differently by Asian cultures,
authoritarian parenting holds a different meaning as well (Van Campen & Russell,
2010, p. 2).
Chinese parenting practices are based upon two principles: Chiao Shun, and Guan
(Van Campen & Russell, 2010, p. 2). Chiao Shun means to train, and Guan means to
govern and to love. So Asian parents who wish to train and govern their children are
often highly involved in their children’s lives. Chinese parent is expected to teach
children how to maintain harmony with others, and this means limiting emotional
expression. In many Chinese societies, emotional expression is considered harmful to
one’s health and relationships, and children are encouraged to avoid it (Van Campen
& Russell, 2010, p. 2). Another method found in Asian parenting is corporal pun-
ishment. This practice is difficult to maintain for families that immigrate to Western
cultures, however.
In contrast with Asian American parents’ display of affection, Western parental
support tend to be much more physical, verbal, and emotional; it typically includes a
lot of hugging, kissing, and praising (Lieber, 2015). A prevalent parenting technique
(continued)
(continued)
in Western cultures is a style that is referred to as “material parenting.” Material par-
enting involves dangling rewards in front of kids and then taking them away for pun-
ishment (Lieber, 2015). Studies have found that there may be a connection between
raising kids using material parenting and materialism in kids when they grow up. Past
research has tied materialism to gambling, debt, marriage conflict, and decreased hap-
piness (Lieber, 2015).
Most mainstream ideas in the U.S. about parenting and parent-child relationships
are based upon Western culture. This is not surprising, given that this is all that we
know and surrounds us, but turning to these assumptions when looking at parenting
styles in other cultures tend to lead to unfair and inaccurate stereotyping. Many dif-
ferent parenting styles are good and correct and effective, and there is no one right
way to raise a child.
References
Biggs, S. N., Pizzorno,V. A., van den Heuvel, C. J., Kennedy, J. D., Martin, A. J., & Lushington, K.
(2010). Differences in parental attitudes toward sleep and associations with sleep-wake patterns
in Caucasian and Southeast Asian school-aged children in Australia. Behavioral Sleep Medicine,
8(4): 207–218. doi:10.1080/15402002.2010.509197
Choi, Y., Kim, Y. S., Kim, S. Y., & Park, I. J. K. (2013). Is Asian American parenting control-
ling and harsh? Empirical testing of relationships between Korean American and Western
parenting measures. Asian American Journal of Psychology, 4(1): 19–29. doi:10.1037/a00
31220
Lieber, R. (2015, January 8).The risk of “material parenting.” The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/the-risk-of-material-parenting
Van Campen, K. S., & Russell, S. T. (2010). Cultural differences in parenting practices: What Asian
American families can teach us. Frances McClelland Institute for Children, Youth, and Families
Research Link, 2(1), Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona.
Providing a Note to the Instructor

Sometimes instructors fail to engage their students because they don’t have the students’ per-
spective on the paper. To engage students in a conversation about their writing ask them to
write a note to their instructor about the essay. Below is the instructor’s prompt for the note,
followed by a note from the author of “Asian Families.” Students can provide such a note
either for their drafts or for the final submission of the essay. Either way, the note helps the
instructor respond to the student.
Prompt for the Note

Write a note to me explaining what you would like me to pay special attention to as I
read your essay. What did you work hard on? What did you struggle with? What are
you most proud of? Were there issues that you were not able to resolve to your satisfac-
tion? What questions do you have about the work you’ve done so far?
Assessment 251
Student Note for “Asian Families”
Dear Professor,
This is a topic I care about and that’s why I chose it. My friends often say to me that
my mom is Tiger Mom. She has strict rules and expect perfect work. Tiger Mom is not
a complement. I want to help them understand that Chinese way of raising children is
different than the US but not bad. In fact, in most cases its good. English is not my first
language so I have work very hard to eliminate my mistakes. I went to Writing Center
and my friend, but I know it not perfect. I hope I got my point across. Did I use quote
well? I hope you correct my paper.
Thank you for reading my paper, Yuan

1 Respond in writing to the note from Yuan.
2 Compare this note to the first notes you wrote for the paper. Did your notes
change? If so, how? Is there value in having the student’s thoughts about the paper?
3 Share your comments with others in the class.
Many instructors have had the experience of spending considerable time writing com-
ments and grading papers only to have students glance at the grade and throw the paper in
the trash on the way out the door. Spending more time on comments during the formative
stage of assessment, thus shifting the burden of comments to an earlier stage of the writing
process, is likely to be more useful for students and less frustrating for the instructor. It also
gives students a good reason to take comments seriously.
For responding to student papers, some instructors have found technology to be helpful.
As technological possibilities grow, we can expect to find it playing an even greater role in
classroom assessment. Below are a few of the technologies you might find useful.
1 Voice-activated software such as JING, which is free and downloadable. JING allows the
instructor to speak to the student while highlighting places in the text.
2 A recorded response to the paper that the student can play on a computer or phone.
3 Word-processing programs that allow instructors to cut and paste advice and then cus-
tomize it for the individual student—commercial products like Emarking Assistant and
Rubric-O-Matic can be used with Word.
4 Text expansion software that eliminates the need to write out phrases and whole sen-
tences that the writer often uses (Cordell, 2010; Williams, 2010).
Some instructors wonder about using machine scoring of essays. Because of the complexity of
responding to students and their writing (Sommers, 2006), it is unlikely that we will be able
to rely entirely on machine-generated responses to papers. As Richard Haswell (2006) and
others (Brent & Townsend, 2006) have speculated, if we thought machines could do the job
effectively, we might think about turning our assessing of writing over to them. But even if
they could handle the complexities of reading the papers, it is unlikely they would be able to
consider the complexities of the individual writer and the classroom context.

1 Have you experienced technology that has been used to respond to your texts? If
so, how successful have the responses been? Which type of response do you prefer?
2 What do you see as the pros and cons of technology-assisted grading or assessment?
Share your thoughts with the class.
Summative Responses
Whether through individual or group assignments or portfolios at the end of the term,
instructors engage in some form of summative assessment. While Sommers (1982) examined
the responses of instructors to first and second drafts, Donald Daiker (1989) looked at the
proportion of negative to positive comments on student papers that are turned in for a final
grade. In a study at Miami University, 24 faculty marked the same essay. Of the 378 mark-
ings, 89.4% were negative; only 40 or 10.6% were positive (Daiker, 1983). Interestingly, in
the Daiker study the faculty that was scoring the papers had been told that they should bal-
ance positive and negative comments. Similar studies (Dragga, 1986; Harris 1977) have had
similar results: Harris looked at responses of 36 high school English teachers and found 40%
of end-paper comments were positive; only 0.007% of marginal comments were positive.
These studies were done several decades ago, but there is little evidence that the relationship
between positive and negative comments has changed in significant ways.

1 Consider a paper that you turned in for a grade or one that you graded. Count the
number of positive and negative comments. Consider marginal and end comments
separately. Share your count with others in the class by compiling them on the
board. Do the results of the class support Daiker’s findings?
2 Revise the comments on the paper to make them more encouraging.
Grading Scales: Single Author and Two or More Authors

Before the paper is due, whether the text was written by a single student or two or more, the
writer(s) should be aware of the criteria that will guide the evaluation of their work. Ideally,
members of the class will create the criteria.
Below is a sample of criteria for papers written in a first-year course:
A Paper
•• Answers a question at issue and provides a thesis that helps organize the paper.
•• Has a strong sense of the audience and purpose.
•• Has an introduction that provides adequate context and identifies a problem.
•• Makes excellent use of sources for analysis, discussion, and development.
•• Has a title that anticipates the essay.
Assessment 253
•• Has paragraphs that have a central idea and purpose related to the thesis.
•• Has smooth transitions between paragraphs, which clarify reasoning.
•• Is untroubled by numerous spelling, punctuation, and syntax errors.
•• Correctly uses the MLA format for citation of sources.
B Paper
•• Has a thesis, which helps organize the paper.
•• Makes use of sources for analysis, discussion, and clarity.
•• Has an imprecise sense of audience and/or appropriate tone.
•• Has a title that relates to the content of the paper.
•• Has paragraphs that have a central idea and purpose.
•• Has some sense of transition or development from paragraph to paragraph.
•• Is untroubled by numerous spelling, punctuation, and syntax errors.
•• Correctly uses the MLA format for citation of sources.
C Paper
•• Has a purpose but is not organized around a thesis or a question at issue.
•• Has not provided adequate context or identified a problem in the introduction.
•• Provides some evidence and analysis, but it is not always tied to the thesis.
•• Has no title or uses the paper assignment as the title.
•• Has paragraphs that have a discernible purpose.
•• Has spelling, punctuation, and syntax errors.
•• Provides some consistent form of documentation of sources.
D Paper
•• Purpose is not clear and does not have an adequate thesis or question.
•• Evidence and analysis are weak or non-existent.
•• Has a significant number of paragraphs that are confused by lack of purpose, contra-
dictory ideas.
•• Has no title.
•• Has a significant number of spelling, punctuation, and syntax errors.
•• Has little or no documentation.
F Paper (Fail)
•• Has no discernible purpose, question, or thesis.
•• Discussion rambles from topic to topic and paragraphs are without purpose.
•• Has little relevant evidence and is not tied to the thesis.
•• Has no title.
•• Is plagued by spelling, punctuation, and syntax errors.
•• Has little or no documentation.

1 Choose a paper assignment; either one you received or one you created for students.
2 In your small group, discuss the grading criteria above and make changes in it con-
sidering the assignment and place of the assignment in the term.
3 Share your revision with others in your group.
Table 7.1 Language for Feedback: Grading Rubric
Grading Rubric Poor Fair Good Excellent
Answers a question posed by the assignment or created by the writer
Has a strong sense of audience and purpose
Thesis, evidence, and their connections bring a fresh analysis or insight
Makes use of sources, details, or other evidence
Has paragraphs that have a central idea and purpose related to the thesis
Has smooth, logical transitions between paragraphs, which reinforce
the main point
Is untroubled by numerous spelling, punctuation, and syntax errors
Correctly uses a documentation format for citation of sources
Has a title that creates expectations
Has a title appropriate to the rhetorical situation
Grading Rubrics: Yes or No?

Many instructors would not consider grading a paper without a rubric. Like the grading cri-
teria in the previous pages, a rubric, which is much like a multi-trait scale, sets out how the
paper will be judged, making the teacher’s expectations for the paper explicit. Some instruc-
tors believe the rubric saves them time when they are grading and helps their students under-
stand the expectations. Many include students in creating the rubric to improve students’
engagement and understanding. Some add a point value to each item on the scale and then
add the points for a total score. Still others use the rubric as a guide for a summative comment
with or without giving a point value for each trait.
However, whether to use a rubric is one of the controversies in writing assessment. Many
instructors do not favor using a rubric. Some see a rubric as too mechanical, a straightjacket
for an essay that doesn’t allow enough room for creativity and unusual but effective responses
to the assignment. Some claim totaling points or giving a specific point values ignores the fact
that the whole may be greater than the sum of the parts (White, 1994). Others say the rubric
may not be sensitive to purpose, speaker role, and audience that occur within the same kind
of paper (Cooper, 1977, p. 14). Still others view the rubric as favoring those already familiar
with the language of the academy (Inoue, 2015). Whether instructors decide to use a rubric,
they should be aware of how one might be constructed and the reasons for using one or not.
The following analytical scale was designed for an argumentative paper. Of course, the assess-
ment criteria will change, depending on the kind of writing the students are producing and
the assignment’s place in the term.

1 Write for 5–10 minutes about your experiences with rubrics. Share your reflection
with your group.
2 Below you will find an assignment for a paper to be written on a poem by William
Blake. As a class, adjust the rubric to fit the assignment. Then read the papers below
and individually score and grade them using the revised rubric.
Assessment 255
3 Share your scores on the papers with other in your group and then with the class.
Record your scores on the board. Discuss the variations in your scoring and recon-
cile the differences.
4 Adjust the scoring rubric for an assignment you’re working on. Score your paper.
What insights have you gained? Reflect in writing on those insights.
First-Year Seminar: The Poetry of William Blake

Assignment 3
In this first section of the course, we have read several poems from William Blake’s Songs of
Innocence and Songs of Experience. Please choose one of the poems that we have not discussed in
class and write an analysis of it. Your goal in this assignment is to help others in the class under-
stand the poem in more depth. You can anticipate that your readers have read the poem but have
not explored it in depth. Length: 2–4 pages.
1. Experiencing Life
Blake’s time was one of great change. People had many challenges as they went about their lives.
Blake wants to write about people and their challenges in his poems. He writes many many poems
and most of them moved people. One poem that I thought was interesting and enjoyable was “The
Clod and the Pebble.”
In his poem, Black has many thoughts about love. I don’t think he was talking about romantic
love though. The clod is ugly but he is still happy. But the clod can not protect itself from the cattle
who tromp along, sometimes tromping on the clod. Even so he has a bright outlook on life and a
warm heart. He is also innocent.
The pebble is the opposite of the clod. It is beautiful. It sits in the water, and sings. But the
song doesn’t sound like much it doesn’t sound like the beautiful song of the clod because the pebble
has a hard heart. The pebble has had experience and that makes him unhappy.
This demonstrates that the clod is full of love and the pebble is not. The love idea relates to
the Bible where it says that: “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth.” The clod
represents truth because it is happy. The pebble represents “sin” because it is unhappy.
William Blake does an excellent job of bring together the ideas of innocence and experience
especially in this poem.
2.The Clod and the Pebble: The Marriage of Innocence and Experience
All throughout his Songs of Innocence and of Experience, William Blake makes comparisons
between the naiveté and goodness of youth and the cynicism and pain of age. Many of his innocence
poems have parallel lyrics of experience, showing the two sides of the same social or political coin. It
is through these comparisons that Blake seeks to compare the harsh realities that come with age and
with the clear, unsullied ideals of youth. Yet a few of his poems attempt to contain both aspects of life,
exposing innocence and experience within the same context and effectively linking the two. In “The
Clod & the Pebble,” Blake discusses the Christian virtue love, first ideally and then pessimistically.
(continued)
(continued)
The Clod of Clay represents all that is rough on the edges, still moldable, and unaffected by
life and time. Not only does the Clod express its joy and love, it does so in song, with the happi-
ness and melody of an unharmed innocence. At the same time, the Clod is not impressive to look
at; one must truly look deep to find any beauty in a piece of clay. But appearance is not the goal
of the Clod. Instead, its focus is upon pleasing those around it, making any attempt possible to
create a “Heaven in Hell’s despair” (ln 4). Although recognizing the sadness, pain, and death of
hell, The Clod does not give up hope that, with enough love, the despair of hell can be changed
into the hope of heaven. The Clod is idealistic, optimistic, and most of all selfless. It seeks to
exemplify the principles of 1 Corinthians 13, specifically the phrases “It is not self-seeking” (vs
5). The Clod has not been hardened by sin, by pain, by experience of any kind. Yet the Clod is
also easily moved—quickly “trodden with the cattle’s feet” (ln 6). It has not yet built any sort of
protective shell and is, therefore, quite susceptible to any outside force. The cattle of the world have
every power to move the Clod because it does not suspect any interference and cannot protect itself.
The Pebble of the brook is clearly the opposite of the Clod. The Pebble, hard, smooth, and
immutable, warbles out its tuneless words of woe. As the Clod looked rugged and ugly on the
outside so the Pebble, refined by the constant stream of water, shines and glistens. It looks beautiful
on the outside, but has nothing of softness or warmth on the inside. As the Clod sought to make a
heaven out of hell, so the Pebble manages to create a hell despite the power and existence of heaven.
Hurt and used by the experiences of coming of age, the Pebble is selfish and egocentric. It directly
opposes 1 Corinthians 13, not just in seeking its own delight but also in taking joy in the pain of
another (1 Cor. 13:6 says that “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.”) The
Pebble has become hard and cold by sin, pain, and experience, but it has also somewhat established
itself. Constantly opposing the water of the brook the Pebble has learned to rely upon itself. It
remains where it is, despite the continual pressure to submit to the power of the water. As time
has pressed forward, the Pebble has learned to stand on its own, to be only mildly affected by the
things of life, to look at life through tainted eyes.
Most of Blakes’ poetry only focuses upon one aspect of existence—either the ideal or the reality.
In “The Clod & the Pebble,” Blake effectively sets the two extremes against each other to truly
bring out their opposites. By doing so, he has in many ways summed up the who effect of the rest of
his work on innocence and experience and, consequently, the futility of either perspective. To look
at life as the Clod would, without defense or protection is just as meaningless as taking the Pebble’s
hardened and unloving perspective. It must be, then, that reality is a focus of the two extremes.

1 Write a one to two page response to this question: What do you see as the strengths
and weakness of using a scoring rubric?
2 If you had the choice, would you use a rubric? Why or why not? Discuss with the class.
Assessing Multi-Authored Papers

In Singular Texts, Plural Authors (1990), Lisa Ede and Andrea Lundsford establish the impor-
tance and prevalence of multi-authored texts. In humanities classes, most papers are written
by a single author, but in the hard sciences and some social sciences, multi-authored texts are
the norm. Ede and Lundsford conclude that once students leave the academy, no matter what
Assessment 257
their college major, they will most likely be writing with others. Thus writing courses should
prepare students to manage writing with team members.
However, multi-author texts present numerous challenges for instructors and students.
Should the grade be based on the product or the process or both? How can we be fair to all in
the group? How does an instructor know who has been doing the work in the group? Many
instructors have elaborate systems for grading and assessing group work (Centre for Teaching
Excellence, 2018). Here are a few ideas that might be useful: group assignment score should
not count heavily toward the final grade (low stakes); two grading rubrics—one a group-
member evaluation of the other members of the group, one for the final product—will help
determine who has contributed to the final product in productive ways; confidential status
reports from each group member at regular intervals help keep the writing moving forward;
the instructor should assign groups, rather than letting students form their own groups. It
makes sense to separate friends, but it also alleviates the possibility of someone being left out
when the groups are formed. There is a plethora of forms for group work available, but the
one below adapted from one used at Carnegie Mellon and Johns Hopkins provides a simple,
straightforward assessment tool for evaluating process. As in other evaluations, students should
be given an explanation of the grading rubrics before they start their project or asked to help
design the rubric for process and product. Despite the problems, there are benefits: students
will be put in a situation they are likely to encounter after graduation and they will see group
dynamics at work.

1 Write for 5–10 minutes about the challenges you’ve had working on a group writ-
ing project. Share these with members of your group.
2 What challenges does an instructor face when assessing the results of such projects?
3 The process grading scale that follows is an attempt to grade fairly. Go over it and
then suggest changes that would improve it based on your own experiences with
group assignments. Consider the rubric for the Blake assignment. How would you
change it for a group project?
Rubric for a Multi-Authored Text

Peer Evaluation Form for Group Work
Your name ____________________________________________________
Write the name of each of your group members in a separate column. For each person,
indicate the extent to which you agree with the statement on the left, using a scale of 1–4
(1=strongly disagree; 2=disagree; 3=agree; 4=strongly agree). Total the numbers in each column.
Evaluation Criteria Group Member: Group Member: Group Member: Group Member:
Ingmar Marina Oscar Jarome
Attends group meetings
regularly and arrives on time
Contributes meaningfully to
group discussions
(continued)
(continued)
Evaluation Criteria Group Member: Group Member: Group Member: Group Member:
Ingmar Marina Oscar Jarome
Completes group assignments
on time
Prepares work in a quality
manner
Demonstrates a cooperative and
supportive attitude
Contributes significantly to the
success of the project
TOTALS
Feedback on team dynamics:
1 How effectively did your group work?

2 Were the behaviors of any of your team members particularly valuable or detrimental to
the team? Explain.
3 What did you learn about working in a group from this project that you will carry into
your next group experience?
Adapted from a peer evaluation form developed at Johns Hopkins University (October 2006)
Carnegie Mellon (19 August 2018).
Social Justice and Grading

Grading and assessing writing in many ways seem to be synonymous. But critics of the system
(Inoue, 2015) claim that grading the product perpetuates the existing power structure and
puts students who enter the university with disadvantages at further disadvantage. In Antiracist
Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future, Asao Inoue
challenges us to think about how a new “grading” system, one based on “labor” produced
in the course, not on a grade for papers, could level the playing field for students who come
to college with disadvantages. Thus a system of grading on labor would contribute to fur-
thering social justice (Inoue, 2018). In this system, the students and the instructor decide on
how much time “laboring” on reading and writing and other assignments it would take for a
student to receive a “B” in the course. The class also decides on what that labor might look
like—time spent writing, reading, responding to the writing of others, etc. Any student who
logs the required amount of labor would receive a B for the course. The class would decide
how much more labor would produce an A, how much less labor for a C or lower. The
instructor would monitor the “Labor Log” at regular intervals and would read and comment
on the student papers, but the papers would not receive a grade. Though there would be a
portfolio for the class with responses from the instructor, other students, and the writer, the
grade in the course would be based completely on “labor.” Students who come to a class with
disadvantages can “labor” and succeed in the class even if they produce papers that are not
“successful” by traditional standards.
Critics argue that time spent does not always equate with achievement and thus penalizes
those who can produce excellent results in less time than what the class agrees upon. Others
suggest the system would put those applying for graduate or professional schools at a disad-
vantage. Some faculty, who think basing grades on labor is fundamentally a good idea are
concerned about the amount of time it would take to monitor the labor logs. Claiming that
Assessment 259
employees cheat on time sheets, others are concerned about the opportunity for students to
falsify the labor logs. Some believe that grades should reward achievement, and taking away
the grade incentive would encourage students to produce mediocre writing.

1 Do you think grading on labor is a good idea? Write a few paragraphs explaining why
or why not. Do you think it will create the goal of increased opportunity for students
who come to college with disadvantages? Share your responses with others in the class.
2 In your group, discuss what problems you would anticipate with labor grading if
you were the student? If you were the instructor for the course? With colleagues?
With the college or university?
3 How would you respond if one of your professors proposed labor grading? Write a
letter to the professor either supporting the decision or asking that the proposal be
reconsidered.
4 Would labor grading lead to a more just university? In an essay, argue for or against
this statement.
Assessing student writing is a complicated task that has become increasingly complex as
we learn more about the teaching of writing and the assessment of it. No one wants to do
assessment (Yancey & Huot, 1997); however, if we can tie assessment more closely to our
pedagogical goals, we are likely to find it more rewarding and productive (Huot, 2002).
When instructors develop a clear approach for assessment, share it with students, and tie it to
the goals of the course, good assessment can improve student writing and learning. Whether
assessment is summative assessment conducted system-wide or formative assessment con-
ducted in the classroom, assessment should be an integral part of teaching and learning.

1 Using the syllabus for a class you could anticipate teaching, build both formative
and summative assessment into the syllabus. Or create a plan in which all of the
assessment is formative as in labor grading. Share your syllabi in small groups and
make changes based on the responses of your colleagues.
2 Write an essay explaining and defending your decisions about how you’ll include
assessment in the syllabus.
3 Thinking about assessment can help people become better writers. In a 3–4 page
self-reflective essay, write a response to this question: In what ways has this chapter
helped you grow as a writer?
Teachers’ Checklist for In-Class Writing Assessment

•• Is my assessment of writing tied to my goals for the course?
•• Have I made the goals and the criteria for the course and for assessment and grading clear
to students?
•• Have I focused on global issues?
•• Have I made specific, positive comments?
•• Have I limited the number of sentence-level comments or corrections?
•• Have I engaged the students in the assessment process?
•• Have I provided formative assessment during the writing process?
•• Have I used students’ errors to correct problems with my teaching or assignments?
•• Are my comments specific, useful, balanced, and encouraging?
•• Have I provided enough context for the writing assignments?
•• Will the assignments and the evaluation of them be important to the students’
learning?
•• Have I written comments that take the writer and her learning seriously?
•• Have my comments been addressed to a living, breathing human being?
MARKING GRAMMAR AND OTHER SENTENCE-LEVEL ERRORS
Those who believe that student writing becomes worse every year (something I hear regu-
larly on my campus) have something in common with Harvard professors of the 19th century
(Huot, 2002). These same colleagues mark every error, rewrite whole sentences throughout
the paper, and cite pages in the handbook, expecting these marks will make students eager to
revise. Generally, none of these happen to be true.
Here are a few principles that grow out of the research and have been borne out in practice
by legions of us who teach writing. Of course, all these need to be offered in the context of
the classroom (Mathison, Fife & O’Neill, 2001; Sommers, 1982).
1 Less is more (Haswell, 1983). Pick out two or three of the sentence-level problems that
are most likely to obscure clear communication. Mark them in a few places throughout
the text or mark them in a single paragraph and give the student a brief specific explana-
tion. For the next paper, pick another two or three errors.
2 Do not rewrite the paper sentence by sentence. See above.
3 Do not use lines, circles, or other marks that students will see as vague (Sommers, 1982).
4 If a concept has been presented in class, comment specifically when you see it used cor-
rectly or incorrectly referring the student to a handbook or to the class notes. Put the
comments in the context of the class (Sommers, 2010).
5 Use specific positive comments to reinforce things the writer has done well (Daiker,
1989).
6 Insist that students use a spell check and/or grammar check on their computers.
(Surprisingly, some students just don’t bother unless it is a requirement.)
Conclusion
Assessing student writing is a complicated task that has become increasingly complex as we
learn more about the teaching of writing and the assessment of it. No one wants to do assess-
ment (Yancey & Huot, 1997); however, if we can tie assessment more closely to our peda-
gogical goals, we are likely to find it more rewarding and productive (Huot, 2002). When
instructors develop a clear approach for assessment, share it with students, and tie it to the
goals of the course, good assessment can improve student writing and learning.
Whether assessment is summative assessment conducted system-wide or formative
assessment conducted in the classroom, assessment should be an integral part of teaching
and learning.
Assessment 261

1 Using the syllabus for a class you could anticipate teaching, build both formative
and summative assessment into the syllabus. Or create a plan in which all of the
assessment is formative as in labor grading. Share your syllabi in small groups and
make changes based on the responses of your colleagues.
2 Write an essay explaining and defending your decisions about how you’ll include
assessment in the syllabus.
3 Thinking about assessment can help people become better writers. In a 3–4 page
self-reflective essay, write a response to this question: In what ways has this chapter
helped you grow as a writer?

Adler-Kassner, L. & O‘Neill, P. (2010). Reframing Writing Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning.
Logan, UT: University of Utah Press.
The authors encourage teachers of writing to become involved in Campus or program-wide
assessment. They give a thorough explanation of what this means taking into account the dif-
ficulties and frustrations those involved in assessment experience.
Cambridge, D., Cambridge, B., & Yancey, K. (Eds.). (2009). Electronic portfolio 2.0: Emergent research
on implementation and impact. Stirling,VA: Stylus Publishers.
This collection brings together articles from researchers on two continents regarding
e-portfolios. In the conclusion, the editors see electronic portfolios as part of the future of
higher education.
CCCC Committee on Assessment (2009, March). Writing assessment:A position statement. Retrieved
from www.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/writingassessment
This document sets out the principles and guidelines for ethical, responsible assessment. Guiding
large-scale and classroom assessment, it was developed in 2006 and updated in 2009 by the
CCCC Committee on Assessment and approved by the CCCC Executive Committee.
Huot, B. (2002). (Re)Articulating writing assessment for teaching and learning. Logan, UT: Utah State
University.
Huot looks at ways writing assessment can be tied to teaching and learning, emphasizing the role
of self-evaluation and the local control of assessment.
Inoue, A. (2015). Antiracist writing assessment ecologies: Teaching and assessing writing for a socially just
future. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press.
Asao makes his argument for more socially just writing assessment and offers a practical plan for
achieving that goal. According to this plan, a student’s grade in the course is based on the amount
of labor the student does rather than on an evaluation of the writing. The book is available free
at WAC Clearinghouse.
Meyers, M. (1994). A procedure for writing assessment and holistic scoring. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Meyers provides a nuts and bolts guide for those who want to conduct large-scale holistic scoring.
Poe, M., Inoue, A., & Elliot, N. (2018).The end of isolation. In M. Poe, A. Inoue, & N. Elliot (Eds.),
Writing assessment, social justice, and the advancement of opportunity. Retrieved from https://wac.
colostate.edu/books/perspectives/assessment. In a well-researched introduction, the editors
(continued)
(continued)
argue for the need to tie writing assessment to justice and equality in higher education.
Compelling chapters dealing specific topics related to justice and opportunity follow.
White, E. (1994). Teaching and assessing writing. New York: Jossey-Bass.
This book, arguably one of the most important books in the field, explores all aspects of assess-
ment but focuses on portfolio assessment.
White, E. (2005).The scoring of writing portfolios: Phase II. College Composition and Communication,
56: 4.
This article updates White’s earlier work calling for portfolio assessment to be tied to the goals
through the reflective letter.
Wolcott,W., & Legg, S. (1998). An overview of writing assessment:Theory, research, and practice. Urbana,
IL: NCTE.
Willa Wolcott with Sue Legg provide a description of the controversies and theories that have
shaped current assessment practices.
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Reading
Across the Drafts
Nancy Sommers
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
For the past thirty years, I have been a teacher of writing—work that I love, especially teach-
ing first-year students. I have always been curious about the ways in which students read
and interpret my comments—why they find some responses useful, others distracting, and
how these comments work together with the lessons of the classroom. In 1982, I published
an article in CCC on this very topic, but rereading this essay twenty-four years later, I feel the
absence of any “real” students who, through voice, expertise, and years of being responded
to, could offer their teachers valuable lessons. In returning to a topic that has captured my
imagination for over a quarter of a century, I’m also returning to a topic that is part of our col-
lective imagination, with so much scholarly attention paid to it that if you search “responding
to student writing” on Google, you arrive in 2.7 seconds at the first of about 230,000 entries
(Harvey 44).1 Our collective interest in responding, I suspect, is deeply professional and
personal. We feel a weighty responsibility when we respond to our students’ words, knowing
that we, too, have received comments that have given us hope—and sometimes made us
despair—in our abilities as writers. The words teachers scribbled on our papers, inscribed
in memory, are often the same words we scribble in the margins or at the bottom of our
own students’ pages—well-intended, most often written with great care, though sometimes
carelessly, often caffeine-induced, usually late at night. These words, we hope, our students
will take with them as they move from our class to the next, from one paper assignment to
another, across the drafts. We don’t take this responsibility lightly. The work of entering into
our students’ minds and composing humane, thoughtful, even inspiring responses is serious
business. Given the enormous amount of time it takes to comment fairly upon a single paper,
let alone twenty or thirty, we often wonder whether our students actually read our comments
and what, if anything, they take from them.
As I look back across a quarter of a century of my own drafts, I remember that my first
impulse when researching the topic of response was to imagine a hierarchy of effective
and ineffective comments that could be isolated, identified, even memorized by new writing
teachers. I quickly learned the limits of such research when I tried to separate comments
from the context in which they were written—that is, the language established in the class-
room. There is a story behind each effective comment that animates it for a student, making
it more than mere marks on a page. But in our professional literature about responding, we
too often neglect the role of the student in this transaction, and the vital partnership between
teacher and student, by focusing, almost exclusively, on the role of the teacher. We offer pre-
scriptions to new teachers that imply a hierarchy of comments: offering praise, for instance,
is more constructive than criticism; posing questions is better than issuing commands; and
using green or blue ink is always preferable to red.
The new perspective I bring to this topic today comes from the Harvard Study of
Undergraduate Writing, which followed four hundred students for four years to see college
writing through their eyes. With the leisurely perspective of time, and with the collection of
over six hundred pounds of student writing, five hundred hours of taped interviews, and
266 Nancy Sommers
countless megabytes of survey data, my fellow researchers and I have witnessed the wide
range of comments that students receive, not just in one course or from one teacher, but over
four years and across the disciplines.2 To see these comments through the eyes of college
students is a kaleidoscopic experience: papers never returned; papers returned with bewil-
dering hieroglyphics—dots, check marks, squiggly or straight lines; papers with responses
that treat students like apprentice scholars, engaging with their ideas, seriously and thought-
fully. That students might benefit from a decoding ring to determine whether the check marks
and squiggles are a good or bad thing will not surprise us. That students might find com-
ments useful throughout the process—before and between drafts, not just at the end—will
also not surprise us. What did surprise us, though, is the role feedback plays in the complex
story of why some students prosper as college writers while others lag.3
It would be comforting to think that those fortunate students who receive the most use-
ful comments make the greatest leaps in writing development. And it would be equally
comforting to think we could link the lack of writing development to a student’s score-
card of useful and useless comments. But in the matter of writing development, nothing is
straightforward. The movement from first-year writing to senior, from novice to expert, if it
happens at all, looks more like one step forward, two steps back, isolated progress within
paragraphs, one compositional element mastered while other elements fall away. For some
students, progress is uneven but continuous. Other students stall and become stuck writ-
ing the same kind of formulaic paper, again and again, no matter what assignment they
receive. We wondered—would more or better comments have made a difference to these
stalled writers? And what relationship could we perceive between those who progressed as
writers and the comments they received?
A quarter of a century ago, I wouldn’t have known how to ask such questions, let alone
answer them. At that point, I focused entirely upon comments written in first-year composition
courses to prompt revisions. And I concluded, “We do not know in any definitive way what
constitutes thoughtful commentary or what effect, if any, our comments have on helping our
students become more effective writers” (148). In the Harvard Study, though, we looked at
all comments students received over four years. Outside the first-year or upper-division writ-
ing courses, we learned, students rarely receive writing instruction and are rarely required
to revise. Consequently, instructors’ comments on final drafts take on an even greater role;
they often become the only place for writing instruction. After following four hundred students
for four years, I now challenge my earlier conclusion by arguing that feedback plays a lead-
ing role in undergraduate writing development when, but only when, students and teachers
create a partnership through feedback—a transaction in which teachers engage with their
students by treating them as apprentice scholars, offering honest critique paired with instruc-
tion. The role of the student in this exchange is to be open to an instructor’s comments,
reading and hearing their responses not as personal attacks or as isolated moments in a
college writing career but, rather, as instructive and portable words to take with them to the
next assignment, across the drafts.
Colleges have great expectations for their students. But if we understand how slow writ-
ing development is—that is, how long it takes to learn how to write a college paper, to
have something to say to a reader who wants to hear it—we become rather humble about
the enterprise of commenting. If our comments move students forward as writers, they do
so because such comments resonate with some aspect of their writing that our students
are already thinking about. As we learned from the students we followed, most comments,
Across the Drafts 267
unfortunately, do not move students forward as writers because they underwhelm or over-
whelm them, going unread and unused. As one student suggested, “Too often comments
are written to the paper, not to the student.” The underwhelming comments look a lot like
check marks and squiggles, or papers returned with the most cryptic of comments like “B+;
your style needs improvement; otherwise, a good treatment of the topic.” The overwhelming
comments assume too much on the part of a student, as if instructors imagine their job is to
comment on every compositional element all at once, and as if they believe that pointing out
such errors will prevent students from ever making them again.
What emerged in every conversation we had with students about their college writing is
the power of feedback, its absence or presence, to shape their writing experiences. As one
student told me, “Without a reader, the whole process is diminished.” That students care
deeply about the comments they receive was revealed in our survey of four hundred stu-
dents, who were asked as juniors to offer one piece of advice to improve writing instruction
at Harvard. Overwhelmingly—almost 90 percent—they responded: urge faculty to give more
specific comments. And when we asked students each year to describe their best writing
experiences, two overriding characteristics emerged: the opportunity to write about some-
thing that matters to the student, and the opportunity to engage with an instructor through
feedback. What became clear from students’ testimonials is that feedback plays a much
larger role than we might expect from mere words scribbled in the margins or at the end
of a paper; feedback plays an important social role, especially in large lecture classes, to
help students feel less anonymous and to give them a sense of academic belonging. As we
learned from the students we followed, it isn’t just that without a reader “the whole process
is diminished”; rather, it is with a thoughtful reader that the whole process is enriched, deep-
ened, and inscribed in memory.
One might easily imagine that this partnership around feedback is so valuable to students
because it affirms them as writers. And, yes, affirmation is often the end result, but a key
finding is that constructive criticism, more than encouraging praise, often pushes students
forward with their writing; constructive criticism more than praise reveals instructors’ invest-
ments in their students’ untapped potential. In the case of praise, the messages it contains—
you belong at this college; you are not the admissions committee’s one mistake—are vitally
important to propel first-year students forward with their writing and to inspire them to work
harder. But over a college career, when such praise is not paired with constructive criti-
cism, when it doesn’t involve a back-and-forth exchange between student and teacher, writer
and reader, it has the opposite effect. Instead, undeserved praise neglects to offer students
an incentive to improve, nor does it provide any alternative approaches for future papers.
Students who repeatedly receive comments from their instructors such as “I have nothing to
say about this well-written paper,” often stall as writers because they are never asked to do
anything differently, never shown what skills they need to develop, nor are they engaged in
a dialogue that challenges their own thinking.
The surprise was watching so many students make great leaps in their writing develop-
ment after receiving what they identified as tough and honest assessment of their work. For
one student, Ellery, the harsh critique he received as a junior was the only thing that could
shake him from his glibness. His political science instructor wrote: “Ellery, this is supposed
to be an essay, not a rush-hour radio talk show. What you write is a good piece of entertain-
ment, but it is not the kind of writing that goes under the label of academic.” Though blunt,
this response was written not as a pronouncement, but in the context of a lengthy comment
268 Nancy Sommers
in which the instructor engaged with Ellery and his ideas. She goes on to model the kind of
questions he might have asked and to model the way in which skeptical readers might look
at the same evidence. Although tough in her assessment, Ellery’s instructor treated him as a
colleague, someone capable of great things, even if not yet achieved. This kind of intellectual
partnership created through feedback showed Ellery that he was part of an academic com-
munity, made up of thinkers sorting out ideas, arguing with each other, and questioning each
other’s thinking. Criticism is not enough; like praise, it has to be paired with instruction. But
in the call and response of feedback, when instructors model for their students a live, listen-
ing person, they offer students an image of a reader at the other end of the writing process,
someone willing to listen and comment, critically yet constructively.
The success of this partnership has as much to do with students’ willingness to hear and
accept honest assessment of their work as it does with instructors’ willingness to offer such
responses. Ellery, for instance, received honest assessments of his writing in his first and
second years, but these assessments didn’t help him become a stronger writer because he
dismissed these responses as his instructors’ idiosyncrasies. Or, in the case of Jackson,
another student in our study, who, when asked as a junior how he might use his instructors’
comments in future assignments, responded: “I don’t think I can use these comments since
each paper is a different assignment and a different kind of paper to work through.” Jackson
intuited the great challenge of undergraduate writing: to move from discipline to discipline,
writing about Confucius in a philosophy course one semester, a Haydn piano sonata in a
music course the next. But on another level, Jackson’s observation makes clear that it will
be difficult for him to apply even the best comments to future writing assignments since he
believes that each essay assignment is defined by its topic, a discrete unit. In Jackson’s view
of writing, comments are tailored to each essay but also isolated from all other essays, and
their purpose is, simply, to show students what they did wrong on a particular assignment.
We learn from Jackson’s undergraduate writing career that part of becoming a good writer
involves learning to receive criticism, both in understanding what an instructor intends and
in the practical sense of knowing how to put that advice into effect in other courses and con-
texts. Jackson is correct that his essay on Confucius is a text onto itself, but part of Jackson’s
stasis as a writer stems from his belief that there is no continuity from one assignment to
another. Because he sees no way to transport lessons from one paper to the next, he reads
his instructors’ comments as isolated moments in his college writing career, not as bridges
between assignments. Even the best, most thoughtful comments will not move students like
Jackson forward as writers.
But for any writer learning how to receive and accept critique, how to read comments not
as judgment about one’s limitations as a human being, or about one’s failings as a writer,
is not simple, especially for beginners who are quick to dismiss or deflect feedback. For
first-year students, feedback is monumental, their most personal, most intimate and direct
interaction with their college writing culture. And feedback comes, implicitly or explicitly, with
messages of hope or despair about who they are and who they might become as students.
While one student will respond, “My greatest reaction to all that red ink is gratitude,” another
first-year will shrug and say, “I guess all these comments mean he didn’t really like my
paper.” Or, if a first-year student believes, as one told me, that the purpose of her composi-
tion course was to teach her how to “write quickly, adequately, and painlessly,” we under-
stand why such an attitude might prevent her from being open to comments that ask her to
slow down, read texts closely and carefully, and, in a word, change. The differences among
first-year students, we found, are less about ability and more about an openness and recep-
tivity to comments, a way of seeing their writing experiences as something under their con-
trol, not random and outside of themselves. We found that one of the important predictors of
undergraduate writing development is a first-year student’s willingness to accept and benefit
from feedback, to see it as instruction, not merely as judgment.
At its best, feedback comes out of an exchange in which instructors explain to their stu-
dents what is expected of them as college writers, and students are open to learning about
these expectations. By giving students a generalized sense of the expectations of academic
writing, teaching one lesson at a time, and not overwhelming them by asking them to improve
all aspects of their writing at once, instructors show their students how to do something differ-
ently the next time. The comments that students identify as the most helpful are responses
that straddle the present world of the paper at hand with a glance to the next paper, articulat-
ing one lesson for the future. Consider, for instance, the feedback Louisa, another student in
our study, received in response to her weak thesis and introduction. Here is her instructor’s
comment: “Louisa, a technique that can work well for opening a paper is to begin with an
intriguing detail, especially one you find difficult to account for. Beginning in this manner not
only draws in your reader, but also forces you as a writer to grapple with a troubling aspect
of the text, which can often be a key aspect that you had previously set aside. This, in turn,
can focus your thesis and argument.”
As a sophomore, Louisa had complained in an interview: “It’s tough getting better as a
writer when nobody is showing you how.” But as a junior, she was fortunate to work with an
instructor who didn’t assume that she arrived in his class as a fully formed writer. Instead,
the instructor treated Louisa as an apprentice, an evolving writer. The tone of his comment
is phrased, respectfully, as a writing lesson on how to arrive at a thesis, and how to engage
a reader with an arguable claim. By giving Louisa a generalized sense of what academic
writing calls for—write about what you don’t understand; those things you have dismissed
might be more important than you first imagined; start with details because they engage
readers—Louisa’s instructor composes his comment to offer a bridge for her to cross to
future writing assignments. We concluded that when students have been taken seriously as
apprentice writers, when instructors model the role of an attentive reader, such comments
function to anchor students in their academic lives and, ultimately, make a vast difference in
their college writing.
Writing development is painstakingly slow because academic writing is not a mother
tongue; its conventions require instruction and practice, years of imitation and experimenta-
tion in rehearsing other people’s arguments before being able to articulate one’s own. The
conclusion from the Harvard Study is that feedback shapes the way students learn to write,
but feedback alone, even the best feedback, doesn’t move students forward as writers if
they are not open to its instruction and critique, or if they don’t understand how to use their
instructors’ comments as bridges to future writing assignments. For students to improve as
writers, a number of factors are necessary: in addition to honest comments, they need plenty
of opportunities to practice writing throughout their college careers, not merely in one course
or in one year, and plenty of opportunities to receive writing instruction in and beyond the first
year, especially instruction in one discipline’s method.
Feedback is rooted in the partnership between student and teacher, and as in any rela-
tionship, it develops its own language and meaning. That this relationship provides students
their most direct contact with their college writing culture seems simple enough. But what
270 Nancy Sommers
isn’t simple is the profound influence the relationship created through feedback has, not
only upon students’ writing development, but also upon students’ sense of themselves as
thinkers. When students receive feedback telling them they have “great insights” that their
instructors have “never seen the topic discussed this way before,” or that there might be “a
whole level of other questions” for them to imagine, students understand that their teachers
view them as people “with things to say,” thinkers capable of insight and asking other levels
of questions. Or, when a student tells us that he will always hear his instructor’s voice telling
him to change his ideas, revise his thinking, it is not just the instructor’s words the student
hears and carries with him across the drafts; it is also the instructor’s belief in the student as
a thinker, someone capable of doing good work, even if as a first-year student he is not yet
accomplishing it. When students respond to feedback as an invitation to contribute some-
thing of their own to an academic conversation, they do so because students imagine their
instructors as readers waiting to learn from their contributions, not readers waiting to report
what they’ve done wrong on a given paper.
I once read a definition of a “true gift” not just as a possession passed from giver to receiver
but, rather, something that is kept in motion, moving back and forth between giver and receiver,
and outward into the world. One college senior, reflecting on the role of feedback in his under-
graduate writing career, told me about such a gift: “If I bumped into one of my professors twenty
years from now, I would know what this professor thought of my work; our minds connected
at this juncture of my paper, and I will always be indebted.” The word indebted caught me off
guard. Indebtedness, after all, carries with it a connotation of obligation, of being beholden.
But indebtedness also carries with it a feeling of appreciation and gratitude, a legacy of con-
nectedness. And indebtedness goes two ways, like any bridge. As teachers, we respond to
our students’ great insights because we are grateful for the insights they have given us. And
in encouraging our students to imagine other levels of questions, we, too, are inspired to think
more widely and deeply. Feedback doesn’t need to be monumental, but its influence often is.
As our students teach us, their papers don’t end when they turn them in for a grade, nor
do our comments end when we write them. The partnership between writer and reader,
between student and teacher, creates something new—a collection of ideas that are larger
than the paper itself, ideas milling around, moving forth into the world, across the drafts.
Acknowledgments
As I worked through the various drafts of this essay, I have been fortunate to receive com-
ments from wise colleagues and friends. I would like to acknowledge the enormous contribu-
tions of the following colleagues to my own thinking about this topic: Joshua Alper, David
Bartholomae, Patricia Bellanca, Faye Halpern, Gordon Harvey, Karen Heath, Jim Herron,
Tom Jehn, Suzanne Lane, Soo La Kim, Emily O’Brien, Stuart Pizer, Maxine Rodburg, Jane
Rosenzweig, Susanna Ryan, Laura Saltz, Mimi Schwartz, Dawn Skorczewski, Stephen
Sutherland, Kerry Walk, and Suzanne Young.
Notes
1 A rich and abundant literature exists on the topic of responding to student writing. In particular, I would
mention the important work of Chris Anson, Lil Brannon and Cy Knoblauch, Summer Smith, Richard
Straub and Ronald Lunsford, and Kathleen Blake Yancey.
2 To learn more about the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing, see www.fas.harvard.edu/~expos.
To date, scholars in our field—Marilyn Sternglass, Anne Herrington, Marcia Curtis, Lee Ann Carroll,
and Jenn Fishman, Andrea Lunsford and colleagues have demonstrated the value of longitudinal
studies to provide a wider perspective than research focused upon one college course or one under-
graduate year.
3 To bring the voices of undergraduates into a larger pedagogical discussion about responding, my col-
league, Jane Rosenzweig, and I created a film, Across the Drafts: Students and Teachers Talk about
Feedback. In this film, we follow one student, Jon Stona, and his writing teacher, Tom Jehn, as they
move through the process of composing the last assignment in Jon’s first-year writing course. The film
also features a wide range of students, first-years through seniors, as well as their professors, speak-
ing about the challenges and rewards of receiving and giving feedback. The film can be viewed on the
Harvard Study Web site,www.fas.harvard.edu/~expos. Copies of the film can be obtained by writing to
wrstudy@fas. harvard.edu.
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Response.” College Composition and Communication 33.2 (1982): 157–66.
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Development in College. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2000.
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Writing.” College Composition and Communication 48.2 (1997): 249–68.
Sommers, Nancy. “Responding to Student Writing.” College Composition and Communication 33.2
(1982): 148–56.
Sternglass, Marilyn S. Time to Know Them: A Longitudinal Study of Writing and Learning at the College
Level. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1997.
Straub, Richard, and Ronald F. Lunsford. Twelve Readers Reading: Responding to College Student
Writing. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1995.
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College Composition and Communication 50.3 (1999): 483–503.
8 Teaching Multilingual Students in a
Composition Class
Olga Griswold and John Edlund
Second language writing is uniquely situated at the intersection of second language studies and
composition studies. . . . both disciplines have a lot to offer each other.
(Leki 1997)
It was the beginning of the fall term, and, about three weeks into it, a new composition
instructor stopped by his senior colleague’s office for some advice. The new instructor was
facing a quandary. He had a significant number of multilingual students in his class for whom
English was not a native language, and while they placed in his course according to the uni-
versity’s procedures and policies, their written performance differed quite a bit—both rhe-
torically and linguistically—from that of their monolingual classmates.
The instructor, although a talented, well-prepared, and eager teacher, did not feel confi-
dent that he could address the needs of these students within the constraints of his curriculum
and expertise. Many of the multilingual students did not possess an intuitive sense of what
sounded right or wrong in English in the same way as their monolingual peers did, and the
instructor himself did not have the background to provide grammar explanations beyond reli-
ance on native-speaker intuition. It was also hard for him to find time for grammar instruc-
tion in an already intensive curriculum, especially when such instruction seemed ostensibly
unnecessary for the monolingual English writers in his class. Correcting the non-native errors
on a one-by-one basis turned out to be futile since it took a lot of the instructor’s time, but
the students did not appear to grasp the underlying causes for the corrections and made the
same errors again on the next assignment. Moreover, many of his multilingual students strug-
gled with organizing their essays in a manner expected by an average American reader. In
the words of the instructor: “The ideas are there, but they don’t always follow one another
in a logical way, and sometimes it is difficult to make out what the student is trying to say.”1
The instructor wanted to help all of his students become successful and confident writers, but
he was stumped for effective pedagogical approaches that he believed would work for his
linguistically diverse class.
This problem is not unusual for college composition instructors encountering for the first
time students for whom English is not a primary language. In the situation that opens this
chapter, the more experienced colleague was able to provide the new instructor with some
pedagogical suggestions that proved effective, and we will discuss these suggestions later in
this chapter. But before we do so, we will address several ideas associated with the theo-
retical underpinnings of second language acquisition and intercultural rhetoric that will help
mainstream composition instructors understand where their multilingual students are coming
from as English users and as academic writers. We will then outline some strategies in lan-
guage development that can be successfully incorporated into and complement the teaching
of writing in classes consisting either fully of speakers of English as an additional language or
combining both monolingual and bilingual English users.
Teaching Multilingual Students 273
More than 20 years ago, Silva, Leki, and Carson (1997) published a poignant and per-
suasive article, drawing attention to the separation of the theoretical frameworks between
composition and second language studies. The authors argued that both disciplines had a lot
to contribute to each other, yet the transfer of knowledge between them tended to go only
in one direction. While the field of second language (L2) writing drew on the insights from
both second language acquisition (SLA) and composition research, the teaching of writing
in mainstream classrooms gave little consideration to non-Western rhetorical patterns and
traditions, to writing in languages other than English, and to writing by individuals for whom
English was an additional language.
The tendency for many a decade was either to relegate students with a primary language
other than English to ESL classes regardless of their educational background and their lin-
guistic and cultural identities, or to treat non-Western (or merely non-American) patterns of
writing and the less-than-native command of grammar as deficiencies needing remediation.
Unfortunately, the situation has not changed significantly for the better since the publication
of Siva et al.’s (1997) article, yet the number of students for whom English is an additional
language in first-year composition (FYC) classes is growing (Roberge, Siegel, & Harklau,
2009; Institute of International Education, 2017). It is, therefore, vital that all composition
instructors, not just ESL ones, be prepared to understand and work with students from diverse
linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Matsuda, 2006).
There are two strong reasons why mainstream composition teachers should be interested
in L2 writing research. First, multilingual students are already in mainstream composition
classes (Di Gennaro, 2008; Doolan, 2017; Griswold, 2017; Matsuda, 2006; Roberge, Siegal,
& Harklau, 2009), and it is incumbent upon every instructor to create the same productive
learning opportunities for them as are created for monolingual English speakers. And second,
without theory, research, and experience from the field of second language acquisition, main-
stream composition is too provincial, basing grand claims on monolingual and monocultural
evidence (Matsuda, 2006; Silva et al., 1997). Our goal in this chapter is to share research and
pedagogical strategies that can help instructors like the one whose story opens this chapter
create a productive learning environment for multilingual students in mainstream composi-
tion classes.
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Multilingual Student Profiles

When a monolingual English-speaking, U.S.-educated student walks into a college com-
position classroom, she is bringing with her the fully developed procedural knowledge of
English morphosyntax acquired naturally from nearly two decades of daily academic and non-
academic interactions; an active vocabulary of anywhere between 17,000 (D’Anna,
Zechmeister, & Hall, 1991) and 45,000 (Nagy & Anderson, 1984) words2; 13 years of English
literacy development; and both tacit and explicit cultural understandings of what a piece of
English writing should look like and how it should be organized, at least in the form of a basic
five-paragraph essay.
Her writing may still be immature, in need of developing a stronger style and a broader
repertoire of genres, of finessing the ability to express herself in hitherto unfamiliar tasks,
on unexplored topics, and to new audiences, and even of polishing up her punctuation and
vocabulary skills. Yet she is assumed to be able to produce syntactically and morphologically
well-formed sentences in spoken English, to write them down using the roman script, and to
string them into paragraphs that match the cultural expectations of her American readers. She
is capable of accomplishing all of this without any explicit understanding of grammatical ter-
minology such as “tense,” or “clause,” or even “part of speech” beyond the rudimentary level
taught in elementary school and usually detached from the process of writing or even speak-
ing. In other words, she will have the procedural knowledge of English—i.e. the capacity to
274 Olga Griswold and John Edlund
produce and understand the language—but not the declarative knowledge—i.e. not the con-
scious awareness of how the language works, nor the ability to discuss its linguistic structure.
A student for whom English is an additional language is going to be bringing a different
set of foundational linguistic skills to the composition classroom, and these skills may vary
tremendously based on the path the student took in acquiring English. While each particular
learner is, of course, a unique individual, with idiosyncratic psychological traits, language
aptitude, personality, motivational factors, social environment, etc. (Cook, 2002), non-native
English-speaking students can be roughly subdivided into three groups based on their history
of acquiring English:
•• Early bilinguals, either born in the U.S. or raised in the country from an early age, who
are products of English-medium K-12 education, but whose exposure to English may
not extend much beyond the school walls.
•• Late bilinguals who immigrate to the U.S. in middle or high school and complete their
secondary schooling through the medium of the English language and in the American
educational system. They usually, although not always, possess at least some formal
schooling in their native language prior to settling in the U.S.
•• International students who are educated at the secondary level in their native country
through the medium of their native language, and who learn English as an academic
subject, much as typical American student may learn French or German in high school.
What these students will know about English and what they can do with it will vary depend-
ing on where and how they learned the language, so let us briefly discuss the skill sets and
knowledge, both implicit and explicit, that we can expect from each group.
Early U.S.-Educated Bilinguals

We will start with the group of students for whom English can be a chronologically subse-
quent and, therefore, technically non-native language, but who are most likely to be enrolled
in mainstream (i.e. “monolingual”) FYC classes because these students do not fit the profile
of a typical ESL user. This group consists of students who arrive in the U.S. as young children
or who are born in the country to immigrant parents. Although they frequently grow up in
families and communities where a language other than English is spoken almost exclusively,
their immersion into English begins at a fairly young age—before the end of what linguists
refer to as the critical period.
The term critical period comes to linguistics from biology. With respect to language acqui-
sition, it was first advanced by Penfield and Roberts (1959) and developed by Lenneberg
(1967). The Critical Period Hypothesis states that the ability to acquire a language depends on
the neuroplasticity and lateralization of the brain. By puberty, the lateralization of the brain is
complete, the neuroplasticity diminishes, and, as a result, complete (i.e. “native”) mastery of a
language—whether first or additional—can no longer be achieved. Thus, some SLA scholars
argue (see, e.g., Bley-Vroman, 1990), individuals who begin learning an L2 before puberty
should be able to attain native or native-like proficiency in it. Those who begin at puberty
or later are bound to fall short of the native-like level and to have permanent gaps in their L2
competence and performance.
The concept of the critical period is highly disputed in the field of L2 studies mainly due to
its deficit perspective on L2 acquisition, i.e. treating L2 speakers as flawed and inadequate lan-
guage users compared to native speakers (Cook, 1991, 2002). Many SLA scholars have ques-
tioned the robustness of the Critical Period Hypothesis in terms of the period’s duration (e.g.
Muñoz & Singleton, 2011; Singleton, 2005, 2007), its effects (e.g. Birdsong, 2004; Birdsong
& Molis, 2001; DeKeyser, 2000; DeKeyser & Larsen-Hall, 2005), its general applicability to
different language subsystems (e.g. Long, 2007), and even its tenability (Marinonva-Todd
et al., 2000; Vanhove, 2013). Nevertheless, most linguists agree that the acquisition of an
additional language is subject to some maturational constraints, whether they are neurologi-
cal, psychological, or social (Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2003).
Because early bilinguals begin acquiring English as an L2 well within the bounds of the
critical period, before maturational constraints have an observable effect, they should, the-
oretically speaking, have the same levels of English proficiency as monolingual speakers.
However, even though such students often consider themselves to be native speakers of
English (Griswold, 2017; Holten, 2002; Huster, 2011; Janssen, 2005; Talmy, 2005, 2008;
Watson & Griswold, 2018) and may appear as such in conversation due to their native-like
interactional and phonological skills, research shows that their tacit competence in English
grammar, morphology, and lexis may differ in noticeable and quantifiable ways from that of
monolingual speakers (Eckstein & Ferris, 2018; Di Gennaro, 2009, 2013; Griswold, 2017;
Holten & Mikesell, 2007; Huster, 2011; Janssen, 2005; Mikesell, 2007; Reid, 1990). Reid
(2006) convincingly argues that this is the result of acquiring an additional language in natu-
ralistic yet limited settings and primarily through aural input received at school, but not at
home or in the community.
Indeed, since the ability to perceive sounds not relevant to one’s native language (L1)
begins to decline at about 10–12 months of age (Best, 1993; Werker & Tees, 2002), it is pos-
sible that even very early bilinguals acquiring English “by ear” do not quite hear the input in
the same way as infants exposed to the language from birth. They may, therefore, mishear less
salient inflections (Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001), extrapolate inaccurate internal rules
of English morphosyntax from these mishearings, overgeneralize these rules, and develop
the procedural knowledge of the language somewhat different from those of monolinguals
(Reid, 2006). While in speech, the misuses of these less salient inflections will not be nor-
mally noticed—after all, they are not easy to perceive acoustically—they will become visible
in writing. Yet, early bilinguals rarely receive formal instruction in the rules of English that
would help them gain declarative linguistic knowledge, notice the differences between their
own production and the target standard and, thus, develop higher levels of grammatical com-
petence (Benesch,2008; Gándara & Contreras, 2009; Menken, Kleyn, & Chae, 2012; Olson,
2010; Peña, 2014; Roberge, 2002; Soto, 2013).
Moreover, Roberge (2002, 2003) points out that the educational histories of language
minority students play a significant role in the process of their acquiring English as an addi-
tional language. Their schooling experiences are often riddled with interruptions, incon-
sistencies in pedagogical practices, relative inattention to academic literacy, and premature
mainstreaming or, on the contrary, persistent ESL tracking based on ethnicity rather than
on language skills (see also Allison, 2009; Doolan, 2017; Wiley & Lukes, 1996; and Valdés,
2001, in this regard). This tends to result in the learners’ gaining significantly higher oral
communicative proficiency than grammatical competence or reading and writing skills
(Crosby, 2009).
So, what can a college composition instructor expect from such students? First and fore-
most, a student who grows up in the U.S. speaking, for example, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic,
or Vietnamese3 at home but attending an English-medium school from about 5th grade on
or earlier4 is bound to fit into the cultural milieu of an American classroom very well. He is
going to speak fluently and possess the local native accent, although his dialect may contain
features of Chicano English, African American English, or another non-standard dialect due
to his exposure to these dialects in his informal interaction with peers (Roberge, 2003). He is
going to know the latest slang and be up on the latest cultural events and activities relevant to
his age group regardless of their native language. He may even self-identify as a native speaker
of English or as a native bilingual, and his proficiency in his heritage language may be limited,
at least from the academic literacy perspective.
Second, because this student has so far gone through the K-12 system in the U.S., he is
likely to have some familiarity with the text structure taught at American schools. He may
know such terms as topic sentence, thesis statement, audience, purpose, paragraph, comma splice,
fragment, and so on. He may have previously written five-paragraph essays typical of many
English classrooms from the elementary through high school level, although it is possible that
due to disrupted education or due to attending an underperforming school, he may not be a
very proficient writer or a fluent reader with a large vocabulary (Allison, 2009; Crosby, 2009).
It is very important to understand that from the formal schooling perspective, this student is
similar to any monolingual peer with a similar educational background.
However, his rhetorical experiences may also differ from those of monolingual students.
He has likely experienced non-American cultural rhetorical patterns and absorbed their
structure implicitly. We are speaking here about learning the style of narration, argumenta-
tion, and persuasion from family interactions and culture-specific conversational storytell-
ing, religious practices, or education, as well as rites, rituals, and celebrations of his heritage
culture. We will discuss such patterns in greater depth in the section of this chapter devoted
to intercultural rhetoric. For now, suffice it to say that they may be reflected in an early
bilingual’s academic writing.
Third, the command of English grammar may vary significantly among early bilinguals.
Some, especially, those with more extensive exposure to English in and outside of school,
stronger educational backgrounds, better established academic literacy in both their L1 and
L2, and possibly some formal instruction in the rules of English they receive in bilingual pro-
grams, may have native-like proficiency. For all practical purposes, these students are native
speakers of English and require the same type of pedagogical attention that is given to their
monolingual classmates both in linguistic and rhetorical development.
However, a large number of early bilinguals may unwittingly produce errors very similar
to the errors of traditional ESL learners (Griswold, 2017; Holten, 2002; Holten & Mikesell,
2007; Mikesell, 2007, Watson & Griswold, 2018). These include:
•• Misuse of verb forms

•• Inaccuracies in verb tense
•• Errors in predication and complementation
•• Omission of non-referential subjects
•• Problems with subject–verb agreement
•• Misuse of count and non-count nouns and articles that accompany them.
Yet because these structures, erroneous from the native-speaker perspective, are part of their
internal linguistic competence, many early bilinguals cannot perceive the difference between
grammatical and ungrammatical utterances. In other words, sentences that a monolingual
speaker will find odd-sounding (i.e. ungrammatical) may sound perfectly acceptable to an early
bilingual with non-native procedural knowledge of the language. Nor do such early bilinguals
possess the metalanguage commonly taught in traditional ESL classrooms, so they cannot rely
on explicit grammatical rules to detect and correct their own errors (Foin & Lange, 2007).
The following paragraph comes from the data collected for a recent study on verb control
in essays of developmental college-level writers (Griswold, 2017)5. The passage was written
by a student who attended American schools from preschool on. She self-identified as a native
speaker of both English and Spanish. She had never participated in a Bilingual Education
program or was enrolled in an English Language Development (ELD) class, and she claimed
English as her strongest academic language:
The most memorable event in my life was going to Wal [sic] Disney and Universal
Studios at Orlando, Florida. I would never forget the amazing rides and food. In fact, I
was seventeen years old and I went during winter break in my junior year of high school.
I had a blast with my brother and sister. Never did I thought I would be going to the
happiest place on earth. I still remember the two theme parks that was my favorite
which were Epcot and Harry Potter world. Epcot was a fun and adventures park
because it had different kinds of countries to visit. My favorite was Germany, France,
Mexico, and Japan. It was great to look at the cultural events such as trying out their food
and looking at the environment. The second place I did like was going to Harry Potter
Land which made me realized how lucky I am to go to Universal Studios with my
family. This theme park was a great experience with thrilling roller coasters and tasteful
food. I even got try “butter beer” and “pumpkin juice” which I thought butter beer
was disgusting but I liked pumpkin juice better. This place I would never forget the
detail of the shops. Such as the candy store, and the wands shop. In the end, I had a
great journey and memories with my family from visiting a amazing place ever and I
would not mind coming back again.
As evident from the passage, in addition to the typical problems in punctuation, spell-
ing, and somewhat inaccurate word choice that many composition instructors see in the
writing of their monolingual students as well, this learner also exhibits difficulties with verb
tense, subject–verb agreement, word forms, comparatives, and the overall sentence structure.
However, many errors here become evident primarily in writing. If delivered orally, espe-
cially in the locally spoken dialect of English, the passage might seem fluent and even accu-
rate, but merely conversational rather than academic. Most of the errors result from writing
the words as they are heard, with non-salient phonological features either omitted (such as
the “t” in “Walt Disney,” an additional syllable in the word “adventurous” that may be elided
in colloquial speech, resulting in “adventures,” or the infinitival particle “to” between “got”
and “try”) or unnecessarily tacked on (such as double-marking of past tense in “never did I
thought” or inflecting the infinitive for past tense after a causal verb in “made me realized”).
Rhetorically speaking, the paragraph is organized according to the American academic
writing conventions, with a topic sentence, a reasonable amount of detail, mostly appropriate
cohesive devices, and a relevant concluding sentence. The language also includes highly cultur-
ally idiomatic expressions such as “I had a blast” and “the happiest place on earth.” This passage
is rather representative of the writing of early U.S.-educated bilinguals in FYC classrooms.
Early U.S. bilinguals rarely self-identify as non-native speakers of English. Therefore, they
are unlikely to even consider enrolling in classes designed for non-native speakers, especially
those overtly labeled as ESL. If they are administratively placed into such classes, early bilin-
guals will resist the placement vigorously. Indeed, being directed to take an ESL class clashes
with their sense of identity and is often damaging from both social and pedagogical perspec-
tives (Chiang & Schmida, 1999). Classes explicitly designed for non-native speakers often rely
on pedagogy that assumes prior explicit knowledge of grammatical rules that these students
do not usually possess. Their linguistic and educational needs, therefore, must be met in the
mainstream composition classes—a task accomplishable with an instructor willing to incor-
porate language development into the teaching of writing.
Late U.S.-Educated Bilinguals

The next group we’ll discuss is that of bilingual students who enter the U.S. educational sys-
tem post-critical period, approximately at the age of 12 years or older. Research demonstrates
that learners in this age bracket tend not to achieve native-like command of L2 grammar
(Birdsong, 1992; Coppieters, 1987; Newport & Johnson, 1989; Patkowski, 1980) or pro-
nunciation (Flege, 1987; Oyama, 1976). In other words, they are more likely—although
certainly not fated (see, for example, Birdsong, 2001; 2006; Bongaertes, 1999; Ioup et al.,
1994; etc.)—to be affected by maturational constraints on the ultimate L2 achievement.
Whether these constraints are neurological (Weber-Fox & Neville, 1992, 1996; Wuillemin
& Richardson, 1994) or social and psychological (Gardner, Tremblay, & Masgoret, 1997;
McIntyre & Charos, 1996; Riney & Flege, 1998), students beginning their U.S. education
and the acquisition of English after the age of 12 are more apt to enter the FYC classroom
with noticeable non-native features in their speech and writing.
Additionally, Collier (1987; 1989) cogently demonstrates on a basis of a 10-year-long
study of over 2,000 students that learners in this demographic require 5 to 7 years to gain the
level of academic proficiency in English comparable to their monolingual peers. This means
that even those students who are first immersed into the English-medium educational envi-
ronment as early as in 6th grade are going to possess still developing interlanguage6 systems
by the time they enter college.
In many ways, a late U.S.-educated bilingual student is similar to her early bilingual coun-
terpart. In the years she has spent at an American middle and high school, she has achieved
high levels of acculturation and oral proficiency. She will speak English fluently, albeit pos-
sibly with a distinguishable non-native accent; yet she will be fully intelligible and will easily
understand what others say to her and around her. She will be well informed about issues
relevant to her peer group and participate in the same activities as her monolingual or early-
bilingual classmates. But she will probably not self-identify as a native speaker of English, and
she will continue to rely on her L1 in both social and academic environments to a consider-
able degree (Frodesen, 2009). It will not be unusual, for example, to see her annotating an
assigned reading in her L1 or translating unfamiliar English words into her L1.
In her rhetorical control, she is also going to be rather similar to other U.S.-educated
students. She will be familiar with the basics of the text structure and the key terminology
pertaining to academic writing that she has learned in her Language Arts classes. At the same
time, since she probably first learned to read, write, and present academic information in a
language other than English and in the cultural environment of her home country, the rhe-
torical patterns of her native culture will influence her writing to a greater degree (Connor,
1996; Kaplan, 1966). Specifically, if she first learned what it means to be a good writer in
Japanese, Cantonese, Spanish, Arabic, or Russian, for example, these skills will transfer into
her American academic writing, even though they may be different from the American rhe-
torical traditions and will not necessarily lead to what is considered “good writing” in English.
In terms of her command of English grammar and morphology, however, this student
is likely to be quite different from early bilinguals. First of all, being a late learner, she will
produce a larger number of errors in both linguistic features that can be acquired from input
over a considerable period of time (such as article or preposition use) and features that can
be explicitly learned in the classroom (such as verb tense formation and use, subject–verb
agreement, or word order). Her command of English is also likely to display a greater level
of both conceptual (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008; Odlin, 2005) and linguistic transfer from her L1
(Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008; Marian & Kaushanskaya, 2007; Wode, 1977). The following types
of errors are to be expected (the list is not exhaustive):
•• Incorrect use of verb tenses (e.g. the ubiquitous use of progressive participles or infini-
tives regardless of the contextually required tense and aspect inflection)
•• Omission of articles or other determiners
•• Misuse of different parts of speech (e.g. adjectives instead of nouns and vice versa)
•• Wrong word order
•• Pluralization of non-count and collective nouns
•• Pronominal reference
•• Complementation and predication
•• Passivization of intransitive verbs (e.g. “this was happened to me . . .”)
•• Misuses of prepositions
•• Non-idiomatic expressions (i.e. grammatically accurate, but atypical of the local dialect
of English)
Second, depending on her country of origin and the level of prior formal schooling, she
may have had ESL grammar-based classes before migrating to the U.S. (Frodesen, 2009).
Moreover, as a late arrival, she was probably classified as an English Language Learner (ELL)
and placed in ELD classes in the U.S. for at least one academic year or longer. These two edu-
cational experiences have possibly provided her with some metalanguage that can help her
identify and correct her grammatical errors if attention is drawn to them. Yet due to being a
post-critical period learner and having had limited explicit ESL instruction, she will probably
produce a larger number of typical ESL errors than an early bilingual.
Aware of her non-nativeness, this student may be more accepting of the “ESL” label than
an early bilingual, although she is still unlikely to be thrilled about it due to the stigma asso-
ciated with it (Marshall, 2009; Talmy, 2009; Vollmer, 2000). She is tired of being classified
“ELL/ELD” and may resist enrollment in classes designed for ESL learners even when they
are available (Ortheimer-Hooper, 2008). Therefore, it is especially important for her compo-
sition instructor to be able to provide the linguistic support that she needs without impinging
on her sense of identity and language ownership.
The following passage is quite characteristic of U.S.-educated late bilinguals. It was written
by a student who self-identified as a native speaker of Korean and a Korean-dominant writer.
She entered the U.S. educational system in 8th grade, was classified as an ELD student for 1
year and then transitioned to the “mainstream.” She considered herself to be fluent in English
and highly acculturated both to the society in general and to the schooling traditions in the
country, yet she noted that she she still struggled with English vocabulary.
The most memorable event in my life happened when I was 10 years old. I was at school
playing with my friends. And suddenly I felt stomachache. It was so hurt that I couldn’t
even cry. I went to nurse’s office and tryed to contact with my parents. In there I
fainted. When I woke up I was at a hospital waiting to take surgery. All of my families
were there holding my hands and prayed for me. Later doctors coming and took me to
surgery room. Since I was little I thought I would never see my family so I said Good
bye to family and it was really great that I could be a member of this family. Suddenly
all the nurses, doctors, and my parents started laugh. After surgery I woke up from
sleeping and I was so thankful that I could live with my family again. Even though it
was really simple and easy surgery this memory is clearly on my mind. This event is
so memorable because every time I remember this event, I always thank to God that
I can live and giving me the most precious people as my family.
Like the writing from an early bilingual quoted above, this passage demonstrates a fairly firm
control of the narrative rhetorical organization expected in an American classroom. It has a
topic sentence, some narrative detail, even if some of it is still left to the reader’s inference,
and a fitting concluding sentence. At the same time, the paragraph also displays difficulties
with verb forms, passive voice, the (non)-use of articles with count nouns, misuse of preposi-
tions, problems with pronominal reference and comparative structures, and non-idiomatic
language use. Unlike the errors of an early bilingual student, most of these errors cannot be
attributed to slight deviations from monolingual intuitions due to mishearing a non-salient
inflection here and there. Rather, they reflect a still developing interlanguage system in which
the internal rules of linguistic structure have not yet approached those of General American
English. If delivered orally, this passage is unlikely to sound merely colloquial to an average
English speaker. The morphological, syntactic, and lexical errors in it resemble those of a
traditional ESL learner more than those of an early bilingual.
International Students
The last group of non-native speakers of English we are going to discuss is that of inter-
national students. These students enter the U.S. educational system at the college or post-
graduate level. They typically possess high levels of formal education and literacy in L1,
and they have studied English for many years as a school subject (Reid, 2006). Unlike most
U.S.-educated bilinguals, then, these students will have received formal instruction in English
vocabulary, grammar and morphology. They usually possess extensive declarative knowledge
of grammatical and morphological rules and substantial metalanguage to talk about them
(Reid, 2006).
Their procedural knowledge of the language, however, i.e. the ability to apply the rules
without conscious thought in the process of oral and written communication, will vary
widely. Despite the fact that these students typically begin the study of English some time
in elementary school and, therefore, within the bounds of the critical period, their ultimate
proficiency depends to a great degree on the amount of input and practice they receive using
English. The latter is contingent on their access to competent teachers, learning materials,
and the communicative use of the language. Unlike their U.S.-educated peers, who spend
multiple hours per day immersed in English-medium communication at school and outside
of it, international students may be exposed to the use of English for only five or six hours per
week, and even that is not always in a communicative environment.
Moreover, their motivation to acquire English will vary tremendously based on individual
goals, abilities, and opportunities to learn, as well as on cultural perceptions of what it means
to know a foreign language well. In many cultures, the ability to speak the language fluently
is valued, and it will drive the students to try and gain communicative proficiency. In others,
the ability to achieve high scores on grammar tests will be valued more, thus leading the stu-
dents to focus on the isolated study of grammatical rules. Although communicative language
instruction with adequate focus on form is gradually gaining footing across the world, it is
still fairly common for international students to have learned English in classrooms where
grammar was taught in isolation from actually speaking or writing in order to communicate
meaning, and vocabulary learning largely consisted of memorizing word lists with transla-
tions. A typical international student, therefore, may be able define a linguistic concept or to
explain a rule of English grammar, but will still have difficulties in applying the rule when
writing or speaking.
From the point of view of academic writing, international students are most likely to be
influenced by the rhetorical patterns of their native cultures. After all, they have spent years
and years learning how to write well in their L1s. But while writing well in their native
language and scholarly environment is not going to be absolutely alien in the American
educational setting (Connor, 2018; Matsuda, 2006; Kilpatrick, 1997), it can be sufficiently
different to result in an essay perceived by an average American reader as possibly unfocused,
repetitive, overly flowery, circuitous, lacking in crucial details, etc.
So, what kinds of knowledge and skills does an international student bring to an FYC
classroom? Unlike his U.S.-educated bilingual counterparts, he probably comes from a
rather privileged socioeconomic background, which is what allows him to attend a foreign
university at a significant financial cost. He is also probably well educated at the secondary
level in his native country and through the medium of his L1. To be admitted to a U.S. uni-
versity, he not only had to demonstrate high levels of academic achievement at the secondary
level, but also to take a test of English proficiency—usually either TOEFL (Test of English as
a Foreign Language) or IELTS (International English Language Testing System)—and earn a
score demonstrating, at the minimum, an intermediate level of English competence. In other
words, he is a reasonably skilled, although not necessarily fluent or grammatically accurate,
user of English. He can understand rather complex language most of the time, especially if the
topic or the subject is familiar, and the material is presented in writing. But he still tends to
produce significant errors and inaccuracies in speech and writing, and he may have difficulties
understanding the spoken language around him, both in class and in informal settings.
Because he learned English as a school subject from academic, or literary, or non-authentic
texts7, his vocabulary may be both limited and overly formal at the same time. He will tend to
rely on his L1 quite a lot, frequently first thinking about the topic or assignment in his L1 and
then translating the thoughts or even the physical text initially written in L1 into L2 (El-daly,
2012). He will use a translation dictionary when he lacks vocabulary in English to express his
complex ideas and, as a result may use words that do not necessarily fit the context8.
Additionally, our international student may not possess a strong sense of register. Register,
in linguistics, refers to the variation in the formality of style, grammar, and vocabulary depend-
ing on the social context and purpose. Academic papers, for example, require a more formal
register than a blog post or a tweet, and the same can be said about the difference between
a college lecture and a chat with a friend. The international student is likely to have expe-
rienced English use only in formal contexts in his home country, and when, upon arrival at
a U.S. university, he begins acquiring new vocabulary from interaction with other students,
he may not be able to quickly learn the difference between what counts as informal usage
or even slang, and what counts as appropriate for the academic genre. Terenin (2015), for
example, cites an advanced ESL student writing a formal academic paper and using the term
“kicked the bucket” to refer to the death of a literary character. In this way, an international
student is going to differ significantly from resident bilinguals.
The following passage is a representative sample of writing by an international student. It
was produced by a native speaker of Arabic who formally studied EFL in his home country
beginning in first grade and through high school. He noted, however, that his primary and
secondary teachers focused on speaking and listening skills and devoted little attention to aca-
demic writing. He first began learning to write more than a sentence or a word list in English
while studying at an IEP (Intensive English Program) in the U.S., where he had spent a year
before entering the university as a matriculated student.
Family has a huge part in our life and how we live it. My family members are so close to
each other and we stand by them in the good times and the worst. My worst feir is to
be apart from my family, so when I decided to study abroad it was so hard. I will neve
forget the day that I left my family at the airport.
I was 18 years old when I came to USA for studying. It was so hard to pack every
thing that belong to me, my room became empty of my thing. I felt so sad to see
my room because it felt like I was not their at all.
The most devastating thing is to say goodbye to my friend and family. My heart was
so broken for the though that I will not be living with them and sharing everything.
In the airport my family start crying so hard that we could not stop because it is more
than just getting in the plane.
I will never forget this day because it had change my hole life. also it the day
which I left my family being so sad over me.
In terms of grammatical control, this essay is similar to that of a late U.S. bilingual quoted
above. It has similar errors in spelling, verb tense, pronominal reference, preposition use, and
the inflection of nouns and verbs. Rhetorically, this essay is not particularly different from
those written by U.S. educated bilinguals and quoted above, at least on the surface. It contains
a premise (i.e. the importance of family) supported throughout the essay (i.e. the emotional
impact of separating from one’s family) and a conclusion reiterating the premise. Yet, it does
display slight influences from Arabic rhetorical traditions, in particular, the frequent repetition
of the key words (e.g. family) and concepts (e.g. sadness of separation) in order to establish
parallelism important for the presentation of the argument in Arabic writing (Van De Wege,
2013). Moreover, it focuses on the emotional impact of the events rather than on the narra-
tion called for in the prompt. Even the chronology—i.e. packing the belongings, going to the
airport, getting on the plane—is couched in emotional terms. The student, therefore, appears
to talk “around the topic” rather than to narrate the events. This feature has been noted as
typical of Arabic writers in English (Abu Rass, 2015).
A composition instructor working with international students in her classroom must be,
therefore, prepared to recognize the potential inclusion of non-Western or non-American
rhetorical patterns in academic writing in English and to help the students expand their rhe-
torical repertoires by acquiring the patterns they are not yet fully familiar with, i.e. the pat-
terns expected of them in the American tertiary educational system.
Implications for the Classroom

The process of acquiring a second language is a long, multi-year one. It is complex, multifac-
eted, and influenced by numerous factors. Among the latter are the age at which the learner
begins learning an L2; the amount of natural input the learner receives in the language; the
quality of this input; the duration of language exposure; the availability of formal instruc-
tion that includes feedback on grammar, lexis, and pronunciation; the learner’s individual
characteristics, such as motivation, willingness to communicate, and language aptitude; the
social circumstances of learning; and many, many others. Even the learner’s identity plays a
significant role in what each learner will know about the language and what she can do with
it when she first sets foot into a composition classroom. Composition instructors, therefore,
cannot expect that bilingual students will come to their classrooms with perfect native-like
control of all linguistic and rhetorical aspects of English. Nor can they realistically aspire for
the students to leave their classrooms with such control at the end of the semester.
They can, however, expect their non-native speaking students to be multicompetent lan-
guage users (Cook, 1991, 2002), who can successfully perform various real-life tasks in mul-
tiple languages. Writing well in English is one of these tasks, and composition instructors can
help all their students, regardless of their native language, develop further competency in it.
To do so well, it is important to know the linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds
of the students. Taking different paths to the acquisition of English as an additional language
will mean that the students will bring different levels of both tacit linguistic competence and
explicit linguistic knowledge to the classroom.
Given the fact that most multilingual students with observable difficulties in language
control will not be able to rely on their linguistic intuitions with any degree of accuracy
(Thonus, 2003), some explicit grammar instruction is necessary in composition classrooms.
It is vital, however, that such instruction not be treated as a separate subject but rather be
tied to learning how to express oneself clearly and cogently in the written medium. Nor can
grammar instruction be limited to dealing with errors on the sentential level since grammati-
cal choices are affected to a very significant degree by the surrounding discourse and genre
(Celce-Murcia, 2016; Ferris, 2016) and the author’s stance (Hyland, 2016). We will propose
some of the strategies in incorporating language development—i.e. grammar—into the writ-
ing instruction at the end of this chapter.
And if grammar is to be included in the teaching of writing, the instructor needs to know
it from the pedagogical and SLA perspectives. It is not sufficient to be a native speaker of
English and a good writer. Instructors working with non-native writers need to have a strong
professional grasp of grammatical terminology and linguistic rules since they will have to rely
on both the rules and the terminology to explain the intricacies of usage (e.g. Why can we
say, “This made me realize how lucky I was,” but not “*This made me realized how lucky I
was”?) and the rhetorical impact of different grammatical choices (e.g. What is the difference
between “I was 18 years old when I came to the U.S. to study” and “When I was 18 years
old, I came to the U.S. to study”? Which works better in a particular text and why? Why
is punctuation different in these sentences, even though their semantic content is essentially
the same?).
Moreover, composition instructors need to teach necessary and sufficient terminology to
their students so that the latter can also use it as a tool for thinking and talking about language.
As mentioned briefly above, U.S.-educated bilingual (and monolingual) students generally
have only a rudimentary understanding of grammatical concepts and are often unable to
apply them to analyzing their own language use. For example, they frequently cannot reliably
find a clausal subject expressed by anything other than a simple noun phrase, or identify a
verb tense, or explain where to put a comma, etc. Yet, it is virtually impossible to efficiently
address such grammatical problems as dangling modifiers, unmotivated verb tense shift, vague
pronominal references, intricate cases of subject–verb agreement, or the punctuation of com-
plex and compound sentences without understanding what a clause, subject, predicate, or tense
is. Fortunately, when both multilingual and monolingual students learn the metalanguage
for the discussion of language, they gain, essentially, an implement that allows them to be
more conscious and deliberate in making linguistic choices for the clarity and eloquence of
the written expression. Therefore, explicit teaching of certain grammatical concepts is ben-
eficial in any composition class. Also fortunately, there is a wealth of resources available to
composition instructors without formal background in pedagogical grammar if they wish to
expand their expertise (e.g. Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2016; Leech & Svartvik, 2002;
Cowan, 2008; Parrott, 2010, to name just a few of the most comprehensive ones).
Having emphasized the importance of composition instructors having a firm grasp on
pedagogical grammar, we also wish to emphasize that teaching grammar must be directly
connected to teaching the students to express themselves with clarity and precision. The goal
of a composition instructor in introducing grammatical concepts in her class is to raise the
students’ consciousness of their linguistic choices and the impact of these choices on a piece
of writing. Budding writers need to become aware not only of the formation of grammatical
structures, especially the ones they are struggling with, but also of the semantic and rhetorical
consequences of choosing one structure over another.
Ellis (2016) discusses three senses of consciousness as applied to language teaching and
learning. First of all, consciousness is an acquisitional process in and of itself. For a structure
to be acquired, the learner needs to notice its form, meaning, and use in discourse (Schmidt,
1990). As you may recall, Reid (2006) attributes certain gaps in tacit grammatical competence
among early U.S.-educated bilinguals to the fact that they do not notice the relevant forms
in spoken discourse due to their acoustic non-salience. Promoting the students’ awareness of
certain structures by drawing overt attention to their formation and use, composition instruc-
tors can also promote acquisition of the said structures without targeted grammar lessons.
Consciousness is also a process of understanding, in the cognitive sense (Anderson &
Krathwohl, 2001). Drawing attention to particularly complex or discursively intricate
structures may not be sufficient if students merely notice them but do not gain an explicit
appreciation of how the structure is formed or how it functions in a text (Ellis, 2016). A
composition instructor may need to be prepared, for example, to explain certain grammatical
rules in a brief, clear, and concise manner followed by the targeted practice in the use of the
focal structure in order for the students to gain the relevant understanding.
A good example of where such an explanation may be called for is the formation and
punctuation of relative clauses. The structure is ubiquitous in both literary and scientific writ-
ing. Yet it is subtle, and students often struggle with different aspects of it, from the use of
the proper relative pronoun (which, who, that, or none at all?), to the appropriate placement
with respect to the noun phrase modified, to the decision of whether a comma is required or
not9. An instructor well versed in the grammar of relative clauses will be able to provide the
students with straightforward rules that the students can then use consciously and accurately
to incorporate relative clauses in their writing.
Finally, once students are cognizant of particular structures both from the linguistic and
rhetorical point of view, they can actively edit their own writing for grammatical accuracy.
Thus, raising the students’ awareness of linguistic structures increases their ability to approach
the language in their essays with mindfulness and deliberation. Moreover, it eliminates the
instructor’s need to correct the errors. If a student produces errors in the structures previ-
ously addressed in class, the instructor can merely direct the student to the rules and editing
guides already covered so that student can take responsibility for her own corrections. Foin
and Lange (2007) for example, found that U.S.-educated bilingual students who were taught
grammatical terminology and rules and whose linguistic errors in essays were then marked
with a familiar grammatical code were able to correct up to 89% of the marked errors on
their own when they revised the essays. The additional benefit of mindful self-editing is that
it provides opportunities for the rehearsal of the structure and its storage in the long-term
memory, thus expanding the students’ linguistic repertoire and aiding their language develop-
ment (Swain, 1995).
Both recent research and practice suggest that a balance between rhetoric and language
development is necessary in classrooms with a significant number of students for whom English
is an additional language (Ferris, 2009; Goen et al., 2002; Holten, 2002, 2007; Singhal, 2004,
Thonus, 2003). In particular, a discursive approach to grammar instruction, where grammar
is taught as a tool that writers can use to make their texts accessible, persuasive, and credible
to their audiences holds the most promise for both students and instructors (Holten, 2007).

1 Think about your own experiences learning a foreign language, including grammar
study, opportunities for comprehensible input and productive practice, attitudes
toward the new language and its speakers, and communicative success. How well
does your path towards L2 acquisition account for your own experiences and the
level of proficiency in L2?
2 Develop a survey for eliciting your students’ linguistic and educational back-
grounds, including their path towards acquiring English. Administer the survey to
your writing class. Write a paper discussing the results and their implications for
teaching writing.
3 Take a popular writing handbook that includes information for ESL writers and
look up one of the rules, for example, the rule for using perfect tenses, or the rule
for articles, and the rule for using commas in complex sentences. Write a short blog
or a reflective journal entry about how you may incorporate the teaching of this
rule in a composition lesson. Focus on the relevance of the rules to the students’
ability to produce a coherent and meaningful text. Is the explanation of the rule in
the handbook useful to the students? Will you teach the rule preemptively (i.e. in
anticipation of student difficulties) or responsively (i.e. when you see errors result-
ing from the mis- or non-application of the rule)? How will you make the students
aware of how the rule applies in written discourse? What kind of practice would
you give the students for the application and reinforcement of the rule?
Intercultural Rhetoric
Our students’ cultural backgrounds influence everything from conceptions of audience to
organizational patterns they apply to a written text, to the attitudes towards knowledge, to
their view of what constitutes a well-written sentence (Connor, 1996; 2018; Silva et al.,
1997). What the students have learned about being a good writer or orator in their primary
culture and language will find a reflection in their English-medium writing. The field of inter-
cultural rhetoric, previously known as contrastive rhetoric, allows us to examine the influence
of native language, culture, and education on the production of texts in L2 (Connor, 2018)
The field was essentially invented by Robert Kaplan in a 1966 article titled “Cultural
Thought Patterns in Intercultural Education.” He later expanded the concept in a 1972
book titled The Anatomy of Rhetoric: Prolegomena to a Functional Theory of Rhetoric: Essays for
Teachers. In both works, Kaplan analyzes numerous examples of non-native students’ writing
in English, and represents his findings as a series of five simple diagrams. These diagrams are
not reproduced here because although these “squiggles” have provoked both interest and
controversy, we have found that once people see them they tend to remember the squiggles
and forget the caveats. It is enough to say that “Semitic” writing is represented by a series of
parallel lines with dotted connections, “Oriental” by a spiral, “Romance” by a crooked single
line, and “Slavic” by a similar crooked, but dotted, line. The English pattern is represented
as a single, direct, and vertical line. The squiggles have been criticized as simplistic, both in
the patterns they represent and in breadth of their categories. Even Kaplan, responding to this
criticism, acknowledged, “It is probably true that, in the first blush of discovery, I overstated
both the difference and my case” (Connor & Kaplan, 1987, p. 9).
Intercultural rhetoric deals with organizational patterns, stylistic preferences (especially
in terms of subordination and coordination), and other conventional aspects of specific
genres, viewed across cultures. In general, this research contrasts American English rhe-
torical patterns with those of a second culture. This research is complex and difficult to
do, because to be credible the researcher must be fluent in both languages and cultures,
or have access to bilingual, bicultural informants, and any insights gained by research into
the patterns of one culture are unlikely to be applicable to another. In most cases, it would
be unreasonable to expect composition teachers to be familiar with the rhetorical patterns
of every culture they might deal with. Why then, is intercultural rhetoric important to
composition teachers?
Intercultural rhetoric can help explain the following situation, described by a Chinese-
speaking student in her Writing Proficiency Exam:
My friend and I read an article. Although my English-speaking friend thought it was very good con-
vincing article, I, on the other hand, did not agree with him. What I thought was that it was very
pushing one way argument. . . . Most of native-speaker agreed with him. Some foreigner agreed
with him, some agreed with me . . . all Asian who have strong Asian background agreed with me.
This writer has conducted her own survey research on an important issue in intercultural
rhetoric and found American patterns to be one-sided and narrow from an Asian point of
view. Many non-native speakers would agree with her.
Kaplan says in his original article, “One should not judge the construction of a composi-
tion merely by the standards of a rhetoric which one takes for granted” (1966, p. 34). In
other words, an essay that appears to be illogical or incoherent by American standards may
be well crafted by the standards of another culture. This is not to say that the non-American
pattern should simply be accepted as a cultural difference, but it is also clear that calling the
paper “illogical” or “incoherent” probably won’t help the student improve. A student is not
a blank slate or an empty vessel, and a writing teacher must be prepared to help integrate
new learning with what has been learned before. In the case of a student for whom English
is an additional language, what has been learned previously may be very different from what
American teachers expect.
Kaplan (2001) notes that “genres are nothing more nor less than conventional solutions
to recurring communication problems” (p. xi). The problem for students and teachers arises
when two cultures have conflicting solutions. In discussing the pedagogical issues raised by
intercultural rhetoric, this chapter will focus first on Japanese patterns. Again, the most impor-
tant concept for the composition teacher is the idea that there are different patterns, and that
they may be influencing the writing of your students.
An Example from Japanese Composition

Shinshu Kokugo Soran (New Japanese Conspectus), a textbook or reference book commonly
used in Japanese secondary education, contains an article titled “How to Construct a
Sentence/Composition.” Ema et al. (1981) write, “There are two main formats in the
design of Japanese compositions: (1) a three-step construction called jo ha kyu (literally
opening—breaking—rushing) and (2) a four-step construction ki-shô-ten-ketsu (introduction—
development—turn—conclusion)” (pp. 294–295). The author continues:
The term jo ha kyu was originally used to name the three movements of music accom-
panying traditional Japanese Court dances, bugaku. Later, this idea was adapted for the
method of dramatizing nô drama (creating dynamic movement, expression, or emphasis).
Applied to the design of a written composition, it is considered as follows:
<jo> Beginning. An introductory part or opening section.
<ha> The portion which makes the center of a composition. A development part on
a main subject.
<kyu> Ending of a composition. The conclusion. (Ema, 1981, p. 294–295, [translated
by Miri Park from the Japanese original]).
On the surface, this sounds similar to the introduction—body—conclusion pattern that

Americans are taught. However, the character that is here represented by jo can also be
translated as “overture,” and this section is seen as establishing a mood or a context for the
rest of the communication. It would be unlikely for this section to contain a thesis statement.
For example, once, one of the authors of this article, John Edlund, was helping a Japanese
professor draft a letter to a distinguished British colleague who was receiving an award, but
who was gravely ill. In Japan, it is conventional to begin a business letter with a reference to
the weather, using specific words appropriate to the season. This is felt to establish a personal
connection before the business at hand is broached. To Edlund’s American sensibility, the
information about the weather seemed to be trivial and unimportant, especially in this serious
context. He suggested that Japanese professor leave it out, and get to the point more directly.
Ultimately he did, but he remained uncomfortable about it.
Examining jo ha kyu also reveals differences in reader/writer roles that affect the extent
to which topics are expected to be developed or explained. The character ha literally means
“breaking” as in “daybreak” or even in the sense of breaking something open, such as a nut. It
signifies new development and the introduction of new themes. However, in Japanese texts,
topics may be “opened” without real development, in a mode that reminds the English reader
of an encyclopedia, or even a laundry list, requiring more involvement from the reader than
is expected from texts written in English and highlighting differences in the Japanese sense of
the roles of writer and reader. John Hinds, a scholar of Japanese discourse linguistics, proposed
a typology of language based on relative reader-/writer-responsibility (1988). Hinds classifies
Japanese as a reader-responsible language, English as writer-responsible, and Mandarin as a
language in transition from reader-responsibility to writer-responsibility (Hinds, as cited in
Kaplan, 1988). This means that in Japanese the reader is expected to read between the lines,
to supply missing connections and information, and in general to tolerate far more ambiguity
than an American reader would be comfortable with. Thus, Kaplan argues, “the fact that a
student understands audience in one language does not mean the student understands audi-
ence in any other language system” (1988, p. 296).
Kyu carries the sense of “rushing” as water rushes into a drain. It means “processing
with force.” In this section, the writer gets to the point, and brings all the themes and
topics together.
Shinshu Kokugo Soran notes that the alternative four-part construction ki-shô-ten-ketsu is
adapted from the poetic form of a Chinese quatrain, zekku:
<ki> Beginning. A problem is shown.

<shô> In response to ki, it describes further detail.
<ten> A example which contrasts or is opposed to the idea presented in the former
two steps is given to enhance the development of the subject.
<ketsu> Integrating the contents discussed in ten section, the whole comes to a con-
clusion with one theme. (Ema, 1981, p. 295, [trans. Miri Park]).
Takemata (1976) defines the ten section in a slightly different way: “At the point where
this development is finished, turn the idea to a subtheme where there is a connection, but
not a directly connected association [to the major theme]” (as cited in Hinds, 1983, p. 80).
Takemata also points out that a Japanese ketsu “need not be decisive [danteiteki]. All it needs
to do is to indicate a doubt or ask a question” (Hinds, 1976, p. 26–27).
The ki-shô-ten-ketsu pattern can be seen as roughly analogous to the five-paragraph essay
formula in English, and is often used for short essays and academic paper writing. Sometimes,
it has even directly compared to the American five-paragraph essay. However, the ten and
ketsu sections are especially problematic for English readers. Hinds points out that:
In ten, an abrupt shift takes place in which information only indirectly relevant to the
major point is brought up with minimal syntactic marking. This obviously causes prob-
lems for English readers who do not expect “digressions” and “unrelated information”
to come up suddenly. . . . In ketsu, the major difficulty involves the Japanese definition
of this term and the difference between that and the English definition of “conclusion.”
(1982, p. 80)
Intermediate Japanese ESL students who are new to writing in English tend to produce four-
paragraph essays in which the third paragraph seems to be entirely off-topic. Japanese readers
who know this pattern expect the third section to make some kind of turn away from the
topic; American readers are confused; and American instructors are likely to ask, “How does
this relate to your topic?” or “What’s your point?”
For example, a Japanese graduate student recently came to see John Edlund because he
was having trouble passing the university’s writing proficiency test. He said that the writing
center tutors told him that his problem was not grammatical errors, but, rather, that he kept
going off the topic. We talked about this ki-shô-ten-ketsu pattern, and Edlund explained that
American readers have trouble following the ten section. He asked if the student could simply
leave that section out. The student understood what Edlund was saying, but he did not seem
to think he could leave one section out. However, reflecting on this problem in this way may
lead to adoption of more American patterns.
Japanese rhetorical patterns are influenced by earlier Chinese patterns. Kaplan found that
some Korean and Chinese writing is marked by what may be called an “approach by indirec-
tion.” In this kind of writing, the development of the paragraph may be said to be turning in
circles around the subject, showing it from a variety of tangential views, but never looking at
the subject directly. Things are developed in terms of what they are not, rather than in terms
of what they are (Kaplan, 1966).
Kaplan also found that Chinese students writing in English were influenced by the Chinese
eight-legged essay, the required form for the civil service exam from the middle of the 15th
century to the early 20th. Cai (1993) says that the eight-legged essay is still a powerful organ-
izing principle for many Chinese students and that a newer, four-part model, qi-cheng-jun-he,
is commonly used to organize paragraphs. Qi prepares the reader for the topic, cheng intro-
duces and develops the topic, jun turns to a seemingly unrelated subject, and he sums up the
paragraph. In Cai’s example, the qi section states that we learn about ourselves from songs
and stories, the cheng section notes that we “realize” or understand ourselves and mutually
understand people through books and the jun section names places where we learn and use
literacy, and also interact with others, but does not directly mention literacy or books. The
he section, what an English reader might call the “topic sentence,” appears at the end of
the paragraph: “Hence, literacy is not an ornament, but a necessity” (Cai, 1993, as cited in
Connor, 1996, p. 39).
Hinds (1990) demonstrates that writing in Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and Korean follows an
organizational pattern he calls “quasi-inductive.” Generally, writing in English is deductive,
with the thesis at the beginning. If the thesis is not at the beginning, readers expect an inductive
pattern, with the thesis at the end. Instead, in this pattern, the thesis is implied or buried in the
passage, involving what Hinds calls “a delayed introduction of purpose.” Hinds (1990) says:
Seen in this light, we must recognize that the traditional distinction that English-speaking
readers make between deductive and inductive writing styles is inappropriate to the writ-
ing of some non-native authors. We may more appropriately characterize this writing
as quasi-inductive, recognizing that this technique has as its purpose the task of getting
readers to think for themselves, to consider the observations made, and to draw their own
conclusions. The task of the writer, then, is not necessarily to convince, although it is
clear that such authors have their own opinions. Rather, the task is to stimulate the reader
into contemplating an issue or issues that might not have been previously considered.
(p. 42)
An Example from Mexican Spanish Composition

In “Discourse Features of Written Mexican Spanish: Current Research in Contrastive
Rhetoric and Its Implications,” Maria Montaño-Harmon describes a study of four groups
of student writers: Mexican students in Mexico, who are native speakers of Spanish, writing
in Spanish; ESL students, who are native speakers of Mexican Spanish, writing in English;
Mexican-American/Chicano students, who are English-dominant, writing in English; and
Anglo-American students writing in English. She found that the compositions written in
Mexican Spanish were longer overall than those written in English, but contained fewer
sentences. Sentences in the Spanish compositions were longer and tended to be what English
readers would characterize as run-ons, connected by conjunctions, commas, or no separation
at all. On occasion, one sentence would occupy an entire paragraph. Anglo-American writers
used simple subject–verb complement constructions or short complex sentences subordinated
with “because” (Montaño-Harmon, 1991).
Montaño-Harmon also found that students in Mexico:
relied heavily on synonyms to unify their compositions, a skill that is emphasized and
taught explicitly in the schools in Mexico. Their basic strategy was to state an idea, place
a comma, and then repeat the same idea using a synonym, the same word, or a semanti-
cally related word (collocation) to create a build-up effect. This building on an idea was
emphasized many times via the use of hyperbole. Thus, the result was a repetition of the
same idea several times within a run-on sentence, each repetition becoming more fancy
or formal.
(p. 421)
Note that this pattern was explicitly taught by the Mexican teachers.
The compositions also differed in the representation of logical relationships. Anglo-
American students most often used enumeration of ideas, represented by such connectors as
first, second, then, and finally. On the other hand, the Spanish compositions were organized via
additive or explicative relationships, in which the writer states an idea and adds restatements
and explanations for why he or she believes it.
Perhaps the most important feature of the Spanish compositions was that they had many
more deviations in their logical development, in some cases complete breaks in the connec-
tion between one idea and the next. As Montaño-Harmon explained:
These deviations were conscious deviations, which are part of the discourse pattern of
Mexican Spanish, for the writer was aware that he/she had gone off the topic and would
often use transitional words or phrases to return to the previous idea before the deviation.
(p. 422)
The Anglo-American students, if they deviated from the topic, did so unconsciously, without
transitional phrases.
On the other hand, the writing of Mexican-American, or Chicano, students was unlike
that of any of the other groups. These students “exhibited composition problems due to a
clash between a non-standard dialect of English, Chicano English—used for oral, informal
interaction with peers—and the standard/academic English” (p. 419). They did not exhibit
Spanish language interference problems.
Additional Cultural Influences

Literature, culture, and education have rhetorical influences beyond organizational patterns.
Kaplan (1966) and Van De Wege (2013) found, for example, that native speakers of Arabic
tend to favor coordination over subordination, because of the stylistic influence of the Koran.
“While the literary traditions of the Judeo-Greco literary influence do not penetrate in
English much beyond the 17th century, the literary influences of the Koran in Arabic extend
into the present day” (Kaplan, 1966, p. 35). Since the 17th century, the fashion in English
prose has been to favor subordination over coordination. However, in Arabic, the stylistic
preference is for elaborate coordination. Kaplan shows that when Arabic-speaking students
revise compositions in English, they create more coordinated structures. (To get an idea of
what such elaborate coordination sounds like, look at the beginning of Genesis in the King
James Version.)
A highly literary writing style rich in metaphor and description is prized in Russian cul-
ture, and paragraphs allow for a considerable amount of digression and verbosity (Terenin,
2015; Vassileva, 1995). The use of allusive language is taught purposefully and explicitly from
early grades. For example, Bednarskaya (2010), in laying out the standards of composition
instruction in 5th-grade Russian schools, states that even the formulation of the essay title
must “mandatorily contain evaluative and metaphoric components” (p. 3) and full lessons
must be devoted to expanding the children’s ability to use figurative language in any genre
of writing, from descriptive to argumentative. This style of writing—what an Uzbek author
Hamid Ismailov (2016) calls “writing in riddles”—may seem overly flowery and overbearing
to an American reader (Mao, 2003) even when the general organization of the written piece
is fairly consistent with the American rhetorical traditions.
On the other hand, texts written by Japanese students may appear to an American reader
bland and lacking in authorial voice. This difficulty with projecting an individual authority
and confidence in writing has sometimes been attributed to the collectivist culture of Japan
(Carson & Nelson, 1994). However, Matsuda (2001) argues that rather than being an over-
arching cultural effect, it may be a much narrower linguistic one. While writing in Japanese,
authors have a variety of linguistic resources for projecting a distinct author personality in
their texts: switching between the katakana, hiragana, kanji, and romanji orthographic systems
within the same sentence, choosing among several self-referential pronouns, and deploy-
ing sentence-final particles. Since English lacks these linguistic resources, and since authorial
voice is a rather elusive concept not clearly tagged to a finite list of specific linguistic means
for expressing it (Hyland, 2002), it takes Japanese-speaking students a while to acquire the
discursive resources available in English to display an easily perceptible stance in their texts.
Thus, even when they make no grammatical or lexical errors and when they attempt to
follow the American rhetorical patterns in writing, users of English as an additional language
may produce texts that look and sound peculiar in an American educational context.
Implications for the Classroom

Students whose primary literacy is in a language other than English may write using rhetorical
patterns and styles that are appropriate to their native language and culture, but are confusing
or seem disorganized, immature, or pretentious to American readers. It is very difficult to
cast aside ingrained habits of thought and organization as well as ideas of what constitutes a
well-written sentence. Rather than labeling such texts disorganized or immature, or identify-
ing particular sections as tangential, or marking certain expressions as inappropriate for the
academic genre, the instructor can approach the problem as a matter of writing to the appro-
priate audience, and explain that American readers have different expectations than Japanese,
Chinese, Mexican, or Arabic readers.
Connor (2011) emphasizes that teaching approaches grounded in intercultural rhetoric
allow composition instructors to expand their students’ rhetorical repertoires rather than dis-
parage their native approaches as inferior to the Western traditions. Thus, it is important that
teachers acknowledge the validity of different conventions of academic and creative writing
in different cultures. While it is unfeasible, of course, to become familiar with all possible
rhetorical and cultural traditions that find their ways into American composition classrooms
with multilingual students, it is possible to incorporate the concepts of intercultural rhetoric
into classroom discussions of writing.
Casanave (2004) proposes several ways in which writing teachers can help students expand
the range of rhetorical traditions that they can draw on. First, she recommends putting explicit
analysis of the purposes and audiences of writing in focus in the classroom. This helps students
see how meaning is made through different rhetorics, to different types of readers, and in dif-
ferent cultural contexts. Another useful recommendation she makes is to encourage students
to compare texts written in L1 with texts of the same genre written in L2 and to analyze them
for overall organization and paragraph-development strategies. We may add here that in addi-
tion to raising the students’ awareness of the readers’ expectations in their L1 and L2, this
strategy also allows the teacher to validate the students’ previous literacy experiences. Finally,
Casanave (2013) suggests that teachers may direct the students to examine conceptualizations of
good writing in different cultures. In this recommendation, Casanave draws on the work of Li
(1996), who found that American audiences particularly prized logic, while Chinese audiences
assigned a greater value to moral sentiments in writing. This assignment can be quite enlighten-
ing to the students, for whom their native patterns are part of their habitus—a natural, ingrained
way which they perceive and organize literacy experiences and react to them. Breaking out of
their ingrained patterns can help students become better writers in both L1 and L2.

1 Do a Web search on “learn hiragana,” “learn Chinese characters, learn Greek
alphabet, or learn Arabic alphabet,” or try a search on another writing system.
Using the materials you find, try to learn to write five or six letters or characters
from an unfamiliar writing system. Write a description of your experiences, noting
your successes and problems. Discuss your experiences with the class.
2 The University of Adelaide in Australia has a page entitled “English for Uni” with
a sub-section devoted to essay writing in different cultures (/www.adelaide.edu.
au/english-for-uni/essay-writing/different-academic-cultures). Go to the link pro-
vided above and read about the advice on writing a good essay in French. Then
consider how a typical American essay might be evaluated by the standards of a
French university. Write a short blog or journal entry reflecting on the differences
between good French writing and good American writing.
Select Pedagogical Practices for Language Development

Let us now return to the composition instructor whom we introduced at the beginning of the
chapter. Here we briefly discuss a few specific pedagogical suggestions he was able to imple-
ment effectively in his classroom. Although their incorporation did not lead to the complete
elimination of all linguistic problems in non-native writing by the end of the semester—that
would be quite unrealistic to expect due to the long-time nature of language acquisition—it
did help his students gain more confidence and accuracy in writing. Moreover, these strate-
gies of language development provided the students with the means to improve their control
of English beyond the composition classroom. After all, once the students know what to edit
their writing for and how to approach the editing task, the skill can be applied to other writ-
ing products, from lab reports in science classes to office memos, to business analyses.
Along with several prominent scholars (Ferris, 2009; Goen et al., 2002; Holten, 2007;
Larsen-Freeman, 2002; Micciche, 2004), we advocate for a discourse-based approach to
teaching grammar as a tool for the expression of meaning. This approach benefits both native
and non-native students since it helps them eliminate language problems common to all
groups of writers: misplaced modifiers, improperly punctuated sentences, abrupt verb tense
shifts, “fuzzy” syntax in sentences that begin with one structure, but get lost in their own
complexity and end in another structure, etc.
One way to link grammar instruction to writing is to use the class readings not only as mate-
rial for discussion and as rhetorical models, but also as models of effective language use (Ferris,
2016; Holten, 2007). Students can analyze the texts in their rhetorical textbooks in order to
understand how specific structures can convey particular emotions, stances, or arguments. For
example, passive and active voice allow the writer to refocus the reader’s attention. Logical
connectors assist in the text’s cohesion. Well-motivated and discursively marked shifts between
verb tenses demarcate the boundaries between examples and generalizations. Participial phrases
and parallel structure assist in the smooth flow of ideas. Choosing past vs. present tense for
reporting verbs allows the writer to implicitly agree with the reported position or demonstrate
a detachment from it. And so on. The form and function of each structure should be taught
simultaneously during mini-lessons or grammar workshops designed in response to specific lin-
guistic problems arising in student writing. The focused analysis of the functions of grammati-
cal forms in well-written texts is consistent with consciousness raising practice discussed above.
Another way to make grammar instruction relevant to writing is to use the students’ own
original texts, complete with their authentic errors, as the foundation for teaching self-editing
strategies (Ferris, 2016; Goen et al. 2002). Holten (2002), for example, found that students
were more engaged and personally invested if they learned grammatical rules, terms, and pat-
terns as a tool to make their sentences clearer, their paragraphs more cohesive and coherent,
and their essays better flowing.
But not all grammar teaching needs to be responsive to student errors and difficulties with
language. Ferris (2016) points out that different writing prompts tend to elicit a preponder-
ance of particular grammatical structures. For example, narratives will involve shifts between
different time frames and, therefore, require the mastery of verb tenses. Expository writing
will call for well-developed skills in the use of subordinate clauses to establish connections
between concepts. Descriptive writing will involve an adept use of adjectives, relative clauses,
and possibly comparative structures. An instructor can analyze the prompt he or she is plan-
ning to assign to the students, identify key structures that are likely to be either difficult or
particularly frequent, and pre-teach the use of these structures in class.
The next strategy that students from various majors are likely to appreciate is exploring
the stylistic tendencies in discipline-specific writing. For example, scientific writing calls for
well-developed skills in the use of passive voice and nominalization; writing in engineering
demonstrates a high distribution of abstract, frequently non-count, nouns; texts in humanities
rely extensively on non-finite verbs in subordinate clauses in order to create cohesion (Biber,
2006). In short, specific disciplines and genres display certain preferences for particular gram-
matical structures. Students can be assigned to explore and bring texts from their own disci-
plines to the classroom and discuss the grammatical choices and their rhetorical consequences
in disciplinary writing.
Finally, one technique that tends to be neglected yet may prove useful is teaching students
how to use the dictionary as a source of grammatical information, such as the countability of
nouns, transitivity of verbs, and the existence of irregular forms. Armed with this informa-
tion, students are less likely to make errors in article use, predication, or complementation
(Holten, 2007).
Last, but not least, we would like to say a few words about corrective feedback. Whether
linguistic errors in writing should be corrected or even explicitly addressed at all has been a
controversial issue in L2 research for decades (see Ferris, 1999, 2009; Ferris & Roberts, 2001;
Krashen, 1982; Lee, 2004; Truscott, 1996, 1999a, 1999b). The evidence is still inconclusive,
but we do know that mere teacher correction of a grammatical mistake is not going to lead
to the immediate acquisition of the target structure by the student. This is, indeed, what our
new composition instructor discovered when he attempted to provide corrections of all the
grammatical inaccuracies in his students’ work. Does that mean that corrective feedback is
futile, then? Not at all. But it does need to be selective, focused, and student-completed in
order to have any effect.
By selective feedback, we mean that it is most beneficial to focus on the global errors that
affect the overall meaning of the sentence or text and on persistent patterns of errors that reoc-
cur in a particular student’s writing regularly. If the instructor observes that multiple students
produce the same patterns of errors, these patterns become good candidates for explicit gram-
mar mini-lessons or workshops to be done with the whole class. Minor errors with little effect
on the overall meaning or clarity of expression, infrequently occurring errors, typos, etc. may
be commented on, but may also be left uncorrected most of the time when more important
issues are at hand. In addition, sometimes the errors that students produce are so complex and
multifaceted that it is not easy to pinpoint the immediate cause or even label the error. In
such cases, a discussion of the problematic passage of language in the instructor’s office hours,
or during a one-on-one writing conference, or with a tutor is likely to be more helpful than
marginal correction.
By focused feedback, we mean that the instructor needs to provide some kind of explana-
tion or clue as to why a particular structure is being marked as erroneous. Instructors may
choose to employ error-specific codes (e.g. “SV” for subject–verb agreement, “VT” for verb
tense, etc.). If the structure in question has already been discussed in class, a reminder of the
rule or a direction to consult an editing guide can be provided on the margins. If a particular
student makes multiple errors in the same structure, it is useful to note this structure in the
end comments on the written piece.
Lastly, by student-completed feedback we mean precisely that—that the instructor may
mark errors, but it is important that students take the responsibility for correcting them.
When the instructor fixes the problem, this problem tends to get ignored by the students.
We have even observed in our own teaching that an error corrected on a first draft reappears
in the exact same form on a subsequent draft. Undoubtedly, such occurrences can be rather
frustrating for the instructor, who has invested a considerable amount of time and effort in
providing the feedback they believed to be useful. It may make corrective feedback seem like
a pointless waste of time.
However, when students are required to analyze the feedback, reflect on it, make their
own corrections following the rules discussed in class, possibly chart their individual error
frequencies, and provide revisions, such an approach promotes mindfulness and attention to
accuracy in the students. They become more aware of both the accurate usages and their own
grammatical choices, including their own patterns of error. When students are required to
actively attend to their own errors, they also engage in rehearsed production, which increases
their chances of acquiring the structure in the long run. To provide more opportunities for
reflection and metalinguistic discussion, teachers may arrange for in-class workshops, where
the students analyze patterns of error and create editing guides in peer groups.
Conclusions
The concepts outlined in this chapter have strong implications for how composition instruc-
tors should be working with writers for whom English is an additional language. The approach
to teaching multilingual and multicultural writers should balance rhetorical instruction with
language development activities. The atmosphere in the classroom should be positive and
comfortable, open to cultural differences, and there should be numerous opportunities for
real communication. Feedback on the writing should include selective and focused attention
to those linguistic problems that affect the meaning and clarity of the message the most, or
those that are persistent and repetitive. The responsibility for correcting the errors should
rest on the students so as to foster their acquisition of the structures they are struggling with.
The rhetorical expectations of English speakers, and the organizational patterns of aca-
demic genres such as the college essay, research essays, reports, memos, and letters, may have
to be explicitly taught, especially to international students. However, instructors should use
care when presenting formulaic approaches such as the five-paragraph essay, because students
may overgeneralize the formula to inappropriate genres, and may become so reliant on the
formula that they are unable to grow as writers.
In the long run, it is best that an ESL writing class be taught by an instructor who is pro-
fessionally well versed in SLA and rhetorical theories, pedagogical grammar, intercultural
rhetoric, and the pedagogies of literacy development. But with the growing and extremely
diverse population of students for whom English is an additional language, we hope that the
material presented here will provide initial help to instructors who suddenly find a significant
number of non-native English speakers in their otherwise “mainstream” composition classes.

Ferris, D. R. (2009). Teaching college writing to diverse student populations. Ann Arbor, MI: University
of Michigan Press.
This book introduces the topic of diverse student populations in U.S. colleges. It presents issues
relevant to both teachers working with multilingual students transitioning from K-12 to post-
secondary education and administrators charged with developing and implementing programs
for such students. Here, the reader will find a thorough description of the students’ backgrounds,
their literacy needs, and suggestions for both program design and classroom strategies.
Roberge, M., Siegal, M., & Harklau, L. (2009). Generation 1.5 in college composition:Teaching academic
writing to U.S.-educated learners of ESL. New York: Routledge.
This collection of articles by prominent scholars working on investigating the writing of mul-
tilingual students in college presents a variety of perspectives on the issue, ranging from the
students’ characteristics and educational paths, to curricula and pedagogical approaches, to the
ideological frameworks surrounding the education of multilingual U.S. resident writers. The
volume is edited by Mark Roberge, Meryl Siegal, and Linda Harklau.
Ferris, D., & Hedgcock, J. S. (1998). Teaching ESL composition: Purpose, process, and practice. Mahwah,
This work by Dana Ferris and John S. Hedgecock is a very thorough presentation of almost
every aspect of teaching ESL writing, including theoretical issues, reading-writing connections,
syllabus design, lesson planning, text selection, oral and written feedback, and improving gram-
matical accuracy.
Silva,T., & Matsuda, P. K. (Eds.). (2001). Landmark essays on ESL writing. Mahwah, NJ: Hermagoras
Press.
Landmark Essays on ESL Writing, edited by Tony Silva and Paul Kei Matsuda, reprints 16 articles
that have been influential in the field, including Kaplan’s original 1966 contrastive rhetoric article
“Cultural Thought Patterns in Inter-cultural Education.”
Silva, T., & Matsuda, P. K. (Eds.). (2001). On second language writing. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
On Second Language Writing (2001), also edited by Silva and Matsuda, presents 15 new articles.
Swales, S. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
This work is an insightful and interesting analysis of the problems of genres and discourse com-
munities, very applicable to the problems of ESL composition and contrastive rhetoric.
Ellis, R. (2008). The study of second language acquisition. 3rd Ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
This work is an authoritative compendium of research and theory concerning the problems of
language acquisition.
Notes
1 We urge the reader to note that this was an informally expressed personal perspective of an instructor
who had not yet at the time experienced working with multilingual writers and was just beginning
to develop interest in intercultural rhetoric and SLA. The authors of this chapter in no way mean to
imply that non-Western or non-American patterns are illogical or inferior to Western ones. Rather,
we argue that the logic and cultural traditions that underlie the writing of multilingual writers need
to be recognized and incorporated into writing instruction.
2 While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the causes of such dramatic variations in the
vocabulary size estimates, suffice it to say for the present that they depend on the operationalization
of the definitions of both “word” and what it means to know a word. Some estimates, for example,
count such lexical items “buy,” “buyer,” and “buying” as three separate words (e.g. Carroll, Davis, &
Richman, 1971) while others consider them variations of the same word. Similarly, knowing a word
may range from being able to vaguely recognize its general meaning from context in a given text
to having a full grasp of the word’s phonology, morphology, syntactic roles, meaning, orthography,
and appropriateness in a variety of pragmatic contexts and genres and being able to use it accurately
in one’s own speech and writing. Vocabulary sizes differ greatly even among monolingual native
speakers, frequently dependent on the amount of reading an individual does and his or her level of
education (see, for example, Stanovich, 1986).
3 Or any other of the several hundred languages spoken in the U.S. by immigrants and their descen-
dants in large and small cultural communities.
4 Maturational constraints on the acquisition of linguistic structure become more observable beginning
at about the age of 10 or 11, even though not all learners are going to display their effects this early
(Ferris, 2009; Newport & Johnson, 1989).
5 As part of the study, students in several Basic Writing classes in college were asked to write a narrative
essay on the following prompt: Write about the most memorable day or event in your life. How old
were you when it happened? Describe what happened and who was there. Explain why this day or
event is especially memorable to you. Use specific details.You have 30 minutes to write your essay.
6 The term interlanguage refers to the idiosyncratic linguistic system internally possessed by a learner
of an additional language. This system tends to combine the features of both L1 and L2 grammars
as well as developmental features typical of L2 learners regardless of the age or native language. The
interlanguage system is in constant flux and development until it stabilizes and becomes ostensibly
impervious to change regardless of instruction (Selinker, 1972).This stabilization can occur at any age
or any stage of L2 development.
7 Texts written specifically for ESL learners and available in ESL textbooks and other school materials.
8 One rather vivid example of this comes from Griswold’s experience in teaching ESL and Academic
Writing to international students at the university level. One of her advanced students in a composi-
tion class wrote that she “repented” a recent trivial purchase.When Griswold asked her why she chose
this particular word, generally associated in English with significant wrongdoing or even religious sin,
not casual shopping, the student said that she looked it up in a translation dictionary, and it seemed
like a nice formal word to use.
9 Students of different linguistic backgrounds often have L1-specific problems with relative clauses.
Slavic and Spanish speakers, for example, tend to use the relative pronoun “which” regardless of the
animacy of the referent (e.g. “*the protesters which gathered at the Capitol”). Arabic speakers are apt
to use a resumptive pronoun (e.g. “*the article which I read it,”) and Korean and Japanese speakers
often avoid the use of relative clauses altogether, thus missing out on a useful linguistic resource for
conveying complex meanings.
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Associated Reading
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New York: Routledge.
Reading
Promoting Grammar and Language Development
in the Writing Class
Why, What, How, and When
Dana R. Ferris
No one would dispute that all writing involves language. Every sentence or even part of a
sentence we write requires choices—about what words we will use, what the structure of the
phrases and the sentence will be, how we will order and emphasize information within that
sentence, and how we will connect ideas within and across different sentences and parts of
the text.
With this truth in mind, it is perhaps surprising that the notion of grammar instruction
and language development in the context of a writing class is highly controversial within
applied linguistics and especially composition studies. Because of the uncertain (or even
dispreferred) status of grammar in the writing class, writing instructors often do not receive
adequate (or any) training in English grammar, linguistics, and/or pedagogical grammar. In
turn, grammar in the writing class is often addressed haphazardly or neglected entirely. This
is more than a missed opportunity for student writers. It is counterproductive to their develop-
ment as writers and productive users of English as a second/other language.
This chapter takes the position that language development and grammar instruction in
particular should and can be effectively accomplished within a second language (L2) writing
class (or a mixed writing class that includes English learners). Because of the controversy
already noted, we begin by discussing the why of developing grammar knowledge within the
context of writing instruction. We then move to the what: With all of the competing concerns
of writing instruction (content, process, rhetoric, etc.), how can a teacher choose from the
many elements of English language on which to focus? We will spend the most time and
space on the crucial question of how instructors can successfully provide language instruc-
tion to student writers, and we will tie it all together with a consideration of when, within a
crowded writing class syllabus, a teacher might incorporate language-focused work. The
goal of this chapter is that teachers will walk away with a range of tools and options that could
be applied to a wide variety of pedagogical contexts.
Language Development: Why?

As already noted, it borders on absurd to argue that attention to language is unimportant in
the endeavor of writing. It would seem especially salient for L2 writers, who have the double
burden not only of making the same linguistic choices that every writer must make but also
of sorting through their knowledge of two (or more) languages to make those choices. There
are at least three distinct reasons why teachers of L2 writers should think carefully about how
to promote their students’ ongoing second language development in the particular context
of writing instruction.
First, L2 writers make errors, which I have defined elsewhere as “morphological, syntac-
tic, and lexical forms which deviate from rules of the target language, violating the expecta-
tions of literate adult native speakers” (Ferris 2011: 3). Errors are not the same as accent or
Promoting Grammar and Language Development 303
style, meaning idiomatic expression that doesn’t necessarily violate a rule of English gram-
mar but that also doesn’t sound quite like something a native speaker would write. Consider
this sentence from the conclusion of a Chinese international student’s first essay in her
writing class at a U.S. university: “I hope this class could teach us how to rewrite our essays
with wonderful words, sentences, and paragraph.” The use of “wonderful” in this sentence
is a good example of accent—not incorrect and indeed rather charming but also not likely
something a native speaker would write. In contrast, the singular form of paragraph is clearly
an error in this context; in a list with other plural nouns, it should have also been marked for
plural here. Errors are also not to be confused with mistakes, which happen to all of us when
we are tired, rushed, inattentive, or applying poor proofreading strategies. Errors suggest
rather that the writer/learner is not entirely clear on the application of the rule or the correct
structure for that sentence.
Some readers might counter that all writers—not only L2 writers—make errors, and this is
certainly true. However, research suggests that L2 student writers make more errors and dif-
ferent errors than do native English-speaking peers (Bitchener and Ferris 2012; Ferris 2006;
Hinkel 2002; Hyland 2002; Lunsford and Lunsford 2008; Silva 1993). Other research, known
in the literature as error gravity studies, has investigated readers’ reactions to written error
in university and workplace settings, finding that some real-world readers (i.e., not writing/
language teachers) are highly critical of errors, and some are less tolerant of errors that mark
the writer as a second language learner (Beason 2001; Hairston 1981; Janopolous 1992;
Santos 1988; Vann, Meyer, and Lorenz 1984). In short, not only do L2 writers make errors
that are different from and often more frequent than those of their peers, but the errors also
may stigmatize them (Hendrickson 1980; Shaughnessy 1977). The errors exist, and they
often (not always) do matter.
A second, related point is that students are unlikely to be able to remediate such errors
without expert intervention in the form of feedback and instruction. Two distinct lines of
research support this generalization. First, 1980s-era thinking on L2 writing, derived largely
from trends towards process-oriented instruction in L1 composition, suggested that L2 writ-
ers would improve their language use naturally through continued exposure to language and
writing practice with minimal formal instruction or error correction (see, e.g., Krashen 1984;
Zamel 1982). However, others argued that L2 learners were likely to “fossilize” (get stuck and
fail to progress) if they were not given feedback about ways in which their language produc-
tion (both speech and writing) deviated from the norms of the target language (see, e.g., Long
and Robinson 1998; Russell and Spada 2006; Schmidt 1995). A second line of research on
written corrective feedback (CF) in L2 writing has demonstrated repeatedly that students who
receive CF are more likely to make short- and long-term progress in their control of targeted
language features than students who receive no feedback (see Bitchener and Ferris 2012,
for a review of the research on this point). In short, many/most L2 writers need expert instruc-
tion and feedback if they are to make progress in language control in their writing.
Third, beyond errors, L2 writers tend to write more simply than do their native speaker
peers, demonstrating less variety and complexity in their texts (Hyland 2002; Silva 1993),
and this relatively immature writing style can cause their writing to be judged of lower overall
quality than perhaps is deserved (Hamp-Lyons 1991, 2003). Whether L2 writers’ simpler
style suggests a desire to avoid errors for which they may be punished (see Schachter
1974) or merely reflects their relatively less developed linguistic repertoires, they clearly
need to continue developing and applying a more sophisticated range of lexical and syntactic
304 Dana R. Ferris
features to their writing, especially for academic and professional purposes. Thus, beyond
helping learners to find and remediate actual errors in their texts, writing instructors should
help their students to analyze authentic language and consider how best to apply it for differ-
ent genres and audiences.
Before moving on from this question of why we should help L2 writers to gain more control
of the language of their texts, it is worth considering the reasons why scholars and some
teachers would argue against doing so. These arguments tend to be both philosophical and
practical. Second language acquisition scholars have questioned the notion of “error,” argu-
ing that “error” should more properly be considered a natural developmental stage in the
process of language acquisition, similar to what young children display as they acquire their
first languages. However, as noted, adult L2 learners (adolescents and beyond) tend not to
move through those developmental stages in the same way that children do (if they move
through them at all), and often such learners do not have the luxury of time to wait to “natu-
rally” acquire enough language to prevent errors in their L2 writing or speech.
In composition studies, objections to grammar instruction and/or attention to written errors
have focused on two issues: a belief that other aspects of writing (“higher-order concerns”
such as ideas, development, organization, and process) are more important than language
control (see, e.g., Brannon and Knoblauch 1982; Sommers 1982) and a concern that trying
to enforce so-called Standard English on students is imperialistic and culturally insensitive in
a world where many different varieties of English are being employed (see the recent collec-
tion edited by Horner, Lu, and Matsuda 2010. for many different perspectives on this point).
Both points are valid, as far as they go: The other elements of writing are important, and a
writing class must never become solely or primarily a course in English grammar. Further,
there are many different regional/ethnic varieties of English that are valid and valuable in
their own contexts; these should never be disparaged or treated as “less than” by teachers
or even by student writers themselves. Rather than being bullied by a pedagogical focus on
language, however, students will be empowered if they have knowledge of and control over
a broad range of language structures so that they can make appropriate choices for the spe-
cific rhetorical situation in which they are writing and/or speaking.
Finally, it is fair to mention that sometimes “philosophical” opposition to grammar teaching
or error feedback in writing classes masks teachers’ own insecurities over their lack of train-
ing and experience in how best to provide such instruction or feedback—or, frankly, their lack
of interest in focusing on aspects of writing that they find tedious or less engaging than other
topics they could explore with students. If lack of interest is the issue, teachers probably
need to think more carefully about their students’ needs. However, if lack of competence/
knowledge is really the problem, there are practical ways for writing teachers to obtain such
training and experience (see Bitchener and Ferris 2012; and Ferris 2011, for suggestions
along these lines).
Language Development: What

Even teachers who are fully convinced that L2 writers need language instruction and feed-
back are sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choices they must make. Yes, L2
writers should expand their productive vocabulary, but English has an enormous lexicon.
Where should teachers and their students begin? Of course, students need more knowledge
of English grammar, but there are so many topics to cover; how do teachers approach this
issue while not neglecting other equally important aspects of writing? What about other ele-
ments of writing style that vary across genres and registers, such as punctuation, mechanical
choices (capitalization, holding, italics, etc.), and formatting? Teachers need, if not a road
map through this maze of options, at least some principles from which to start. Three prin-
ciples that may be helpful are: (1) consider specific student needs, (2) exploit the language
used in authentic texts, and (3) prepare students for the specific language structures elicited
by particular writing tasks. We will discuss each of these in turn.
Investigating Student Needs
Every writing class is different. L2 students come with varying knowledge bases that depend
upon their L1 background (and its similarity to or distance from English), their L2 proficiency
levels, and their educational pathways (i.e., whether they have encountered formal English
grammar instruction in their previous exposure to English). Teachers should not simply open
a grammar textbook or writing handbook and teach through it. They must discover what that
particular group of students knows and what they need most at that point in their develop-
ment as L2 learners and writers.
Teachers should conduct two distinct types of needs analysis with regard to grammar for
L2 writers. First, they should collect and analyze an early writing sample to assess strengths,
weaknesses, and patterns of error for individual students and for the whole class. Instructors
can do this analysis themselves, but it can be very time-consuming. For many classes, the
procedure shown in Table 1 should work nearly as well.
Error analysis should also be ongoing, as teachers should hope and expect that their
students will show progress with some patterns of error as the term goes on. Instructors
Table 1 Suggested Procedures for Preliminary Error Analysis (adapted from Ferris and Hedgcock
2014: 314–315; and Ferris 2014: xviii–xix)
1 Preselect particular errors on which to focus (e.g., verbs, plurals, articles, word choice, punctuation,
etc.). Pick enough error types to get a good picture of student needs but not so many that the task
will be overwhelming for you or the students.
2 Go through the writing samples and mark (highlight, circle, or underline) all instances of errors in
the categories you have chosen.
3 Return the papers to the students in class, and briefly go over a brief explanation of the error
categories you marked, with examples of each type.
4 Ask the students to go through their texts, numbering each marked error and trying to categorize
it. They can ask classmates or the teacher for help if they’re confused about a particular error(s).
Have them record their findings in an error chart you create for the activity.
5 Ask them to identify, below the chart, three patterns of errors they noticed most frequently when
they were completing the exercise.
6 Collect the exercise, spot-check the students’ work for accuracy, and record the information (make
a spreadsheet or take copies of the exercise) for individual students and compile findings for the
whole class. Now you have a fairly good sense of what the class as a whole might benefit from in
terms of in-class instruction and of what individualized feedback each student might need.
7 Share the whole-class findings with the students so that they understand why you will focus more
on certain issues than others for in-class work.
306 Dana R. Ferris
can also conduct an analysis of common class errors every time they grade or respond to
a particular set of student papers, turning patterns and student examples into a quick and
contextualized mini lesson based on the students’ own recent work.
Another useful tool for needs analysis is students’ own self-reported areas of strength
and weakness, as well as their preferences and views regarding error feedback and their
awareness of their own existing self-editing strategies. Questionnaires such as those shown
in Ferris and Roberts (2001: 181–183) or in Ferris (2014: xiii–xvi) can be very informative
for teachers and enlightening to students themselves, if they have never looked at their own
language knowledge so analytically before. These two types of data—error analysis of an
early writing sample and self-reports of grammar knowledge—not only can help teachers to
focus their efforts most successfully but also can facilitate student cooperation, if they feel
that instructors’ grammar instruction and feedback choices are rooted in thoughtful consid-
eration of how their time would be best spent.
Exploiting Language in Assigned Readings
Most writing classes include some sort of reading component, or at least they should—
students need content to write about, and they benefit from authentic models for both rhetori-
cal and linguistic analysis. However, teachers will often stop at having students consider only
the content (main ideas and details) of assigned texts, and this is a missed opportunity. Once
students have read the text with comprehension and critically analyzed it, the teacher can
then lead the class a step further and have them consider the language choices made by the
author. Depending upon the text and the teacher’s goals for the lesson, the class might focus
on vocabulary (e.g., adjectives or modal auxiliaries) used to convey a specific emotion or
argument, on ways in which punctuation and sentence structure communicate with a target
audience, or they might simply examine target linguistic structures (e.g., verb tense usage
or article vs. zero-article noun phrases) in authentic written prose. Such language lessons
have the benefit of being authentic (based on real texts the students have already engaged
with) and naturally integrated with other course content. Stand-alone grammar lessons in
writing courses often are less engaging because they are not connected to anything else the
class is doing, but if language analysis activities are instead directly tied to course readings,
they will have added face validity for students. Table 2 shows language samples from one
authentic text (Reilly 2012) and points out different elements of the language used and how
it deviated from formal academic conventions while clearly conveying the author’s message.
Such analysis could be applied to any class text a teacher is using with students.
Anticipating Structures Elicited by Writing Tasks
A third suggestion for narrowing the universe of English structures on which to focus comes
from considering the actual writing tasks students are being asked to accomplish. For exam-
ple, if students are being asked to write papers that include material from other sources,
it makes sense to provide instruction on paraphrase, summary, and quotation—both what
those techniques accomplish in a text as well as the syntax and punctuation choices associ-
ated with them. Similarly, in some disciplines, ideas written by other authors are conveyed
in the “literary present” tense (“As Shakespeare says in Romeo and Juliet. . .”), while in
others, such as the social sciences, the work of other authors is described using the past
tense (“Krashen noted in his landmark 1982 book that . . .”). Narrative writing, which can
Table 2 Sample Language Analysis Activity Based on Authentic Text (from Reilly (2012))
What a [fool, tool, stooge, sap] I was

Jealous egghead, I thought.
What’d they do instead? Alerted nobody. Called nobody.
I hope Penn State loses civil suits until the walls of the accounting office cave in. I hope that Spanier,
Schultz and Curley go to prison for perjury. I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it
most richly deserves.
What Students Could Consider
•• How Reilly’s repeated use of the same sentence frame (“What a_____ I was”) helps to express his
overall meaning.
•• Why Reilly turned the sentence “Jealous egghead, I thought” around, instead of the more
conventional “I thought he was a jealous egghead.”
•• Why Reilly flouted typical writing rules about avoiding contractions and sentence fragments.
•• Why Reilly repeated “I hope . . .” several times in a row. (Isn’t sentence variety supposed to be a
virtue?)
be relevant in various genres or disciplines (e.g., describing an interview or a field study,

summarizing the plot of a novel in a literature class, writing up a case study in business or
a lab report), requires an understanding of how verb tenses shift when telling a story (espe-
cially between simple present and simple past, with other tenses coming into play as well).
Scientific writing often requires the skillful use of the passive voice, while writing for the
humanities conversely requires minimizing it (instead writing other types of long, syntactically
complex constructions to show intellectual sophistication).
With these distinctions in mind, teachers of L2 writers should examine their own writing
prompts/assignments to assess what language structures (syntactic and lexical) students
might need to write effectively and to consider, as part of the prewriting and drafting process,
facilitating mini lessons on those points so that students are comfortable with the tools they
will need for their specific rhetorical purposes. This type of analysis should also be applied
to writing prompts used for assessment (i.e., in-class essay examinations or timed writing for
placement or diagnostic purposes). If the wording or content of a particular writing task will
elicit structures over which students do not have adequate control at their stage of L2 devel-
opment, this may put them at an unfair or unnecessary disadvantage. One example from my
own experience was a midterm examination prompt given to students in a low-intermediate
L2 writing class about arranged marriages: “Imagine that you are the parent of a grown son
or daughter . . . .” The teachers and administrators in the program didn’t realize until they
read the responses that this wording required students to use hypothetical conditional struc-
tures: “If my son wanted to choose his own bride, I would . . .”—and almost none of them
were able to do so, leading to an excess of verb tense/form errors in the essays. In such
instances, teachers may want to either reconsider the prompt and/or take the challenges
presented by the prompt into account when assessing written examinations. (In our program,
we decided to throw the examination out and have students write to a different prompt that
did not present such syntactic challenges for them.)
To summarize this section, teachers who want to help students proactively develop better
knowledge of the English language and improved control over language choices in their own
writing have many options to consider as to what linguistic topics they might cover in their
classes. The three principles discussed here—targeting student needs for a specific class,
308 Dana R. Ferris
examining language used in assigned course readings, and anticipating structures required
to successfully complete a particular writing task—provide teachers with some contextual-
ized ways to make choices for their own particular teaching situation.
Language Development: How

Having considered the why and the what of language development for L2 writers, we now
turn to arguably the most important (and difficult) question: the how. Both L1 and L2 com-
position research is replete with examples of how not to address grammar instruction or
error feedback for student writers (for reviews, see Bitchener and Ferris 2012; Connors and
Lunsford 1988; Frodesen and Holten 2003; Lunsford and Lunsford 2008). For easy refer-
ence here, Table 3 provides an overview of what doesn’t work and why.
As already noted, in-class grammar instruction that is unconnected to other reading and
writing that students are doing may have limited effects: “The return on grammar instruction
is often disappointing. Teachers find that even when a grammatical feature has been covered
and practiced, students may not use it accurately in their own writing” (Frodesen and Holten
2003: 142). Thus, stand-alone grammar lessons—for example, inserted into the first or last
20 minutes of a writing class meeting—may not have their desired effects. Though student-
led presentations have the advantage of variety and being more engaging, at least for the
student leader(s) of the day, they share the same disadvantage as teacher-led grammar les-
sons of being decontextualized from other writing class concerns. Further, since designing
grammar mini lessons is challenging even for trained teachers, student-led lessons present
the additional risk of erroneous or incomplete instruction for the rest of the class.
The latter two items in Table 3 refer to overgeneralized peer or self-study activities that,
while they provide students with more agency and responsibility, may fail to give students
enough guidance for the exercises to accomplish their desired objectives. Peer editing activi-
ties can be very useful to help students learn what to look for in their own writing, but they
need to be carefully structured to be effective. Table 4 provides two examples of well focused
peer editing activities. The first follows a teacher-delivered mini lesson on verb tense shifts
in a narrative. The second is a more general peer editing activity for the penultimate draft of
a student paper.
Similarly, while it can be useful to provide students with a list of self-study resources for
grammar, vocabulary, or mechanics (websites, handbooks, etc.), instructors need to review
those resources themselves, just as they would a textbook they might adopt for a class (see
Ferris and Hedgcock 2014 for concrete approaches about how to do this). Simply handing
students a book or giving them a link(s) without ensuring that such resources are easy to
Table 3 Ineffective Language Development Strategies
What (Usually) Doesn’t Work Why It Doesn’t Work

Decontextualized grammar lessons by Not enough connection to students’ own writing
the teacher on random topics
Decontextualized grammar presentations Not well integrated with other class activities
by the students on random topics
Unfocused peer editing activities Students don’t know what to look for
Unstructured “outsourcing” or “self-study” Self-study materials may be too hard or not relevant
enough (or too artificial)
Table 4 Sample Peer Editing Activities
Example 1
Peer Editing Exercise as a Mini Lesson Application
Instructions: Exchange papers with a partner. Mark (circle, underline, or highlight) each example
you find of present tense, past tense, or present perfect tense (ignore other verb tenses and
forms for now). Then complete the following chart. If you find any errors in verb tense, do not
correct them, but you can discuss them with your partner in a few minutes.
Verb Tense Why This Tense Is Used Here

(Discussed in Mini Lesson)
Source. Adapted from Ferris (2011, figure 5.4: 135).
Example 2
Peer Editing of Almost Final Paper Draft
Instructions: Exchange papers with another member of your writing group
1 Read the paper carefully for any problems with:
•• Missing or “extra” words.

•• Typos or spelling errors.
•• Word/phrase choice that is incorrect (or not exactly correct).
•• Errors with commas.
•• Errors with apostrophes.
•• Errors with citations (APA format, punctuation).
•• Grammar errors such as subject–verb agreement, run-on sentences or comma splices, verb
tense/form errors.
2 Do not “rewrite” words, phrases, or sentences simply to improve “style.” Focus on actual errors.
3 If you find errors, mark them as follows:*
¾¾ Use strikethrough for unnecessary words or word endings.

¾¾ Use yellow highlight for unnecessary punctuation.
¾¾ Use a red font to insert a word or word ending or punctuation that is missing.
¾¾ Use “Comments” to add any comments in the margins about word choice or grammar.
*These instructions assume that students are using computers for the peer editing task, but they can be adapted for
pen-and-paper activities as well.
navigate, well designed, and appropriate for students’ proficiency levels and needs may
result in more frustration than assistance for them.
Having discussed some pitfalls or common errors to avoid in facilitating language devel-
opment for L2 writers, we now turn to more successful approaches. These can be divided
into three general categories: instruction through in-class mini lessons, self-directed lan-
guage study, and corrective feedback.
Language Mini Lessons
Mini lessons on salient language points can be an appropriate way to integrate grammar,
vocabulary, mechanics, or strategy instruction into a writing class without putting such
310 Dana R. Ferris
language concerns out of balance with other writing course priorities. As their name implies,
mini lessons should he brief and narrowly focused, not taking up too much class time and
not trying to cover too much in one chunk of instruction (for more complex structures, a series
of connected mini lessons may work well). The teacher may also want to build in homework
either before or after the mini lesson so that additional analysis or practice can occur without
taking over the entire in-class lesson.
Topics for Mini Lessons. Nearly any language-related topic can be addressed in the
mini lesson format—vocabulary, self-editing strategies, punctuation, or grammar (see Ferris
2014 for examples). The teacher should consider the suggestions in the previous section of
this chapter (the “what” of language development in the writing class) to identify possible mini
lesson topics for a particular class. These mini lessons can also include the “common errors”
lesson referred to in the previous section (for an example used in a writing class, see Ferris
and Hedgcock 2014, Appendix 9: 350–351).
Format of Mini Lessons. I recommend the following elements for class mini lessons,
usually but not necessarily in this order:
• Discovery: Analysis activities to elicit students’ prior knowledge about the structure or
focus to be discussed in the mini lesson.
• Explanation: Brief, clearly focused instruction on the structure/rules/topic under consid-
eration, with on-point and straightforward examples.
• Practice: Opportunities to practice the rules/strategics described in the mini lesson with
language samples (e.g., sentences or paragraphs, with or without errors) and/or with
texts that students find themselves (e.g., a newspaper article online if they have com-
puter access).
• Application: Focused activities that require students to apply the concepts presented in
the mini lesson to their own writing—either a paper they are currently working on or one
they wrote recently.
While most grammar/language textbooks and websites routinely include explanation/

instruction and practice activities, the discovery and application sections of a mini les-
son may be less common. Arguably, the application section is the most important and
indispensable part of the mini lesson, as there is ample evidence that students’ inability to
apply grammar knowledge to their own writing, not lack of knowledge itself, is a primary
problem for L2 writers. Appendix A to this chapter shows a sample mini lesson (on verb
tense shifts in narratives) as a simple example of how the different parts of a mini lesson
can work together.
Self-Directed Language Study
I have noted that unfocused referrals to self-study materials can be an ineffective approach
to language development for L2 writers. However, in combination with other approaches,
some self-directed language study can be useful, motivating, and empowering for student
writers. Self-study has two major advantages over whole-class instruction: (1) Students
can choose to work on topics/issues that they are interested in and/or have problems with,
which reflects the reality that in any given class, students will not all have the same needs.
(2) Students can work at their own pace, choosing to move on quickly if they feel comfort-
able with a topic or structure or slowing down to investigate it more deeply if they are con-
fused. Self-study activities can include individual study of specific grammar/mechanics topics
(e.g., sentence boundaries, verb tenses, apostrophes, etc.). Self-directed vocabulary learn-
ing (vocabulary journals, collocations journals), or analysis of stylistic choices made by other
authors in assigned or self-selected reading texts. They can be assigned for homework and/
or extra credit and can be graded on timely, good faith completion. To be most successful,
self-study activities should include the following components:
• Initial diagnostic activities in which the student and/or the teacher can assess possible
topics/issues for the student to work on during the course (a diagnostic error analysis
and/or grammar knowledge questionnaire, as described in the “what” section).
• Clear structure for the assignment, including models (e.g., of a vocabulary journal entry
or a style analysis entry).
• Recommended resources (what the student might use for grammar self-study, what the
student might read for vocabulary learning or style analysis).
• Regular checkpoints to avoid procrastination or loss of focus (reasonable due dates, in-
class sharing of questions or insights from self-study).
• Reflection, especially at the end of the project, about what the student has gained from
self-study and what they might continue working on in the future.
Appendix B to this chapter shows one example of a language self-study project assigned in
a first-year composition course (a mixed class including both L1 and L2 English writers). This
could be adapted as needed/desired for a variety of class contexts.
Corrective Feedback
Providing instruction and self-study opportunities does not remove the need for L2 writers
to receive focused corrective feedback (CF) on errors they make, particularly if they are
persistent, patterned errors and/or if the errors interfere with overall comprehensibility of the
message (see Bitchener and Ferris 2012; Ferris 2011; Hendrickson 1980). Written CF has
been an extremely controversial topic in L2 writing, and space docs not permit a thorough
discussion of it here, so I will simply summarize the following suggestions or principles from
existing research on CF (for a more elaborated version of this list with additional citations,
see also Ferris and Hedgcock 2014: 283):
• Existing research suggests that CF, if provided effectively, can help student writers to
both revise existing texts and carry over to new texts.
• Focused CF (on selected patterns of error) is more effective than unfocused CF (on
anything that happens to catch a teacher, tutor, or peer editor’s eye).
• Indirect CF (in which the teacher/editor points out errors but does not correct them) may
be more effective in the long run for writing development than direct CF (in which the edi-
tor makes the correction), but there may be legitimate roles for direct CF as well (more
efficient, more informative for idiomatic errors such as preposition usage).
• Some sort of explanation of error patterns (error codes, rule reminders in the margins,
summary comments in an end note) is probably more helpful than simply circling or
highlighting an error without an explanation.
• Some categories of error are more responsive to written CF than others; for more com-
plex errors, a one-on-one conference may be needed.
• Students should be required/directed to apply, analyze, and reflect on CF they have
received so that the feedback isn’t wasted or ignored.
312 Dana R. Ferris
These guidelines for effective CF apply whether the feedback provider is the teacher, a
tutor or consultant in a writing center, or a peer editor (see the preceding discussion about
more/less effective approaches to in-class peer editing workshops). The point here is that
CF can and should be part of an overall approach to language development in an L2 writing
class, but it should neither be the only approach (because students can benefit from focused
instruction and from self-study) nor abandoned entirely (because students can benefit from
targeted feedback on their own work).
“Dynamic” Written CF. One specific application of CF combines the goals of self-study
and CF in an integrated approach. This approach, developed by faculty members at Brigham
Young University, includes the following components:
1 Students regularly produce a short timed-writing sample (5–10 minutes each time),
based on an accessible prompt.
2 The teacher marks it immediately (before next class) using a list of preestablished error
codes.
3 Students correct the marked errors (in the next class or for homework) and chart their
error patterns. (The teacher may require several revisions/resubmissions as needed.)
4 The process is repeated regularly throughout the course.
This approach is dynamic because it shifts from student to student and over time. It also has
the advantage of being frequent and manageable for both instructor and students, provid-
ing more consistent feedback and revision opportunities on shorter pieces of texts. It also
promotes mindfulness in students (because they are directed to focus regularly on specific
language issues and to chart their progress) that can carry over to longer writing projects and
promote language acquisition. Preliminary research (see Evans, Hartshorn, McCollum, and
Wolfersberger 2010; Hartshorn, Evans, Merrill, Sudweeks, Strong-Krause, and Anderson
2010) suggests that students benefit from this approach, and anecdotal reports from teach-
ers and students at BYU and at my own institution (which adopted it program-wide in 2013)
attest to its popularity with many/most students in L2 writing classes.
To summarize this section, instructors wishing to provide integrated opportunities for lan-
guage development in their writing classes should consider a combination of approaches, from
language mini lessons that address the needs of the whole class, to guided self-study oppor-
tunities, to well designed CF given to students about their own writing. This combination pro-
vides students with the right mix of teacher expertise, specific feedback on areas in their own
writing on which they need to focus, and autonomy for/responsibility over their own learning.
Language Development: When

In this chapter so far, we have looked at the why, how, and what of language development in
L2 writing classes. We close this discussion by briefly examining the challenging question of
when such activities should take place. Writing class syllabi can be among the most difficult
to construct because as students move through the stages of the writing process—drafting,
receiving feedback, revising, and editing—the timing of the different stages can be complex,
and teachers need adequate time to provide quality feedback. With this in mind—together
with the apparently competing goals of a writing course (content, process, rhetoric)—how
can teachers integrate language development in ways that are authentic and that comple-
ment other writing activities without distracting too much time and energy away from them?
While every writing class is different, there are at least four distinct points within normal
writing class cycles where a focus on language fits naturally:
1 When a new writing assignment is being presented and discussed (to present possible
vocabulary and grammar structures that may be salient for the task and genre).
2 When the class is discussing assigned readings (to “exploit” the language features of the
text, as discussed in the “what” section).
3 When students are in the final stages of editing a paper (a mini lesson on a key language
point followed by a peer editing activity and self-editing exercises).
4 When the instructor has finished grading or responding to a class set of papers and deliv-
ers a “common errors” mini lesson based upon patterns observed in the students’ texts.
In addition to these naturally recurring points in the life cycle of a writing course, the teacher
may also want to build in an early class activity in which students’ individual and collective
needs are diagnosed (as discussed), as well as an end-of-course activity in which students
reflect on the various language development activities they have completed and talk about
where they have made progress and where they still need to focus attention in the future. An
early mini lesson (in conjunction with the first major paper) on strategies for proofreading and
self-editing writing may be appropriate for most classes, as well.
Because the instructor may not know until the class begins exactly what mini lessons
and workshops might be most needed for a particular group of students, it might be benefi-
cial to simply note “Language Focus TBD [to be determined]” at strategic points (as previ-
ously outlined) on the syllabus, explaining to the students at the course outset that topics for
grammar and language instruction will be decided based upon demonstrated class needs.
Students will likely appreciate this thoughtful, contextualized approach, as opposed to the
typical march through the handbook/grammar book (whether or not the topics all relate to
their current needs) that they may have experienced.
Conclusion
Language development in the writing class is challenging for teachers to envision and imple-
ment, which explains why, too often, such instruction is either delivered haphazardly or
ignored altogether. I hope that the opening section of this chapter has provided some clear
arguments for why it is important that teachers effectively integrate language development
with other course goals for L2 writers—and that the subsequent sections have provided some
practical guidance as to how to proceed in doing so. Teachers who follow the suggestions
in this chapter may be pleasantly surprised to find that their students respond positively to
thoughtfully selected, well-integrated language focus activities and that they themselves feel
more satisfied about their efforts in instruction and feedback. Language is an inevitable and
inextricable part of writing; to neglect it in instruction is to deliver only part of a writing class.
1 Before reading this chapter, did you believe that “bottom–up instruction” (on grammar
and vocabulary) was a necessary and important component of an L2 writing class or
that it was an inappropriate focus for a writing class? Has your thinking changed or been
strengthened after reading this chapter?
314 Dana R. Ferris
2 In the “what” section of this chapter, it is suggested that teachers “exploit” the language
of assigned readings, anticipate the language elicited by different writing tasks, and use
these analyses to plan targeted, contextualized language lessons for their students.
Practice this principle by examining a sample reading (e.g., from an L2 textbook or
from a current newspaper article) and listing interesting features of how language is
used that could potentially be discussed with a class of students. Also, if you can obtain
one or more authentic writing assignments/prompts, try to imagine what kinds of lan-
guage (reporting verbs, passive voice, use of quotations, key vocabulary, etc.) might
be required to respond effectively to that writing task. If you are reading this book in a
methods class, discuss your findings with your classmates and instructor.
3 Another suggestion was to analyze student papers written at the beginning of a writing
class to get a sense for individual and class error patterns. Obtain a set of 5–10 L2 stu-
dent papers written to the same prompt in the same class. Follow the suggestions for
error analysis provided in Table 1, and create a list of 3–5 error patterns that seem to
be consistent across the set of papers. If these were your students, on what language
features would you focus (for instruction and/or feedback) in this class? How might you
approach the issues you noted, considering the various suggestions in this chapter (e.g.,
through mini lessons, self-study, feedback, or some combination)?
4 Considering your findings in questions 2 and/or 3, pick a topic for a possible class mini
lesson for a writing class—based upon student needs (as seen in the error analysis) or
on the language features modeled in a reading text or required by a writing class. What
ideas do you have for designing a mini lesson on this topic?
5 Beyond mini lessons, the chapter also suggests that the teacher should utilize language
self-study activities and provide corrective feedback (written, oral, and in peer/self-editing
workshops). What is your reaction to these suggestions? What do you like about them?
What are your concerns, as a prospective or current teacher of L2 writers?
Essential Readings
Connors, R. (2003). Grammar in American college composition: An historical overview. In L. Ede &
A. A. Lunsford (Eds.), Selected essays of Robert J. Connors (pp. 117–138). Boston, MA: Bedford/
St. Martin’s.
Ferris, D. (2011). Treatment of error in second language student writing (2nd ed.). Ann Arbor, MI:
Hartshorn, J. K., Evans, N. E., Merrill, P. F,Sudweeks, R. R., Strong-Krause, D., & Anderson, N. J. (2010).
The effects of dynamic corrective feedback on ESL writing accuracy. TESOL Quarterly, 44, 84–109.
MacDonald.S. P. (2007). The erasure of language. College Composition and Communication, 58, 585–625.
Matsuda, P. K. (2012). Let’s face it: Language issues and the writing program administrator. WPA:
Writing Program Administration, 36(1), 141–163.
Zimmerman, C. B. (2008). Word knowledge: A vocabulary teacher’s handbook. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
References
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9 Language, Linguistic Diversity,
and Writing
Sharon Klein
In the published version of his presidential address (Rickford 2016), John Rickford provided
this piece from Ferdinand de Saussure, a major figure in the history of contemporary linguis-
tics, as one of his epigraphs. I believe it is fitting for us, here, as well.
Finally, of what use is linguistics? . . . in the lives of individuals and societies, speech (sic)
is more important than anything else. That linguistics should continue to be the preroga-
tive of a few specialists would be unthinkable—everyone is concerned with it in one way
or another. But . . . there is no other field in which so many absurd notions, prejudices,
mirages and fictions have sprung up. . . . the task of the linguist is . . . to dispel them as
best he (sic) can.’
(Ferdinand de Saussure 1966 [1916], p. 71)
1 Introduction2
Linguistic diversity is universal; we need look no farther beyond whatever group of people we’re
with (arguably, even when we’re alone) to encounter language or linguistic differences. No two
people speak the same language (and many argue we each control more than “one,” even when
we believe we’re monolingual). All too often, the differences across the languages that individu-
als speak become barriers. Or even weapons. Language can be a club, in both senses.
The way we talk about language and about language differences plays a significant role in
our dealings with one another and with the different languages we speak. We should not be
surprised. J. L. Austin (1962) introduced the label “speech act,” and in a letter to the Leveson
Commission’s deliberation on an issue related to language in the public sphere, Rae Langton
(2014) highlighted the power of language with a reference to Austin, noting that saying
something is, in fact, doing something3 (p. 1). It seems important to remember this—that
language does not only provide the means for representing and externalizing thought—which
it most certainly (and fundamentally) does. It also “does things.” Some of what our language
does—what we do with our language—can be injurious, as we also know. What we as teach-
ers “do” in our classrooms—with and to language—affects every student there. And every
student there has (at least one) language, at once similar to and different from the language(s)
of classmates and from both our own and the language(s) of printed texts. How we under-
stand and discuss these differences matters.
This chapter, as its title notes, addresses three areas: language, linguistic diversity, and writing—
more narrowly, the implications of how we understand critical aspects of the first two for
composition classrooms. In its pages we address issues associated with defining language itself,
and we consider a small sample of the range of linguistic diversity that we encounter, and
should not fail to make note of. We also address the ways in which we talk about language:
the language we use in describing our own and others’ languages. And in this context, as
318 Sharon Klein
we speak to readers who are preparing to work with—to teach—student writers, the chapter
turns its attention in particular (but not exclusively) to such educational settings. It is here, for
example, that observations about the language we use to talk about language are crucial. They
are crucial because, as language serves to represent our thought, our language about language
reveals much about how we think about it, and, also, again, because the language about lan-
guage we use can be damaging. It can even silence our students by undermining their own
languages, and, thus, their access to representing and externalizing their thought. If these rea-
sons were not enough, talking about linguistic diversity and language itself seems fundamental
to any interesting, much less effective, discussion of text—whether we’re considering how to
compose them, how to read them, or how to critically evaluate them.
For Writing and Discussion: Some Observations

Read through each of the following “offerings,” and consider their relationship to the
context laid out in the chapter’s introductory remarks. Consider as well, whether you
could use such examples in your own writing classrooms, and in the contexts where
you might find them fitting and useful.
1 Charles Dickens, Chapter 8, Great Expectations.

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal
dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then, of the discoveries that are occa-
sionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of
being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the
admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.
“He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!” said Estella with disdain, before our first game
was out. “And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!”
I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider
them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infec-
tious, and I caught it.
She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she
was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy
labouring-boy.
“You say nothing of her,” remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked on. “She
says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?”
“I don’t like to say,” I stammered.
“Tell me in my ear,” said Miss Havisham, bending down.
“I think she is very proud,” I replied, in a whisper.
“Anything else?”
“I think she is very pretty.”
“Anything else?”
“I think I should like to go home.”
“And never see her again, though she is so pretty?”
“I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I should like to go
home now.”
“You shall go soon,” said Miss Havisham, aloud. “Play the game out.”
Language, Linguistic Diversity, and Writing 319
2 A Biblical excerpt, from Judges, Chapter 12: Verses 5 and 6 from the King James version
of the Old Testament, which provide us with an etymology of the word shibboleth.4
5
And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so,
that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of
Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
6
Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could
not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of
Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
3 A 19th century cartoon reproduced in Bailey (1996).5
4 And, finally, a small exercise. Seek out the definition(s) and etymology of the word bar-
barian in an unabridged dictionary (OED, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language, or The Merriam Webster Unabridged Dictionary). What do you find?
Figure 9.1 “Evil communications,” &C [sic]

Source: Bailey (1996, p. 89)
320 Sharon Klein
Adding writing to the set of topics complicates what you might be guessing is already a bit
complex. But writing is, after all, why we are here, why you are reading these words that I
have written. The text, in fact, moves us into a more sophisticated area—if not one exclusive
to writing—composition. We will address issues in these three areas, and importantly how
they relate to one another and how to navigate the territories their relationships define.
2 Toward Some Organization

Earlier versions of this chapter sought to describe particular details of selected languages.6 We
will not engage in extended language-specific descriptions, as there are excellent sources for
these, which will be mentioned in the relevant contexts. We will, however, discuss some
general fundamental working assumptions about human language that characterize much of
the linguistic work, from the basic science of linguistic inquiry, and we will connect the find-
ings from linguistics to study in the areas of sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, and issues
in contemporary composition. We will do so with a focus on the issues, connecting the fields
through these issues. Each of these fields, as well as the issues, is itself wide-ranging and non-
holistic, and a complete discussion would move well beyond the boundaries of a chapter that
has any hope for instructional value. But, we pay some attention—we hope both accessible
and useful—to the fields, and both their working assumptions and the insights that inquiries
guided by them have yielded, with some focus on the ways in which emerging applications in
areas of composition studies have interpreted and applied the findings and insights emerging
from these areas of language study.
We will begin with some notions about language, as these will follow us throughout. But
first, contributing to our preparation, we investigate one perspective on writing.

Look at Plato’s Socratic dialog Phaedrus. Its bibliographic entry here provides a web
link, and you should be able to find and read sections 274b through 278b. What did
Socrates think of writing? Where might you actually agree with him? And where not?
What are your reasons for each? How might you guide new college students in a writ-
ing class through such a discussion of language and writing? Consider, too, the fact that
writing itself is a fairly recent technological innovation. No one learns to read without
instruction, but everyone develops at least one (most people in the world develop more
than one) language. With no instruction.7 How might this fact contribute to your
thinking about Socrates’s disposition toward writing?
3 About Language
3.1 Some Linguistic Assumptions

Angelea Friederici opens her 2017 overarching review of the fields of neuro-and biolinguis-
tics, where she seeks to specify the neurobiological basis for language with the following:
“Humans are born to learn language. We learn our native language without any formal
teaching or training, and we easily deal with language every day in all possible situations
without even thinking about it. . . . we use language automatically” (p. 1). It is, in fact, for
the reasons Friederici touches on here that many linguists refer to children’s linguistic progress
as “language development” rather than as “language learning,” to distinguish it from the way
we typically think of learning. As a brief illustration of linguistic automaticity—and arguably,
a glance at the complexity of the system, consider the strings of words in (1).8
1 a the ship sinks

b ship the sinks
c the sinks ship
You’ll notice that the simple rearrangement of the three elements in the strings triggers re-
analysis, and moving the definite article9 the in (1.c.) does so further. All of this you were
fairly immediately aware of, and immediately—automatically—responded to the demand for
mental restructuring, even if it took you a moment to restructure—and, we might add, you
read these strings, you did not hear them, which involved another unconscious and automatic
step (your having learned to read, and your being proficient readers, yields that automaticity)10
and access to an additional system. While we effortlessly interpret such strings—even put them
into service in larger contexts and know where any one of them could not fit e.g., ∗I think you
should the ship sinks,11 it is unlikely that a typical speaker could describe the linguistic knowl-
edge they’d deployed in that instant to distinguish among the strings and make the additional
judgment. So, our inherently human “knowledge” is (before any study of linguistics) beyond
our reach of awareness; we refer to that knowledge as “tacit” or “implicit”—not unlike our
knowledge of how we walk (absent itself of any formal instruction in the anatomy and physi-
ology of kinesiology).
Language is not only inherently human, it is also uniquely so. No other animal develops
this particular system, even with extended instruction, but certainly not without it, as human
infants do spontaneously12 (Anderson, 2004). We turn now to a bit about how linguistic
research generally thinks about language. But it’s worth repeating that our discussion of what
language is (at least what linguists generally mean when we say that word)—what insights
the focused study of language have contributed—is in the service of how to interlace these
insights with an understanding of linguistic diversity and in turn, the relationship of all of this
to making what happens in composition classrooms most beneficial (and what the goals might
themselves be in such classrooms) for the students inhabiting them.
3.1.1 I-Language and E-Language

This pair of terms was introduced in Chomsky (1986), have focused conversations and treat-
ments of linguistic phenomena in the field of linguistics itself, and are terms that can advance
our goals as well. I-language (where the I represents, roughly, internalized, individual, and
intensional13 language) refers to the working assumptions that each individual human being
develops their own individual linguistic system, much as we develop our own individual
visual-perceptual, immune, or digestive systems. The general biological aspects of such systems
are uniformly determined, but each of us develops our own individual actualization. And as we
do with these other biological phenomena, we can talk about the nature of human language,
but must understand that it develops and exists in individuals. This I-language is what allows
us to assign structure to visible (in sign languages) or audible (in spoken languages) linguistic
signals, and, again, the prevailing working assumption is that it develops; we do not learn it as
we conventionally understand the notions underlying learning. And I-language—the knowl-
edge internalized by a single speaker—is really the only potentially fruitful focus for linguistic
study with the goal of precisely understanding and defining the nature of human language.
E-language refers to everything else. The irony is that even though its reference—everything
else—makes it virtually impossible to define, it is what all of us typically use the word language for.
322 Sharon Klein
It is our “common sense notion of language.” We talk about the English language, or writing
in American English (or French, Armenian, or Korean, for that matter), or we say “Julia speaks
Hungarian and Hebrew.” But exactly what are our references in these expressions? Whenever
we talk about speakers of Bikol, or of Swedish Sign Language, or when we’re talking about
“global English,” African American Language, or Spanglish, we are using E-language terms.
The terms don’t really refer to anything tangible; they refer to our ideas of what the languages
are, tacitly including social and political components. And typically it is these ideas of language
that guide teachers in their work with student writers—rather than the realities of the indi-
vidual internal linguistic systems in the heads—mind-brains—of individuals.
This observation makes it clear that although E-language is not a promising focus for
understanding what it is that a speaker knows when they know a language, or for understand-
ing what the nature of the human language faculty is, the concept(s) underlying E-language
cannot be dismissed. Its sheer pervasiveness and its clear “sociopolitical dimensions” make
it something we cannot ignore. Linguistic communities are of interest insofar as how they
use aspects of linguistic behavior to identify themselves—and others (recall shibboleth), and
findings in such areas are of interest (witness the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project and
the work of Sali Tagliamonte, as well as that of the sociolinguists we cite throughout this
chapter who have contributed to our understanding of the dimensions of African American
Language, for example). E-language, moreover, given its centering on what is externalized,
permits discussions of usage, which have provided us with a rich tradition of usage manuals,
along with the ongoing discussion about such manuals and the attitudes they reflect (Edward
Finegan’s and Jim Quinn’s approaches, looking at such dispositions, lend insights about such
manuals that remain undiminished). We will, in the context of diversity and the writing class-
room, have more to say about usage.
Importantly, familiarity with these two concepts and the distinct conceptual framework
each provides for is crucial not only to our clear view of human language, but also to our
understanding of linguistic diversity and general views of it, along with the prevailing ideolo-
gies regarding language that define the nature of classrooms addressing anything related to
language—which, of course, omits little, but for us in particular, defines writing instruction.
3.1.2 Grammar
Grammar has achieved a vertiginous depth of complexity as both a word and term. We men-
tion, of course, Hartwell’s (1985) extensive discussion of at least five of its senses at that time,14
to which Martha Kolln forcefully added what she argued was a distinct notion, triggering a
documented debate, and contributing to the ongoing challenge of weaving notions of gram-
mar into writing instruction. But even the debate itself narrowed the meaning of grammar
at work in writing instruction to the reference of the term syntax in linguistics, namely the
knowledge speakers have of sentence structure. Writing is most certainly dependent on our
individual knowledge of sentence structure and its role in both contributing to meaning and
challenging readers.
In linguistics, the term, grammar refers to the knowledge of I-language that any given speaker
internalizes. This is roughly Hartwell’s “Grammar 1.” And while syntax (more precisely than
our reference above, syntax refers to the knowledge any speaker of a language internalizes of
how phrases, clauses, and sentences are structured, and how meanings are ascribed to these
structures) is certainly a significant component, it is not the only component of such knowl-
edge, of a grammar. Syntax interfaces with phonology15—required for the externalizing of
this knowledge—as well as with semantics, which determines how words, and often phrases,
and clauses, as well, work to represent meaning. How these systems interact with the more
general communicative contexts in which speakers find themselves is addressed by the field of
linguistic pragmatics, a field that also plays a significant role in elucidating the sorts of expecta-
tions about what texts’ forms mean that readers bring to them, how these expectations affect
interpretation, and what aspiring writers should know about them. What we have just out-
lined: a linguistic account of what comprises any speaker’s I-language, their individual, inter-
nal linguistic system, corresponds, again roughly, to Hartwell’s “Grammar 2.” So, there is a
duality of the term—even in linguistics—as it refers at once to the tacit knowledge a speaker
has internalized (I-language) and the linguistic account(s) and model(s) of this knowledge.
For Writing and Discussion—A Brief Interlude . . .

Consider the information that the sentences in (2) require that a reader feels they must
already know, as opposed to what the reader is likely to infer subsequent sentences will
supply. What elements actually change? What are the effects of these changes on the
“exchange” of information between the text and a reader?
2 a A group of researchers walked into a lab.

b A group of researchers walked into the lab.
c The group of researchers walked into a lab.
d The group of researchers walked into the lab.
e They walked in.
3 a They were absent from yesterday’s meeting.
b They absented themselves from yesterday’s meeting.
Ignoring for a moment that the proximity of (3) to (2) might have tempted you to presume
that they might (still) somehow be connected to a/the group of researchers pair (which makes us
aware of how we interpret pronouns), consider the difference between (3a) and (3b), which
differ in their use of absent—one as an adjective and the other, as a verb. How does that dif-
ference affect how you read (or what you “read into”) the sentences?
Try to construct three other sets of sentences that reflect structural differences and discuss
with others the differences in interpretation that the sentences’ respective structures are likely
to trigger, whether they do, and what might be at work.
In the exercise you have just completed, the connections between structure and the
meaning(s) it conveys are relatively apparent. But, this sort of experience is typically not
the focus of grammatical study in writing classrooms. Rather, its focus is on a particular set
of conventions for sentence structure to which a presumed linguistic community holds its
writers, and deviations from this set are referred to as errors.16 These conventions provide for
discussion of usage—a decidedly E-language construct, as we have noted. The objective of
grammatical study, then, is to show students what such deviations are and (presumably) how
to avoid them. Notoriously, this approach has a history of sustained failure, but that is the
history we have.
When some attention was paid to approaches that some might refer to as “stylistic,” that
is, approaches that provided aspiring writers with access to various ways of manipulating sen-
tences, there was some success with attention to the pieces of sentences—both with explicit
grammatical (actually linguistic, in this case: Bateman and Zidonis 1966 and see also Zibroski
201617) terminology, and without. Success was measured in terms of the extent to which
324 Sharon Klein
students’ subsequent writing made fruitful use of the more elaborated sentences. Included
in the latter (i.e., devoid of linguistic instruction) were sentence imitation (Corbett 1963),
whose pedagogy invoked the classical tradition, not of copying, but of composing sentences
from models in context), combining sentences (Daiker et al. 1978 and Morenberg et al. 1978,
and what its developer (Christensen 1963) referred to as “Generative Rhetoric,” a method
which provided simple clauses to which student writers were guided toward adding vari-
ous sorts of phrasal and clausal modifiers and studying the rhetorical effect of such structur-
ings, and combining sentences (Daiker et al. 1978 and Morenberg et al. 1978, for example).
Experimentation provided significant evidence that these approaches enriched students’ “syn-
tactic maturity;” they worked.
In “The erasure of the sentence,” Connors (2000) both carefully documents and evinces
bemusement at the overwhelming rejection of these pedagogies, particularly sentence com-
bining, which had taken hold during the last third of the 20th century, but was included in
the rejection into the turn of the millennium. This rejection, moreover, included not just
the pedagogies, but also the research regarding them and attesting to their effectiveness. In
fact, what developed into an argument against them was the perceived “scientistic” nature of
both the pedagogy and the research supporting it Connors (pp. 118–122). Writing—as the
process methodology was moving in—was not a science. This reaction, and the turn away
from sentences culminated in the virtual disappearance of these sorts of approaches—at least
in most writing classes seeing themselves as outside of the “creative writing” areas18—in other
words, in most “composition” classes.
The appearance of the first edition of Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say I Say in 2006 (now
in its 4th edition, 2018) reignited (or reflected already renewed, or quietly undaunted) inter-
est in the sentence (but, for some critique of at least early versions of Graff and Berkenstein,
see Lancaster, 2016) and Virginia Tufte’s Artful Sentences appeared that same year. But there is
a difference between these and the efforts of that last third of the 20th century. Those efforts
provided apprentice writers with the experiences that seems analogous to those a musical
student has with scales and related exercises. Neither experience is tied to any particular com-
positions (of musical units or words and sentences), but both have the capacity to trigger an
awareness of how the medium works, and how phrases (and clauses) can combine.
In a footnote, Connors (fn. 4, p. 123) cites an essay by William Strong, which appeared
in Daiker, Kerek, and Morenberg (1985), a collection of papers and talks where members of
the opposition to sentence combining, who argued that it was disconnected from rhetoric
and was not “natural” (compositionists including Peter Elbow and Donald Murray) and those
who had developed, implemented, and tested the model came together, or attempted to. In
“How Sentence Combining Works,” Strong points out that sentence combining “requires
human beings to pay attention to their own interaction with sentences,” and that it “often
serves as a springboard for writing tasks.” It involves students in the language they’re using,
and, he argued, his “hunch” was that “the language in sentence combining often triggers
metalinguistic thinking beyond its own discursive content . . . sentence combining helps stu-
dents transfer power from oral language performance to writing.” They are “attending to
discourse” in large measure because they are constructing small pieces of it (Strong, p. 350.).
It is tempting to speculate that these sorts of exercises (including Corbett, Christensen, and
Daiker et al.) brought students closer to an awareness of their own I-languages in ways that
were unblurred by the static of E-language perspectives.
Before we move away from grammar, a topic, in any case, that is addressed in the chapter
preceding this one, it seems only fair to acknowledge that even (or especially) the theory of
grammar (“Grammar 2”) best suited to model human linguistic knowledge (“Grammar 1”)
and to provide the framework for studying that is not a universally agreed-upon choice. The
grammatical framework that seems to be favored by compositionists in this area is that associ-
ated with M. A. K. Halliday, notably systemic functional linguistics (SFL). We will spend a
few words here outlining the differences, insofar as that is possible. SFL, as its name implies,
looks at language through a functional lens, concerned with how language functions in social
contexts to achieve the goals that speakers may have, notably creating and communicat-
ing meanings. One major working assumption is that speakers construct meanings through
choices they make—choices of words and phrases—that will function in various ways to
convey meanings. This focus on choice highlights what is referred to as the paradigmatic
axis—will a speaker select a definite or indefinite article (the vs. a), for example, or a pronomi-
nal subject, or a fully fleshed-out nominal, on the one hand (4a-b) or one of the two verbs
indicated on the other (4c, shun vs. love):
4 a Most of the canines I know love playing in a park.

b They love playing in the park.
c They shun playing in the park.
Thus it is the notions of function, interlaced with the overarching role of choice, with lan-
guage providing the repertoire of choices19 in the service of making or affecting meaning,
that are primary.
3.2 The Bigger Picture: Arranging Pieces of the Puzzle

The investment that reading through these discussions about language and grammar requires—
even as they are somewhat (over) simplified—should promise some payoff. In fact, the obser-
vations we’ve highlighted regarding descriptive and theoretical views of the human language
faculty, and what insights they might each provide, will be important as we turn our focus into
the areas of language variation and linguistic diversity as well as to contemporary notions of
transnational, translanguaging, and translingual approaches to thinking about language and text.
4 Linguistic Diversity
4.1 Some (More) Definitions
4.1.1 Dialect
There are words and terms that we regularly deploy with little thought toward their “actual”20
reference and sense. Until someone asks. The terms dialect and language are prominent in this
regard. Many introductory linguistic texts have foundered on the shoals of trying to make
a linguistic argument for the distinction. And of course, as we have seen and will continue
to see, the word language itself has a complex and often murky range of referents and senses,
even within the territory of linguistics (large itself), but certainly beyond it. But, as our con-
versations about language ideologies (complemented by the parallel reading) should reflect,
discussion of these—including language—provides the space to build the connections between
sociolinguistic insights (including those that shed light on our tangled attachment to the
notions of E-language) and our understanding of the human language faculty underlying any
I-language. So, we will turn back to the early mid-20th century (But we can look even far-
ther back for such insights, see the first chapters of Ferrers Howell’s translation of Dante, De
Vulgari Eloquentia) for this first insight). Chomsky (1986) observed that “A standard remark in
introductory linguistics classes is that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy” (p. 15),
an observation which, in his mention of it, Chomsky attributes to Max Weinreich,21 whose
descriptive and sociolinguistic work focused on Yiddish, and who is considered one of the
early 20th century patriarchs of sociolinguistics.
326 Sharon Klein
We wish the observation were actually more standard in introductory texts, but the one
we discuss here is exemplary in this regard. Akmajian et al. discuss dialect at length, but do
refer to Weinreich and his insight (providing it as it was in the original Yiddish) in a detailed
“Special Topic” section. (pp. 291–292) But noteworthy for us is the following, where
Akmajian et al. consider “mutual intelligibility,” a criterion typically exploited for referring to
two linguistic entities as dialects rather than languages, in the context of a discussion of French
(which has E-language status, regardless of the actual range of “Frenches” we can identify)
and Swiss German (which has this E-language name, but itself is somewhere in-between the
definitional spaces. . .a Prattian 1991 Contact Zone?). Akmajian et al. write: “. . . one could
say that Swiss German and French are ‘mutually intelligible.’ Clearly, ‘mutual intelligibility’ has
more to do with the competence of speakers than it has to do with languages being mutually intelligible”
(p. 264, italics mine). It is important to note that competence itself is used in Akmajian et al.
in its technical sense, as Chomsky (1965) introduced it, to refer specifically to the tacit and
implicit linguistic knowledge that a speaker has internalized. In that sense, with the added
emphasis on the knowledge being internal and individual, I-language has supplanted compe-
tence). Thus, Akmajian et al. are pointing out that the feature of mutual intelligibility in rela-
tion to the use of these linguistic systems is a function of individual knowledge (I-language),
not of anything called “French” or “Swiss German.” We may repeat this assertion, but it
deserves some mention here. What we do with language depends crucially on I-language.
How we typically think about and refer to language is related to and a function of E-language.
In their discussion, Akmajian et al. make it clear that even in general usage, the word dialect
is fraught in many ways. Referring to a linguistic entity as a dialect certainly does not confer
status. On the contrary, being referred to as a dialect is typically considered a demotion for
a linguistic system, unless a system with dialect status “earns” the companion label “stand-
ard,” itself an issue for us. In other words, prestige dialect and standard dialect are infused with
status not because they’re dialects, but because they are positively marked dialects. Nor does
the term dialect have any consistent content, as dialects are “never purely regional, or purely
social, or purely ethnic,” despite these being used definitionally, since “regional, social, and
ethnic factors combine and intersect in various ways” as they’re put into service in the identi-
fication of dialects (p. 262). And in case we needed more evidence of the largely sociopolitical
dimensions that define the terms language and dialect, the E-languages Serbian and Croatian
exist as a function of the dissolution of Yugoslavia (itself of course having been a construct of
the 20th century), as they were—admittedly edgily (with the Serbs and Croats using distinct
writing systems)—a single E-language, Serbo-Croatian. There are many other such examples
readers may already know or certainly can discover.
4.1.2 Correctness, Standard, and Monolingualism

It seems reasonable to consider “correctness,” closely related to the ideologies of standard
language and monolingualism in the context of propaganda and its effectiveness. Here we
turn again (as we did in fn 3) to Stanley (2015) for two guideposts. First, consider the fol-
lowing: “[supremacist] ideology involves a hierarchy of race, an explicit elite group, and
the dehumanization of other groups.” Stanley calls this a “flawed ideology,” and continues:
“When societies are unjust, for example, in the distribution of wealth, we can expect the
emergence of flawed ideologies” (p. 3). Second is the issue of ideology itself. Stanley claims
that to understand its power one must consider the 16th century observation of Etienne de la
Boétie, who identified voluntary servitude, which Stanley describes as “the (alleged) tendency
of the negatively privileged masses to accept the flawed ideology of the elites” (p. 5). We
clearly saw evidence of this tendency in the 19th-century cartoon about “proper” grammar,
and our corollary reading (Watson and Shapiro 2018), delves into the issue as well.
Socioeconomic and political ideologies pervade every area of our relationship to language.
Consider the natural process of language change when it comes to words’ references and
senses (semantic change). In his text Words in Time, Geoffrey Hughes (1988) notes that “As
power has been extended to a variety of interests, first through capitalism, and then through
democracy, so oligarchies—both political and economic—have been able to manipulate
words in their favour” (p. 8). He also cites C. S. Lewis (who as an academic was a medieval-
ist), who in Studies in Words, noted the existence of a robust category of change related to
“the moralization of status words,” working in both directions (C. S. Lewis 1960, pp. 21–23;
in Hughes, p.12). Our word lewd, for example, once simply referred to ‘the laity, the unedu-
cated,’ who were the majority, and villain (from the Medieval French spoken by the ruling
class in England) described the lowest class of servant, but meant little beyond boorish at the
time. In the other direction, a favorite example from Old English is hlāford, a term referring
to the house servant who took charge of the availability of bread, and which eventually short-
ened to the word lord, with all that it means.
Its pervasiveness, however, renders such ideology invisible; it’s just there. . .for us to believe
and perpetuate, at least until we render it visible again. A recent example of such invisibility is
the more public use of the expression “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps,” which so many,
whose access to various social services is regularly questioned, must hear repeatedly. We have
learned that the phrase was originally used with trenchant irony. The earliest attributed use as
found is in 1834 in the Workingman’s Advocate: “It is conjectured that Mr. Murphee will now
be enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland River or a barnyard fence by the straps of
his boots” (Zimmer 2005). From those who have reconstructed it, Anne Curzan observes in
Lingua Franca that the phrase was not intended in that context as a criticism of Mr. Murphee.
It is, of course, physically impossible to lift oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. But as unsee-
ing as we remain in this context, we do even more persuasively in the context of language.
Even constructed ones.
The power of these wider prevailing sociopolitical and economic ideologies has easily given
rise to companion ideologies about language. In particular, we refer to the assumption of a sort
of monolingualism as a goal for texts in writing classrooms, as well as the corollary presump-
tion of any consistently identifiable standard of English or written English as such a unified
language.. Despite Herculean, well-executed, and often repeated efforts—notably those of
Matsuda (2006) as well as others—to disabuse us of these, we are still reading about them.
Beyond providing critical insight, as Matsuda’s work has, his observations make clear how
essential it is to treat these—and, for that matter, most—language phenomena just as Galileo
treated the phenomena of nature: not just as “natural,” or, worse, invisible, but as puzzling,
and demanding sustained and careful inquiry. Before we move on, it seems a good place to
consider some other language ideologies.

This exercise with Klingon has appeared in earlier versions of this chapter. Although we
have been graced with a number of new constructed languages since Klingon, notably,
Na’vi (Frommer), Dothraki, High Valyrian, and, most recently, Trigedasleng, the lan-
guage of the Grounders (Peterson), the detailed sociolinguistic territory of Klingon that
Okrand crafted is worth plumbing; it’s instructive in the context of our thoughts about
language. From The Klingon Dictionary:
(continued)
328 Sharon Klein
(continued)
As part of the Star Trek enterprise, a non-Terran language identified with the
Klingon beings was developed for Paramount Pictures by Marc Okrand, a lin-
guist. The introduction to the dictionary providing a detailed description of the
language is quite instructive for us in a number of ways, working as a mirror
of sorts for the ways we think about linguistic variation and privileged forms.
Consider some of the assertions in this excerpt. How might these assertions—
the excerpt in general—be interpreted as satire? What comments does the piece
make about the roles of dialect and language in society? What parallels can you
draw in universes with whose languages you are more familiar? What is Standard
Klingon, for example? How is it defined? How is what you have recently learned
about I-language vs E-language—notably, E-language—reflected here? What
connections can you make to the discussion about concepts regarding cor-
rectness and the myth of monolingualism that Watson and Shapiro address? If
you or fellow classmates/writing instructors know at least one other language,
consider the positions around correctness and how correctness is defined in
that language’s lore. For example, whose version(s) of the language are used to
define correctness?
Although Klingons are proud of their language and frequently engage in long
discussions about its expressiveness and beauty, they have found it impractical for
communication outside the Klingon Empire. For intra- and intergalactic communi-
cation, the Klingon government, along with most other governments, has accepted
English as the lingua franca. In general, only those Klingons of the upper classes
(which include higher-level governmental and military officials) learn English. As
a result, English has taken on two additional functions in Klingon society. First,
it is used as a symbol of rank or status. Those Klingons who know English will
use it among themselves to show off their erudition and make their place in soci-
ety known to all who happen to be listening. Second, English is used when it is
thought best to keep servants, soldiers, or even the general populace uninformed.
Thus, on a Klingon vessel, the commanding officer will often speak Klingon when
giving orders to his crew, but choose English when having discussions with his
officers. On the other hand, a Klingon officer may use Klingon in the presence
of non-Klingons to prevent them from knowing what is going on. This use of
Klingon seems to be quite effective.
There are a number of dialects of Klingon. Only one of the dialects, that of
the current Klingon emperor, is represented in this dictionary. When a Klingon
emperor is replaced, for whatever reason, it has historically been the case that the
next emperor speaks a different dialect. As a result, the new emperor’s dialect
becomes the official dialect. Those Klingons who do not speak the official dialect
are considered either stupid or subversive, and are usually forced to undertake tasks
that speakers of the official dialect find distasteful. Most Klingons try to be fluent
in several dialects.
Some dialects differ only slightly from the dialect of this dictionary. Differences
tend to be in vocabulary (the word for forehead, for example is different in almost
every dialect) and in the pronunciation of a few sounds. On the other hand, some
dialects differ significantly from the current official dialect, so much so that speak-
ers have a great deal of difficulty communicating with current Klingon official-
dom. The student of Klingon is warned to check into the political situation of the
Klingon Empire before trying to talk.
(Okrand, 1985)
4.1.3 Standard(ized) English, Standard(ized) American English, EAE and “the Language of
Wider Communication,” MUSE, and *SAE
Correctness and ideology are topics that take us directly to the terms here. Correctness as a
concept (and it does prevail) cannot exist absent the ideologies that support it (a point we’ve
seen) and these both are entwined with all the notions represented by what we have here: an
impressive array of labels for something that doesn’t exist.22 In the second edition of English
with an Accent, Lippi-Green (2012) reminds us that, in search of a label beyond “standard” for
the first edition of the book (1997), she’d settled on “mainstream US English” or MUSE. But
in this edition, she rejects that compromise, having come to the conclusion that “mainstream
is just as inaccurate as the term standard” (p. 62). She chooses instead to use *SAE. The letters,
SAE could stand for Standard(ized) American (or Academic) English, but what is significant
is Lippi-Green’s use of the asterisk. She is capitalizing on its general use in analytical stud-
ies whose goal is to develop accounts of data that not only describe what occurs (and what
speakers presumably find immediately acceptable), but also (and crucially) predict what will
not and cannot occur as speaker intuitions. It is such predictions that render the descriptive
analyses testable—and allow practitioners to evaluate the hypotheses embedded in a given
analysis. The role of the asterisk is to mark a string as non-occurring—a string that no speaker
would recognize as an even possibly occurring utterance, much less a likely one. A strong
claim about (so-called) SAE, one to take seriously, and one that Watson and Shapiro (2018)
(our selected collateral reading) adopt.
What can one call something that it is widely claimed should be “the goal of all speakers,”
but whose very existence is in question and is soaked through with divisive ideology? Geneva
Smitherman—one of the linguists who has been at work teaching other linguists, as well as
students preparing to teach speakers of African American Language since the Ann Arbor deci-
sion in 1977 (Smitherman 1981) and through the Oakland Ebonics proposal in 1997—relates
a story about what some have chosen as a label, and how that choice plays out:
I have this program in Detroit at the Malcolm X Academy, where I deal with seventh
and eighth grade young males, you know, they’re all strutting, and they’re all real nation-
alistic, and I always have to tell them I’m saying “wider” communication not “whiter”
communication. I’m saying wider, so we can talk outside the “hood.”
(Smitherman 1996, pp. 22–23)
She had attributed the term “language of wider communication” to Joshua Fishman, who
referred to such as “the language that helps people communicate in a broad spectrum out-
side their own particular sphere, outside their own particular community” (Smitherman
1996, p. 22). The question becomes, of course, who decides what that “wider” language is.
In answer to this question, some linguists (including Charity Hudley and Mallinson in
Understanding Language Variation in US Schools) have chosen to use, with emphasis, the suffix
–ize along with standard, because standardized:
makes the parallel that just as specific types of knowledge are valued on standardized
tests, so, too are specific types of language valued within the educational system. Using
the term standardized English also reflects the important reality that powerful people
and institutions, including the media, are involved in decisions about when and how to
standardize English.
(p. 12)
As part of the discussion, Charity Hudley and Mallinson cite Bonfiglio (2002) who has
explicitly made the case that the selection of forms of American English more like those in
the upper middle west (rather than varieties identified with certain urban areas, e.g., Boston
330 Sharon Klein
or New York City, which are arguably more cosmopolitan—that being a potentially desir-
able feature) as more standard are related to issues of racialization. They also cite Suzanne
Romaine’s introduction to sociolinguistics (Romaine 2000), which observes that “[s]tand-
ardization is not an inherent, but rather an acquired or deliberately and artificially imposed
characteristic (p. 87).”
What is also worth noting here (although this does take us a bit ahead of ourselves),
is that many who are “native” speakers of “the language of wider communication,” but
are not proficient speakers of African American Language (as Smitherman’s students are)
have, nonetheless, appropriated a range of elements from the language, as the videos
Talking Black in America and The E-Word reflect (and as both the videos and Rickford
(2016) make clear, these speakers of “the language of wider communication” seek out
elements of AAL, finding the language very communicative, while standardizing efforts
to continue to derogate it.
EAE, “Edited American English” is a label—the one label—that has specifically to do
with text, and it is discussed at length in the extended conversation about Students’ Rights to
their Own Language (SRTOL) in the special issue of College Composition and Communication.
This discussion raises a number of issues about the expectations of writing instruction
related to linguistic diversity (in this document, because it was the Conference on College
Composition and Communication (CCCC) and the NCTE who collaborated, the discus-
sion is directed toward K-12, rather than post-secondary settings), and, as Watson and
Shapiro discuss as well, arrived early to (and even initiated some of) the conversation ques-
tioning mythologies of aspirational linguistic homogeneity and standard language. The arena
of written language seems to provide a much less permeable framework of standardization,
but it also allows us a telling insight into the infrastructure of that framework. As Milroy and
Milroy (2012) have taught us, and as Linn (2013) as well as Watson and Shapiro remind us,
the idea of a standard language is precisely that—an idea. This is true even when language
academies exist and persist.23 Language as individuals speak it changes.24 And we’ve noted
that in the 14th century, Dante understood this perfectly.

CCCC passed a resolution referred to as the SRTOL: Students’ right to their own
language. It read as follows:
We affirm the students’ right to their own patterns and varieties of language—the
dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity
and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American
dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to
an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim
leads to false advice to speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A
nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its
heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and
training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students
to their own language.
(Larson 1974)
In their book also, Charity Hudley and Mallinson (2011) list “Seven Privileges of
Standardized English” (p. 36), reproduced here:
1 Standardized English-speaking students can usually be assured that the newspapers,
magazines, books, and other media they encounter at school will be in the type of
English they are already familiar with.
2 Standardized English-speaking students can usually be assured that they will not be
mocked or teased for how they pronounce their words.
3 Standardized English-speaking students can usually be assured that they will not be
thought of as being less intelligent because of how they talk.
4 Standardized English-speaking students can usually be assured that standardized test
instructions and materials will be written in English they are already familiar with.
5 Standardized English-speaking students can usually be assured that most of their
educators will communicate with them in the type of English the students are
already familiar with.
6 Standardized English-speaking students can usually be assured that the way they talk
will not be the subject of jokes or belittling in mainstream TV shows or movies.
7 Standardized English-speaking students can usually be assured that their pronun-
ciation, intonation, and sentence structure will not interfere with their ability to
be assessed accurately, to interact with authority figures, or, later in life, to obtain
housing and be hired for a job.
How do these two pieces align with one another? What aspects related to language and
standardization can you find that are consistent across the two. What aspects related to
attitudes seem to diverge? How might one reconcile these? If the notion of standard is,
as many argue, imagined and inconsistent, what exactly is privileged?
For Writing and Discussion (Exercise Adapted from Ginsberg,

Maya, and O’Neil, 2011)
What languages do your peers in your own seminar or course speak, and write and
read? What languages do the students in your writing class speak, and write and read?
Find the Omniglot website whose link is cited in the References, along with the link
to where the first sentence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is written in a
number of languages. Work with your peers to find the sentences in their languages,
and then try to translate those into English. What do you notice? What particular trans-
lation challenges did you discover? What words did and did not translate? How did the
sentence structure differ, if any?
4.1.4 Languaging, Translanguaging, and Other Terms . . .

A number of language specialists, including linguists, applied linguists, and educators, have
operationalized careful observation of what happens when (at least) two languages come
together in the setting of a speaker25 for whom at least one of them is new, or new-ish. In
his paper, “Translanguaging as a practical theory of language,” Li Wei (2018) discusses the
sense and reference as well as the motivation for this “trans-,” and also addresses the history
of what it prefixes, namely languaging, a term he attributes to others, but whose definition he
elaborates. He also, in this paper, seeks to have translanguaging become an overarching term,
supplanting a range of other descriptors that we will consider in this context as well.
332 Sharon Klein
Li has written extensive descriptions of what he has labeled New Chinglish, a language
that has been emerging among a “new generation” of Chinese speakers of English in China,
and in this paper also discusses a linguistic system that has emerged among ethnic Chinese
Singaporeans that includes Mandarin, Malay, Cantonese English, and what is referred to as
Singlish (pp. 13–14). Li uses his term translanguaging to capture not only the cross-linguistic
nature of these linguistic practices, but also to bring attention to aspects of multilingual speak-
ers’ actual usage that he claims moves beyond what is typically meant by multilingualism, as
that term does not automatically bring to mind the characteristics of language mixing that
include, crucially, simultaneity and dynamism. Others (Vogel and García 2017) also appeal to
these two features, rendering them somewhat definitional.
Translanguaging does not make a direct reference to any sociolinguistic context (as does
“crossing” (Rampton 1995a, 1995b), for example, which explicitly includes the reasons for
the linguistic features speakers choose as they cross linguistic and consequent identity bounda-
ries, often seeking specifically to identify with the individuals and linguistic communities who
may lay claim to the chosen features . . . or at least seem to, as an enterprising Ephraimite at
the Gileadite border might have26). The term—and the theory its proponents seek to derive
from it (Li Wei 2018, Vogel and García 2018, as well as others)—refers fairly consistently to
a “unitary linguistic repertoire,” a sort of linguistic filing cabinet, from which speakers “select
and deploy particular features . . . to make meaning and to negotiate particular communica-
tive contexts” (Vogel and García, p. 1).
While appealing, translanguaging, as it is defined in these contexts, is linguistically trouble-
some. It is conceptually odd to think of a multilingual speaker as having taken combinable
elements from all the languages they know, and store them in a single “receptacle” from
which they can be “chosen” and “deployed.” The actualization of the human language fac-
ulty for any given language has been amended in response to that language’s particular fea-
tures. Languages have different word orders as well as different choices for a range of other
syntactic structures; different realizations of phonological elements (including those of sign
languages); and, of course, different choices for words and signs and their referents.27 It is dif-
ficult not to wonder how these choices from different languages could all tumble into such
a container. But this is precisely the question we must ask of translanguaging theory if we
are to extract useful pedagogical applications in any classroom, particularly if tacit assump-
tions at its foundation seem at odds with what we know about cross-linguistic diversity and
linguistic unity (Anderson 2012), and what neurolinguistic research tells us is conflicted, with
confounding issues related to age of acquisition for the two or each language(s), and inde-
pendently established level(s) of proficiency (Kovelman et al. 2008; Costa et al. 2014; a 2013
review article by Buchweitz and Prat; Thurman (2018), who discusses at length the linguistic
prowess of “hyperglots” and the inchoate neurolinguistic research of Ev Fedorenko, whose
research team is at work on a number of questions about language in (so-called) monolingual
brains, as well as questions about language(s) in the brains that belong to multilingual speakers;
and, also recently, Xu, et al. 2017).
But parallel to translanguaging is the “ethnolinguistic repertoire” approach (Benor 2010).
Both seem to respond to such observed linguistic behaviors in bi-or multilingual speakers as
these: intra-group variation, intra-speaker variation, out-group use, delineation of the lin-
guistic ethnic group, and delineating “ethnolect” (Benor p. 160). Much of what multilingual
speakers do with the languages they speak is intentional—and, importantly, individual. But
Benor also asserts further that beyond the individual there is an advantage to attending to the
ethnic groups individuals identify with. She cites Fought’s (2006) conceptualization of this
“pool of resources” as being in the service of constructing an ethnic identity—language is,
indeed, most certainly a feature, a salient feature, used in identifying group membership, for
better and for worse.
In his very thoughtful and articulate study of a community of South Asian immigrants in an
American mid-south city he pseudonymously named Kingsville, Iswari Pandey (2015) posed a
number of questions regarding the nature of these individuals’ literacy practices—the ones they
brought with them, circumstances that put them into the positions of having to adopt new ones
as well, and the word-work (which he uses in the sense of Toni Morrison’s use of the term in
her Nobel lecture, 1993) they engaged with in these linguistic borderlands (Pandey, p. xiii). He
reminds us that “native languages and literacies are inescapably tied to self-identity, especially
for people occupying an in-between space. It is not an issue of choice as implied by nativist,
English-only, or monolingual ideologies that ask immigrants to choose between native and
English or America identity” (p. 191). Complete abandonment of one’s language of identity
typically occurs under duress28—but language shifting and linguistic mixing occur as part of the
word-work that speakers straddling the linguistic margins of multiple languages engage with.
And the mixing finds its way into written texts, with different goals and at different points on the
Figure 9.2 Linguistic solutions?

Source: stocknadia\shutterstock.com
334 Sharon Klein
continuum of intention—from using mixing as part of the message on the one hand, and reaching
for cross-linguistic collocations, idiomatic expressions, or formalized language with specific rhe-
torical purposes—such as disagreeing, or speculating, for example (Graff and Birkenstein 2018,
Fish 2015, p. 29). These vary across languages, as we’ve seen in other chapters, and multilingual
understanding of the forms and their expected functions demands explicit attention.
So it seems that language mixing itself, whatever we call it—translanguaging, code switch-
ing, code meshing, polylanguaging (Jørgensen et al. 2011), polyingual languaging (Jørgensen
2008, associated with children’s language play), an ethnolinguistic repertoire (Benor 2010)—
provides for individual constructions of linguistic systems, using elements of varying natures,
depending on the description. Jørgensen’s is the only work that identifies linguistic features
and casts aside in some ways the need to establish the relative level of a speaker’s proficiency
in any one of the linguistic sources for the linguistic features they’re extracting. What seems
important is that the features are identifiably connected to a community the speaker in turn
seeks to connect and identify with. The emerging systems are flexible structures, and are
critical to speakers’ need to navigate linguistic, cultural, sociopolitical, and economic bor-
derlands.29 One writer (Cenoz 2017) has observed that while the current literature (and ter-
minological explosion) would have us believe that this is a new phenomenon, we should be
reminded of the Rosetta Stone (197 BCE) and of the Behistun inscriptions (between 522 and
480 BCE), both examples themselves of multilingual texts that raised questions regarding the
meaning of language choices that we have not yet fully answered. And a final set of questions
emerges from the image on Canagarajah’s (2013a) text, Translingual practice: Global Englishes
and cosmopolitan relations, a segment of which appears here:
What is the inky substance, what fluid seems to surround it, and what is the relationship
between the two? Is the ultimate product a “new” system? Is it, in fact not the case that every
language mixing “event” provides a slightly different system?
What is significant is that this convergence of notions regarding the consistent develop-
ment of rich cross-linguistic systems in the minds of bilingual and multilingual speakers seems
wholly incompatible with the attempted imposition of a non-existent entity.—that is the
ideologically driven monolinguistic model of language performance that is often at the core of
writing courses, serving as a desirable outcome. These are two opposing forces—one multi-
lingual (more neutrally, “multi-system”) and consistent with the way linguists have proposed
that language works in human minds, and the other, the monolingual mythology—that have
always been in conflict in institutional settings.
4.2 Some (Other) Languages
4.2.1 Creole Languages

The discussion of Creole languages, and particularly the work of such linguists as Michel
DeGraff is important in the context of our work with the terms languaging and translanguaging
for a number of reasons. Like the language-contact situations that Li and others argue moti-
vate these terms, Creole formation has significant sociohistorical and political dimensions.
Because the oppression that Creole speakers experienced had, in many areas—notably the
Caribbean and continental areas of the U.S.—much to do with race and enslavement, the
recognizable and characterizable E-languages that emerged were typically disenfranchised,
which has as at least one consequence, the absence of sustained study, and certainly not the
encouragement of speakers to use the language(s). But as DeGraff observed, there is no rea-
son to conclude that the language-contact experiences of the individual speakers yielding the
I-language knowledge that developed would be any different from the linguistic aspects of
language contact that yield language change or new languages—including what have been
called the “interlanguages” (Selinker 1972) of adults learning subsequent languages.30

a Two languages spoken in Hawai’i are Hawai’ian Pidgin and the Hawai’ian lan-
guage. Do some research regarding (a) the origins of the Pidgin and its speakers;
how, for example, do people learn the language; how many speakers are there?
(b) Find out about the history of the Hawai’ian language, including its current use.
Is it taught in schools? How many speakers does the language have? Is either the
Pidgin or Hawai’ian endangered?
b Look at one of the sites regarding Creoles across the world, and try to discover
the dominant languages at the foundations of these, i.e., there are English-based
Creoles, but there are others that have their base in other colonizing languages. For
example, what language(s) are at work in Haitian Creole?
c What is a lingua franca? What is the history of that term? Why might the scholar-
ship regarding translanguaging and its companion phenomena resort to the notion
of a “lingua franca?”
4.2.2 Global English(es) or English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)?

The reference of English as a lingua franca is interesting, as, if this chapter has accomplished at
least part of its task, readers will object to this designation, questioning how, given the spread
of English, and its contact with multiple other languages in every setting around the world
where we might imagine its existence, no English will be the same as any other. In the last
century’s final decade, McArthur (1987, 1998) provided a model of varied world, or global
Englishes, and this model persists.
Given this variation, we should ask ourselves what sort of default lingua franca any of these
Englishes could be.
Despite the list of a selection of documented “World Englishes,” the figure should seem
odd. What makes any variety “standard”? Why are some of these languages referred to as
“standard” and some as “standardizing?” As it happens, several of the languages are, in fact,
English-based Creoles.
In figure 4, we see another approach to a representation of the World Englishes taxonomy:
From McArthur (1998) p. 94 (Peter Strevens model: a branching system superimposed on
a Mercator projection. An excellent depiction of the results of 18th and 19th-century colonial
enterprises. A more detailed version appears in David Crystal’s Cambridge Encyclopedia of the
English Language, (2010, p. 113). Note that this representation makes the colonial origins of
most of the Englishes across the world quite clear, in ways that the “wheel” model did not.31
4.2.2 Non-Standard Negro English, Black English Vernacular/Black Vernacular English

(BEV/BE) Black English, African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Ebonics
(Williams), African American English (AAE), African American Language (Alim et al.)
The title of this section includes a range of the labels that have been associated with one
of the more widely studied and resolutely misunderstood languages in our midst. Most
importantly, as Alim (2016) details in his introduction (crediting Carmen Fought’s 2006
reading of Anzaldúa (1987)), and consistent with the insight provided by the distinction
between I-language and E-language, none of these captures at once the nature of the lan-
guage or how it varies across speakers. But aside from the introduction of Ebonics as a term by
Dr. Robert Williams in 1972, blending the words ebony and phonics, in pursuit of a label that
336 Sharon Klein
Hong
English
glish
Sing
lish
Antipodean English
East Asian English
Ma
Eng
Kong E
apo
al En
Ph
lay
an
c.
lnd
ilip
re E
sia
et
lish
Australi
Ja
rigin
C
Zea
ar
nE
nglish
hi
ine
p
ngli
g
ne
M
an
En
sE
Abo
ngl
se
la
es
New
sh
h
En
ori
e
ng
ish
ac
n
So
isi
En
gl
Ma
Be
lis
kP
ut is
gli
a/
h
h h
sh
am
et
To
Ind As c. Australian, ish ish
ian gl
sl
ia l
East Asian En Eng lish
Bi
En n New Zealand,
Pa gli En h C ng
ki Standardizing s h
sta
ni E
sh gl
is and South r i BB ish E nglis
t i
h English B gl E
Ban
glad
ngl
ish Pacific En ot tish
esh
i En Standard Sc s
glis ot
h English Sc
Nepale
se En Nom h
glish South Asian British and Englis
Standard(izing) Welsh
Sri Lankan En Irish Standard ts
glish
English Ulster Sco
English h etc.
World Hiberno-Englis
Burmese English etc. Irish English
Standard
African English West, East, and American English
English
English South(ern) Network
Nigerian h American Standard
a ia n Englis African Nor the
Gha n s h Standard rn
Engli Standard(izing) Midla
m e roon e Kno English nd
Ca eon idgin English Sou
a L the
rr P
Sie an glish h Bla rn
fric n
e st A yan E nglis sh Caribbean Canadian Gu
ck
E
W n E li ng
Ke dan Eng lish Standard Standard Ap ah
ll lish
a n n g
n is h Ve
p rna
Ug ania n E ngl tc. lis
h English English In ala cul
Ca
z i a E e g di c ar
n an hia
Ta amb an lish n
n
E
ad
Z e g n En n
ia
bw En bea
ge
gl
n
Qu
ba n ish
ua
En
n
m rica ib
Fre
eb
r
aja
i et
ng
gl
Ca
ian
Z Af c.
New
an
ec
is
n
n/B
La
Bellzian
h
Atha
th
Guyanese
dad
glis
Nicaraguan etc.
Inuit Englis
ami
Ukrainian English etc.
En
u
on
So
dia
fou
gli
h/f
i
ati
Trin
basc
Bah
rba
sh
n
ran
nN
dla
Ba
gla
ica
an E
nd
is
ma
Eng
nglis
Ja
lish
h
Figure 9.3 World Englishes (wheel system)

Source: McArthur (1998, p. 97)
would capture the language’s status as a distinct system, the names for the African American
Language(s) forced it into being a type of English, on the one hand, and also labeled it as “a
vernacular” on the other. This was wholly undescriptive; all spoken languages are, by defi-
nition, vernacular. It functioned, as a label, to subtly derogate the language. Such has been
the case with many Creoles. But the development of forms of African American spoken
language(s) are closely related to the variety of languages that the enslaved Africans arrived
with, and these languages, having mixed themselves during the Middle Passage voyages, also
mixed with the Englishes spoken by the White Anglo plantation owners, foremen, other
indentured servants, and, it is speculated, some indigenous peoples, as well.
Twice in the 20th century, the damage to children’s education that the failure to recognize
the status of African American Language as just that caused, became a topic of focus. The first
of these involved African American parents in Ann Arbor, Michigan whose children, attend-
ing the Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, simply were not being understood by the
teachers because the teachers, as they were predominantly White, knew little or nothing of
ENGLISH
AMERICAN ENGLISH BRANCH BRITISH ENGLISH BRANCH
USA CANADA
BRITISH ISLES
Anglophone Francophone
Canadian Canadian Irish Scootish
English
Midwest Welsh
NE Coast
California
Southern Puerto Rico FAR-EAST
INDIA-PAKISTAN
W Indian
Jamaica Barbados AFRICA

Forms of Malay Chinese
Trinidad etc
Indian English U.S.
Philippines W Africa E Africa
AUSTRALASIA
Philippines
Am Samoa
New Guinea
Anglophone
S Africa FV
Australia
New Zealand
Figure 9.4 World Englishes (branching system)

Source: McArthur (1998, p. 94) (Peter Strevens’ model: a branching system)
338 Sharon Klein
the languages the children were speaking. These parents sued the school district, and in the
context of the testimony from linguists, including William Labov and Geneva Smitherman,
the court found in the parents’ (and children’s) favor, calling for a new policy regarding teach-
ers’ study of the language. More detail can be found at the language policy decision website
(see Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School children et al. v. Ann Arbor School District
entry; and see also Freeman 1982).
The second episode developed a little over 20 years after the Ann Arbor decision.
Concerned that African American students, many of whom were speakers of African American
Language(s), were not doing well with standardized testing and were performing in ways par-
allel to students learning English as a subsequent language, the Oakland school board adopted
a resolution to teach speakers of African American Language as students speaking Spanish,
Armenian, or Hmong were being taught. The students would qualify for bilingual education
under the Federal Title VIII programs. The African American Language was to be recognized
as a language, and teachers who were bilingual in African American Language and what was
called Standard American English were to be recruited. The responses—including those from
such figures as Maya Angelou and the Reverend Jesse Jackson—made it clear that on the one
hand there was little to no understanding of the nature of African American Language (despite
the efforts at educating teachers and administrators that had occurred in the wake of the ear-
lier Ann Arbor decision) and that, on the other, the depth of linguistic racism was profound.
John Rickford’s essay, “The Ebonics Controversy in My Backyard: A Sociolinguist’s
Experiences and Reflections” (1997a) documented both the immediate aftermath of the failed
resolution, and the violence of the responses to the resolution and the position regarding African
American Language as a language. Rickford also discussed the Linguistic Society of America
(LSA) resolution regarding Ebonics (1997b), and the Senate hearings in the wake of the events,
where the expert testimony of linguists succeeded in preserving the funding already in place
for educational services related to making certain all children achieved “Standard English
Proficiency,” and in securing funding for research regarding the access to success for chil-
dren speaking African American Language. His other essay, “A Suite for Ebony and Phonics”
(1997c) appeared in Discover magazine, and described a number of features of the language.
Despite this effort—and one that has been sustained, with the videos referred to in the
References (The E-Word and Talking Black in America), and an abundance of more recent
research regarding the nature of African American Language (Lanehart 1998, 2015;
Smitherman Green 2002, 2010; Baker-Bell 2013, 2017a, 2017b; Alim et al. 2016)—the fail-
ure of the court to provide for an interpreter/translator when Rachel Jenteal testified at the
trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, instead being dismiss-
ive of her for their having failed to understand, suggests that there remains much work to
be done in the area of linguistic naïveté and linguistic prejudice (Rickford and King 2016).
4.3 Challenges: Education and Continued Linguistic Derogation

As we’ve seen, the major—and, possibly, the most insidious—way of derogating a language is
by referring to it as a dialect. We have also seen that (even in linguistic circles) the languages
described by the terms Pidgin and Creole are typically described as “simplified” in a number
of ways, but most notably in the context of the absence of word-internal morphology, a
misconception about linguistic simplicity and language “status” that is regularly addressed in
introductory linguistics courses.32
In addition, there remain responses to language differences that fall into the realm of acute
“othering,” including Mock Spanish or Junk Spanish that Jane Hill described in 1995 and
2008, and that Alim et al. document as well. But they also document instances of Mock Asian
and Mock ESL, all of which are used cross-ethnically too. (Chun 2016).
Linguistic naïveté also pervades the treatment of other languages. But bilingualism is now
encouraged, and initiatives related to translanguaging as a pedagogical strategy are often
folded into programs actively advocating and implementing bi-and multilingualism in class-
rooms (García and Flores 2012; García and Lin 2016). In California, there is now a biliteracy
seal for qualified high school graduates, and bilingual awards at the 5th and 8th grades. In the
context of this chapter, we would advocate also for such initiatives to recognize indigenous
languages that are likely spokent by students, including, for example, Zapotecan languages,
Quiche, and Garifuna (see website references for: Bilingualism Matters, IYIL, and LAUSD:
World Languages and Cultures).
Also a challenge—although there is reason for some optimism, as the issue is currently a
central one—is the general disposition toward instructors who sound (as well as look) differ-
ent from the students they teach. “Non-native” English-speaking English language and writ-
ing instructors continue to meet with challenging encounters—with students and colleagues,
and some of the work that has been done (Ruecker et al. 2018; Ruecker 2011; de Oliveira
et al. 2012) is suggestive of possibilities for using these instructors’ linguistic backgrounds and
experiences to enhance students’ experience with college writing and reading. It’s plausible
that serious reflection in this context will modify how we see our “NNES” composition
students as well.
4.4 Applications, Conclusions, and Lingering Questions

One of the issues that make it clear we are not sure of the direction in which we want to pro-
ceed continues to come from African American Language. The strategy of what Wheeler and
Strong referred to as code switching33 involved translating from African American Language
into *SAE did not include a reciprocal translation, with the request for *SAE examples being
translated into African American Language. This failure of the method speaks volumes, and
the 2013 exchange between Wheeler and Thomas on the one hand and Young on the other
is relevant to our conversation.
Despite the abundance of conversation about translanguaging, and Canagarajah’s trans-
lingual practices, there has, as yet, been little direct guidance for composition instructors.
But perhaps that is a positive response; the opportunity to work with language (where the
focus of the Writing and Discussion exercises was intended to lie) is crucial. In fact, such a
suggestion was among the several Valdés made in her 1992 essay, where she provided a com-
prehensive discussion of where the field of cross-language writing was and what she thought
were promising lines of research. In the literature that has accumulated since that paper, there
is little directed specifically to what Valdés called for. But it does seem as though we are at
least looking in fruitful directions, and the student readers of this text are well positioned to
carry on.

a If you are a student, currently, find out what languages your peers speak. If you are
an instructor, do the same with the students in your class. How many languages
are represented? What is the predominant language in the class? What sorts of pro-
ficiency do students have: Reading and writing, but not conversational fluency?
Conversational knowledge, but not reading or writing? Conversational knowledge
and some reading, but not writing?
(continued)
340 Sharon Klein
(continued)
b For students proficient in a language other than English, ask them to cite three
idioms in the language they know well, and try to translate the idioms into English.
What are the challenges? How might one consider addressing idiomatic language
and how its intended meaning moves from one language to another?

Print Publications
Language at Large
Akmajian,A., Farmer,A. K., Bickmore, L., Demers R.A., & Harnish, R. M. (2017) Linguistics:An intro-
duction to language and communication (7th ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. An up-to-date, com-
prehensive, and accessible textbook introducing students to the linguistic treatment of language.
Bonvillain, N. (2013). Language, culture and communication (7th ed.). New York: Pearson. A text with
a more anthropological focus, describing a range of communicative systems across the world’s
languages (including politeness and face-saving systems).
Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct. New York: Harper Collins. An engaging introduction to
language.
Tortora, C. (2018) Understanding sentence structure: An introduction to English syntax. Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons. This is an introduction to the study of sentence structure and is at once
comprehensive and very accessible (welcoming readers “with open arms”), moving step-by-
step, as Tortora designed the text not only for use in a classroom, but also explicitly for “Do
It Yourselfers.” Anyone who is contemplating working with students who will be writing in
Englishes, as an instructor, mentor, or tutor, should have a working knowledge of how our
knowledge of sentence structure is described.Tortora’s perspectives:“I take sentence structure to
be a product of the human mind,” that “the existing regional and sociolinguistic variation dictate
that each reader will have a different understanding of what is possible and what is not possible
in their own English” (pp. xii–xiii), and that syntax—sentence structure—” is an object of scien-
tific inquiry” are consistent with the view of “how language works” that has informed our work
with literature treating language, languaging, linguistic diversity, and the teaching of writing.
Linguistic Ideas
Anderson, S. R. (2010) Languages: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. An
excellent and comprehensive, as well as accessibly brief, look at issues about languages, with
some attention to language and its nature as well. A fine discussion of sign languages is provided,
as are some insights about variation across the world’s documented spoken languages (known
as linguistic typology) and how to resolve such diversity with the unity of human language.
Baker, M. C. (2001). The atoms of language. New York: Basic Books. Recommended for the first
chapters, as the book quickly becomes fairly technical. But these chapters discuss the intrigu-
ing issue of the Navajo code.
Jackendoff, R. (1994). Patterns in the mind: Language and human nature. New York: Basic Books. A
short and readable introduction to the perspective the field of linguistics has regarding human
language and its nature, responding to the question “What does human nature have to be like
in order to account for the fact that we can all speak and understand a language?” (pp. 5, 159).
Predating the introduction of the terms I-language and E-language, it is situated nonetheless
in the theoretical framework yielding them. The book also looks at the human non-language
mental systems of visual perception, music, and thought.
McWhorter, J. (2012) What language is (And what it isn’t and what it could be). New York: Avery
(Penguin).
Napoli, D. J., & Schoenfeld,V. L. (2010) Language matters: A guide to everyday questions about language
(2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dialects, Attitudes, and Classrooms Update

Gilyard, K. (1996). Let’s flip the script. Detroit, MI. Wayne State University Press.
Lippi-Green, R. (2012). English with an Accent: Language, ideology and discrimination in the United
States (2nd ed.). London and New York: Routledge. If students want to read only one book
discussing attitudes toward language variation, their implications, and their broad conse-
quences, this should be the one. In part, it should be the one because it will (along with its
resources) likely lead to further investigation.
Reaser, J., Adger, C. T., Wolfram, W., & Christian, D. (2017) Dialects at school: Educating linguistically
diverse students. New York: Routledge. Although intended for K-12 instructors, this is a text
that aspiring and practicing writing teachers will find relevant and helpful.
Talking People www.talkingpeople.net/tp/languages/worldeng.html. A site addressing issues
about World Englishes (WE) and and English language learning and teaching.
Websites,Videos, and Podcasts Addressing Issues of Language in General, and Language Diversity
More Specifically
Websites
The Alliance for Linguistic Diversity: The Endangered Languages Project.
http://endangeredlanguages.com
International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL).
https://en.iyil2019.org
The LingSpace interview with Anne Charity Hudley (a prominent sociolinguist who studies and
addresses issues of language discrimination in educational contexts and beyond).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKjrnrsiKv4&feature=youtu.be
TheLingSpace interview with Sali Tagliamonte (sociolinguist who studies the language of various
groups of teenagers).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tapgQNcKuFo
Omniglot (for examples of languages’ writing systems, and the iterations of the first sentence of
the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in languages that can be used in the
relevant “For Writing and Discussion” experience).
www.omniglot.com and in particular [https://omniglot.com/udhr/index.htm]
Bilingualism Matters.
www.bilingualism-matters.ppls.ed.ac.uk
Yale Grammatical Diversity Project.
https://ygdp.yale.edu. An excellent description of a range of syntactic diversity across Englishes
spoken largely across North America. In addition to describing these linguistic forms, the site
provides an instructive glossary of terms and an illuminating FAQ section considering a range
of topics and issues we’ve touched on here.
The Transnational Composition Group (The Conference on College Composition and
Communication group’s public presence on Facebook, with relevant discussion regarding
issues addressed in this chapter and beyond).
www.facebook.com/groups/transnationalwriting/about
Videos
Anderson, S. R.Video lecture “The place of human language in the animal world.”
https://mediaserver.unige.ch/play/90552
(continued)
342 Sharon Klein
(continued)
We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân.
https://itvs.org/films/we-still-live-here.This documentary is excellent on multiple levels, not the
least of which is its cinematic quality. But its content is revelatory, telling not only the story of
the rejuvenation of the Algonquin language of Wampanaugh, the language spoken by the peo-
ple whom the Plymouth Rock pilgrims first encountered, were helped by, and who provided
the wherewithall for the “first Thanksgiving,” and then who nearly perished, along with their
language, as a result of the systematic settler and colonial policies.
Speaking in Tongues.
http://speakingintonguesfilm.info. An excellent documentary addressing successful dual-language
immersion programs
John Rickford’s presidential address to the LSA (Rickford 2016).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMMxufNN4pg&feature=youtu.be
The E-word.
https://ewordfilm.com
Talking Black in America.
www.talkingblackinamerica.org
Two excellent videos treating and contextualizing the African American Language(s) in the USA.The
first also addresses the 1996 Oakland “controversy” regarding how most successfully to address
the language(s) and students speaking them in classroom settings. The second also highlights,
threading it through the video itself, the history and linguistic foundations of the language(s).
Podcasts
The World in Words.
www.pri.org/categories/world-words
A site with selected podcasts from The World in Words relevant to the topics in this chapter.
www.pri.org/search/node?search_api_views_fulltext=language%20diversity&f%5B0%5D=field_
ref_program%3A65995
Lexicon Valley.
McWhorter, J. “The Blaccsent: What does it mean to sound Black?” Lexicon Valley, Episode No.
84 May 3, 2016.
www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2016/05/blaccent_is_there_such_a_thing_as_
sounding_black.html
Note: There are three articles in the “References” section that I recommend to readers who are
preparing to teach writing—in any setting. In particular, the papers are recommended both
for their comprehensive treatments of their respective areas and for their informative historical
perspectives. Their sources are detailed below, so I will only list them (alphabetically) briefly
with the minimal citations, author and date.
Connors (2000).
Horner and Trimbur (2002).
Valdés (1992).
Notes
1 The two parenthetical instances of sic have to do first with the reference to speech as “more important
than anything else.”We would, of course, replace speech with language, in the context of what we have
recognized about sign languages. And the second refers to the recognition that he would be replaced.
Perhaps even with they. Speech acts both.
2 Because this chapter addresses issues of linguistic diversity (and its corollary, linguistic discrimina-
tion), all words deployed as labels for linguistic, ethnic, or cultural communities will be recognized
as “proper nouns” (i.e., names), and thus will appear in the text with uppercase letters, regardless of
their use in other semantic contexts, when they are not functioning as names.
3 In fact, it was Stanley (2015, fn 15, p. 306 who called the Langton piece to my attention)
4 This is a rather popular example, used frequently to encourage speakers to consider the depth of the
tradition of language prejudice (Wolfram and Reaser 2015).
5 In a postscript to his text, Bailey invokes the term shibboleth himself, as he describes the dramatic
changes to English in the 19th century. An instructive description:
Grammar acquired an array of shibboleths, fully documented and thoroughly anathematized.

Testing for correctness became institutionalized, and admission to higher education and the
professions was increasingly regulated by measurements designed to exclude people whose
English was not regarded as worthy. . . .
Writing, and the schools that fostered it, encouraged greater class stratification. Artisans
became operatives; clerks became stenographers. Large-scale enterprises, bureaucracies, and the
development of suburbs separated managers from workers; distrust grew on both sides of the
class barrier. Distrust gave way to doctrines justifying that separation, and these were fully sup-
ported in an ideology about English that smothered democratic optimism in linguistic anxiety.
(Bailey 1996, pp. 320–321)
6 We will use the word language throughout to refer both to what are conventionally accorded such
status and to what have traditionally been (and in many cases continue to be) referred to as dialects.
In the discussion about dialect and language in Section 4, the rationale underlying this choice should
become clearer to readers.
7 Of note: Ethnologue (Simons and Fenning 2018) avers that of the (its) documented 7,097 “living
languages” of the world, 3,909 of them have writing systems. However, there are no figures regarding
how many speakers of languages with them have access to these writing systems or use them.
8 We will number what we use as linguistic examples—pieces of language we discuss or refer to.
9 Some terms we will define, and others, such as “definite article,” we will not. That does not mean
that these terms don’t require some attention—it’s not clear what ‘definite’ means in the term, and
understanding how such elements as a(n) and the function in most dialects of American English
seems critical for instructors whose goal it is to help students use the tools of language to construct
meaningful and rhetorically effective sentences. One grammar book in particular appears in the
bibliography (van Gelderen 2010). Its explanations are clear, accessible, and linguistically consistent.
10 The topic of reading itself, and the observation that, unlike language, access to print is learned, as we
have noted, fills its own volumes, but is an important area for aspiring compositionists. Approachable
and well-researched overviews can be found in Wolf 2016 (although Wolf 2007 is a fine read as well).
11 The asterisk (*) is used in linguistics to indicate that any speaker of most dialects of English would
unhesitatingly find the so-marked string distinctly unacceptable, being ready to claim that “it’d never
happen,” or “it’d never occur,” or that it sounds “just totally weird.” These are all desirable responses
and the absence of any hesitation is crucial.These are not examples that typical speakers would want
to look up in a usage book. Linguists depend on these judgments to reveal speakers’ knowledge—
and therefore to shed light on the validity of linguists’ account of this knowledge.We will see further
on that the asterisk is put into service elsewhere, as well.
12 Looking at the word infant in the same sort of dictionary recommended in the “For Discussion and
Writing” exercises, you’ll discover something interesting about it in the context of language. And it
is important to remember that this inescapable observation about the uniqueness of human language
should not be interpreted as an impugning of non-human animals. Anderson’s (2004) discussion
of animal cognition makes this abundantly clear, and we should note that beyond our observation
about other animals, short of the tale P.L.Travers (1934) weaves, human infants show no capacity for
developing or learning the systems other animals use effortlessly to communicate.
13 The word intensional comes from logic, and here, roughly refers to our capacity to use language referentially.
14 Which, Hartwell acknowledges, moves on from a platform provided by W. Nelson Francis’s work in 1954.
15 We will continue to make certain that any discussion about linguistic phenomena related to under-
standing the nature of linguistic knowledge and the human language faculty itself applies at once
to both spoken and signed languages, as the distinction in these modalities does not affect the
understanding that they are both human languages. Phonology, which of course carries the Greek
root phon- related to sound, has been divested of that connection, with the term having to do with
the study of the nature of the system occupied with externalizing language, and dealing with the
structure and arrangements of the minimal non-meaning bearing elements. Whether the system is
visual/manual or aural/oral, it addresses the character of this system.
344 Sharon Klein
16 This point is one to remember, particularly when we look in more detail in Section 4 at the idea of
a standard. Ultimately, the outlines of the elusive standard are defined by what is not in it. The focus
is on what count as errors, and the consequent proscription of them is what begins to give shape, if
not substance, to the so-called standard.
17 Zebroski (2016) discusses the largely forgotten Bateman and Zidonis studies, which investigated
teaching students how to analyze sentences in ways for which the introduction of generative gram-
mar had provided. The studies found:
that when teachers and students systematically investigate and theorize language, in an authen-
tic way (which means there is no pre-formed answer), drawing on work in the disciplines but
also work that is local and lively, and then connect it to writing, there is marked improvement
in the quality of writing.
Zebroski notes that writing disciplines “took little notice of this finding. . .,” (p. 269) and that unfor-
tunately, what note was taken missed the point. The success of Bateman and Zidonis’s work argued
that inquiring about language—the linguistic perspective—brought students closer to language, and
again, as we noted in the context of William Strong’s discussion of sentence combining is likely to
have triggered the sort of metalinguistic awareness that provides for a relationship with language that
in turn, strengthens one’s relationship to writing and provides, in turn, for its development.
18 Creative writers continued to attend to sentences (see Ostrom et al., and Queneau, for example)
19 By necessity, the representation of these fundamental tenets of SFL is simplified—arguably over-
simplified. The notion of choice, for example, works not only for categories such as those here, but
also for tense and voice, for example, and for units that shape discourse as well—choosing proposi-
tions or interrogatives, or voice (active vs. passive) and mood, for example.
20 The word actual is in quotation marks here, because, as we should remember—and observe—the ref-
erents and senses of words change, both across generations and even within them. A recent example
(where “recent” refers to “in the vicinity of the publication date of this text”), the change in the
meaning of the –ly adverb literally suffices on a few counts. As readers may know (or have learned),
the meaning of that word seems to have changed. It is frequently deployed as hyperbole to mean
figuratively, e.g., I’ve literally told you a thousand times. . .. And, as Merriam Webster, in their Words At
Play site’s discussion of responses to their definitions of the word teaches us, this deployment is, in
fact, not nearly as new as those who object to it believe. This interlude touches on aspects of how
words come to mean as well as (often received and unexamined) notions of correctness, which
require sustained attention and inquiry, some of which we attempt to provide.
21 The instructive quip itself first occurred in Yiddish, in Weinreich’s paper detailing the talk (both in
Yiddish) about the early post-WWII challenges for Yiddish and Jewish culture, where Weinreich
cites a member of the audience at the talk whom he credits with the observation. Yiddish itself
danced along the constructed “language–dialect continuum,” long dismissed as a dialect of German,
until the post-WWII wish to distance this language from German influenced some of the scholar-
ship regarding its history. A parallel Sephardic language is Ladino—also frequently referred to in
dialect terms as Judeo-Spanish
22 It seems important to note that the recently deployed Common Core State Standards for the
English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) feature a strand labeled “Language” (one along with three
others: Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening). The Language strand begins with this label:
“Conventions of Standard English,” and the first two anchor standards (the general wording for a
given standard across K-12) are as follows: “(1) Demonstrate command of the conventions of stan-
dard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking;” and (2) “Demonstrate command of the
conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.”
23 The Académie Française is a prime example, established in the mid-17th century, and, with minor
interruptions, still active. An important note, here, as well, is that standardization—mythological as
it is—is distinct from the decision to adopt an “official language.” A language may be designated
an official language—typically for sociopolitical reasons—and however that language evolves, any
attempts to constrain this notwithstanding, it is the official language. Such a status, because the offi-
cial language(s)—many nation-states recognize more than one language as official—will constitute
the language(s) used educationally.
24 Recall that we use the term ‘speak’ generally for both aural/oral and visual/manual languages.
25 Reputedly, the term translanguage and translanguaging was first used in the context of a particular peda-
gogy in Wales associated with the use of two languages, alternating them systematically in the classroom.
The references for translanguaging have changed significantly, and although the term is used in educa-
tional contexts, it does not describe the Welsh (or any specific) pedagogical design (Lewis et al. 2012).
26 The 2018 films BlacKKKlansman and Sorry to Bother You have, along with other popular culture
ventures (e.g., the HBO series Insecure), raised the issue of “sounding White,” and sounding (authen-
tically) Black (K. Austin Collins 2018 and Giorgis 2018), while linguists such as John McWhorter
had already been addressing the converse, sounding Black (McWhorter 2016, 2017, and Smith,
Jamil 2017). It is interesting that both issues are from the perspective of African American spoken
language, and it seems relevant to look at how popular culture both represents and considers the
phenomenon of what is fundamentally “crossing” in Rampton’s 1995a and 1995b context.
27 In their excellent book, Language Matters (Napoli and Lee-Schoenfeld 2010), note that concepts
exist independently of the languages that represent them (“language is like a hanger that we put
our thoughts on,” p. 59), and that, for example, while English has no word equivalent to the Italian
scaramanzia, the concept it encodes is well known to many English speakers, being a form of magical
thinking that has us declaring the worst possible outcome for some concern in order to preempt that
very outcome. And conversely, Italian has no single word corresponding to one of the core meanings
of privacy, but Napoli and Lee-Schoenfeld note that “Italians close the door when they use a public
bathroom, they do not have sexual relations in public places, and they do not ask personal questions
of people they are not intimate with” (p. 54).
28 Including disenfranchised indigenous populations (such as a number of American Indian nations,
about which the Makepeace film, We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân is critically informative), immi-
grant populations even now, and other minoritized groups: White Appalachian speakers, African
American speakers, and Latinx speakers, to name a few is why this chapter exists, and why for
example, the work of the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity’s Endangered Language Project is vital.
Linguistic discrimination contributes substantially to the loss of languages in a variety of settings.
29 As others do, we should also note the legacy of Anzaldúa’s (1987) extension of the notion of borders
to several conceptual arenas. For anyone reading this chapter, her most critical piece in the context
of language in that work, is, of course, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”
30 The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS), an online linguistic resource that linguists respect,
lists and locates a major selection of the world’s recognized and described Creoles and Pidgins, and
Wikipedia lists many of these as well, with both providing links to more detailed descriptions.These
“lists” are, of course, not exhaustive and in both cases the brief description of Creole is not fully con-
sistent with the most recent and very highly valued work of Michel DeGraff (whose specialization
is Haitian Creole, and whose work, as well as focusing on the linguistic foundations for redefining
Creoles and their development, has centered on issues of education and language in the context of
the failure of institutions to recognize either the language status of Haitian Creole or its crucial role
in children’s educational success).
31 It is of note that the Vice President of India, in office at this chapter’s writing,Venkaiah Naidur in a
speech on September 14th 2018, referred to English as “an illness left behind by the British.”
32 In contrast, a language such Mandarin, notable for its non-dependence on inflectional morphology,
is not referred to as “simplified.” Non-Creole languages that do not involve inflectional morphology
(that is, word-attached elements that may mark tense, aspect, number, person, or gender, for exam-
ple) are referred to as “analytic” or “isolating” terms in linguistics that describe the predominant sorts
of inflectional systems in a language.
33 This usage of “code switching” with this reference involved some appropriation itself. Linguists
had identified interlanguage conversational practices that bilingual and multilingual speakers would
engage in while in conversation (Ellen Woolford 1983 and then Ellen Prince and Susan Pintzuk
1984). The activity involved the use of words, as well as word-internal elements (the latter being
called “code mixing”) from one language or the other in single sentences or phrases. Of interest
was what speakers did and did not do; linguists wanted to discover the constraints on what could be
replaced and where such replacements could and could not occur. After Wheeler and Swords (2006),
however, new terminology was needed, and Young provided us with “code meshing,” although the
contrast between code switching and code mixing was gone.
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Reading
Clarifying the Multiple Dimensions of Monolingualism
Keeping Our Sights on Language Politics
Missy Watson and Rachael Shapiro
During the spring 2016 semester, Missy’s department at City College of New York, CUNY
embraced her request to propose a new course outcome for the first-year composition cur-
riculum that reflected current disciplinary theories for better attending to linguistic diversity.
Missy, excited at the opportunity and determined to craft an outcome that would endure,
sought the expertise of scholars participating in a Transnational Writing Group on Facebook.
She asked for feedback from the group and offered one option of an outcome to consider:
“Acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on
those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility.”
While all responses from the group were helpful, one made her pause. Ligia Mihut shared
the following outcome that her department at Barry University includes in its first-year-writing
curriculum: “Students recognize the extent to which cultural standards, institutional practices,
and values oppress, marginalize, alienate, or create/enhance privilege and power.” Missy
was at once refreshed by the explicitness of this outcome and hesitant to move forward
with it, or some version of it, as the outcome she proposed at City College. Fully endorsing
the notions captured in the outcome and believing wholeheartedly that City College should
be an institution leading the pursuit to approach linguistic diversity with utmost care, Missy
pondered over her hesitance. She questioned whether her department and institution were
ready for such explicit stances on the oppressive nature of standardized English. And she
suspected her version of the outcome, which focused more on honoring diversity and honing
rhetorical sensibility, would be more welcome and still a worthy step in the right direction,
albeit modest and, admittedly, not fully capturing what the field has long known about the
oppressive role of standardized English.
We believe that this discrepancy—what Missy felt was truly needed and just given her
pedagogical position to explicitly combat standard language ideologies versus what she
believed was feasible given the dominance of English monolingualism that persists at City
College and across US higher education— is representative of the current state of composi-
tion studies when it comes to dealing with the politics of linguistic diversity. While we in com-
position studies may have grown more sensitive to and welcoming of cultural and linguistic
differences in the classroom, we remain far from united in pursuits to combat explicitly in our
pedagogies the politics of standardized English. We struggle to detach from the powers of
standard language ideology, so deeply engrained within our discipline and professional iden-
tities. While most writing teachers would readily agree that standardized English (hereafter
*SE)1 will “create/enhance privilege and power,” many may still be more reluctant to proclaim
and denounce how standard language ideology serves to “oppress, marginalize, alienate.”
We miss out on important opportunities to combat monolingualist ideology when we focus
only on cultivating in students a “rhetorical sensibility” and on fostering attitudes whereby stu-
dents see “linguistic differences as resources,” as did Missy’s initial version of a course out-
come. Inviting and celebrating language varieties is useful in confronting assumptions about
Tacit English-Only Policies (Horner and Trimbur) and in deconstructing the myth of linguistic
Multiple Dimensions of Monolingualism 357
homogeneity (Matsuda “Myth”). However, we hope to emphasize that inviting and including
language differences in the classroom and in writing, in and of itself, is far from sufficient. On
its own, over decades of use, inviting writing differences into composition classrooms might
begin to dismantle and quiet the harms caused by monolingualist ideologies. While a steady
pace toward adjusting centuries-long ideologies and rhetorical expectations is in order, if
we are to have any real hope of combating the harms of linguistic hierarchies, we must fur-
ther address students’ and our unchecked affinities for *SE, as well as our complicity with
the material harms caused by our profession’s perpetuation of standard language ideology.
Thus, to the extent that inviting language differences is the best vehicle in the field to unite
the front against monolingualism, a focus on language difference in our research and teach-
ing needs to be preceded by more explicit attention to how standardized languages have
historically suppressed linguistic varieties and oppressed their users.
Said simply, we believe we need to do more than acknowledge, invite, and honor the lin-
guistic diversity in our classrooms; we must do more than help students understand how lan-
guage works and how to negotiate their own interests and languages alongside standardized
varieties and conventions. We must also, together and at last, confront the field’s distancing
from, indeed resistance to, facing the material harms caused by the very monolingualist
ideologies so many of us, no matter our good intentions, uphold and perpetuate in our class-
rooms and institutions. To move toward linguistic justice, we call for unified intention and
action across our field to explicitly combat what we see as multiple facets of monolingualism.
One issue preventing unified approaches in contesting monolingualist ideologies, as we see
it, is that we do not forefront in our minds and our practices the material consequences of
monolingualist ideology, nor have we come to a holistic consensus on the concept of mono-
lingualism. With this article, we hope to clarify just what it is we’re rejecting when we combat
the monolingual paradigm, and, in so doing, be better prepared to combat more explicitly the
harms of linguistic hierarchies.
In what follows, we first synthesize decades’ worth of scholarship that illustrates the harms
caused by monolingualist ideology. Then, we parse out distinctions across four competing
definitions of English monolingualism, which helps us not only to highlight monolingualism’s
distinguishable strands but also to reveal that some uptakes of monolingualism may lead
us to stray too far from attending to its material consequences, which harm speakers and
writers and tarnish the ethical goals of our work as literacy and language professionals.
Indeed, as we show, the uses and meanings of monolingualism are multiple and have thus
not always been consistently or fully considered in composition scholarship. Following our
discussion of monolingualism and its multiple dimensions, we conclude with practical class-
room and administrative applications, including a proposed learning outcome that instructors
and WPAs might consider adopting in order to work more explicitly against the harmful con-
sequences of *SE in and beyond the composition classroom.
Keeping Our Sights on Material Consequences

We believe that building solidarity in tackling monolingualist ideologies is necessary as we
move forward with teaching and research in today’s linguistically diverse classrooms and
communities. Monolingualism is an ideological paradigm that restricts and actively works
against language difference in multifaceted ways, as we’ll unpack further. However, before
revealing the various strands of monolingualism we must all attend to, it is critical that we
358 Missy Watson and Rachael Shapiro
recall some of what we have learned in composition studies about the many material con-
sequences they create. Monolingualism is an ideology of many violences at the micro-and
macro-levels. At its worst, it can lead (and has historically led) to a silencing and even eradi-
cation of languages and varieties as well as brutal penalization of speakers of non-preferred
languages. At their best, though still oppressive, monolingualist ideologies “devalue other
languages and language varieties and by extension their speakers” (Richardson 109); mono-
lingualist ideologies privilege a “linear, container-bound approach to writing” and overlook
the power non-privileged genres and modes may afford speakers of other languages and
varieties (Gonzalez; see also Shapiro).
In the US, monolingualism has served the project of colonization and nation building,
helping to identify the look and character of US insiderness and, hence, outsiderness, indi-
cating divisions along lines of nation, race, and class (Canagarajah “Clarifying”; Horner
“Introduction”; Horner and Trimbur; Lyons; Mangelsdorf; Pratt “Arts”; Trimbur; Villanueva).
As Ellen Cushman puts it, “The primacy of English in composition studies and classrooms
at its very heart maintains an imperialist legacy that dehumanizes everyone in different and
differing ways” (236). In its insistence on a particular kind of English, monolingualism has
complied with “the project of racism” (Winant 40; Inoue), working to continually marginalize
and recolonize non-White, non-standard English speakers, marking their languages as defi-
cient, their differences as error and incompetence (Lu “Redefining”; Richardson). Moreover,
the varieties of English language learners and of non-standard English speakers are treated
as “evidence of [their] alienation” (Canagarajah, Translingual Practice 22). Bodies typically
attached to the dominant variety are assigned capital that users of other varieties are not,
and since “so many people who speak non-standard forms of ‘English’ or languages other
than ‘English’ are not white, these manifestations of the standard language ideology, for
some, serve as coded expressions of racism” (Mangelsdorf 117).
And, as we know, systemic forces of oppression result in significant socioeconomic
inequalities—language oppression is merely one force within this system. While the affor-
dances of standard language and literacy are often touted, “language in and of itself provides
no guarantee of socioeconomic advancement, operating instead in contingent relation to a
host of other factors such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, and age in determining one’s eco-
nomic position” (Horner and Trimbur 618; see also Street; Graff; Auerbach). Monolingualism
reflects and manifests a range of microlevel aggressions in addition to broader values, policies,
and practices that emerge from and reinforce systemic linguistic oppression, affecting everyone
beyond the most elite groups and especially targeting already vulnerable communities.
English monolingualism as a colonizing force has, further, worked to suppress lan-
guages and their associated cultural identities (Cushman; Lyons; Powell; Richardson).
Monolingualism defines and then subordinates the linguistic other, an other who faces
ostracization, who is falsely promised full initiation through assimilation, and who pays for
that insiderness with aspects of a prior cultural and social identity (Rodriguez; Lu “Living-
English”). Since monolingual orientations deem dominant varieties as the privileged (and
sometimes the only permissible) language, they “can potentially limit the range of languages
that can be used in a place in social interactions,” which further “gives justification for a com-
munity to exert its own language on others sharing its place” (Canagarajah, Translingual
Practice 21). Speakers of other varieties are marked as lesser citizens—less patriotic, less
literate, and less legitimate. Indeed, “Language, literacy, and citizenship are viewed as inter-
dependent: to be literate is to know the language, and to know the language is requisite to
citizenship” (Horner, “Introduction” 1). Speakers of other varieties are, furthermore, assigned
all responsibility for acquiring the so-called “shared” dominant variety and thus carry a much
fuller burden for communication (Lippi-Green 72–74) and for clarifying meaning (rather than
communication being negotiated equally across interlocutors). Thus, speakers of other varie-
ties are often also deemed as less intelligent, less authentic, less competent, less qualified—
“a certain hegemonic conception of what it means to be a thinking and acceptable American
emerges” (Richardson 97).
As such, monolingualism has stolen from us the symphonic repertoire available for com-
municators when we open our minds to resources beyond the narrowest English and the iden-
tities that lay claim to it. As Marilyn Cooper writes, “. . . we need to realize that monolingualism
does not improve but rather debilitates language and deprives humans of the resources that
enable them to make meanings flexibly in response to ever-changing conditions” (238).
While some of the political consequences of monolingualist ideologies remain hidden
within and are perpetuated by traditional practices and beliefs, there are plenty of material
consequences that plainly affect, control, and manipulate people in their lived and embodied
realities. For instance, as Min-Zhan Lu exposed in her influential “Living-English Work,” some
international English language learners have gone so far as to surgically alter their tongue
structures in hopes of “sounding” more fluent in English. Like many of the students who find
their way to US college composition, individuals like those referenced by Lu do so for mate-
rial purposes; they “want to gain competence in the knowledge, codes, and discourses that
will allow them to compete in emerging global economies” (Canagarajah and Jerskey 473).
Beyond seemingly individual drive to “fit” with neoliberal currents,2 policy has also played
a more explicit role in moving bodies and suppressing language differences. Legislation at
the state level has worked to sustain monolingualism and stamp out language difference,
particularly impacting bilingual programs and (thus) multilingual students in public school
settings, such as California’s Proposition 227 or Arizona’s Proposition 203 (Mangelsdorf),
not to mention the wider English-Only and official English movements that have waxed and
waned in the US for decades.
Monolingualism further plays a role in defining what kind of immigrants, documented
and undocumented, have access to the protections and services of the state, especially
given the power of English literacy in “documentary society” (see Vieira). There is also “the
dilemma of highly educated, rhetorically developed multilingual writers whose literacy and
language practices become frozen, shut down, or held in place” in the US (Lorimer Leonard,
“Traveling” 30), such as the individual whose degree and professional experience don’t hold
the same capital within its borders. Here we’re thinking of trained professionals who, upon
immigration to the US, find that their degrees and experience are undervalued and they are
forced, instead, to take on unskilled labor or invest redundant time and money into earning
the US-equivalent of their home degrees (Lorimer Leonard examines this phenomenon in
Writing on the Move). As it affects speakers of World Englishes both within and beyond the
United States (Kachru), monolingualism has permeated educational institutions to shape
experiences of belonging, access, and legitimacy. Cangarajah’s Geopolitics of Academic
Writing, for instance, points out the degree to which power relations have skewed sharing
and ethos in the academic knowledge economy, arguing that: “The English language thus
becomes a very effective vehicle for spreading center values globally and for providing
Western institutions access to the periphery” (40). The spread of English globally has thus
had material consequences for the bodies and lived realities of English speakers around
the world who have sought English as a path to securing material advantages enjoyed in
the West, where English’s privilege has helped to sustain its beneficiaries’ social and eco-
nomic power.
In US higher education institutions, various gatekeeping measures regularly occur under
tacit monolingual policies. Multilingual students, for instance, are regularly siloed in ESL ver-
sions of courses, with or without students’ wishes or approval, and typically without critical
consideration of how such practices may perpetuate monolingualist ideologies (Matsuda
“The Myth”; Shuck “Combating”). Such siloing problematically relieves mainstream compo-
sition teachers of their responsibility to gain knowledge and strategies needed to support
any and all students enrolled in their courses, no matter students’ language backgrounds
and exposure to or prior experiences with *SE. Further, students with more dominant lan-
guage varieties are sheltered from the realities of linguistic diversity, thereby missing out
on opportunities to develop more complex cross-language and cross-variety communica-
tive strategies. When English, and only one kind of English, is permitted in the composition
classroom, it reifies the social hierarchy, privileges mainstream students, and “denies an
increasing number of multilingual students the opportunity to develop as assets and to use
strategically the full range of their linguistic and discursive resources to accomplish their
communicative goals” (Mangelsdorf 198). As Paul Kei Matsuda has demonstrated, “the myth
of linguistic homogeneity” and a “policy of containment” thrive in composition (“Myth”) and
drive the division of labor between composition and second language writing (“Composition
Studies”), resulting in the labeling of linguistically diverse groups (nonnative speaker, inter-
national student, basic writer, ESL, ELL). While many composition professionals understand
these labels as “at times benign and even useful,” they “can also be problematic, misleading,
even politically noxious” (Horner and Trimbur 617).
In fact, every aspect of the WPA architecture is prone to influence from monolingualism
in ways that inadvertently harm students. As noted by Christine Tardy, language is “sup-
pressed rather than recognized and valued” when we use “strategies such as filtering out
language minority students in admissions, ignoring language difference in the classroom,
referring language minority students to the writing center, or placing students into reme-
dial writing courses or special sections for second language writers” (636). Student assess-
ment in our field and classrooms is also inextricably tied to monolingualism (Dryer) and is
also deeply connected to race and language varieties. For instance, Asao Inoue’s Antiracist
Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future
addresses language politics in the writing classroom with respect to race, noting the ecolo-
gies wherein students of color and multilingual students are disproportionately subject to
remedial courses and failure as results of systemic inequity (6). In all of these ways, the
small, day-to-day tasks of our work as literacy professionals are subject to and influenced by
the ambient pervasion (and perversion) of monolingual ideology.
These monolingual interruptions of ethical writing instruction have material consequences
for students, as well. Let us not overlook the extra layers of financial and academic liabili-
ties linguistically diverse students face in higher education, which can result in academic
probation, loss of financial scholarships, or eventual expulsion (Shuck “Combating”). When
students are not equally welcomed within academic institutions, those deemed “other” are
confronted with increased time and cost constraints (e.g., inflated tuition and exam expenses
for international students; increased tuition dollars spent on non-credit-bearing courses for
so-called basic writers or ELLs; tutoring services, or required attendance at the institution’s
affiliated language institute). This is all in addition to the immeasurable affective weight non-
mainstream students face when working against a system that’s not designed for, yet actively
recruits and ineffectively accommodates them (particularly in areas of mentorship, when we
take into account poor faculty diversity). As duly noted by Mary Louise Pratt in “Building a
New Public Idea about Language,” “The lived reality of multilingualism and the imperatives
of global relations both fly in the face of monolingualist language policies, while those poli-
cies inflict needless social and psychic violence on vulnerable populations” (111). Given our
realization through political language scholarship that difference is the norm rather than the
exception, monolingualism’s violence is certain to affect all but the narrowest population of
our students; we find this unacceptable.
These inconvenient truths must not be buried under pragmatic claims about what we’ve
long done, what students say they want, what we’re trained to do; rather, it is essential that
our pedagogies are designed to address the material harms our literacy work can cause. The
linguistic injustice we describe above reflects scholarship going back at least 50 years in our
discipline; we can no longer deny them as reality, professing only the advantages provided
by our upholding monolingualist ideologies in our classrooms and through our curriculum.
With this history in mind, we turn next to parsing out the intertwined, yet distinguishable,
strands of the monolingual concept. Our hope is that clarifying the material harms caused
by monolingualism, as well as the various facets of monolingualism, will help to push our
research and teaching to reunite under a shared pursuit to address the full politics of our role
in today’s racialized and socially hierarchized literacy economy.
Combating Monolingualism in Composition Studies

Arguably, the most multifaceted discussion of the concept of monolingualism by composition
scholars comes in a chapter published in the 2007 collection Rethinking English in Schools:
Toward a New Constructive Stage and Account, where Bruce Horner and Min-Zhan Lu
describe monolingualism as involving multiple ideological and curricular gestures. Their
overview acknowledges the ways in which monolingualism may conceptually be understood
as “ideologies linking reified notions of language and national identity, or in terms of the ‘glo-
balization’ of a monolithic, uniform English as an international language of communication”
(141), which highlights the values of authenticity and ownership inherent in monolingualist
thinking. They present monolingual ideologies as further resulting in standardized ideals by
way of a “tacit policy of ‘English Only’: [wherein] only reading and writing practices in English
are recognized, and only a limited, ‘educated’ set of practices with English are accepted as
legitimate.” Applied, they explain, this ideology leads to curriculum that ultimately “fails to
recognize the actual heterogeneity of language practices within as well as outside the USA
and UK and denies the heterogeneity of practices within English itself.” Finally, Horner and
Lu also understand monolingualism as involving the false assumption that English, or any
other language, is to be “treated as a fixed entity” capable of being segregated or at least
quieted when needed.
Rarely has monolingualism been articulated in such a fully dimensional fashion, encom-
passing the many discrete and overlapping ways in which it is taken up across our schol-
arship (for another excellent and comprehensive discussion of monolingualist ideologies,
their histories, and effects, see Canagarajah, Translingual Practice). While examinations of
monolingualism have surfaced for decades in disciplinary conversations within and beyond
composition studies,3 our close reading of many key texts from translingualism (most
recently) as well as significant works addressing language politics from SRTOL, basic writ-
ing, second language writing, and other pre-translingual scholarship helped us to identify
subtle but important differences in monolingualism’s definition and role, depending on a
given author’s purpose.
Based on our analysis of explicit discussions of combating monolingualism, we name and
describe here four interconnected versions of monolingualist ideology:
• Monolingualism as Standard Language Ideology

• Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies
• Monolingualism as the Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity
• Monolingualism as the Myth of Linguistic Uniformity, Stability, and Separateness
In order to elaborate on these interconnected facets of monolingualism, in this section we

mesh together key passages from selected texts by scholars who have been central to
discussions of language difference in college composition, including Suresh Canagarajah,
Bruce Horner, Min-Zhan Lu, Paul Kei Matsuda, John Trimbur, and more. While it is beyond
the constraints of this project to review all scholarship addressing the monolingual concept,
we attempt to illustrate with our synthesized sampling from composition studies how a more
fully dimensional disciplinary understanding of monolingualism is needed to help advocate
for an increasingly politically and materially conscious movement against linguistic oppres-
sion in our classrooms and scholarship to come. In naming its strands, we call for all com-
position scholars, not just those already working in the realm of linguistic politics, to engage
more explicitly in combating a holistic monolingualism.
Monolingualism as Standard Language Ideology

The politics of standardized English permeate our field’s scholarly history and classroom
practices, with Monolingualism as Standard Language Ideology working to exclude, segre-
gate, track, and define students upon the notion that non-standard language practices are
deficient and inappropriate for public, academic, and official purposes. Monolingualism as
Standard Language Ideology “[expects] writers’ conformity with a putatively uniform, univer-
sal set of notational and syntactic conventions that we name Standard Written English (or
alternatively, Edited American English)” (Horner et al. 306). This uptake of monolingualist
ideology requires an imagined set of inherently correct codes, flattening English to an arbi-
trary, stable, and unified standard; it “teaches language users to assume and demand that
others accept as correct and conform to a single set of practices with language” (312). Under
this ideology, any non-standard English language use is understood as ignorance, inability,
or error, representing deviance from the norm.
The CCCC resolution on “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” (hereafter SRTOL),
published originally in 1974, was instrumental in revealing the problems with and social
consequences of privileging *SE at the expense of other languages and dialects. Applying
research insights from applied linguistics and sociolinguistics to composition studies, SRTOL
cites the 1972 CCCC Executive Committee’s Resolution to advocate not only for “students’
right to their own patterns and varieties of language—the dialects of their nurture or whatever
dialects in which they find their own identity and style;” it declared that the standard American
English dialect was itself a myth and that “the claim that any one dialect is unacceptable
amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another” (qtd. in
“Students’ Right” 2–3). The SRTOL resolution pressed teachers to respect language diver-
sity, emphasizing the harms caused by privileging one kind of English over others. While the
term “monolingualism” is not used in the SRTOL resolution, its purpose was unquestionably
dedicated to combating what the field later understands as Monolingualism as Standard
Language Ideology. In the decades following SRTOL, there are a litany of voices from schol-
ars of color who have toiled to describe and theorize the violence of *SE and its impact on
identity, economy, and success (see especially the work of Gilyard, Lyons, Smitherman,
Villanueva, Young).
Our uncritical acceptance of the myth of a standard variety and the assumption of its supe-
riority is based in what linguists have defined as standard language ideology. Definitions of
standard language ideology forefront its function as a tool for social stratification. As defined
by Lesley Milroy, standard language ideology is “the belief that there is one and only one cor-
rect spoken form of the language, modelled on a single correct written form” (174). As James
Milroy and Lesley Milroy have shown, the standardization process diffuses the selected privi-
leged variety, maintains its supremacy by codifying and prescribing it. The subordination of
all other dialects follows, as the standard variety then dictates all others as non-standard
and, hence, sub-standard. Another oft-cited expert of standard language ideology is Rosina
Lippi-Green, who emphasizes the ways these belief systems go unchecked, leaving them
invisible and assumed to be commonsensical. Lippi-Green defines standard language ideol-
ogy as “a bias toward an abstract, idealized homogenous language, which is imposed and
maintained by dominant institutions and which has as its model the written language, but
which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper-middle class” (67).
We find it important, as do Milroy and Lippi-Green, to highlight the ways that standard lan-
guage ideology serves also as a racist belief system, what Robert Phillipson calls linguicism,
or what Victor Villanueva and others have referred to in the context of academia as part of
the “new” racism. Laura Greenfield drives this home in her article, “The ‘Standard English’
Fairy Tale: A Rhetorical Analysis of Racist Pedagogies and Commonplace Assumptions
about Language Diversity.” She explains that language discrimination is rooted in racism,
and so when we treat standardized English as the preferred variety in our classrooms,
we’re perpetuating racism and its legacy. Scholarship from compositionists such as Inoue,
Smitherman, Villanueva, and Young has long supported such interpretations, as has a larger
compilation of research outside our discipline.4
Classrooms operating under this ideology seek to move students from a place of dif-
ference to a place of homogeneity—what Horner and Trimbur refer to as “unidirectional
monolingualism” whereby *SE is the language toward which all should aim. *SE, as one
variety of English dialect, has been “endowed with more prestige than others,” and despite
decades of scholarship from scholars of color offering testament, we in composition have
yet to collectively recognize that teaching students to privilege *SE over their other varieties
“involves their acceptance of a new—and possibly strange or hostile—set of cultural values”
(“Students’ Right” 6). Some teachers have attempted to straddle the line by describing *SE
as merely a different version of English that students can use to achieve their academic and
professional goals while maintaining “home” languages for more personal purposes, but as
Young points out in his opening to Other People’s English, this approach reflects a “racial
compromise” (6) and “a vestige of legalized racial segregation” that “becomes a strategy not
only to teach Standard English but to negotiate racism” (9). Young reminds us that we cannot
excise the problem of race in the university by maintaining distinctions of “appropriateness”
for languages according to designated spheres of use. We can, of course, no more standard-
ize language than we can standardize identity.
Academic and public practices that seek to maintain standard language covertly (and
sometimes overtly) privilege mainstream, middle- and upper-middle class, white, native-
English speakers who are more likely to be already accustomed to and experienced with *SE
discourse. Through Monolingualism as Standard Language Ideology, we imagine an “ideal
speaker” who is “thought to be a monolingual native speaker of a prestige variety of English”
and who is “evaluated according to a narrow canon of rules” (Shuck, “Combating” 59). This
standard (as it is reified and invoked by individuals, institutions, and governments in various
local moments) is used to define insiders and outsiders with respect to class membership,
social status, and national identity. While this version of monolingualism is the oldest to be
revealed and contested in our discipline, we question whether some contemporary treat-
ments of language difference have left it behind, to the detriment of better mitigating the
harms of monolingualism.
Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies

Within composition studies, Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies, the second of
four strands of monolingualist ideology we review here, has shaped how we discuss language
differences in our scholarship and how we treat them in our classrooms. In their important
2002 article, “English Only and US College Composition,” Horner and Trimbur pressed the
field to confront the tacit “unidirectional monolingualism” guiding our practices and policies.
They traced our field’s favoring of English-Only education back to the cutting of classic lan-
guages from the curriculum in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a move that
“purifies the social identity of US Americans as English speakers, privileges the use of lan-
guage as written English, and then charts the pedagogical and curricular development of lan-
guage as one that points inexorably toward mastery of written English” (607). Supporting this
unidirectional language learning, students and scholars are expected only to read and write in
English for other readers and writers of English (Horner “Introduction”; Horner and Trimbur).
This dimension of monolingualism reflects global power relations, uncovers and empha-
sizes a tacit national policy in the US concerning the dominance of the English language,
and defines particular codes of English as those toward which all users should strive.
Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies privileges not just one dialect in one context,
but one language—English—as ideal for most contexts, including educational purposes, offi-
cial cross-cultural communications, and even matters of national interest and security (Wible).
It further upholds English as the fitting lingua franca, owing to the belief that the standardized
variety of English is “more efficient as a shared resource for meaning-making by everyone at
the global level” (Canagarajah, Translingual Practice 24). On a national and policy level, this
ideology interprets linguistic diversity as a social problem, resting strictly in the hands of immi-
grants whose linguistic deficit must be addressed; their struggles to efficiently acquire fluency
in the preferred language and dialect is often read as stubborn resistance and individual fail-
ure rather than “evidence of the limitations of the monolingualism of US culture” (Horner and
Trimbur 617). In this way, Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies is unidirectional as
well: it suppresses and silences other languages, varieties, and experiences, and “reveal[s] a
preference for a certain type of ‘naturalization’ of immigrants and an ideal type of assimilated
African American and other ‘minority’ American groups” (Richardson 97).
On an international level, Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies assumes English
is both geographically defined and authorized by native speakers. This aspect of monolin-
gualism is thus based on “a center-periphery model” (Richardson 97); is a form of “Anglo-
Saxon hegemony in [US] linguistic memory” (Trimbur 584); and is rooted in “nation-state
formation” as well as “colonization and imperialism” (Canagarajah, Translingual Practice
20). Overseas, Standardized British and Standardized American English are often preferred
over other local varieties of English in official settings (Canagarajah, “The Place” 588).
Multilingual scholars within and outside of the US face increased challenges as they work to
apply the versions of *SE that will grant their research acceptance into Western publication
venues. For multilingual writers from nations where English is not the dominant language,
English is an obstacle in the way of legitimacy, not to mention limitations in electricity, library
resources, mentors, etc. (see Canagarajah, Geopolitics and the many works of Mary Jane
Curry and Theresa M. Lillis, among others). Further, in Lu’s “Living-English Work,” she helps
us understand the struggle for English acquisition in “‘developing’ countries as intricately
informed by what we in ‘developed’ countries do and do not do when addressing our own
and our students’ ambivalence toward English-Only rulings” (606).
English-Only ideologies and practices ignore global contexts of languaging, writing, and
instruction (see Kachru; Canagarajah “The Place”; Aya Matsuda; Phillipson; and Pennycook).
While some followers of English-Only are merely unaware of the complex history and con-
temporary practices of global English use, more extreme English-Only advocates have
seen English as an epistemically superior language that is better suited for rationality and
knowledge-making than other languages. Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies
has thus been a colonizing activity, invested in keeping English tied to territory (particularly
in the US), sustaining legitimacy of national identity, and working to preserve English as the
language of global power while suppressing all others. From this perspective, the consensus
over English as the lingua franca reifies its value as the language of economic and social
globalization and denies the local realities in which English language users with varied and
intersectional identities shift English through their adaptations of it.
Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies manifests in classroom practices through
assessment, rubrics, textbooks and assigned reading, assignment sheets, and more. In both
passive and active choices to preserve Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies, mul-
tilingual students and their language uses are understood as deficient, with home languages
posing as obstacles to English language learning, which can result in “students losing their
heritage languages and diverse repertoires they bring with them” (Canagarajah, “Clarifying”
426). As Trimbur further clarifies in his 2006 article, “Linguistic Memory and the Politics of US
English,” in college courses we rarely refer to non-English texts, and the use of languages
other than English “has remained largely invisible, both conceptually and programmatically”
(585). When we do acknowledge the diverse language repertoires our students bring, under
this monolingual ideology some might assume “that learning multiple codes simultane-
ously is difficult” and thus not appropriate or even possible in our classrooms (Canagarajah,
“Clarifying” 425). Such teachers may reason, then, that as the language of power, English is
better suited for use in classrooms. Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies may lead
us to assume that both English and *SE are what all students want, and we thus have a habit
of “giving in uncritically to this desire” (Canagarajah, “Clarifying” 426).
Whether consciously or not, teacher-scholars who succumb to Monolingualism as Tacit
English-Only Policies flatten and obscure language difference and deny linguistic inequality
(including among English varieties). Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policies, like its
counterparts, harms many writers through material consequences such as those described
above. Yet for most of us, our disciplinary work remains deeply entrenched in its devices
through our complicity at the levels of classroom, institution, and scholarship.
Monolingualism as the Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity

Addressing another vein of monolingualism, Matsuda has pointed out that in composition
studies, we problematically assume linguistic homogeneity in our scholarship and our class-
rooms. Monolingualism as the Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity shares with the previous
dimensions of monolingualism the primacy and privilege of particular varieties of English,
and it further assumes that students enter our classrooms already native-English speak-
ers, readers, and writers. Indeed, the myth of linguistic homogeneity, revealed by Matsuda,
directly extends the type of tacit English-Only monolingualism that Trimbur traces within
US college composition. Matsuda explains that “the dominant discourse . . . not only has
accepted English Only as an ideal but it already assumes the state of English Only, in which
students are native-English speakers by default” (“Myth” 637). Though our students’ lin-
guistic diversity has increased, Matsuda points out, our “dominant image” of our students’
language use has not expanded, and we thus tailor our pedagogical approaches with this
image in mind. If we had accepted unidirectional monolingualism and actually had a multi-
lingual image in mind, Matsuda convincingly argues, “all composition teachers would have
been expected to learn how to teach the dominant variety of English to students who come
from different language backgrounds.” This has clearly not been the case in our field. In other
words, even the standard language ideology that’s central to our monolingual practices has
remained resistant to the reality of a linguistically diverse composition classroom. We are,
by and large, prepared to teach just one variety of English through methods and practices
designed only with linguistically homogenous English-speaking students in mind.
Historically, higher education institutions have worked to uncritically “contain” and correct
linguistic differences, evident in the problematic division of labor between ESL composi-
tion, mainstream composition, and even basic writing (see Matsuda “Myth,” “Composition
Studies,” and “Basic Writing”).
Globalization, the expansion of World Englishes, and the integration of subsequent gen-
erations in immigrant families have resulted in increasingly plentiful variations in English
use, making it more difficult for containment practices to effectively divert students from
mainstream classrooms. Despite the increasing regularity of multilingual and non-standard
language users, this monolingual ideology presumes that prior gatekeeping and tracking
methods—such as placement exams and essays—continue to maintain the composition
classroom as a space for native, and thus “legitimate,” English speakers. The imagined
homogeneity preserves the de facto logic described above—that the composition class-
room is a place for English speakers to read and write for other English speakers. Under
Monolingualism as the Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity, and the practices that help main-
tain it, ELLs and international students may be represented at best as rare and different, or
worse, as illegitimate outsiders who haven’t yet earned a seat in mainstream composition,
contrary to evidence that these students and their language practices are increasingly the
norm (Matsuda “Myth”, see also Arnold).
As is evident in the three facets of monolingualism thus far interrogated, in composition
studies, discussions of combating monolingualism are rooted in social power and conflict,
calling not only for increased awareness of linguistic diversity but for “a radical shift from
composition’s tacit policy of monolingualism to an explicit policy that embraces multilingual,
cross-language writing as the norm for our teaching and research” (Horner, “Introduction” 3).
Monolingualism as the Myth of Linguistic Uniformity, Stability,

Separateness
Moving from the politics of language and language users to focus on how languages work (and
have historically worked) in the world, Monolingualism as the Myth of Linguistic Uniformity,
Stability, and Separateness imagines languages as whole and static codes with inherent
structures that have been and will always be internal to a given language and its use. In short,
this facet of monolingualist ideology “treat[s] languages and language practices as discrete,
uniform, and stable” (Horner et al. 307). It assumes that we “have separate competences for
separately labeled languages” and that “one language detrimentally ‘interferes’ with the learn-
ing and use of another” (Canagarajah, Translingual Practice 6). From this myth’s perspec-
tive, “the boundaries separating one language from another are imagined as fixed” (Horner
and Trimbur 614) and “a bilingual person’s competence is . . . simply the sum of two discrete
monolingual competences added together” (Canagarajah, “Toward” 591). While more compli-
cated orientations understand that languages emerge, shift, and blend with one another upon
the tides of fluctuation and variation in users and uses, this dimension of monolingualism
defines differences as deficiencies, interprets the mixing of linguistic repertoires as a defiling
of purity, and values above all else the chimera of what can only be an imagined whole.
Like other versions of monolingualism, The Myth of Linguistic Uniformity, Stability, and
Separateness is unidirectional in its demands—that is, it places all responsibility on the non-
English or non-standard English speaker to conform rather than placing equally on all parties
the demand for versatility across languages, or, the “communicative burden” (Lippi-Green
73–74). It further takes on an “accommodationist” perspective which “assumes that each
codified set of language practices is appropriate only to a specific, discrete, assigned social
sphere: ‘home’ language, ‘street’ language, ‘academic’ language, ‘business’ language, ‘writ-
ten’ language (aka the ‘grapholect’), and so on” (Horner et al. 306). Resulting from these
perspectives, “language becomes separated and systematized from other environmental
forces. We lose the notion that languages are mobile, heterogeneous, and hybrid resources
that combine with other semiotic resources to make meaning in context” (Canagarajah,
Translingual Practice 23).
Canagarajah has highlighted the need to move beyond versions of multilingualism that
“[perceive] the relationship between languages in an additive manner (i.e., combination of
separate languages),” preferring instead a translingual perspective that “addresses the syn-
ergy, treating languages as always in contact and mutually influencing each other, with emer-
gent meanings and grammars” (“Negotiating” 41). For Canagarajah and other translingual
scholars working against this aspect of monolingualism, the idea of synergy is quintessential
to evolving our understanding of the relationship among languages “which generates new
grammars and meanings,” as opposed to monolingualism’s portrayal of “multiple languages
enjoying their separate identity and structure even in contact” (“Clarifying” 419). Under trans-
lingualism, “the monolingual orientation is turned upside down, shifting the emphasis from
sharedness to diversity, grammar to practices, and cognition to embodiment” (420). Bruce
Horner and Laura Tetreault similarly urge this recognition of linguistic synergy, as we come
to understand languages and language users as “internally diverse, interpenetrating, and
fluid both in character and in relation to other languages and to social identities, which are
likewise understood as multiple and fluid—the always emerging products of practices” (15).
Thus, The Myth of Linguistic Uniformity, Stability, and Separateness resists acknowledging
the situatedness of language uses and the linguistic fluidity inherent to drawing on cross-
language repertoires.
We find it necessary to distinguish among these competing ideologies underpinning the
broad concept of monolingualism since, collectively, they are fundamental to understanding
what belief systems we’re up against when we address linguistic difference in composition
today. In essence, these strands of monolingualism help us question our normalized prac-
tices by asking: Why do we privilege, invite, and assess only standardized English? Why do
we privilege, invite, and assess only English to the exclusion of other world languages? Why
are our pedagogies designed in ways that assume and strive for linguistic homogeneity?
Why do we see language as uniform, stable, and separate, rather than dynamic, fluid, and
synergistic? And, undergirding each of these questions, we’d add, should be, “How do our
responses work to harm language communities?” and “What can we do to change that?” In
clarifying the differences between and overlaps across these four distinct strands, we can
begin to better understand how and why teacher-scholars invested in language politics may
work in diverse ways to transform and transgress monolingualism in our classrooms, our
administration, and our research.
The Problem with Incomprehensive Treatment of Monolingualisms

Collectively, scholars in composition have taken to task the political ramifications of mono-
lingualist policies in our institutions as harmful to English language learners, basic writing
students, and those whose English practices do not reflect the imagined community indexed
in standard English. However, we argue that as scholarship combating monolingualism
moves forward, it is crucial to ensure that all facets of monolingualism are accounted for and
included. Given the different dimensions of monolingualism we’ve laid out, the importance
of treating all facets of monolingualism holistically becomes clearer. Consider, for example,
what happens when we do not attend explicitly to Monolingualism as Standard Language
Ideology as integral to the monolingualist ideologies we aim to combat. A scholar address-
ing just the final three monolingualist ideologies discussed here might focus her energies on
these three intertwined objectives:
1 invite and honor language difference in her classroom, encouraging code-meshed

texts that feature a fuller range of students’ linguistic repertoires (thus working against
Monolingualism as Tacit English-Only Policy);
2 acknowledge the linguistic diversity in her classroom and work to train university fac-
ulty, including herself, to gain practical knowledge on how to better support linguistically
diverse students (thus working against Monolingualism as the Myth of Homogeneity);
3 encourage students to engage their own and others’ language varieties and commu-
nication practices as dynamic, fluid, and synergistic, while also training faculty across
the curriculum to also understand and treat language as such (thus working against
Monolingualism as the Myth of Linguistic Uniformity, Stability, Separateness).
While these stances and praxes are downright progressive, commendable, and worth cel-
ebrating, they take up only three of the four strands of monolingualism.5 Such a pedagogy
lends to celebrating diversity and the “trans” nature of language, and it heightens awareness
of linguistic diversity and language theory for students and faculty alike. But it also misses
the critical opportunity to acknowledge in our research, teaching, and administration how
language differences are tied up with language ideologies that hierarchize language varieties
and their users—which, as we see it, is the most crucial aspect of combating monolingualism.
If, in this hypothetical pedagogy, we also attended to Monolingualism as Standard
Language Ideology, we would set ourselves up for more socially just approaches: to bet-
ter interrogate the paradox of upholding *SE even after decades of research recognizing
how *SE serves oppressive projects; to avoid the pitfalls of language play (rather than
linguistic justice) taking priority in our research and pedagogy; and, to shift from a disem-
bodied, history-less language user to focusing the purposes of our work in mitigating real,
historical struggles that have long haunted our literacy work in composition classroom and
across the university. A more multidimensional accounting of monolingualism (including
and especially Monolingualism as Standard Language Ideology) can lead us to making
language politics and the material realities that follow more central to composition scholar-
ship and pedagogies (in addition to writing program administration, writing center work,
and teacher training).
Our concern here can be likened to recent criticisms made of translingual approaches to
writing. As translingualism may be considered the latest iteration of combating monolingual-
ism in composition studies, it serves as a useful example for the need to be mindful of all
facets of the monolingual paradigm.6 Juan Guerra, in his contribution to the recent College
English special issue on “Translingual Work in Composition,” convincingly claims that “we
falter in our efforts to help our students understand what a translingual approach is because
we have been leading them to think that we expect them to produce a particular kind of writ-
ing that mimics what we call code-meshing” (231). He argues that, as teachers adopting a
translingual approach, “what we want instead is for [students] to call on the rhetorical sen-
sibilities many of them already possess but put aside because of what they see as a jarring
shift in context” (231–32). In his concluding remarks to the same special issue, Keith Gilyard
worries that portraying translangauging as something all students perform may lead to the
“devaluing of the historical and unresolved struggles of groups that have been traditionally
underrepresented in the academy and suffer disproportionately in relation to it” (286).
We, alongside Guerra and Gilyard, fear that dwelling too locally in the realm of language
practice assumes a sort of “linguistic everyperson” in our students and so fails to serve the polit-
ical project translingualism offers for communicators drawing on non-standardized varieties.7
We interpret the move away from focusing on material realities of language difference as,
potentially, resulting from applying disparate definitions of monolingualism. We have come
to understand this pattern as emerging when we treat translingualism as foremost a process
and practice (i.e., translanguaging) rather than as an ideology with material consequences
(i.e., our cultural attitudes about language and their effects on individuals). Our agenda sup-
ports Gilyard’s conclusion that despite legitimate criticisms of translingualism, “its rejection
of the monolingual paradigm is certainly the way forward” (289). Whether we take up trans-
lingualism or work against monolingualism from another perspective, we believe that explicit
attention to Monolingualism as Standard Language Ideology should guide and inform our
pedagogy and scholarship.
Explicitly Combating Monolingualism: A Shared Outcome
Monolingualism in all of its complex iterations is harmful to our students, harmful to faculty,
and serves nefarious projects with which we are certain none of us would wish for our work
to be aligned. As those of us who have long fought monolingualist ideologies see it, failing to
combat monolingualist ideology is equivalent to perpetuating it; it leads us, consciously
or not, to “ultimately support a status quo, laissez-faire approach to language that helps
to maintain the dominance of some languages and language users over others” (Horner,
“Students’ Right” 743). We make false promises in our composition classrooms that the
standard (English) language students will learn in our courses will give them the tools they
need to be successful in their college careers and far beyond. We assure students that
standard language is the key to the gate. But standard language—or, more accurately, the
shared ideology that privileges it— is the gate. Standard language ideology is what holds
back groups who use non-privileged language varieties; *SE regularly serves as a barrier,
not merely a path, to social upward mobility. If language, an abstraction, is indeed a tool, it is
often more effective as a tool for oppression than a tool for mobility. While the consolidated
consequences that result from monolingualist ideologies are weighty, all can be understood
foremost as preserving social hierarchies and maintaining oppression.
It is irresponsible, indeed unethical, to assume and treat language and language differ-
ences as apolitical. How, we ask, can we be informed about the harms of monolingualist
ideologies—the kinds of beliefs that classes like the ones most of us teach have historically
perpetuated for decades—and not address and combat them more explicitly? How can we
know about the oppression resulting from the dominance of English and demands for *SE and
not challenge these standards and their effects actively with our colleagues and students?
While some may argue that pragmatism is the way forward, we argue that it is no one’s
best interest to wait until racism and everyday language discrimination are overcome before
we reorient our pedagogies to overtly dismantle monolingualist ideologies. Either we get
busy contesting them, or we continue perpetuating them all in the name of waiting for a
revolution we can’t guarantee will come. We believe that salient and intentional classroom
approaches that work explicitly against monolingualism will enhance the field’s movement
toward a literacy work that is decolonizing, antiracist, and nonviolent. But such promise will
only be realized through ongoing collective and large-scale endeavors. Some may prefer to
leave this work to those who have a special interest in language difference, hoping that their
own pedagogies will make more modest strides by supporting language varieties without
explicitly working against monolingualism. This approach problematically assumes or hopes
that more acceptance of linguistic differences will come with time and through the efforts of
select groups, such as translingual writing or second language writing specialists. However,
such selective and special-interest efforts provide little hope for change when the majority
of our discipline turns a blind eye, consciously or not, to the myths and harms perpetuated
by monolingualist ideology. Collective intervention in cultural and systemic perpetuations of
monolingualism is required if we are to expect any sort of real strides against the social and
racial hierarchies that are aided by linguistic discrimination and exclusion.
It is beyond the constraints of this current article to exemplify the many ways in which
teachers can better work to combat monolingualist ideologies. To briefly illustrate what this
looks like in the classroom, however, we can turn to pedagogical examples from scholars
already committed to making the historical and social relations of power and language cen-
tral in composition. Consider Guerra’s emphasis in his teaching on “explicitly demystifying
the various approaches to language difference” (16). With students, Guerra examines a
continuum of competing ideologies “with a monolingual/monocultural approach at one end, a
multilingual/multicultural approach in the middle, and a translingual/transcultural approach at
the other end” (16). Inviting students to study each approach allows them to consider the real
world impacts of these linguistic orientations. Relatedly, in Michelle Cox’s first-year composi-
tion course for international students at Dartmouth, she “sought to create optimal conditions
for agency by inviting students into the academic conversation on second language writing,
equipping students with the same literature and tools that academics have access to, and
providing a venue for self-positioning” (Shapiro et al. 43). In her classroom, students can
study and take an active stance regarding monolingualism.
Building from Guerra’s and Cox’s approaches, we believe all composition teachers and
students will benefit from expanding their understandings of how competing language ideolo-
gies inform their writing today, gaining insights on how ideologies have and continue to mark
and violate larger cultures and communities far beyond the work they will do in our classroom,
other classrooms, and the workforce. That said, we are inspired by those who incorporate
language diversity explicitly into writing instruction as a way to actively resist the oppressive
functions of *SE. Vershawn Ashanti Young has long advocated for code-meshing as a way to
expand what we perceive as possible and powerful in academic writing (“Naw We Straight”;
“Your Average Nigga”). In the same vein, in his chapters in Other People’s English, Kim Brian
Lovejoy shares how self-directed writing provides an opportunity for students to problematize
the cultural context that has politicized and constrained linguistic variety in the classroom,
while making space for code-meshing to “validate students’ multiple voices” and build their
rhetorical dexterity across writing contexts. In the context of code-meshing as it’s been theo-
rized by Young, this kind of language praxis blends an attention to the undercurrents of power
that shape language expectations in various spaces with a rhetorical strategy that leverages
writer agency in remaking those expectations through their intentional discursive practices.
Thus, an important difference between the approach we advocate for here as compared
to other approaches to addressing language diversity in the classroom is an insistence on
contextualizing the oppressive aspects of *SE so that students are armed, just as we are,
with the knowledge needed to make decisions about how, whether, and when to push against
standardized norms. Consider Greenfield’s call for drastically revising our shared goals in
writing courses and tutoring. She acknowledges the need to work with students to enhance
their language and literacy, but she encourages us to support students as they “develop a
critical consciousness of the effects of their choices at an individual and institutional level,
and—most importantly—cultivating in them a sense of agency in combating, linguistically
and otherwise, the injustices they encounter along the way” (58).
Greenfield suggests we might accomplish such an ambitious feat by examining with stu-
dents the racist undercurrents of language attitudes and the inherent linguistic and racial
hierarchizing sustained in composition pedagogy and in higher education at large. Only then
might “students’ choices about language use [be] based on their own critical thinking, not on
the instructors’ personal biases” (58). Importantly, as Greenfield clarifies, “Such a pedagogy
is not a distraction from the real work of teaching and tutoring writing but an investment in
teaching and tutoring through a lens that both ethically and practically accounts for the social
and linguistic truths of our time” (58).
To be clear, though, the composition classroom, framed by commitments to combating
monolingualism, does not lecture on the ills of *SE or try to convert students over to vilifying
it so much as it treats the politics of *SE and language diversity as complicated and multi-
faceted topics of inquiry in and of themselves. This approach could perhaps be likened to
writing about writing movements, but with far more attention to the larger sociopolitical con-
texts of English’s dominance and its role in empowering privileged groups and in oppressing
groups already disadvantaged. As Canagarajah so poignantly notes in regards to translin-
gual approaches to teaching, “Translingualism doesn’t ignore Standard English . . . Such
norms are a social fact, and can be ignored only to one’s peril” (“Clarifying” 425). Instead,
he argues, “What translingual pedagogies favor is deconstructing Standard English to make
students aware that it is a social construct” in order to “critically engage with this variety to
represent their voices and renegotiate its norms” (425). While teachers who aim to combat
monolingual ideologies may still rely upon *SE in the classroom, it will be treated as content
and rhetorical strategies to critically examine and critique rather than abstract skills and dis-
courses to master.
We can, at once, prepare students to identify and harness the standard strategically in
context while also deconstructing its perceived inherent legitimacy and inviting linguistic and
rhetorical differences. Further, keeping *SE as central content of the composition classroom
aligns well with scholars in translingualism who call on us to spend more time “dwelling in
borders” (Cushman), exploring the “meso” or “in-between position” (Paudel), and treating
writing as critical translation (Horner and Tetreault). Rethinking the role of *SE in the class-
room in this way allows students to, as Hem Paudel describes, “rethink historical language
conventions, consider their interactions with dominant social ideologies, reflect on the avail-
able resources for creatively resisting the hegemony of English monolingualism, and develop
a mesodiscursive awareness of language use in specific micro-macro contexts” (216). A
course informed by the ills of monolingualist ideologies will strive to build “mesodiscursive
awareness” as well as “metalinguistic and meta-rhetorical dexterity” in students, as Paudel
and other scholars invoked here call for.
At Rachael’s university, she has been working with Celeste Del Russo, director of Rowan
University’s Writing Center, to highlight and work against standard language ideology in the
center. Through a carefully designed series of professional development workshops, hiring
of a multilingual tutor coordinator, as well as in partnerships with campus resources like the
Office of Social Justice, Inclusion, and Conflict Resolution, they have been steadily working
to shift the tutoring culture to one that values language difference and actively works against
standard language ideology. In ongoing efforts, they are working alongside tutors to define and
design tutoring strategies that activate ethical approaches to language diversity while meeting
students’ needs and working against all dimensions of monolingualism; these approaches
might include honoring and welcoming students’ language varieties in all stages of the writ-
ing process, treating those language differences as resources rather than impediments to
English language writing, and using a “questioning orientation” rather than a “correcting gaze”
to respect writer agency when considering perceived error or irregularity in student writing.
In her graduate courses in the Language and Literacy MA Program at City College, Missy
works to heighten awareness of the linguistic discrimination and other obstacles facing all
learners of English and especially speakers of undervalued varieties—the very realities that
we have discussed in this article that may go overlooked especially by budding teachers
who may be unaware of research on standard language ideology or who, like most teachers
of English language and literacy, may be focused solely on highlighting the advantages of
learning and using SE*. Meanwhile, Missy’s campaign for a more explicitly political course
learning outcome guiding FYC continues, as do her efforts toward offering professional
development workshops aimed at addressing with City College instructors the politics of
monolingualist ideologies.
In the teaching of our undergraduate writers at Rowan and City College, we both treat
monolingualist ideology as a topic of inquiry that students critically examine through read-
ings, dialogue, and writing assignments. Many undergraduate students, especially those at
City College, are themselves affected daily by the politics of monolingualist ideologies, and
they show readiness and even eagerness to learn more about the too often mystified politics
and oppressive nature of *SE. Rowan students, on the other hand, would appear to be a
much more racially and linguistically homogenous group, making awareness of language
difference and confrontation of standard language ideology perhaps still more critical. It is
precisely because of the perceived sameness that students are moved when they discover a
more nuanced understanding of language difference and power. Our methods for doing this
sort of language work with students, then, must of course be situated, localized, and shaped
by our unique university contexts.
Inherent within the select examples of teaching we’ve synthesized here is a shared com-
mitment to account for the full politics of monolingualist ideologies. We recognize that each
is imperfect and incomplete; these examples of research and teaching reflect just some of
the means by which we may work together toward delinking the profits of our literacy work
from colonization and violence against bodies locally and around the world. In a way, each
example above addresses a course outcome such as this:
Students will recognize the role of language attitudes and standards in empowering,
oppressing, and hierarchizing languages and their users.
Again, there are a variety of pedagogical strategies we might propose or recall from past
scholarship that might address this outcome, too many to review here. For now, we wish
to highlight the need in our current historical moment for all writing teachers, tutors, and
administrators to consider how we might implement lessons, readings, discussions, and
assignments that interrogate *SE with students, offering critical reflection on how standard
language shapes and is shaped by social power. Adopting a learning outcome such as this
one, or like the one suggested by Ligia Mihut at the beginning of this essay, we believe may
help writing teachers explicitly work against all forms of monolingualism, whether they do so
out of a translingual framework or through other approaches. Guided by such an outcome,
our hope is that composition research, teaching, and administration will merge in a collective
pursuit against the many affective, embodied, and material consequences of monolingual-
ism. While this is but a modest step, we know well the importance of defining the culture of a
discipline, department, and classroom by way of settling on shared goals.8
We will be the first to acknowledge that none of the work we’ve covered, including our
own approaches and the outcome we suggest, will magically solve the problems we’ve high-
lighted with monolingualist ideologies and the incomplete treatment of them. However, mov-
ing forward, we believe we can work toward a set of shared ideals. We can make sure other
languages and Englishes are invited, supported, and valued; we can ensure that students
and teachers alike come to know the full politics of English; we can develop strategies to help
our institutions gain a fuller sense of what students’ language backgrounds and language
goals are; we can fight for a range of credit-bearing composition courses that fulfill degree
requirements, and advocate for students’ agency in self-selecting courses that best meet
their linguistic needs and goals; we can better train and support service staff who work with
linguistically diverse students; we can advocate for smaller classrooms to provide the space
and time teachers need to work on languaging; we can develop programmatic assessments
that value labor and rhetorical sensibility rather than proficiency in academic discourse; we
ourselves can normalize and make visible the plentitude of language variety by continuing
to publish in our own dialects and languages; we can press our universities and the public at
large to understand the full politics of English and monolingualist ideologies; we can increase
efforts toward becoming a more multilingual nation; we can protest unethical media portray-
als through public critique; we can lobby for legislation and community programs that work
to support rather than discriminate against folks who don’t use English. We invite your ideas,
suggestions, and participation to extend this list of actions and to better unite against linguis-
tic injustice in our classrooms and in everyday moments.
Notes
1 We intentionally include the “-ized” suffix when referring to standardized English to recognize the
ongoing and emergent historical and social processes that shape what version of English is privi-
leged at a given place and time (see Laura Greenfield). We aim to further emphasize the myth of
so-called “standard English” by preceding our acronym with an asterix, in chorus with sociolinguist
Rosina Lippi-Green who explains her use of *SAE as follows: “syntacticians use an asterisk to mark
utterances which are judged grammatically inauthentic. I am adapting that practice here, and will use
*SAE to refer to that mythical beast, the idea of homogenous, standard American English” (62).
2 See Dingo’s treatment of women’s economic “fitness” in neoliberal policy in Networking Arguments.
3 This conversation has also come up in cultural rhetorics scholarship, especially by Geneva
Smitherman, Keith Gilyard, and Victor Villanueva; in alternative discourse conversations including
scholars like Patricia Bizzell and Tom Fox; more recently around code-meshing with scholars like
Vershawn Ashanti Young and Suresh Canagarajah; and throughout decades of basic writing and
second language writing research.
4 Especially important scholarship on language politics from beyond our field comes from, among many
others, aforementioned scholars Lippi-Green, James Milroy, Lesley Milroy, and Phillipson, but also
linguists Alastair Pennycook, Terrence G. Wiley, and Walt Wolfram, as well as TESOL and second
language writing scholars Elsa Roberts Auerbach, Ryuko Kubuta, and Angel Lin.
5 We can imagine readers questioning our reasoning that encouraging code-meshed texts does not
contest Monolingualism as Standard Language Ideology. While it’s true that inviting language differ-
ence may work to assign heightened value to other varieties and languages within academic settings,
unless we are actively and explicitly exposing and deconstructing the harmful standard language
ideologies undergirding our unchecked privileging of *SE (and that which make code-meshing a
purposeful and useful act of contestation in the first place), we fail to address the full politics of
monolingualism. In other words, we can invite language difference into our classrooms without stu-
dents ever challenging their and others’ belief systems deeming *SE as superior. Such a pedagogical
approach, we believe, would be an incomprehensive treatment of monolingualist ideologies.
6 Of course, translingualism isn’t the only entry point for discussing language politics. But here we invoke
scholarship on translingualism because of its situatedness in composition studies, its relevance to our
own projects, and, especially, its explicit and unapologetic commitment to combating monolingualism.
In this way, we understand translingualism to be an active strategy for working against monolin-
gualism and intervening in the harmful effects of *SE, particularly for the most vulnerable student
bodies in US higher education. Further, although here we ground our understanding for combating
monolingualism in translingual approaches to writing, we respect and reflect important critiques of
translingualism’s potential to elide difference in language users in its attempts to unite all language
through the differences within and among language uses. In Horner et al.’s opinion piece, they define
translingualism as threefold: “(1) honoring the power of all language users to shape language to spe-
cific ends; (2) recognizing the linguistic heterogeneity of all users of language both within the United
States and globally; and (3) directly confronting English monolingualist expectations by researching
and teaching how writers can work with and against, not simply within, those expectations” (305). Of
interest to us here is how this definition aligns to the multifaceted nature of monolingualism that we
outline. Significantly, the third aspect of translingualism they name explicitly works with students to
combat monolingualism. That said, while “teaching how writers can work with and against” discursive
norms like those in *SE no doubt helps to combat monolingualism, such a pedagogical approach still
does not make clear the need for instructors to examine alongside students the oppressive nature of
said norms. This, we argue, is where our field can unite behind a shared outcome, like that we pro-
pose below, to make this work more explicit in our classrooms.
7 It’s worth acknowledging that the field was examining the myth of standard English before it was
examining tacit English-Only policies and before it was examining the myth of linguistic homogeneity.
Indeed, we may even respectively align influential texts that were significant to each of these three
notions, which also reveals chronology (SRTOL, 1974; Horner and Trimbur, 2002; Matsuda “Myth,”
2006). However, what we find particularly noteworthy is that the term translingualism was coined once
most monolingualisms had been introduced to the field (As Standard Language Ideology, as Tacit
English-Only Policies, and as the Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity), while the other monolingualism
we review here (As the Myth of Linguistic Uniformity, Stability, and Separateness) was (and is still
being) developed alongside, and as a response to, the translingual movement. While we do not have
the time and space to explore that further here, this may be relevant given recent arguments that
focusing on the Myth of Linguistic Uniformity, Stability, and Separateness without attending more to
Standard Language Ideology can lead to overlooking the politics of language.
8 Some folks may argue that outcomes constrain pedagogical possibilities in an effort to streamline
easily assessable deliverables and to satisfy neoliberal university impulses toward efficiency, scal-
ability, and replicability. We, rather, understand this kind of outcome to offer unity to teachers in a
department or discipline. Through shared outcomes, we project and enact a shared vision of best
practices and shared values; we tether our ideological commitments to pragmatic action. We imagine
the outcome we propose as one that an individual teacher may take up in her classroom, that a writing
program may adopt or adapt in their lower division courses, or that may even be used to amend the
current Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Outcomes Statement.
Works Cited
Arnold, Lisa R. “‘This is a Field that’s Open, not Closed’: Multilingual and International Writing Faculty
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10 Issues in Digital and Multimodal Writing
Composition Instruction for the 21st Century
Jennifer Sheppard
When we bring multimodal composing into our writing classes, we can help students build a
broader definition of writing that includes the various contexts in which writing takes place in
their lives: in digital and analog spaces, in multimodal and text-based writing, both in and out of
school. With a clear and direct connection made between writing in various contexts, students
may see their out-of-school writing as more important, may see it as connected to classroom
practice, and may be able to learn from it in a way that they were not able to previously.
Shepherd, Ryan P. (2018) Digital writing, multimodality, and learning transfer: Crafting
connections between Composition and online composing. Computers and Composition: An
International Journal, 48, 103–114.
Guiding Questions
• How can we help students expand their Composition practices and rhetorical toolkits by
integrating technology and multimodality into our writing classes?
• How can we help students realize and leverage “all available means of persuasion”
through greater attention to multimodal and technological affordances?
Introduction
Over the past four decades, technology and digital environments have dramatically changed
the genres, audiences, and purposes of our communications. The variety of communicative
modalities we now have to choose from, along with the speed, frequency, public nature, and
complex social dimensions involved, have also had a significant impact on writing and writing
instruction. Composition teachers are increasingly responsible for integrating technology into
their pedagogy, including incorporating computers, mobile devices, online applications, and
social media platforms, and for making space for a broader view of what constitutes “writing”
and “text.” For instructors new to the field, having to include digital and multimodal writing
in an already packed curriculum can seem overwhelming, or worse, an unnecessary distrac-
tion from the “real” work of teaching writing. As the discussion below illustrates, however,
facility with a variety of types of technologies, writing processes, modalities, and texts is criti-
cal for communicative success in the 21st century.
The purpose of this chapter is to offer an introduction to digital and multimodal writing
instruction and how these areas fit within the primary learning goals for teaching Composition.
Rather than viewing these responsibilities as yet more to cover, digital and multimodal writ-
ing actually offer a number of possibilities for assisting students in becoming more rhetorically
savvy communicators, helping them leverage what Aristotle famously called “all available
means of persuasion.” An increasing aspect of our job as contemporary instructors of writing
and rhetoric is to help students recognize and employ these practices in thoughtful, deliberate,
and productive ways.
380 Jennifer Sheppard
To be sure, the research-based argumentative essays traditionally taught in many
Composition courses are still a critical and important set of (largely academic) literacies and
the need for this type of writing isn’t going anyway anytime soon. In fact, the ability to
read and analyze critically, and to communicate in informed, credible, source-based ways is
perhaps more important than ever. However, developing proficiency with this genre and its
attendant writing processes is only one part of learning how to communicate effectively and
persuasively in an array of contemporary contexts. Authors also need to develop critical and
flexible composing practices so they can utilize whatever digital or multimodal resources are
most strategic for making meaning in a given rhetorical situation.
This chapter provides an overview of central theoretical and pedagogical issues in digital
and multimodal writing; major areas of focus in the teaching of Composition. I begin by
discussing terminology for issues of digital and multimodal writing and the ways in which
these concerns are in conversation with the larger field of writing studies. I then offer a brief
history of scholarship surrounding each of these concepts and the ways this evolving research
has informed classroom practice over the past four decades. Building on this historical con-
text, I then identify and discuss three key issues in contemporary theory and pedagogy for
digital and multimodal composition, providing prompts for discussion and ideas for classroom
integration along the way.
The Importance of Terminology: What Do These Terms Mean and

Why Do They Matter?
Digital writing, multimodal writing, computers and composition, digital rhetoric, multime-
dia, multiliteracies, new media. . . and the list goes on. Do all of these terms refer to the same
thing? If not, what are the differences and why do they matter? Before starting a review of the
field, it is important to discuss and specify terminology. You may have noticed that the chapter
title refers to two kinds of writing: digital and multimodal. While they are often used inter-
changeably and do overlap in some of their concerns, they also have distinct emphases, histo-
ries, and disciplinary lineages that shape their usage and potentials for classroom integration.
Discussion Question
What terms make the most sense to you in relation to the kinds of “writing” you do
with technology of various sorts? Why and in what ways do your terms change based
on context or audience? In what ways are these distinctions important?
As Claire Lauer (2009) argued, “Defining terms is an important and necessary practice
in any field, including Composition. . . . Defining terms is a situated activity that involves
determining the collective interests and values of the community for which the definition
matters” (225). In other words, terms, each with their own definitions and histories, are use-
ful for establishing common ground and shared understandings so that our “conversations”
are really centered on the same concerns. For the sake of time and because they are the terms
most commonly in use as of this writing, this chapter focuses on the concepts of “digital”
and “multimodal,” as defined below, but see Lauer’s 2009 article for an in-depth discussion
of differences in the concepts of “multimedia” and “multimodal” and her 2012 follow up on
definitions for “New/Multi/Modal/Digital/Media Texts.”
Issues in Digital and Multimodal Writing 381
What Is “Digital” Writing and Why Does It Matter to Composition?
When Composition scholars talk about “digital writing” or “digital rhetoric,” they are typi-
cally concerned with the relationship between writers and ever-evolving communication
technologies. They want to better understand the affordances and constraints these technolo-
gies offer writers, as well as the implications these hold for writing processes, genre conven-
tions, audience expectations, and the ability to communicate thoughtfully and persuasively
using a variety of digital tools and environments. As Sarah Arroyo (2013) argued,
digital rhetoric does not just mean that more people write with computers or that more
people are online. Rather, it entails larger cultural shifts in recognizing new patterns of
thinking, rethinking familiar conceptualizations about both the self and human interac-
tion, and re-envisioning attitudes and expectations toward reading, writing, and rhetoric,
regardless of the physical presence of machines.
(p. 114)
In other words, while scholarship has addressed the integration of different forms of technology
into writing instruction, a larger underlying focus has been on the ways in which those tech-
nologies have changed our conceptions of and expectations for writing and human interactions.
Although the work of teacher-scholars in the computers and composition subfield has
grown and diversified since early calls for inclusion of technology in the writing class, the
following list summarizes many of the key concepts, issues, and questions that have emerged.
1 Digital Pedagogies: How can the availability of various networked and stand-alone
technologies be used to teach writing in classrooms, programs, writing centers, and
online settings?
2 Technological Literacies: How can students develop practical facility with and critical
awareness of digital tools for communication and interaction expected for participation
in academic, professional, and cultural contexts?
3 Multimodality: How do the multiple modes for composing and meaning-making made
available through technology broaden what counts as “writing”?
4 Cultural and Systemic Changes in Communication: How do systemic changes to
our cultural communication landscape reshape our relationships with others?
5 Technological Access and Experience and the Digital Divide: How do issues of
technology access and prior experience impact the writing classroom and student learn-
ing outcomes?
6 Technological Identities: How can new communication technologies be used to
allow the construction of new kinds of identities for students, instructors, and audiences?
7 Writing in Online Environments: How can online social and instructional spaces
shape and reshape types of interactions and communication between participants?
8 Digital Privacy, Copyright, Ethics, and Intellectual Property: How do digital
affordances and online sources create a complex ethical intersection between “remixed”
compositions, fair use, plagiarism, and copyright?
9 Interdisciplinary Connections to and Implications for Digital Writing: How do
diverse fields, including art, literature, linguistics, graphic design, technical communica-
tion, geography, and media studies intersect with digital writing and pedagogy to allow
for better understanding of available communicative affordances?
Each of these themes call on Composition teacher-scholars to consider how various tech-
nologies, platforms, modalities, and online spaces can extend writing instruction in critical
and relevant ways. A more complete discussion of the history of scholarship and pedagogy in
digital writing follows later in this chapter.
Reviewing the themes and questions listed above, which interest you most and why? If
you were to design a research study to investigate one or more, what would you want
to find out and how would it relate to the teaching of writing? What other areas for
inquiry are not included here that you think belong?
What Is “Multimodal” Writing and Why Does It Matter to

Composition?
Writing words on paper or screen is obviously not the only way people communicate and
persuade. ALL forms of communication and argument are multimodal, meaning that eve-
rything from written text, still images, video, and body language to color, sound, spatial
arrangement, and more contributes to meaning and shapes how others are influenced by it.
Being better aware of how multimodal composing choices influence an audience can help
writers to be more critical of what others are saying to them, as well as to help them make use
of these strategies in their own communication.
The five commonly agreed upon modes of communication, as identified by Gunther Kress
and Theo van Leeuwen (2001), are:
• linguistic (words that are written or spoken)

• aural/oral (sounds, spoken language)
• visual (images, elements that can be seen)
• gestural (body language, movement)
• spatial (physical arrangement, layout)
While all the modes have their own affordances, or things they do well individually (e.g. a
picture is worth a thousand words), it is the combination of modes that really gives them their
rhetorical strength (e.g. the way a written caption and an audio clip can help an audience
understand the meaning of an image in a deeper, more contextualized, more critical way).
In composing multimodally, writers have to think carefully about their rhetorical situation
(audience, purpose, and context) to choose the modes, media, and genres that will function
most persuasively for a given situation.
At first glance, it may seem that only the linguistic and maybe the visual are related to
what we typically think of as “writing.” However, as the kinds of texts we encounter on an
everyday basis continue to expand, so do the modalities upon which we rely to make mean-
ing. For example, even a word-based webpage, utilizing only the linguistic mode, is still
exploiting the spatial (e.g. in the alignment of words on screen, the breaks between sentences
or paragraphs, and the location and arrangement of navigation elements) and visual (e.g. in
the choices of font, color, and textual emphases such as bolding and italics) modes to make
and convey meaning.
As I will discuss below, a primary focus of the “multimodal turn” in composition is the way
in which writers can learn to leverage, both alone and in conjunction with one another, the
affordances of multiple modalities. You can think of the modes as a set of meaning-making
resources from which writers can select, consciously, depending on their specific rhetorical
goals. The intention is not to try to use multiple modes for their own sake, but instead to
make intentional decisions about which modes might be most appropriate and effective for a
given subject, purpose, audience, and context.
Discussion Questions/Activities
Take 10 minutes to walk around your school, building, or home and make a list of
every kind of multimodal communication you encounter. Don’t worry about the con-
tent of the messages being conveyed or even if you are the intended audience, but
instead focus on how that text communicates. Consider, for example, the meaning of
different sounds in your environment, such as those from your phone, toaster, micro-
wave, and other electronics. Consider the arrangement of furniture and its texture, the
body language of others you encounter, the ways in which colors are coded for specific
messages, and any other element or text that is attempting to communicate something
to someone. Compare your list with a partner or small group, paying specific atten-
tion to modes of communication that don’t overlap between the lists. Finally, discuss
why, how, and in what ways you might want to incorporate attention to some of these
modalities in the writing classroom.
Does Digital = Multimodal?

Before moving on, I want to make a quick point about an important difference between the
concepts “digital” and “multimodal” because while they share a lot in common and are often
used interchangeably, they don’t mean the same thing. Conflating these ideas can cause us
to miss the pedagogical potentials that study of these terms, each through their own lens and
approach, can offer.
The rise of digital communication and tools for composing has led, in part, to an expanded
definition of what constitutes a “text.” Previously, we thought of “text” as written words,
something that looked like a traditional essay or a report or a newspaper article. As we’ve
come to realize the persuasive power of different modalities, however, and as we’ve gained
access to increasingly easy-to-use editing tools, the kinds of things we’ve come to see as a
text have broadened. Cultural theorist Barry Brummett (2014) argued, “we can think of a
text as a message, as a collection of verbal and nonverbal signs that create meaning” (p. 4).
Other rhetoric scholars, such as Sonja Foss (2017), have suggested use of the term “artifact” as
a way of emphasizing that any action, event or object “perceived as a unified whole” can be
crafted to inform and persuade. Everything from the opening title sequence of a TV show to a
streaming music playlist to an athlete’s victory dance can be read symbolically and rhetorically
as a collection of meaning-making signs, as a kind of text.
Just as our definition of “text” has expanded, so too has our understanding of what consti-
tutes “writing.” The “writing” we do today is often attentive to and inclusive of the potential
meaning-making contributions of a number of communicative modalities. It is also conscious
of the technological tools and affordances that are available for contemporary composing
practices. Whether one is writing a blog entry, a social media post, a newsletter, a podcast,
or any other digital communication, there remains a similar iterative composition process for
creating a rhetorically purposeful text, but the means to that end is more diverse than in a
word-privileged era.
However, while all digital texts are multimodal (as illustrated with the word-only webpage
example above), not all multimodal texts have to be digital. Think, for example, of visually
and textually rich flyers on a crowded bulletin board, each crafting their persuasive message
through rhetorical choices relating to color, text, image, and more. They use multiple modes
(visual, linguistic, and spatial) to compete for the audience’s attention and to convey their
messages. Although they may have been designed digitally, they are read or consumed in an
analog setting. This distinction between the digital and multimodal is significant, particularly
in classroom or institutional settings that lack access to technological resources. As Daniel
Anderson (2008) pointed out in his article, “The Low Bridge to High Benefits: Entry-Level
Multimedia, Literacies, and Motivation,” students can still develop critical multimodal ana-
lytical skills and composing practices without the aid of computers or mobile devices, though
their availability obviously offers additional potentials for composing.
Discussion Questions/Activity
Take a few minutes to brainstorm ways you could bring attention to the rhetorical and
meaning-making opportunities available in specific examples of multiple modalities that
are not reliant, at least directly, on technology. What ways can you think of that could
help classmates or students to be more conscious of the affordances and constraints of
different modalities, either through observation and analysis of texts produced by others
or through creation of one’s own non-digital multimodal text?
Further, as Jody Shipka (2011) argued in her book Toward a Composition Made Whole, “to
label a text multimodal or monomodal based on its final appearance alone discounts, or worse
yet, renders invisible the contributions made by a much wider variety of resources, supports,
and tools” (p. 52). Discussing Shipka’s argument and her workshop-based classroom approach,
Claire Lutkewitte (2014) wrote that “This process-focused approach encourages students to
experiment with multiple modes and rhetorical appeals in a way that broadens their under-
standing of what effective communication entails” (p. 3). The work of Anderson, Shipka,
Lutkewitte, and other multimodal scholars reminds us as Composition teachers that we should
continue critical exploration of how digital tools AND multimodal resources, both alone and
in combination, can help students develop necessary 21st-century communication practices.
Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Outcomes

To illustrate how issues of digital and multimodal writing are relevant, and indeed central, to
the concerns of the larger field, I next want to briefly discuss their relationship to the WPA
Outcomes Statement. In an effort to establish collective, regularized learning goals for the
teaching of first-year composition based on best practices in the field’s research, theory, and
practice, the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) established its Outcomes
Statement. Now in its third iteration, the 2014 Statement identified four interdependent areas
of focus. I have listed each below, along with short explanations of the ways in which digital
and multimodal writing share these same learning outcomes.
Of particular note is that the Outcomes Statement does not include a separate focus on
digital or multimodal issues because both are so integral to every part of today’s writing prac-
tice. The authors argue, “‘composing’ refers broadly to complex writing processes that are
increasingly reliant on the use of digital technologies” and where writers now have to attend
to issues of design, image or sound incorporation, spatial layout, and other modal considera-
tions beyond the written word.
• Rhetorical knowledge concerns abilities to analyze and negotiate contexts, purposes,

and audiences in composing a variety of texts. Success for any kind of written, digital, or
multimodal text must be composed with the rhetorical situation in mind.
• Critical thinking, reading, and composing is the ability to analyze, synthesize, inter-
pret, and evaluate ideas in the work of others and in composing one’s own work. Clearly,
such critical capabilities are important and applicable to the writing of any persuasive text,
whether it is a word-based essay or a digital or multimodal project. Modalities beyond
print can offer new paths to understanding an issue through research and in communicat-
ing findings to others.
• Knowledge of processes concerns the ability to utilize multiple, flexible, and iterative
research, drafting, and revising processes for writing. Writing rarely proceeds in a linear
and fixed pattern from invention to final product. Instead, each and every text that writ-
ers compose is unique and may require multiple recursive cycles to research, draft, and
revise. Successful writers need conscious understanding of and control over each stage of
the writing process and when, how, why, and in what order they should be put to use.
• Knowledge of conventions includes the ability to understand, analyze, and negoti-
ate the formal rules and informal audience expectations of communications in different
genres, digital settings, and contexts. Successful writers develop a clear understanding
of the rules and expectations audiences have for texts in particular rhetorical situations
and they develop strategies for figuring out those conventions when composing for new
audiences, genres and venues. Such knowledge is applicable to traditional word-based
text, in all its variations, as well as to digital and multimodal compositions.
The WPA Outcomes Statement is often used by writing programs as the foundation for
establishing their own programmatic student learning outcomes (SLOs). The Statement’s
existence has helped to move the scholarly and pedagogical conversations about digital and
multimodal writing instruction into higher education classrooms across the country. Despite
these efforts, however, attention to these issues and their integration into writing pedagogy is
still a work in progress. A large-scale survey of writing faculty in 2006 found that only 24%
of respondents indicated that multimodality was an integral part of their writing program’s
overall curriculum (Anderson et al.).
Further, these researchers found that 84% of respondents reported that multimodal com-
position takes place within individual classrooms rather than on a larger programmatic level
(Anderson et al., 2006, p. 69), meaning that universal instructional attention in this area is
far from complete. What this means for writing teachers and writing programs is that there is
still much work to be done in educating and supporting faculty as they learn more about the
rhetorical possibilities of digital and multimodal composing and how that fits into the work
and responsibilities of Composition instruction.
Search your department’s website or ask your Writing Program Director or Department
Chair for a copy of the Student Learning Outcomes that guide the work of first-year
writing classes at your institution. In what ways do these outcomes sync up (or not)
with the WPA’s Outcomes Statement? In what ways, if any, do they reference or make
space for digital and/or multimodal writing?
A caveat: A key assumption underlying most scholarship in digital and multimodal writing
is that pedagogical considerations, not technological ones, should drive the integration of technol-
ogy and/or multimodality in the teaching of writing. That is, this work does not advocate
the use of new technologies and text types for their own sake, but rather because they offer
a potential to address pedagogical needs and goals. For example, teacher-scholars working
from this perspective would not simply make use of a new social media platform because of
its cultural popularity or its technological bells and whistles. Instead, such a platform might be
adopted because it offers specific features or affordances that support student learning, such
as synchronous and asynchronous team communication capabilities, cloud storage and online
tools to facilitate collaborative writing in and out of class, and access to a large public audience
to share final texts and receive feedback from real-world users, giving students new avenues
and rhetorical considerations to employ in their own writing processes. Although teach-
ers and scholars from Composition are often on the bleeding edge of classroom technology
integration, they are also thinking continually about their pedagogy and what Kress (2005)
described as the “gains and losses” as “we move from representation primarily through writ-
ing to representation” through visual and multimodal means (p. 5).
Digital Writing: A Brief History

Although a number of emerging scholars began investigating the impact of technology on
writing in the late 1970s, most histories mark the field’s formal establishment with Cynthia
Selfe and Kathleen Kiefer’s inaugural issue of Computers and Composition: An International
Journal (C&C), first as a newsletter in 1983 and then as a scholarly journal in 1985. According
to the C&C blog, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the journal began to move away
from its early focus on “brief narratives about classroom experiences using technology,
descriptions of working with drill-and-skill programs, and software reviews” and toward
longer scholarly articles, “that more fully incorporated pedagogical and rhetorical theories
and boldly confronted the complexities of merging computer technologies with classroom
practices” (C&C blog, “History”). While C&C remains one of the top scholarly venues in
the discipline, journals such as College Composition and Communication, College English, and
Technical Communication Quarterly, have helped to introduce these concerns to the broader
Composition, English Studies, and Language Arts communities. Additionally, newer pub-
lications in both print and digital formats have enlarged and diversified these conversations.
Among others, these journals include Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy;
Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture; Computers and Composition Online;
Hybrid Pedagogy; and Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion.
Log onto your library’s database of scholarly journals and search for one or more of the
journals above. Review the titles from the last three years’ worth of issues. Make a list
of the top three or four themes that seem most interesting or relevant to your studies/
teaching. What is significant about these themes and why? Be prepared to share and
discuss your themes with classmates.
What follows in this section is a brief overview of the computers and composition field
and its focus on digital writing. This discussion offers only broad strokes of the discipline’s
history, unfortunately glossing over many interesting nuances and controversies. However,
this selective review is intended to provide a backdrop for the contemporary issues I will
cover in more depth in the next section. If you are new to the field or would like to find out
more about this history, I have included suggestions for a number of detailed histories in the
selected readings section at the end of this chapter that will supplement the references cited.
Late 1970s through Mid-1980s: Early Explorations of Writing with Computers

Early work on the intersection of writing and technology began with the efforts of intrepid
researchers working first with room-sized mainframe computers and punch cards and later
with the technological affordances of the first wave of personal computers into homes. Some
histories point to Ellen Nold’s 1975 College Composition and Communication (CCC) article,
“Fear and Trembling: A Humanist Approaches the Computer” as the first piece of published
scholarship in the field. Others suggest that Hugh Burns’s 1979 dissertation on computers
and writing was the first disciplinary contribution (Hawisher et. al., 1996, p. 198). No matter
where its beginning is marked, though, it is clear from reviewing the early archives of C&C
and other sources that a number of scholars seized upon the idea that personal computers, in
their growing accessibility in homes and classrooms, could be useful in the teaching of writing.
Late 1980s through Early 1990s: Investigating Widening Access to Computers and
What It Meant for Writing Instruction
According to the Computers and Composition (C&C) website’s “History” page, early
writings in the emerging field of computers and writing featured “authors who focused on
innovative technologies (e.g., hypertext and electronic mail) and their attempts to situate
them within classroom contexts” (C&C, “History”). With the addition of Gail Hawisher as
Co-Editor in the late 1980s, “the journal began to feature special-edited issues that focused on
such diverse areas as writing centers, synchronous CMC [computer-mediated communica-
tion], computer programming, intellectual property rights and professional concerns such as
tenure and promotion” (C&C Blog, “History”). A review of the archives points to interests
in the potentials of word-processing software (e.g. Paul LeBlanc’s 1988 article “How to Get
the Words Just Right: A Reappraisal of Word Processing and Revision”), the ways in which
computers could support a process-based approach to writing (e.g. Timothy Weiss’s 1989
article “A Process of Composing with Computers”), and the pedagogical and administrative
logistics of creating computer-based learning spaces (e.g. Stephen A. Bernhardt’s 1989 article
“Designing a Microcomputer Classroom for Teaching Composition”).
1990s: Examining the Growing Ubiquity of Computers and the Pedagogical

Potentials of the Early Web
As computer access in homes and classrooms continued to expand, perhaps the most sig-
nificant technological advance during this period was Tim Berners-Lee’s development of
the technologies that created the World Wide Web in 1989 and the release of the first web
browser, NCSA Mosaic, in 1993 (World Wide Web Foundation, “History of the Web”).
Although text-based internet connectivity had been available for government and scientific
work earlier, these advancements opened access to anyone with a computer, a modem, and a
phone line. Exploring the affordances of Web connectivity opened a world of new possibili-
ties for students, teachers, and researchers, and for writing itself.
Importantly, this period intersected roughly with the larger Composition field’s turn
toward a social-epistemic approach to writing and away from current-traditional models.
The growing interest in a collaborative and socially constructed view of writing fit well with
new technological affordances such as local area networks and wide area networks, allowing
student writers new modes of interaction with their peers (e.g. Sirc & Reynolds, 1990), and
eventually, a larger internet public. Additionally, a growing interest in social considerations
in the writing classroom, including issues of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation, were
taken up in research and pedagogy, particularly in relation to how digital literacies and envi-
ronments could challenge or reshape the status quo of classroom, cultural power dynamics,
and identity (see Janangelo, 1990; Regan, 1993; Selfe & Selfe, 1994).
Another significant area of inquiry during this time revolved around the changing nature
of texts themselves. A core affordance of the web is its ability to hyperlink. This allows writers
to connect their ideas, in an intertextual and visually explicit way, to what others have said
(Barrett, 1988; Bolton, 1990; Brent, 1997). Further, because links embedded within a web-
page can offer readers multiple paths through content, scholars studying hypertextual writing
investigated the ways it could influence how we make arguments, how we establish ethos,
and how it could transform the role of readers into one of co-authorship, constructing their
own version of the text based on the non-linear links they chose to follow (see DiPardo &
DiPardo, 1990; Kaplan & Moulthrop; 1990; Slatin, 1990; Bernhardt, 1993; Landow, 1994;
Heba 1997).
From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0: Late 1990s–Mid-2000s

Although the issues discussed above were taken up for their relation to writing instruction,
much of this early work focused on reading, interaction, and analysis of static webpages,
rather than on composition of these digital, mostly word-based texts by students themselves.
As the web matured and editing and production software and platforms became increas-
ingly user-friendly, some emphases in the writing classroom began shifting toward issues of
digital production. Contributions such as Cynthia Selfe’s (1999) Technology and Literacy: The
Importance of Paying Attention, Sean D. Williams’s (2001) “Thinking Outside the Pro-verbal
Box,” and Kathleen Blake Yancey’s “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New
Key” (2004) all worked to be more inclusive of digital and multimodal texts. They also
pushed Composition theory and pedagogy to focus more on critical, deliberate production
practices, rather than just analysis and consumption.
The Birth and Ubiquity of Social Media: Mid-2000s to Present

The rise of social media in the early 2000s offered new digital environments and expanded
communicative modalities for teachers and students of writing. Although the first social
media platform, Six Degrees, launched in the late 1990s, popular usage didn’t really explode
until the development and widespread availability of MySpace in 2003, Facebook in 2006,
and Twitter in 2007. The early part of this period also saw the release of wikis, blogs,
and digital photo sharing sites such as Flickr, each offering potentials for teaching writ-
ing and digital literacies. More recent iterations of social media platforms have included
YouTube, SnapChat, Instagram, and a variety of encrypted direct messaging applications
such as WhatsApp.
Because each of these social media innovations allowed for communication to be mediated
through a variety of technologies and modalities, studying resulting shifts in cultural literacy
practices is vital to understanding how writing and writing instruction are changing as a result.
Among the issues scholars have been discussing during this time include the potentials and
pitfalls of working with social media in the writing classroom (Maranto & Barton, 2010),
the collaborative composition possibilities of specific technologies such as wikis (Lundin,
2008), the decline of design abilities with the rise of standardized website templates (Arola,
2009), the integration of digital and multimodal rhetoric into graduate education (Graupner,
Nikoson-Massey, and Blair, 2008), folksonomies and social tagging (Nicotra, 2009), and how
pedagogy can be adapted when writing classes or writing tutoring move online (Hewett &
Ehman, 2009; Warnock 2009).
The shift from the static web pages of the Web 1.0 era to the dynamic, interactive, user-
generated, and socially connected sites of Web 2.0 over the last 15 years or so, has offered
new digital environments and expanded communicative modalities for teachers and students
of writing. Cloud storage, such as Dropbox, GoogleDrive, and OneDrive provide new
opportunities for collaboration among student writers and offer new possibilities for address-
ing time and location constraints for meeting. Microblogging platforms, such as Twitter, have
encouraged new forms of writing that are more condensed, inclusive of hashtags and linked
media, and networked into large, diverse audiences who may respond to a writer’s contribu-
tions from a variety of perspectives. Media editing platforms for image, sound, and video,
including those available on mobile devices, have become increasingly robust and easy to use
for composition and for publishing resulting digital texts through various social media chan-
nels. Researchers have also investigated the potential role of digital games in writing studies
(Gee, 2004; Bogost, 2010), as well as, a still-elusive Web 3.0 that might make use of “the
internet of things” (Zappen, 2018) or the “semantic” or “contextual” web (McClure, 2011).
Scholars have begun investigating these issues and more in relation to writing studies in the
hope of helping students to be more critically aware of their communicative and rhetorical
options, no matter what technology or platform they are using.
Take a few minutes to brainstorm questions about the writing and digital literacy
dimensions of your favorite technology or social media platform. If you were to begin
an investigation into these practices, what kinds of issues might you explore and why?
Once you’ve finished brainstorming your ideas, share and discuss with classmates.
Multimodal Writing: A Brief History

The history of scholarship on multimodality in writing studies is neither linear nor reliant
on work in a single discipline. Instead, its lineage can be traced through contributions from
rhetoric, Literacy Studies, Composition, linguistics, media studies, and more. Some scholars
pointed to a growing interest, starting in the late 1970s, in visual communication and visual
rhetoric as a first step toward a broader understanding of writing (Eyman, 2015). Others sug-
gested that the work of literacy scholars, pursuing the study of what it means to be literate,
to be able to read and write in various cultures, as opening a focus on non-discursive forms
of communication (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). Still others (Zappen, 2005; Eyman, 2015),
considered the intersection of rhetorical theory, emerging technology, and Composition as
the impetus for a focus on “identifying characteristics, affordances, and constraints of new
media” (Eyman, 44). Although all of these perspectives likely informed one another and
shaped the ways we now think about multimodality, it is nonetheless useful to know a bit
about what these disciplinary strands have focused on and why. What follows in this section
is a quick review of key influences and scholarship on multimodal writing. It is by no means
comprehensive, but this chapter’s references and the suggested readings I provide below will
point interested readers toward more robust histories and discussions.
Semiotics, Literacies, and the Social and Multimodal Turns
One of the most influential contributions to conversations about multimodality came out of
work published in 1999 by the New London Group (NLG), a collective of well-regarded
literacy scholars. Their call to expand instruction from “literacy” to “multiliteracies” repre-
sented a broader focus on the practices needed to consume and produce the diversity of mul-
timodal communications we encounter in everyday life. These scholars, along with others in
the New Literacies Studies (Barton & Lee, 2013; Cope & Kalantzis, 1999; Dorr, 1994; Gee,
1996; Gee 2004; Heath, 1983; Knobel & Lankshear, 2007; Kress, 2003; Scribner & Cole,
1988; Street, 1984), advocated for seeing writing not as a singular monolithic literacy, but as
a plurality of literacies, and for understanding a “text” to be constituted not just by words on
page or screen, but as any unified communicative artifact comprised of any relevant mode.
What this meant for teachers, according to the New London Group, is that “literacy peda-
gogy now must account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information
and multimedia technologies” (p. 9). That is, teaching traditional word-based writing is no
longer sufficient for the needs of our students. Instead, a primary emphasis for anyone teach-
ing writing in the 21st century must include significant attention to helping students develop
critical fluency with multiple communicative modes and literacies.
Following just a couple of years after the NLG’s influential article, Gunther Kress and
Theo van Leeuwen, in their prescient 2001 book, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and
Media of Contemporary Communication, used a semiotic lens to introduce and explore prin-
ciples of multimodal communication in everyday life. They were particularly interested
in the idea that “within a given social-cultural domain, the ‘same’ meanings can often
be expressed in different semiotic modes” (p. 1). Whereas modal specialists used to be
responsible for producing specific, discrete kinds of content (e.g. written words from a
copy writer, photos from a photographer, and page layout from a graphic designer), digital
communication tools have allowed, and increasingly require, that work to be completed
by a single author.
What this shift meant for Kress and van Leeuwen was that our culture’s long history of
privileging the linguistic mode above all others has to broaden in ways that recognize the
semiotic or communicative power of multiple modes. They argued,
we move towards a view of multimodality in which common semiotic principles oper-

ate in and across different modes, and in which it is therefore quite possible for music to
encode action, or images to encode emotion. . . . [I]n the age of digitisation [sic], the dif-
ferent modes have technically become the same at some level of representation, and they
can be operated by one multi-skilled person, using one interface, one mode of physical
manipulation, so that he or she can ask, at every point: ‘Shall I express this with sound
or music?’ ‘Shall I say this visually or verbally?’ and so on. [It is] the question of how this
technical possibility can be made to work semiotically.
(p. 2)
In other words, Kress and van Leeuwen suggested that to be fully literate in the digital era
required the ability to communicate the same meaning through different modalities depend-
ing upon what one is trying to convey for a particular audience or purpose. Although Kress
and van Leeuwen focused on theoretical arguments about how meaning is made across dif-
ferent modes of representation in contemporary culture, their work, as well as that of other
scholars in Semiotics, Linguistics, and Literacy Studies has been significant in shaping peda-
gogy, classroom practice, and research in Composition.
Visual Rhetoric, Visual Communication
Interestingly, work on multimodality from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, initially focused
on the communicative potential of the visual mode. In his book, Digital Rhetoric: Theory,
Method, Practice, Douglas Eyman cited Roland Barthes’s 1977 article, “The Rhetoric of the
Image,” as a “touchstone for the turn to the visual in rhetorical studies” (p. 49). In this piece,
Barthes argued that images can be read rhetorically, rather than just aesthetically, by examining
their linguistic (written words), denotative (explicit), and connotative (implied) messages. This
contribution to rhetorical theory expanded the artifacts/modalities considered research-worthy
from an exclusive focus on written and spoken language and offered an initial analytical frame-
work for understanding how the visual mode functions to communicate and persuade.
John Berger’s 1977 Ways of Seeing is also seen as a significant scholarly and cultural influ-
ence on the necessity of incorporating serious, critical attention to the visual in education. As
Diana George (2002) suggested about Berger’s work, it was “radical” because of “his insist-
ence on breaking down the barriers that separated high culture (in this case art history) from
low (advertising)” (p. 23). This publication began to shift scholarly focus on visual analysis
away from the realm of modal experts and high-culture texts (e.g. fine art) and toward one
that sought to understand how everyday visual images/artifacts were read by ordinary, every-
day people. This shift also brought the kinds of texts available for (and in need of) study into
the domain of writing teachers where they would be responsible for helping students read and
write a range of persuasive messages utilizing textual and visual modes.
Following the work of Barthes, Berger, and others, Sonja Foss (2005) was influential in
defining a critical schema for analyzing how visuals convey meaning. She contended that
using existing rhetorical theory, developed for speech and writing, did not allow analysts to
attend to all communicative and persuasive features of visual artifacts. Instead, she argued
some features of visual images clearly require attention to different elements and a different
treatment of those elements from what discourse does (pp. 150–151). She maintained, that
“visual images provide access to a range of human experience not always available through
the study of discourse” and that it is therefore incumbent upon rhetoricians to be inclusive of
the visual mode and how it can be utilized for persuasion (p. 143).
Working from a Composition perspective, Diana George’s 2002 article, “From Analysis
to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing,” argued for the necessity of
training students to be critical producers of visual texts, not just critical consumers. She wrote,
“For students who have grown up in a technology-saturated and image-rich culture, ques-
tions of communication and Composition absolutely will include the visual, not as attendant
to the verbal but as complex communication intricately related to the world around them”
(p. 32). George’s work echoed broader calls in rhetoric and Composition to shift from an
examination of how multimodal signs themselves convey meaning to how writers utilize those
meaning-making resources in their literate practices. She also made the important point that
we should not approach the visual as a kind of add-on, appended at the end of the composing
process, to somehow decorate or support the “primary” written text. Instead, her approach
suggested that students need to begin their composing processes by considering their specific
rhetorical situation. Only then, should they consider the visual and linguistic modalities at
their disposal to address that situation.
Making a similar argument from a rhetorical perspective, Eyman (2015) contended, “If
we see digital [and multimodal] rhetoric as a productive art, then nearly all digital texts can be
seen both as objects of study for analysis (using digital rhetoric methods) and as products of digi-
tal rhetorical practices” (p. 9, emphasis mine). He continued, “While many rhetorical theorists
focus primarily on the analytical capacity of rhetoric, it is the value for production that I see as
a key resource for the formulation of digital rhetoric” (p. 17, emphasis mine). That is, Eyman
suggested, if we as teachers of writing and rhetoric are working to assist students in develop-
ing critical, kairotic, and persuasive understandings of digital communication, we fail in part
of our duty if we focus only on analysis of texts and not also on their composition. “Digital
rhetoricians,” Eyman contended, “must explore both the theory and the technology; critical
engagement alone is just as insufficient as a curricular approach as would be practical applica-
tion without the provision of tools for understanding how technologies work within social
and cultural contexts” (p. 113, emphasis in original).
From Visual to Multimodal

At this point, you might be thinking (hopefully) that this all sounds interesting, and is maybe
even an accurate description of how we make meaning now, but that your job is to teach writ-
ing, the development and arrangement of words, not visual design or podcasting or whatever
new communicative technology comes along tomorrow. However, as Selfe (2009) argued,
such a limited understanding of what constitutes writing in contemporary culture does a dis-
service to the students we teach. She wrote,
As faculty, when we limit our understanding of composing and our teaching of

Composition to a single modality, when we focus on print alone as the communicative
venue for our assignments and for students’ responses to those assignments, we ensure
that instruction is less accessible to a wide range of learners, and we constrain students’
ability to succeed by offering them an unnecessarily narrow choice of semiotic and rhe-
torical resources. By broadening the choice of composing modalities, I argue, we expand
the field of play for students with different learning styles and differing ways of reflecting
on the world; we provide the opportunity for them to study, think critically about, and
work with new communicative modes. Such a move not only offers us a chance to make
instruction increasingly effective for those students from different cultural and linguistic
backgrounds, but it also provides an opportunity to make our work increasingly relevant
to a changing set of communicative needs in a globalized world.
(p. 644)
As Selfe suggested, a multimodal approach to Composition presents an abundance of oppor-

tunities for learners to experiment and make meaning. Additionally, it offers potentials for
improving access to the curriculum for students with a variety learning styles, providing sup-
port so that they can be more successful as well.
Another influential voice in the multimodal turn in Composition was Kathleen Blake
Yancey (2004). Her Conference on College Composition and Communication Chair’s
address and its resulting publication in CCC addressed a broad cross-section of writing teach-
ers and scholars, particularly those who had not previously thought much about their work
in a digital and multimodal context. Yancey’s 2004 call for action is still just as relevant and
important today. She wrote,
A little more than twenty years ago we talked about “winds of change” (Hairston, cita-
tion in original); today the changes are those of tremors. These are structural changes—
global, educational, technological. Like seismic tremors, these signal a re-formation in
process, and because we exist on the borders of our own tectonic plates—rhetoric, com-
position and communication, process, activity, service and social justice—we are at the
very center of those tremors.
(p. 321)
Yancey pointed to the ways in which digital possibilities and their global implications were
not simply re-shaping writing, but were calling into question the very processes, practices,
and foundations on which we base our teaching, learning, and interaction with the world.
Failing to acknowledge these communicative and cultural shifts, by holding stubbornly to
monomodal texts and traditional understandings of writing, for example, we leave our stu-
dents ill-equipped for the actual critical and communicative demands they will face.
A significant additional contribution to the conversation came in the National Council of
Teachers of English’s (NCTE) 2005 “NCTE Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies.”
It argued that, “[i]ntegration of multiple modes of communication and expression can
enhance or transform the meaning of the work beyond illustration or decoration” and that
“[t]he use of different modes of expression in student work should be integrated into the
overall literacy goals of the curriculum and appropriate for time and resources invested”
(NCTE, “Position”). This professional statement was, and continues to be, particularly note-
worthy because it is addressed to the broader field of English Studies at both the K-12 and
higher education levels, rather than just the post-secondary writing studies community more
specifically. This move worked to improve curricular alignment between different educa-
tional stages, expanded and standardized some aspects of contemporary literacy practices, and
offered students opportunities to develop critical multimodal literacy skills at a younger age.
Importantly, though the statement offers a rich and inclusive definition of multimodal
literacies, it also demonstrated awareness that communicative practices are still very much
in flux. By focusing on the practices needed to read and compose through multiple modes,
rather than on specific digital tools, genres, or modalities, the statement has remained an
important touchstone for educators.
Despite the well-established scholarly calls for more attention to multimodality in com-
position, implementation of that change in writing pedagogy has been slowed by a host of
constraints, such as faculty, administrators, and institutions wedded to traditionalist models
of writing, outdated learning outcomes, and lack of technology resources. Writing Studies
scholars Karla Kitalong and Rebecca Miner (2017) argued,
Nearly two decades later, we are, as a profession, still turning toward multimodality in
Composition teaching, research, and administration . . . . What we do seem to agree on
is that effective multimodal composing, like effective composing in a single—usually
written—mode, is more than simply accumulating bits of information one upon the
other, more than merely including multimodality within Composition (Alexander &
Rhodes, 2014, p. 4, cited in original). The goal with multimodal composition, as
with composition in any single mode, is for students to practice so that they
can synthesize modes, genres, ideas, and skills, and become ever more fluid
and flexible composers.
(pp. 39–40, emphasis mine)
To address what they saw as a stagnancy in moving from theory to classroom practice,
Kitalong and Miner proposed looking at multimodality for its potential to offer enhanced
opportunities for student writers to exercise increased agency. They offered three suggestions
for creating such classroom composing possibilities. First, prompts and assignments should
explicitly encourage students to exercise personal agency through selecting issues of inter-
est to them (p. 53). Second, as students begin incorporating multimodal elements into their
research and composing, Kitalong and Miner suggested,
a pause to reflect and consider alternative ways to express an argument before they resume
their textual production. . . opens up new avenues for argumentation. We believe that
allowing this valuable time for reflection enables students to learn from their experiences
as well as from each other (e.g. in peer reviews or in conversation outside of class).
(p. 53)
Finally, they argued that while “encouraging free invention and fostering creative thinking”
may leave some instructors uncomfortable with a loss of classroom control, “the excitement
of being free to compose in multiple modalities generates students’ engagement in their own
learning, which leads them toward reflectiveness and self-awareness” (p. 53). Further, they
contended,
as college composition students experiment with multiple modalities, they learn (as do
professionals in complex work environments) that it is okay to struggle and beneficial
to make changes in response to critiques of their work. . . [U]ltimately, the work of
rhetorically analyzing and revising their projects generates more precise and potentially
more powerful messages that reveal elements of personal agency, especially evident in
their reflections.
(Ibid.)
Although all of the contributions highlighted in this section offer critical tools and frame-
works for understanding multimodal rhetoric and writing, each also reminded us that genres
and practices for using digital tools and environments to compose multimodally are still very
much evolving. These scholars and many more have worked to help us and our students see
how meaning is made in our ever-changing communicative landscape, by focusing not on
the newest social media platform or type of digital writing but on how to recognize and make
use of the persuasive and meaning-making potentials they might hold.
Being a Digital Pedagogue: On Myth and Reality in What It Takes

to Be a Digital Writing Teacher
Before turning to a discussion of current issues in digital and multimodal writing, I first
want to address three common myths and fears teachers of writing often experience as they
encounter the digital/multimodal Composition class for the first time.
Issues of Expertise: On (Not) Being a Technology “Expert”

Over the past 15 years, I have worked with new graduate students and teaching assistants, as
well as with seasoned instructors and administrators, at conferences, workshops, community
colleges, and research universities, on the integration of technology and multimodal writing
into their classes. Whether they were facing this challenge of their own accord or because they
were being pressured to update their curricula, pedagogies, and/or learning outcomes, many
have been apprehensive, particularly about their perceived lack of technical or mode-specific
skills. Trying to demonstrate or utilize unfamiliar practices in front of a student audience, who
may or may not already be familiar with it, is likely nerve-wracking for most of us. This is a
valid set of fears, particularly when it intersects with other issues related to teacherly identities,
classroom power dynamics, and personal inclinations toward technology more broadly.
The alternative perspective I offer usually includes some version of the following. First,
as a field, we have largely abandoned the “banking” model of education in which we see
the empty minds of students waiting passively to be filled with the instructor’s knowledge
(Friere, 1970). Instead, Composition has embraced a critical and social view of writing and
pedagogy in which instructors function more as facilitators, introducing content and guiding
students’ development of knowledge and practices just on the edge of their competence
(Vygotsky, 1968; Lave & Wenger, 1991; New London Group, 1999), while also learning
from and working in concert with students. In such a model, the classroom is likely to be
more student- rather than instructor-centered, as well as more likely to embrace contribu-
tions of student expertise and interest. Rather than seeing this as a threat to their authority or
an abdication of their professional responsibilities, such instruction practices what it preaches
by demonstrating the collaborative, connected, and socially constructed nature of commu-
nication and learning.
What this perspective means in practice is that when students come to our courses and cur-
ricula with technological literacies or experience we don’t possess, we can find ways for them
to take the lead and teach us and their classmates. We don’t have to try to know everything
in order to teach with technology. Further, for students, the act of trying to teach something
to others often helps both teacher and student to clarify and strengthen their own understand-
ings. As boyd (2014) and many others have pointed out, today’s students engage with count-
less hours of diverse technologies, software, and modalities of their own motivation, so why
not leverage this when possible? What we as Composition instructors have to offer in such
a situation is a critical lens, helping students to be conscious and intentional in the digital or
multimodal choices they make as they utilize these tools. Further, as the New London Group
(1999) suggested in their four-part multiliteracies pedagogy, beyond “overt instruction” and
“situated learning,” we also need to push students toward “critical framing” and “transformed
practice” with the intention of helping them to reflect on what worked and what didn’t in
their meaning-making efforts and to consider how they might apply such learning in new,
novel contexts in the future (p. 31).
Second, even if instructors are fluent in today’s most popular literacies and technologies,
those skills are likely to be passé tomorrow and keeping up with each new release seems more
impossible all the time. While it is certainly helpful to be familiar with available tools and the
affordances they offer, instructors being wedded to a single mode or set of applications can
limit the imaginations and potentials of students and the meaning-making resources available
for their composing. Instead, many digital teacher-scholars (Ball, Sheppard, & Arola, 2018)
have advocated for focusing first on what students want to say in their particular rhetorical
situation, and only then deciding on which modes or technologies might be most productive.
In such a scenario, student writers are free to explore and utilize the modes and tools that are
best suited to their rhetorical needs. They are also, then, responsible for using or learning how
to use those tools on their own or through collaboration with other students.
Finally, there has never been a time when more learning and support resources for using
technology have been so readily available and for such low, or no, cost. On YouTube alone,
students can find demos and mini-lessons for editing images, audio, and video, utilizing spe-
cific software tools or social media capabilities, and more. Learning how to find and use these
resources, and developing a mindset in which self-sponsored technology/software/digital
practices research is an expected part of all composing processes is critical to today’s digital
literacy capabilities. Additionally, this approach has a benefit for students in that they are
accessing relevant support on a just-in-time basis rather than receiving direct instruction in
applications or technologies that may not have applicability to their specific projects.
Issues of Experience: Myth of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

Related to concerns over instructors’ technology expertise are the popularized concepts of “dig-
ital immigrants” and “digital natives.” In 2001, Mark Prensky coined the now-problematized
term “digital native” to refer to the supposed innate digital literacy skills for anyone born after
1980. Prensky suggested that because kids:
have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital
music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital
age, . . . today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their
predecessors.
(Prensky, p. 1, emphasis in original)
By default, many instructors might then see themselves as “digital immigrants,” struggling to
develop a fluency with technology later in life that appears to come so naturally to younger
students. While Prensky’s contention that today’s students are “born digital” and thus have an
innate ability to use and create digital and multimodal texts has found a hold in popular con-
versation, many scholars have taken issue with this supposition and its implications, including
danah boyd (2014).
As a technology and social media researcher who studies teens’ digital habits, boyd argued,
Teens may make their own media or share content online, but this does not mean that
they inherently have the knowledge or perspective to critically examine what they con-
sume. Being exposed to information or imagery through the internet and engaging with
social media do not make someone a savvy interpreter of the meaning behind these arti-
facts. Technology is constantly reworking social and information systems, but teens will
not become critical contributors to this ecosystem simply because they were born in an
age when these technologies were pervasive. . . . Becoming literate in a networked age
requires hard work, regardless of age.
(p. 177)
Echoing the concerns of a number of scholars, boyd’s work emphasized the fact that ubiq-
uitous exposure to technology does not necessarily equate to critical awareness of what
digital/multimodal texts say or how such communicative practices can be put to use for
students’ own rhetorical purposes. Instead, as Selfe (2004) suggested, it is the responsibility
of educators to help students understand “the implications of such cultural trends as well as
manag[e] their own communicative efforts in ways that are rhetorically effective, critically
aware, morally responsible, and personally satisfying” (642). Additionally, as boyd suggested,
developing digital literacies requires explicit commitment to learning functional and rhetori-
cal possibilities. As with any other form of professional development, digital fluency neces-
sitates that instructors put in the effort to learn and to consider the pedagogical applications
for such practices.
Issues of Access and Equity—Realities of the Digital Divide

In her 2016 article, “Multiliteracy Centers Spanning the Digital Divide: Providing a Full
Spectrum of Support,” Joy Bancroft defined the digital divide as the “gap between those
who [have] access [to] and use computers and the Internet and those who do not” (p. 47).
She contended, “In the same way that limited knowledge of grammar and mechanics cre-
ates barriers to academic success, limited knowledge of basic digital literacy skills inhib-
its success in higher education, and both skillsets are essential to meaningful, empowering
communication in the 21st century” (p. 46). She continued, writing that while the digital
divide “has narrowed as broadband Internet and mobile internet usage has spread across
the nation, . . . availability and use of a home computer, Internet, or broadband service
continues to depend on age, gender, race, education, employment, and disability status”
(National Telecommunications and Information Administration [NTIA] & Economics &
Statistics Administration [ESA], 2014, citation in original). That is, far from the dream that
technology could support greater parity among learners from diverse cultural, racial, and
economic backgrounds, issues of access persist, and in many cases, perpetuate long-standing
social and educational inequities.
Although we might perceive technological literacy and access to the internet as universal
in American culture given the ubiquity of computers and mobile devices, an education-
ally significant digital divide remains among our students. According to the Pew Research
Center’s 2018 “Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet,”
For some demographic groups—such as young adults, college graduates and those from
high-income households—internet usage is near ubiquitous. Even so, adoption gaps
remain based on factors such as age, income, education and community type. . . . As is
true of internet adoption more broadly, home broadband adoption varies across demo-
graphic groups. Racial minorities, older adults, rural residents, and those with lower
levels of education and income are less likely to have broadband service at home.
(Internet/Broadband)
What these findings mean in the context of the digital and multimodal writing classroom is that
instructors must be attentive to the wide continuum of digital experiences and literacies among
our students. Without regular access to technology in both school and home environments,
students may be unable to develop the comfort and fluency that results from instructional
and self-sponsored digital activities. If our goal as writing faculty is to help students develop
the critical abilities and literacies needed for informed, persuasive communication, we must
develop inclusive pedagogies that support the rhetorical and technological needs of all students.
Rather than framing the digital divide as simply one of access, however, researcher
Stephanie Vie (2008) questioned our assumptions about what exactly the digital divide is for
today’s students. She wrote,
The problem is not so much providing access for Generation M [millennial] students sur-
rounded by technology but rather to effectively integrate technological literacy instruc-
tion into the composition classroom in meaningful ways. Compositionists should focus
on incorporating into their pedagogy technologies that students are familiar with but do
not think critically about: online social networking sites, podcasts, audio mash-ups, blogs,
and wikis.
(p. 9)
In other words, Vie suggested that critical digital literacy should be the focus of our con-
versations about equity rather than just physical access or lack thereof to computers, mobile
devices, and technology. Further discussion of the need for critical digital literacy and ways
we can support these practices in our writing courses follows in the next section.
Current Questions/Areas of Interest for Digital Writing

This section offers a brief discussion of three issues that have arisen for Composition in the
current digital environment and the ways in which scholars have begun to address these. New
technologies and multimodal affordances will continue to evolve and writing researchers and
instructors will continue to consider these areas of inquiry in relation to the guiding questions
that started this chapter: How can I help students expand their Composition practices and
rhetorical toolkits by integrating technology and multimodality into my writing class? How
can I help students realize and leverage “all available means of persuasion” through greater
attention to multimodal and technological affordances?
1 Critical Thinking/Critical Stance-Taking/Critical Digital Media Literacies
As illustrated by the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the still-unraveling investigations in
2018, digital propaganda and social media manipulation have the potential for profound effects
on broad populations of internet users. Beyond the deceptive advertising and slick market-
ing manipulations that inspired media literacy education campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s,
today’s sophisticated hacking and online influence operations are far more insidious and effec-
tive. According to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s conclusions, in their “Assessing Russian
Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections” report, Russian hackers in the lead-up to
the 2016 election were able to target and infiltrate social networks, spread deceptive messages to
inflame animosity between voters from various political perspectives, and ultimately disrupt and
(likely) bias the ballot choices of the American electorate. By relying on a combination of hack-
ing and spearfishing operations to steal data, illegal use of detailed personal information collected
by social media companies about their own users, sharing of fake or remixed multimodal con-
tent, reliance on bots and trolls to amplify false or propagandistic messages, and a keen under-
standing of how to exploit divisive social issues, the intelligence assessment found that Russian
operatives were able to have a significant influence on American voters. The agencies wrote,
Moscow’s influence campaign [during the 2016 presidential election cycle] followed a
Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—with overt efforts
by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and
paid social media users or “trolls.”
(p. ii)
Far from being a one-off, Daniel Coates, in his Director of National Intelligence’s 2018
Worldwide Threat Assessment, argued that such cyber-espionage efforts are the “new normal.”
The assessment warned,
The potential for surprise in the cyber realm will increase in the next year and beyond as
billions more digital devices are connected—with relatively little built-in security—and
both nation states and malign actors become more emboldened and better equipped in
the use of increasingly widespread cyber toolkits.
(p. 5)
While the political and technological power to block such efforts is far from the realm of
writing instruction, compositionist still have an important role to play in this arena and many
others in our digital environment. By helping students develop a set of critical tools for
questioning and assessing all media they encounter, writing faculty can provide a level of
protection against such efforts. Many of the traditional, digital, and multimodal practices we
teach, including identification and analysis of persuasive appeals, careful evaluation of source
credibility, and critical consideration of the messages conveyed through multimodal content
can support students in developing deliberative, informed consumption practices. Further, as
students hone these critical consumption practices, we also need to help them understand the
implications of their own contributions to the digital landscape.
Consider and discuss the following questions with a small group of classmates: What
are some potential consequences or implications for users’ contributions in a variety
of digital environments? Why might it be important to help users be critical of their
individual or collaborative contributions to digital spaces? In what ways could we facili-
tate conscious awareness of these considerations among students?
Rodney Jones and Christoph Hafner (2012) offered one approach for teaching and supporting
these practices through their concept of critical or conscious stance-taking. Such a model posi-
tions readers and writers to “‘interrogate’ the ideologies and agendas promoted in the texts”
they “encounter via digital media and by digital media themselves” (p. 98). That is, critical
stance-taking helps learners to evaluate the agendas of the content they encounter, as well as that
of the technology, mode, or medium itself. Such work is important because both the content (the
“what” of a communication”) and the mode or technology (the “how” of a communication)
convey and shape meaning. “The problem with ideologies,” they argued, “is not that they are
necessarily bad, but that most people are unconscious of them, taking the particular ideology
they subscribe to as the ‘truth’ rather than simply as one of many possible ‘versions or reality’”
(p. 98). By developing strategies for identifying and questioning these embedded ideologies, we
can help students to exercise greater agency over what they know and how they communicate.
The affordances offered through multimodal means for stance-taking (posts, likes,
follows, images, videos, emojis, etc.) in the networked and social media world has
added immeasurable complexity to the possibilities for expressing one’s own views and
responding to those of others. “Thus, at a broader level, understanding acts of stance-
taking is crucial to understanding how identities are constructed in new online spaces”
(Barton & Lee, p. 31). In a small group, discuss the following questions in relation to
stance-taking, identities, and affordances:
•• What social media platforms do you use most often and why? In what ways does
your intended audience or purpose shape your choice of which one to use when?
•• What are the stance-taking affordances and constraints of your most-used social
media apps? That is, what affordances or means do they offer for expressing your
views through interactions such as your original contributions, shares/retweets,
likes, comments, emojis, and more?
•• What considerations do you have in mind as you think about your potential audi-
ence and the kinds of responses you want to elicit when posting or sharing your
own content? In what ways is this specific to a particular platform?
•• What considerations do you have in mind as you think about your interaction
with content produced by others (e.g. what are you trying to say when you “like”
a photo or write a comment or “follow” an account and who is your audience)?
•• In what ways do these questions relate to your identity or the parts of your identity
you want to construct for particular audiences and contexts?
2 Digital Identity and Rhetorical Agency

In the early days of the computers and composition field, there was a heady optimism about
not just the technological possibilities of computers in the classroom, but also about the social
and identity potentials. Reviewing this history, Eyman (2015) wrote,
Identity has been a concern for digital rhetoric since the advent of networked technolo-
gies, and quite a few scholars have theorized how digital space complicates, facilitates,
or subverts the very notion of individual identity. Early works tended toward a quasi-
utopian view that the digital self, represented through conscious choices in and across net-
works, would leave behind the body, with its attendant baggage of race, class, and gender.
(pp. 77–78)
By the early 1990s, however, utopian aspirations matured as Composition researchers took
a more critical approach. One of these scholars, Lester Faigley (1992), argued that while
teaching his first course in a networked classroom reproduced many of the same idealized
characteristics suggested by Eyman, “subsequent experiences . . . problematized the concept
of a student-centered classroom” and caused him to question more critically if, and in what
ways, computers and networked communication in the classroom was realigning potentials
for student agency and identity (p. 167).
Connecting back to the importance of critical thinking and stance-taking activities in
relation to issues of agency and identity, Selfe (2009), reminded us that digital and multi-
modal writing offers students important opportunities for self-expression and identity shap-
ing. Perhaps more significantly, though, she argued that “For students, the stakes are even
more significant. Young people need to know that their role as rhetorical agents is open”
(p. 643). Further, these stakes:
involve fundamental issues of rhetorical sovereignty: the rights and responsibilities that
students have to identify their own communicative needs and to represent their own
identities, to select the right tools for the communicative contexts in which they operate,
and to think critically and carefully about the meaning that they and others compose.
(p. 618)
Writing from a New Literacy Studies perspective, Jones and Hafner (2012) suggested that
while understanding the affordances and constraints of particular technologies is important,
developing digital literacies requires more than mastery over tools and technologies. “It also
means using those tools to do something in the social world and these things we do invariably
involve managing our social relationships and our social identities in all sorts of different and
sometimes unpredictable situations” (p. 13, emphasis in original). That is, the creation and
re-creation of our digital identities is highly mutable. These identities represent who we are,
who we want to be, and how we want others to see us in a variety of contexts. Each time we
construct these digital identities, they are based not just on our desires for self-representation,
but also on our rhetorical situations, digital tools, and social media platforms. This interaction
requires a complex negotiation of contexts, audiences, affordances, and constraints each time
we, as writers, engage with a digital environment.
Literacy scholars David Barton and Carmen Lee (2013) suggested the concept of “pres-
entational culture” as one lens for examining people’s digital and multimodal practices
in social media and other online spaces. They define presentational culture as the:
new opportunities for people to document and display their everyday lives in the
form of writing and other modes” that are often shared with varied audiences and
through varied platforms and in which writers “constantly pay attention to how
they present themselves.
(68)
In small groups, discuss the ways in which the concept of presentational culture is
applicable to your use of two or more social media applications. What kinds of consid-
erations shape the identities you craft on different platforms and how do you express
such aspects of identity? In what ways does the identity you present or craft differ
between platforms based on considerations such as audience and multimodal affor-
dances? Finally, what ideas do you have for how you might incorporate attention to
presentational culture and online identity in a writing class?
As Eyman, Selfe, Jones and Hafner; Barton and Lee; and others have suggested, issues of
identity and rhetorical agency in the teaching of digital and multimodal writing are complex
and ever-changing. Exploring them in an explicit way in the writing classroom not only
influences relationships among students and between students and instructors, but also has
significant implications for writers beyond the classroom. Helping students to be conscious of
and intentional about the ways they construct identities and interact with others is critical to
their development and empowerment as writers in a digital era. As with many other aspects
of the field, technologies make possible a whole host of opportunities for exploring one’s
own identity and the multitude of ways it can be represented online, but these potentials are
realized most constructively with active attention to and reflection upon these possibilities.
3 Assessment of Digital and Multimodal Projects

One of the most frequent topics of discussion, and often concern, among teachers new
to digital and/or multimodal writing is assessment of students’ work. Most composition-
ists, after all, are trained to evaluate written language. It is no wonder, then, that many of
us feel unprepared to offer formative feedback or to judge the merits and shortcomings in
summative evaluation of such projects. However, as this chapter argues throughout, what
we always bring to our pedagogy is an awareness of how authorial choices shape meaning.
This is where our expertise in understanding argumentative structures, use of evidence and
support, knowledge of persuasive appeals, and more can help us help our students to be
more aware and intentional in their writing choices. There is rarely a singular “right” way
to compose a text. Instead, an author’s perspective, a text’s message, and its reception by
an audience is always a complex, nuanced intersection with the particulars of the rhetori-
cal situation. The more we can assist students in recognizing and leveraging these choices,
regardless of mode or technology, the better we equip them for communication demands
in contemporary settings.
Attention to assessment of compositions other than traditional texts has been of great inter-
est not just to instructors but also to researchers and professional organizations within writing
studies. As the “NCTE Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies” (2005) argued, “The
additional dimensions of multimodal work add increased complexity to the tasks of teaching,
learning, and, therefore, the evaluation of those learning experiences. What this means for
teaching,” the statement continues, is that the “complexity of multimodal work suggests that
an assessment process must be developed and refined collaboratively by students, teachers,
administrators, parents, and other stakeholders over time” (NCTE, “Position”). This argu-
ment is significant because it acknowledges that while multimodal texts often “blur traditional
lines of genre, author/audience, and linear sequence,” instructors still need to define and
articulate the learning goals and expectations for projects they assign.
Further, since so many texts, genres, modalities, and technologies are constantly evolving,
we as instructors must work collaboratively and flexibly with students and other stakehold-
ers to develop evaluative criteria. In other words, as we outline and refine our assessment
practices, we need to ask questions such as the following: what pedagogical goals do we want
to achieve through a particular curriculum or assignment? What might “success” on such an
endeavor mean or look like and why? Is there flexibility in the modalities, technologies, and/
or approach students can use or have these been specified explicitly for learners in assignment
prompts and directions? In what ways does assessment of students’ research, analysis, compos-
ing, and revision practices fit with larger institutional, societal, or professional expectations for
student literacy and communicative competence?
Writing with colleagues Kristin Arola and Cheryl Ball, I have argued for “creating flexible
assessment strategies that mirror the hands-on and multimodal learning students do in our
classes” (“Multimodality as a Frame,” 2014). By this, we meant that rather than defining and
applying a set of standard assessment criteria regardless of context, genre, or modality, our
students’ learning is better served when we offer feedback and evaluation that are tailored to
each unique learning and rhetorical situation. Additionally, we suggested,
These assessment strategies should make learning explicit to students. To move from
implicit practice to explicit understanding allows students to make conscious, purpose-
ful choices in their projects. It also provides space for self-assessment, allowing students
to consider what worked, what didn’t and how they might alter their approach in the
future. If one of our primary goals as teachers of writing and communication is to help
students be successful in any number of rhetorical environments beyond the classroom,
pushing them to be mindful of their own practices and the tools in their repertoire is an
important component of our work.
(Arola, Ball, & Sheppard, n.p.)
Beyond helping students understand our pedagogical goals, being explicit about our assessment
expectations models for students the importance of awareness of and control over authorial
choices and practices. Additionally, including a self-reflection component in course projects
encourages students to develop self-assessment practices to improve future performance.
Rather than beginning with a question of how to assess multimodal texts in a standardized
way, the Multimodal Assessment Project (MAP) group began their research with the ques-
tion, what would assessment of digital and multimodal writing “look like if the language of
assessment was closely aligned with the language used by the creators and readers of digital
compositions?” (Eidman-Aadahl, et al.). As a result of their 18-month project, funded by
the National Writing Project, the ten authors advocated for assessment that is inclusive of
“five domains—context, artifact, substance, process management and technique, and habits of
mind—that link the language of assessing multimodal writing with acts that drive the creation
and reception of digital texts” (Eidman-Aadahl, et al.).
Reviewing the MAP group’s recommendations, Sohee Park (2015) summarized the five
domains of multimodal assessment as follows:
• Artifact is the finished product of digital multimodal composition. A well-created prod-

uct conveys a coherent message to audiences by using appropriate structure, medium,
mode, and technique.
• Context involves the rhetorical and physical surroundings of the artifact. Purposes, audi-
ences, composing environment, and modes are elements to consider around context.
• Substance refers to the quality and significance of content and ideas presented in the
digital multimodal composition. The credibility and accuracy of information presented
are also important criteria to evaluate the substance of an artifact.
• Process management and technique are related closely to composing skills and pro-
cesses. To compose a digital multimodal text, students should be able to use not only
digital devices such as laptops or tablet PCs but also Web 2.0 tools. Students also need to
manage the entire composing process from planning to publishing.
• Habits of mind refers to students’ behaviors or attitudes that develop over time while
they compose digital multimodal texts. Creativity, persistence, risk taking, mindfulness,
and engagement are examples of important habits of mind.
As the MAP group discussed, these domains overlap with each providing a critical but neces-
sarily partial means for reading and assessing a digital or multimodal text. True assessment of
multimodal composing requires evaluation in all five domains. Further, the group argued,
considering these dimensions collectively rather than individually, “offer[s] multimodal
authors and those providing feedback and evaluating multimodal works with a framework for
discussing both a single piece and a writer’s development over time” (Eidman-Aadahl, et. al).
The digital/multimodal assessment approach advocated by the MAP group is very much in
line with best practices in the field of Composition more broadly. The CCCC’s Committee
on Assessment first established its “Writing Assessment: A Position Statement” in 2006 and
most recently reaffirmed it in 2014. Although its terminology focuses almost exclusively on
written texts, its guidelines nonetheless have application to digital and multimodal writing.
In part, this relevance is so apparent because of the statement’s emphasis on assessment as
a formative pedagogical instrument rather than just a summative evaluation tool. Among
the principle’s most applicable guidelines is the assumption that “Best assessment practice is
informed by pedagogy and curricular goals” and “is useful primarily as a means of improving
teaching and learning” (CCCC Committee on Assessment). What this means is that standard-
ized assessment for writing, any kind of writing, is often problematic because it fails to leave
space for local, rhetorical, and pedagogical needs. Instead, assessment of any kind of writing
should remain open to revision and negotiation so that it keeps pace with the unique autho-
rial demands of ever-evolving types of texts and writing.
Conclusion—So What and Why Does This All Matter?

In the introduction to Multimodal Composition: A Sourcebook, editor Claire Lutkewitte (2014)
worked to illuminate the pedagogical benefits of digital and multimodal writing advocated in
various contributions to the collection. She argued that those chapters:
encourage instructors to think of multiple possibilities for writing that challenge tradi-
tional and canonized beliefs about what writing should be and do. Using multiple modes
often results in a break from thesis-driven print culture, a culture which prevents us from
composing with all meanings and does not adequately prepare students for the kinds of
creating they will do outside of the academy.
(Lutkewitte, p. 14)
For Lutkewitte and many other teacher-scholars in Composition, the affordances of digital
and multimodal writing offer students opportunities to leverage all available means of persua-
sion and to explore what relevant and persuasive communication might look like for different
audiences and purposes and in a variety of settings, genres, and modalities. Further, as digital
communication and tools for composing become even more pervasive in the world beyond
the classroom, neglecting to prepare students for more diverse approaches to writing has the
potential to limit their professional readiness.
Importantly, and even more broadly, Cynthia Selfe (2009) reminded us that failing to
prepare students for the diverse and ever-changing digital and multimodal world would hurt
them not just on an educational or professional level, but also on a sociopolitical level. Rather
than letting our own biases and limitations as teachers yoked to more traditional understand-
ings of writing foreclose students’ rhetorical agency, Selfe argued, we too must adapt. She
contended that students:
need a full quiver of semiotic modes from which to select, role models who can teach
them to think critically about a range of communication tools, and multiple ways of
reaching their audience. They do not need teachers who insist on one tool or one way.
Students, in sum, need opportunities to realize that different compositional modalities
carry with them different possibilities for representing multiple and shifting patterns of
identity, additional potential for expression and resistance, expanded ways of engaging
with a changing world.
(Selfe, p. 645)
Throughout this chapter, I have argued for expanded understandings of rhetoric, writing,
and literacy and the ways in which our instruction must work to be more inclusive of digital
and non-textual means of communication and persuasion. Such evolutions are grounded in
the research and theory of the field and encoded in the position statements and best practices
advocated by our professional organizations. These understandings are increasingly evident
in the classrooms, teaching, and pedagogies of our practitioners. And attention to these affor-
dances is increasingly expected by students in our curricula. Failing to adapt and broaden our
approaches to teaching writing to be more attentive to these digital and multimodal com-
posing possibilities is not only a missed opportunity for us as instructors, but also a disservice
to those we teach. Among the primary goals of writing instruction is an aspiration to help
students learn to be critical, engaged readers, writers, and participants in academic, profes-
sional, and social contexts. If such instruction is not attentive to the digital and multimodal
tools and composing practices now so widely available, our contribution is incomplete and
fails to help students realize and leverage all available means of persuasion at their disposal in
our contemporary world.
Sample Assignment—Multimodal Rhetorical Analysis

So far this semester, we have read, discussed, and tried out a variety of methods for under-
standing the persuasive strategies of all kinds of everyday texts. Your task for this project is
to continue developing your critical rhetorical skills by analyzing an artifact of your choice.
There are two key differences for this project from the last. First, I want you to consider
ways in which you can present your findings utilizing multiple modes of communication.
This is an experimental, creative, and potentially fun opportunity to try out technologies and
media as a way of making and supporting an argument. I offer a couple of options below for
this project, but you are welcome to propose alternatives. Second, this will be a collaborative
project. You may choose to work with a partner or in a small group (up to four people). You
are also welcome to remix/re-mediate work you (or one group member) did on a previous
project for this class.
Option #1—Making a Multimodal Argument about Everyday Texts

Rather than relying solely on words, multimodal communication allows you to use the
affordances (the communicative advantages) of each mode to deliver your argument most
effectively. For example, if your project analyzes body language and facial expressions within
a particular TV genre, it will likely be far easier to show your readers a relevant video clip
than to try to describe these gestures in writing. Or maybe you are considering the ways in
which a particular organization or business is utilizing social media to convince readers to take
action or buy a product. Maybe you are interested in how acquaintances construct their iden-
tity through images on Instagram or text on SnapChat and creating an annotated slideshow of
posts would work most efficiently for presenting details of your artifact. The possibilities for
subject matter and the use of multiple modes to analyze are endless.
Option #2—Remixing a Textual Rhetorical Analysis and Making It Multimodal

Re-mediating a project allows you to think more actively about the rhetorical choices you
can make in communicating your ideas through various modes (linguistic, visual, aural, spatial
and/or gestural). For this option, your task would be to revisit and extend one of your rhe-
torical analysis essays from earlier in the semester and to present your argument and examples
through multiple modes. This is an opportunity to create modes of communication that go
beyond the printed word and to consider alternative ways of informing and persuading your
audience. For example, your project might take the form of an infographic, video, podcast,
website, slideshow, photo essay, comic book, blog, magazine article, conversation in tweets,
Prezi presentation, or . . .
Option #3—Integrating Visuals and Using One of the Critical Rhetorical Methods
We Read About
If you are feeling a little apprehensive about jumping into a tech-centered project, you do
have the option to complete a more traditional essay. While I would still require inclusion,
at minimum, of several images within your text to help illustrate your ideas or examples, this
option would allow you to write a traditional essay using a different method of rhetorical
criticism than you did for paper #2. You would be welcome to use the same artifact or one
that is similar to what you worked with before, but you must select a different rhetorical lens
for investigation (ideological, genre, cluster, feminist, visual, etc.) and follow the same struc-
ture laid out by Foss for organizing your paper (an introduction and description of the artifact,
an explanation of the rhetorical/critical framework you are using, an analysis of
the artifact using the focus of your chosen method, and a conclusion that wraps
up the project and the significance of your analysis).
Other Details:
No matter which of these options you choose, your final project will have two components:
1 A media-rich rhetorical analysis of an everyday text or artifact (whichever option you

choose, the amount of analysis should be roughly equivalent to what you would do in a
four to seven page paper)
2 A short reflective essay (two to three pages) discussing your:
•• composing and rhetorical choices and your justifications for making them
•• your challenges and successes with the project
•• how you might approach a similar project in the future given more time, technology
skills, or other resources.
Suggested Readings
In addition to the references cited throughout this chapter, the sources below will provide
additional insight into the issues discussed in this chapter.
Alexander, J., & Rhodes, J. (2014). On multimodality: New media in composition studies. Urbana, IL:
National Council of Teachers of English.
Alexander, A., & Rhodes, J. (Eds.). (2018). The Routledge handbook of digital writing and rhetoric. New
York: Routledge.
Arola, K. L. & Wysocki, A. F. (Eds.). (2012). Composing(media) = composing(embodiment): bodies, technolo-
gies, writing, the teaching of writing. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press.
Ball, C. E., Sheppard, J., & Arola, K. L. (2018). Writer/Designer: A guide to making multimodal projects
(2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Bowen, T. & Whithaus, W. (Eds.). (2013). Multiliteracies and emerging genres. Pittsburgh, PA: University
of Pittsburg Press.
Hawisher, G. & Selfe, C.L. (Eds.). (1999) Passions, pedagogies, and 21st century literacies. Logan, UT: Utah
State University Press.
McKee, H. & De Voss, D. N. (Eds.). (2007). Digital writing research: Technologies, methodologies, and ethical
issues. New York: Hampton Press.
Miller, S. M. & McVee, M. B. (2012). Multimodal composing in classrooms: Learning and teaching for the
digital age. New York: Routledge.
Palmeri, J. (2012). Remixing composition: A history of multimodal writing pedagogy. Carbondale, IL:
Selfe, C. L. (Ed.). (2007). Multimodal composition: Resources for teachers. New York: Hampton Press.
Selfe, C. L. (1999). Technology and literacy in the 21st century: The importance of paying attention. Carbondale,
Sheridan, D. M., Ridolfo, J., & Michel, A. J. (2012). Available means of persuasion: Mapping a theory and
pedagogy of multimodal public rhetoric. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.
References
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Reading
The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning
Aurality and Multimodal Composing
Cynthia L. Selfe
Participation means being able to speak in one’s own voice, and thereby simultaneously to
construct and express one’s cultural identity through idiom and style.
—Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere”
. . . perhaps we can hear things we cannot see.

—Krista Ratcliffe, “Rhetorical Listening”
ory dimension is. . . more than a simple changing of variables. It begins as a deliberate decen-
tering of a dominant tradition in order to discover what may be missing as a result of the tradi-
tional double reduction of vision as the main variable and metaphor.
—Don Ihde, Listening and Voice
Anyone who has spent time on a college or university campus over the past few decades
knows how fundamentally important students consider their sonic environments—the songs,
music, and podcasts they produce and listen to; the cell phone conversations in which they
immerse themselves; the headphones and Nanos that accompany them wherever they go;
the thumper cars they use to turn the streets into concert stages; the audio blogs, video
soundtracks, and mixes they compose and exchange with each other and share with anyone
else who will listen.
Indeed, students’ general penchant for listening to and producing sound can be elo-
quently ironic for English composition teachers faced with the deafening silence of a
class invited to engage in an oral discussion about a written text. This phenomenon,
however, may reveal as much about our profession’s attitudes toward aurality and
writing1—or the related history of these expressive modalities within our discipline—as it
does about students’ literacy values and practices. Sound, although it remains of central
importance both to students and to the population at large, is often undervalued as a
compositional mode.
My argument in this article is that the history of writing in U.S. composition instruction, as
well as its contemporary legacy, functions to limit our professional understanding of compos-
ing as a multimodal rhetorical activity and deprive students of valuable semiotic resources
for making meaning.2 As print assumed an increasingly privileged position in composition
classrooms during the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, aurality
was both subsumed by, and defined in opposition to, writing (Russell, “Institutionalizing” and
Writing; Halbritter; B. McCorkle, “Harbingers”; Elbow, “What”), thus establishing and perpetu-
ating a false binary between the two modalities of expression (Biber, “Spoken” and Variation;
Tannen, “Oral” and Spoken), encouraging an overly narrow understanding of language and
literacy (Kress, “English”), and allowing collegiate teachers of English composition to lose
sight of the integrated nature of language arts. Further, I argue that a single-minded focus
The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning 411
on print in composition classrooms ignores the importance of aurality and other composing
modalities for making meaning and understanding the world. Finally, I suggest that the almost
exclusive dominance of print literacy works against the interests of individuals whose cul-
tures and communities have managed to maintain a value on multiple modalities of expres-
sion, multiple and hybrid ways of knowing, communicating, and establishing identity (Gilyard;
Dunn, Learning and Talking; Royster, Traces and “First Voice”; Hibbitts; Powell; Lyons).
My ultimate goal in exploring aurality as a case in point is not to make an either/or
argument—not to suggest that we pay attention to aurality rather than to writing. Instead, I
suggest we need to pay attention to both writing and aurality, and other composing modali-
ties, as well. I hope to encourage teachers to develop an increasingly thoughtful under-
standing of a whole range of modalities and semiotic resources in their assignments and
then to provide students the opportunities of developing expertise with all available means
of persuasion and expression, so that they can function as literate citizens in a world where
communications cross geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic borders and are enriched rather
than diminished by semiotic dimensionality.
What is at stake in this endeavor seems significant—both for teachers of English com-
position and for students. When teachers of composition limit the bandwidth of composing
modalities in our classrooms and assignments, when we privilege print as the only accept-
able way to make or exchange meaning, we not only ignore the history of rhetoric and its
intellectual inheritance, but we also limit, unnecessarily, our scholarly understanding of semi-
otic systems (Kress, “English”) and the effectiveness of our instruction for many students.
The stakes for students are no less significant—they involve fundamental issues of
rhetorical sovereignty3: the rights and responsibilities that students have to identify their
own communicative needs and to represent their own identities, to select the right tools
for the communicative contexts within which they operate, and to think critically and care-
fully about the meaning that they and others compose. When we insist on print as the
primary, and most formally acceptable, modality for composing knowledge, we usurp
these rights and responsibilities on several important intellectual and social dimensions,
and, unwittingly, limit students’ sense of rhetorical agency to the bandwidth of our own
interests and imaginations.4
By way of making this argument, I begin by recounting a very brief, and necessarily selec-
tive, history of aurality, focusing on the role it came to assume in college composition class-
rooms from the mid-nineteenth century onward. I then discuss some of the ways in which
aurality has persisted in English composition classrooms in the midst of a culture saturated
by the written word. Finally, I suggest how digital communication environments and digital
multimodal texts have encouraged some teachers of composition to rediscover aurality as a
valuable modality of expression.
The irony of making an argument about aurality in print is not lost on me, nor, I suspect,
will it be on most other readers of this article. Indeed, it is very much the point of what I try
to say in the following pages. Thus, throughout this article I have included references to four
sound essays composed by students at Michigan Tech, the University of Louisville, and The
Ohio State University. I consider these pieces a crucial part of my argument about valuing
aurality as a composing modality. Hence, I encourage readers to go to <http://people. cohums.
ohio-state.edu/selfe2/ccc/>, listen to these sound essays, and read what their authors have
said about composing them.
412 Cynthia L. Selfe
Aural Composing: Sample 1, Sonya Borton’s Legacy of Music
At this point, I ask readers to leave this printed text and go to <http://people.cohums.
ohio-state.edu/selfe2/ccc/>, where they can listen to Sonya Borton’s autobiographical
essay, Legacy of Music, in which she tells listeners about the musical talents of various
members of her Kentucky family. In relating her narrative, Borton weaves a richly textured
fabric of interviews, commentary, instrumental music, and song to support her thesis that
a love of music represents an important legacy passed down from parents to children
within her family.
A Short History of Aurality in College Composition Classrooms

Theorizing the role of aurality in composition classrooms is not a task that comes easily to
most composition teachers. Since the late nineteenth century, writing has assumed such a
dominant and central position in our professional thinking that its role as the major instruc-
tional focus goes virtually uncontested, accepted as common sense. As Patricia Dunn
(Talking) writes, it seems absurd even to
question an over-emphasis on writing in a discipline whose raison d’etre is, like no other
discipline, for and about writing. That common-sense assumption, however, may be
what makes it so difficult for us in Composition to see word-based pedagogies in any
way other than supportive of learning.
(150)
Composition teachers, she concludes, have come to believe “writing is not simply one way of
knowing; it is the way” (15). Doxa, or common belief, however, always maintains its strong-
est hold in the absence of multiple historical and cultural perspectives. Although writing has
come to occupy a privileged position in composition classrooms—and in the minds of many
compositionists—historical accounts by such scholars as David Russell (“Institutionalizing”
and Writing), James Berlin, Nan Johnson, and Michael Halloran confirm this situation as both
relatively recent and contested.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, for example, collegiate education in America was
fundamentally shaped by Western classical traditions and was oral in its focus. As Michael
Halloran notes, within this curriculum students learned to read, speak, and write both clas-
sical language and English through recitation—the standard pedagogical approach for all
subjects—as well as through a wide range of oratorical performances, debates, orations,
and declamations, both inside formal classes and in extracurricular settings such as literary
societies. The goal of these activities was to build students’ general skill in public speaking,
rather than encouraging specialized inquiry as mediated by the written word.
This old model of oratorical education, David Russell notes (“Institutionalizing” and
Writing), was linked to the cultural values, power, and practices of privileged families in the
colonies who considered facility in oral, face-to-face encounters to be the hallmark of an edu-
cated class. The male children of these families were expected to help lead the nation in the
role of statesmen, enter the judicial and legal arena, or become ministers. For heirs of these
families, as Susan Miller has added, little instruction in writing was needed other than practice
in penmanship. Their lives were imbricated with oral communication practices—speeches,
debates, sermons—and such individuals had to be able to speak, as gentlemen, in contexts
of power. Universities were charged with preparing these future leaders to assume their roles
and responsibilities.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, universities began to change in
response to the rapid rise of industrial manufacturing, the explosion of scientific discover-
ies, and the expansion of the new country’s international trade. These converging trends
accumulated with increasing tendential force and resulted in profound cultural transforma-
tions that placed an increasing value on specialization and professionalization, especially
within the emerging middle class. Such changes required both new approaches to edu-
cation and a new kind of secular university, one designed to meet the needs of individu-
als involved in science, commerce, and manufacturing. It was within this new collegiate
context that the first departments of English were able to form, primarily by forging identi-
ties for themselves as units that educated a range of citizens occupied with business and
professional affairs.5 In response to these cultural trends, Russell has observed, “the mod-
ern project of purification, the drive toward specialization, made old rhetoric impossible”
(“Institutionalizing” 40).6
Instead, departments of English focused on preparing professionals whose work, after
graduation, would increasingly rely on writing, as Russell explains—articles, reports,
memoranda and communications, “texts as objects to be silently studied, critiqued, com-
pared, appreciated, and evaluated” (Writing 4–5). Supporting this work were technological
innovations—improved printing presses, typewriters, and pens, among others—that com-
bined with innovations in business operations, efficient manufacturing techniques, and
science to lend added importance to writing as a cultural code, both within the new univer-
sity and outside it (Russell, “Institutionalizing”).
As they emerged in this context, departments of English sought increasingly modern
approaches to changing communication practices and values—hoping to distance them-
selves from the old-school education in oratory, which was considered increasingly less valu-
able as a preparation for the world of manufacturing, business, and science, and to link their
curricula to more pragmatic concerns of professionalism in the modern university. The new
departments of English taught their studies in the vernacular—rather than in Greek or Latin—
and separated themselves from a continued focus on oratory, religion, and the classics,
which became devalued as historical or narrowly defined studies. These newly emergent
departments of English focused primarily on their ability to provide instruction in written com-
position. During this brief period in the latter third of the nineteenth century, writing became
one of a very few subjects required for a university course of study (Berlin; Russell, Writing).7
Charles William Eliot, who became president of Harvard in 1869, noted that instruction in
writing—distinguished by a natural, uninflated style—was not only desirable for students at
the new university but also necessary for the success of a national culture based on eco-
nomic development, modern industrial processes, and trade (359).8
Scholars have described, in various ways, the historic shift that occurred during the last
half of the nineteenth century, from an older style of education based on declamation, ora-
tory, forensics, and delivery9 to a new style of education based primarily on the study and
analysis of written texts, both classical and contemporary10—and the production of such texts.
Perhaps the most succinct statement, however, and the one most directly to the point for this
history of aurality in college composition classrooms is Ronald Reid’s (1959) comment:
The most significant change was rhetoric’s abandonment of oratory. The advanced
courses, commonly known during this period as “themes and forensics,” consisted
almost exclusively of written work. . . . The beginning course, too, gave much practice in
writing, none in public speaking.
(253)
Although attention to aurality persisted in various ways into the twentieth century, it was
clearly on the wane in English studies.11 By 1913, one year before teachers of speech
seceded from the National Council of Teachers of English, John Clapp was moved to ask in
an article published by the English Journal;
Is there a place in College English classes for exercises in reading, or talking, or both?
The question has been raised now and then in the past, almost always to receive a
negative answer, particularly from English departments.
(21)
The general response of the profession to these questions, Clapp noted, was that “for the
purposes of the intellectual life, which college graduates are to lead, talking is of little impor-
tant, and writing of very great importance” (23).
This brief history of composition as a discipline can be productively viewed within a larger
historical frame as well—specifically that of the rise of science (and its progeny, technology) in
the West before, during, and immediately after the Enlightenment, from the seventeenth to the
nineteenth centuries. At the heart of science as a rational project was the belief that humans
could unlock the secrets of nature using systematic observations and precisely recorded
written measurements. In a world attuned to the systematic methodologies of science, the
recorded word, the visual trace of evidence, provided proof, and observations rendered in
the visual medium of print revealed truth—Newton’s notes on mathematical proofs, Franklin’s
written descriptions of experiments, Darwin’s Beagle diaries. If the scientific revolution rested
on the understanding that seeing was believing, it also depended on writing—and after the
mid-fifteenth century—on printing as a primary means of recording, storing, and retrieving
important information and discoveries. Later, with the application of scientific methods to a
wide range of legal, military, industrial, and manufacturing practices, the complex network of
cultural formations that reinforced the privileged role of visual and print information.
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, then, as the power of vision and print
gradually waxed in the context of a university education, the power of aurality gradually
waned, although this trend was, at different times and places, far from even or immediate in
its effects. U.S. colleges and universities, for instance, lagged slightly behind those in Europe
for a time in this regard, but education within the two cultures followed the same general tra-
jectory. As Hibbitts notes, it was during this period that “the social and intellectual status of
vision gradually undermined the position still occupied by the other forms of sensory experi-
ence in the Western tradition” (2.25).
In educational institutions and, later, departments of English and programs of English
composition, the effects of this shift were far-reaching. Writing and reading, for example,
became separated from speech in educational contexts and became largely silent practices
for students in classroom settings. Written literature, although including artifacts of earlier
aural forms (Platonic dialogues, Shakespearean monologues, and poetry, for instance), was
studied through silent reading and subjected to written analysis, consumed by the eye rather
than the ear.12 The disciplined practices of silent writing, reading, and observation that char-
acterized collegiate education became normalized and, importantly, linked to both class and
race. In educational contexts, Hibbitts observes, “[t]he most important meta-lesson became,
as it today remains, how to sit, write, and read in contented quiet” (2.25). It was through
such changes that writing became the focus of a specialized academic education delivered
primarily to, and by, privileged white males.
If print became increasingly important within the new U.S. universities in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, however, aurality retained some of its power and reach in
other locations, where individuals and groups were forced to acquire both written and aural
literacies by a range of informal means or through an educational system that retained a fun-
damental integration of the language arts. Many women during this period, for instance, were
discouraged from pursuing a university education or had less time and money for such a lux-
ury. Blacks, Hispanics and Latinos/as, and American Indians, in addition, were, for prolonged
periods, persecuted for learning to read and write (Gere; Royster, Traces; Richardson), edu-
cated outside the schools that males attended, and denied access to the white colleges and
universities.13 Although individuals from these groups learned—through various means and,
often, with great sacrifice—to deploy writing skillfully and in ways that resisted the violence
of oppression, many also managed to retain a deep and nuanced appreciation for aural tradi-
tions as well: in churches and sacred ceremonies, in storytelling and performance contexts,
in poetry and song.
The history of slavery in the United States, for example, shaped the educational opportu-
nities of black citizens, many of whom survived and resisted the violence and oppression in
their lives by developing literacy values and practices—often, but certainly not exclusively,
aural in nature—that remained invisible to whites and that were, often because of this fact,
highly effective. Although many of the legal prohibitions against teaching blacks to read and
write were lifted after the Civil War, de facto barriers of racism continued to function. Many
black citizens were denied access to schools with adequate resources and others had to
abandon their own formal education to help their families survive the economic hardships
that continued to characterize the lives of blacks in both the North and the South (Hibbitts).
And although black citizens, under adverse conditions, found their own routes for acquiring
written literacy—in historically black colleges and universities, in churches, literary socie-
ties, homes, segregated public schools—artifacts of this historical period persisted in black
communities in verbal games, music, vocal performance, storytelling, and other “vernacular
expressive arts” (Richardson 680). These aural traces identify communities of people who
have survived and thrived, not only by deploying but also by resisting the literacy practices
of a dominant culture that continued to link the printed word and silent reading, so closely to
formal education, racism, and the exercise power by whites (Banks; Smitherman, “CCCC”;
Richardson; Royster, “First Voice;” Mahiri). “[T]he written word,” notes Ashraf Rushdy, in
part “represents the processes used by racist white American institutions to proscribe and
prescribe African American subjectivity.”14
Hispanic/Latino communities, too, while valuing a wide range of literacy practices in
their cultural, familial, and intellectual lives (Guerra; Guerra and Farr; Kells, Balester, and
Villanueva; Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, and Alvarez; Cintron; Villanueva; Trejo; Limon;
and Ruiz) also managed to retain, to varying extents and in a range of different ways, an
investment in collective storytelling, cuentos, corridos, and other aural practices developed
within a long—and continuing—history of linguistic, educational, economic, and cultural dis-
crimination. Contributing to the persistence of these traditions has been the history of U.S.
imperialism and discrimination in Texas, California, and other border states; the troubled his-
tory of bilingual education in this country; the devaluing of Latin American, Puerto Rican, and
Mexican Spanish speakers; and the persistence of the English-Only movements in public
education. Given this history of discrimination, as Hibbitts points out, Hispanic citizens often
find themselves “drawn and sometimes forced back into the soundscapes of their own ethnic
communities” (2.43), while simultaneously deploying a wide range of written discourses—
skillfully and, sometimes, in ways that productively resist mainstream discourses (Kells,
Balester, and Villanueva; Reyes and Halcon; Cintron).
Many American Indians, too, have managed to sustain a value on aurality—as well as
on writing and a range of other modalities of expression—as means of preserving their
heritage and identities: in public speaking, ceremonial contexts, shared stories, poetry,
and song (Clements; Blaeser; Keeling; Evers and Toelken), although as both Scott Lyons
and Malea Powell point out, the diversity of tribal histories and the “discursive intricacies”
and complexity of Native American’s literacy practices and values remain misunderstood,
under-examined in published scholarship, and prone to painful and simplistic stereotypes.
The aural literacy practices that many tribal members have valued and continue to value—
along with the skillful and critical use of other modalities—serve as complex cultural and
community-based responses to the imperialism of the “Euroamerican mainstream” (Powell
398). Such practices form part of the story of survival and resistance that American Indians
have composed for themselves during the occupation of their homeland and the continuing
denigration of their culture as their battles for sovereignty continue.
In sum, the increasingly limited role of aurality within U.S. English and composition pro-
grams during the last half of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries was intimately tied
to the emerging influence of writing as the primary mode of formal academic work, of com-
mercial exchange and recordkeeping, and of public and professional expression. This trend,
influenced by the rise of manufacturing and science, as well as the growing cultural value
on professionalism, was instantiated in various ways and to varying extents in courses and
universities around the country and enacted variously by groups and individuals according to
their different cultures, literacy values, and practices. The trend was, nevertheless, consist-
ent in its general direction and tendential force. In formal educational contexts, writing and
reading increasingly became separated from speech and were understood as activities to be
enacted, for the most part, in silence.
In this discussion, I take an important lesson from colleagues like Jacqueline Royster
(“First Voice”), Geneva Smitherman (Talkin’), Adam Banks, Scott Lyons, and Malea Powell,
who point out the serious risks, when discussing the oral traditions and practices of people
of color, to cede written English as “somehow the exclusive domain of Whites” (Banks 70).
The work of these scholars reminds us in persuasive and powerful terms that people of color
have historically deployed a wide range of written discourses in masterful and often power-
fully oppositional ways while retaining a value on traditional oral discourses and practices.
My goal in this article, then, is not to suggest that teachers focus on either writing or aurality,
but rather that they respect and encourage students to deploy multiple modalities in skillful
ways—written, aural, visual—and that they model a respect for and understanding of the
various roles each modality can play in human expression, the formation of individual and
group identity, and meaning making. In this work, the efforts of the scholars such as those
cited above as well as attention to historical and contemporary discursive practices of blacks,
Native Americans, Hispanics, and other peoples of color can help direct our thinking and lead
our profession forward in productive ways.
Audio Composing: Sample 2: Elisa Norris’s “Literacy = Identity:

Can You See Me?”
At this point, please go to <http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/selfe2/ccc/> and listen to
Elisa Norris’s audio poem, “Literacy = Identity: Can You See Me?” which opens with a school
bell, a teacher reading a classroom roll, and her own personal call and response, “Elisa
Norris, Elisa Norris. . . is she absent today? No. Do you see her? No.” In this poetic text, an
aural variation on a conventional writing assignment, Norris layers music, voice, and poetic
images to create a composition that asks listeners to acknowledge her presence and the
complex dimensions of her cultural identity. Through the sonic materiality of her own voice,
Norris invites listeners to enter her life, and with her to resist the cultural erasure and racial
stereotypes that shape her experience.
Artifacts of Aurality
Tracing how aurality became subsumed by print within composition classrooms in the United
States during the nineteenth century, however, provides us only one part of a complex his-
torical picture. Another, and perhaps as important, part of the picture involves investigating
how and why aurality has persisted in English composition classrooms, in the midst of a
culture saturated by print.
From one perspective, this process can be understood as a kind of cultural and intellectual
remediation.15 Within the specialized cultural location of the college classroom in the United
States, aural practices became gradually, but increasingly, subsumed by academic writing,
which was presented as the improved medium of formal communication characterizing new
U.S. universities. At the same time, academic writing often made its case for superiority by
referring backwards to characteristics of aurality, which was never entirely erased. By the end
of the nineteenth century, for instance, as scholars such as Ben McCorkle (“Harbingers”) has
noted, the academic focus on the production and delivery of aural texts was increasingly to be
mediated by written textbooks on delivery and elocution. English studies faculty still lectured
and students still engaged in some oral activities, but within the context of the new university,
instruction was increasingly mediated by writing and printed materials—published textbooks,
in written assignments, collected and printed lectures, written examinations for students.
Throughout the twentieth century, too, English composition faculty continued to talk about
oral language, but primarily in comparison with written language. They continued to make ref-
erence to the oral qualities of language, but often metaphorically and in the service of writing
instruction and in the study of written texts (the voice of the writer, the tone of an essay, and
the rhythm of sentences) (Yancey; Elbow, “What”). Similarly, although students continued
to have opportunities for oral performance, they were carefully circumscribed and limited to
conferences, presentations, and class discussions focused on writing.16 And although writing
assignments in the twentieth century sometimes focused on topics that touched on aurality
and oral performances—popular music, for example—students were expected to write their
analyses of songs, to focus on written lyrics, or to use music as a prompt for written composi-
tion. In scholarly arenas, scholars studied the history of rhetoric but considered orality and the
canon of delivery (McCorkle, “Harbingers”) to be of interest primarily as a historical artifact.
Even rhetoric scholars whose work was designed to focus attention on the discursive prac-
tices and “voices” of long-ignored groups—blacks, Latinos/as, Native Americans, women—
wrote about these oral practices.17 The majority of English composition scholars who spoke
about their work at professional conferences delivered written papers that they wrote first
and, only then, read. By the end of the twentieth century, the ideological privileging of writ-
ing was so firmly established that it had become almost fully naturalized. The program of the
1998 Watson Conference, for example, included Beverly Moss as a featured speaker. Moss,
who had fractured the elbow of her right arm, delivered a talk about oral language practices in
black churches. She introduced her presentation by mentioning her own struggle to prepare a
talk without being able to write her text first. Moss’s presentation and delivery were superb—
cogent and insightful—but her framing comments highlighted how difficult and unusual it was
for her, and many other scholars, to deliver an oral presentation without a written text.
Writing as Not-Speech
A brief examination of some aural artifacts in English composition classrooms during the
twentieth century can be instructive in helping readers understand the ways in which atten-
tion to orality has persisted in U.S. composition classrooms.
By the time the Conference on College Composition and Communication was formed in
1949, attention to students’ writing in English departments, with a few brief exceptions, had
almost completely eclipsed attention to aural composition. Although the professional focus
on speech was revived somewhat after scholars like Lev Vygotsky published his ground-
breaking work on the developmental relationship between speech and writing in 1962, many
composition scholars—concerned with staking out the territory of the new field and identify-
ing the intellectual and professional boundaries of the nascent discipline—chose to focus on
the differences between writing and speech, to define the work of composition classrooms
(i.e., writing and the teaching of writing) in opposition to talking, speech, and aurality.18 This
scholarly effort continued throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, until informed by
the work of linguists like Douglas Biber (“Spoken” and Variation) and Deborah Tannen (“Oral”
and Spoken), many in the profession came to recognize that writing and speaking actually
shared many of the same characteristics and did not exist in the essentialized, dichotomous
relationship that had been constructed by scholars.
During the 1960s and 1970s, however, many compositionists defined writing primarily in
terms of how it differed from speech. Motivating some of this activity, at least in part, were
two converging trends. The first, well underway at this point, was the movement away from
current-traditional rhetoric (which posited knowledge as pre-existing language, as external,
as discoverable, and as verifiable) and toward a social-epistemic understanding of rhetoric
(which posited knowledge as socially constructed and created in, and through, the social
uses of language) (Berlin). During roughly the same period, teachers of composition were
also attempting to digest poststructuralist theories of language, which occasionally proved
less than directly accessible. In his 1976 work Of Grammatology, for example, Jacques
Derrida pointed out the fallacy of immediacy and questioned the notion of coherent, self-
presentation of meaning in spoken discourse, and he urged close attention to writing as
the ground for understanding the active play of difference in language and the shifting
nature of signification. Although Derrida’s aim was not to reverse the historical hierarchy
of speech over writing, but rather to call into question logocentricity itself, many composi-
tion scholars connected his focus to the field’s emerging understanding of writing as both
social and epistemic. Influenced not only by these scholarly streams of thought, but by the
overdetermined forces of specialization that continued to shape the field within the modern
university, compositionists turned their scholarly attention and pedagogical efforts, increas-
ingly, away from speech and toward writing, defining the figure of writing against the ground
of speech.19
In 1984, for instance, Sarah Liggett annotated fifty-one articles on “the relationship
between speaking and writing” (354) and suggested another nineteen pieces for “related
reading.” The majority of these works, not surprisingly, concluded that the aural language
practices of talking and speaking were related to writing in various ways and at various lev-
els, but also that they differed significantly from writing in terms of important features (Emig;
Barritt and Kroll; Connors, “Differences”; Farrell; Halpern; Hirsch). Further, in a number of
cases, scholars claimed that writing posed more intellectual challenges to students than
speech or oral composing, that writing was more sophisticated or complex than speech
(Sawyer). Many of these works associated speaking and talking with less reflective, more
“haphazard” communication (Snipes) and with popular culture, while writing was consid-
ered “inherently more self-reliant” (Emig 353), a “more deliberate mode of expression” and
“inherently more intellectual” (Newman and Horowitz 160). In their 1965 article in College
Composition and Communication, John Newman and Milton Horowitz concluded:
Writing and speaking clearly represent different strata of the person. Although both func-
tions funnel thought processes, speaking evidences more feeling, more emotive expres-
sion and more “first thoughts that come to mind.” While writing is more indicative of the
intellectualized, rational, and deliberative aspects of the person.
(164)
Other scholars (Dyson; Bereiter and Scardemalia; Carroll; Furner; Lopate; Snipes; Zoellner)
explored speech and talking as auxiliary activities that could help students during the pro-
cess of writing. The ultimate goal of these activities, however, was always a written compo-
sition or a literate writer. The profession’s bias against aural forms of expression was also
evident in the work of scholars who implied that students’ reliance on the conventions of
oral discourse resulted in the presence of problematic features in their written work (Cayer
and Sacks; Collins and Williamson; Robinson, 1982; Snipes; Shaughnessy). In 1973, for
example, Wilson Snipes investigated the hypothesis that “orientation to an oral culture has
helped cause a gradual decrease in student ability to handle written English in traditionally
acceptable ways” (156), citing “haphazard punctuation,” “loose rambling style,” and “diminu-
tive vocabulary” (159), writing that is “superficial, devoid of subtle distinctions,” and thought
that remains “fixed in a larval state” (160).
Despite the scholarly work of linguists (Biber, “Spoken” and Variation; Tannen, “Oral” and
Spoken) who identified a broad range of overlapping elements that writing and speaking
shared as composing modalities, the bias toward writing continued to grow in composition
studies throughout the twentieth century. By 1994, Peter Elbow sounded a wondering note
at the profession’s continued efforts to separate voice from writing:
What interests me is how . . . most of us are unconscious of how deeply our culture’s
version of literacy has involved as decision to keep voice out of writing, to maximize
the difference between speaking and writing—to prevent writers from even using those
few crude markers that could capture more of the subtle and not so subtle semiotics of
speech. Our version of literacy requires people to distance their writing behavior further
from their speaking behavior than the actual modalities require.
(“What” 8)
The Silence of Voice

Another persistent artifact of aurality in the composition classroom has been the reliance
on metaphors of voice in writing. In Kathleen Yancey’s germinal collection Voices on Voice,
for instance, the bibliography annotates 102 sources that inform professional thinking about
voice. Yet Yancey and Elbow, the authors of this bibliography, describe it as “incomplete”
because “‘Voice’ leads to everything” (315). The treatment of voice in College Composition
and Communication and College English attests to that statement: between 1962 and 1997,
in articles or citations to other scholarly works, voice was explored in connection with femi-
nist theory (Finke), rhetorical theory (Shuster); personal expression, identity, and character
(Gibson; Faigley, “Judging”; Stoehr); the writing process (Winchester); style and mimesis (P.
Brooks); academic writing (Bartholomae); race, gender, and power (Royster, “First Voice”;
Smitherman, “CCCC’s Role”; Wiget, Hennig); technology (Eldred), political dissent (Murray),
advertisements (Sharpe), public and private discourses (Robson), and authenticity and
multiplicity (Fulwiler), and evangelical discourse (Hashimoto), among many other subjects.
Between 1972 and 1998, ten books with voice in their titles were reviewed in CCC.20
What these works on composition had in common, however, was less an understanding
of embodied, physical human voice than a persistent use of the metaphorical language that
remediated voice as a characteristic of written prose.
As Kathleen Yancey outlined the scope of work on voice in 1994,
[W]e use the metaphor of voice to talk generally around issues in writing: about both
the act of writing and its agent, the writer, and even about the reader, and occasionally
about the presence in the text of the writer. . . .Sometimes we use voice to talk specifi-
cally about what and how a writer knows, about the capacity of a writer through “voice”
to reveal (and yet be dictated by) the epistemology of a specific culture. Sometimes we
use voice to talk in neo-Romantic terms about the writer discovering an authentic self
and then deploying it in text.
(vii)
Aurality in Popular Culture

Although aurality continued to take a back seat to writing throughout the twentieth century
in collegiate composition classrooms—especially in terms of the texts that students were
asked to produce—teachers continued to recognize its importance in the lived experience of
young people. In 1968, for instance, Jerry Walker wrote of his concern that English majors
were asked to focus almost exclusively on printed works of “literary heritage” (634) that
provided youths little help in dealing with the problems of the Cold War era. Given students’
concerns about “alienation, war, racial strife, automation, work, and civil disobedience” (635),
Walker noted, they often found the texts of television and radio, which involved the aural
presentation of information, to resonate more forcefully than the written texts of historical
eras. Walker pointed to the successes of teachers who focused on popular culture and who
used aural texts and popular music as foci for classroom assignments. Similar suggestions
for assignments were put forward in subsequent years—with assignments that examined
the music of The Beatles (Carter) and Billie Holiday (Zaluda); popular music in general
(Kroeger); and the writing associated with popular music (Lutz)—for instance, the liner notes
that accompany albums and CDs.
In general, however, the aural text was not the focus of these scholars. Music and com-
munication in mass media (especially radio, film, newspapers) was considered part of popular
culture, and teachers of English composition—influenced by the biases of the belletristic tradi-
tion (Trimbur; Paine) that shaped composition as a discipline—distinguished such texts from
academic discourse, dismissing them as part of the “philistine culture” outside the walls of the
university (George and Trimbur 694).21 Although most composition teachers in the twentieth
century were willing to accept the draw of popular culture, the goal of the composition class-
room remained, at some level, as Adams Sherman Hill had described it in the nineteenth
century: to “arm” students (Hill, qtd. in Paine 292), to “inoculate” (Paine 282) them against the
infectious effects of popular culture and various forms of mass communication, to encourage
them to turn to the written texts of geniuses from the past as a means of discovering their
“real selves” (Hill, qtd. in Paine, p. 282) and “resisting mass culture” (Paine 283). Although it
was permissible to lure students into English classes with the promise of focusing on popular
culture or music, most composition teachers agreed it was best to approach such texts as
objects of study, analysis, interpretation, and, perhaps most importantly, critique (Sirc).
As representative pieces of popular—or low—culture, aural texts were not generally rec-
ognized as appropriately intellectual vehicles for composing meaning in composition class-
rooms. Only writing held that sinecure, and the goal of composition teachers’ assignments
continued to be excellence in reading and writing. Robert Heilman summarized this view
succinctly in 1970, within the context of a discussion about the use of electronic media in
composition classrooms:
the substitution of electronic experience [music, film, radio] in the classroom, for the
study of the printed page is open to question. It tends to reduce the amount of reading by
creating a thirst for the greater immediate excitement of sound and light. The classroom
is for criticism; the critical experience is valuable; and it cannot be wise to attenuate it by
the substitution of sensory experience which the age already supplies in excess.
(242–43)
Despite this common characterization, some pioneering teachers during the 1960s, 1970s,
and 1980s continued to experiment with more contemporary texts and assignments that
involved aural components. Lisa Ede and John Lofty, for instance, suggested incorporat-
ing oral histories into composition classrooms. Both authors, however, also considered the
goal and the final step of such assignments to be written essays that quoted from conversa-
tions with interview subjects. Although aurality was acknowledged and deployed as a way
of engaging students and even a way of investigating various phenomena, it was generally
ignored as a compositional modality.
Aurality and Pedagogy

A value on aurality—in limited and constrained situations—also persisted in the context
of certain classroom practices throughout the twentieth century. One strikingly persistent
thread of work, for instance, focused on teachers and using audio recordings to convey their
responses to student papers (G. Olson; Sommers; Mellen and Sommers; Anson; Sipple). In
such articles, faculty talked about the fact that their taped oral responses to students’ written
work allowed for a clearer acknowledgment of the “rhetorical nature” of response to a piece
of writing, because remarks could be “more detailed and expansive” (Mellen and Sommers
11–12) and unfold across time. As Jeff Sommers noted, the sound of an instructor’s voice
seemed at once more immediate and more personal; the aural nature of the comments were
able to give students a “‘walking tour’” through their texts, as if a reader were conversing
with them (186). Interestingly, however, none of these authors mentioned some of the more
basic affordances of aural feedback—that speech conveys a great deal of meaning through
pace, volume, rhythm, emphasis, and tone of voice as well as through words themselves.22
Teachers continued to provide other aspects of their instruction orally, as well. Diana
George, for example, explored the use of audio taping in the composition classroom as a
way of recording the texts of small group interactions and responding to these texts with her
own suggestions, observations, and remarks. George noted that this approach provided
her insight about the problems that such groups encountered when discussing each other’s
written papers, as well as the work that small groups accomplished when a teacher was not
present. This scholarship deserves attention because it is one of the relatively rare instances
in which students’ oral exchanges were considered as semiotic texts that were composed
and could be studied for the meaning they contained.
As much of this scholarship suggests, however, while students were expected to engage
in discussion and oral group work in many composition classrooms, their speaking was
located within specific contexts and occasions and was expected, generally, to happen on
cue. Such occasions were limited in many classrooms and often were not wholly satisfy-
ing to teachers. In 1974, for instance, Gerald Pierre noted that well-meaning teachers who
depended on lecturing to convey information often short-circuited their own attempts to gen-
erate class discussions, turning them into “oral quizzes, guess-my-conclusion games, or
bristling silences” (306).
In an attempt to address such concerns, some teachers turned to oral presentations as
venues for student talk within the classroom. Mary Saunders, in a 1985 article in College
Composition and Communication, described a sequence of assignments in which students
were asked to make short oral presentations abstracted from drafts of their written research
papers and then to revise their papers based on the feedback they received from class-
mates. The primary goal of these presentations, of course, was to improve students’ written
work, to help them “write better papers” (358). Similarly the aural work accomplished within
teacher-student conferences (Schiff; North; Arbur; A. Rose; Memering) and writing-center
appointments (North; Clark) was subordinated almost wholly to the end goal of writing. For
students, the primary reason for speaking and listening in composition classrooms was iden-
tified as improved writing.
In this context, it is interesting to note that aurality also continued as a key form of faculty
teaching and testing practices.23 Lecturing, for instance, remained a relatively popular form
of teaching in many composition classrooms through the end of the century and beyond—
despite a growing agreement that classrooms should be centered around students’ oppor-
tunities to practice composing strategies rather than teachers’ chances to talk about such
strategies (Finkel; Dawe and Dornan; Pierre; Lindemann).24
The continued use of the lecture as one method of conducting instruction foregrounds
some of the complications and contradictions of the professions’ stance toward aurality and
writing: although students have been encouraged to focus on the production of written texts
and such texts have increasingly become the standard of production for composition classes,
many teachers have continued to impart information through oral lectures, often expending
a great deal of time to craft and deliver effective oral texts. In this respect, as every teacher
and student understands, power and aurality are closely linked. Indeed, the enactment of
authority, power, and status in composition classes is expressed, in part, through aurality:
how much one is allowed to talk and under what conditions. This phenomenon has been
mapped as well in teachers’ aural evaluations of both undergraduate and graduate students,
which, although not generally considered as important as the evaluation of written work, has
remained nonetheless persistent. For undergraduates, for instance, such evaluations have
continued to be conducted in highly ritualized one-on-one conferences in which students are
expected to explain the purposes, audiences, and approaches taken in their written projects
(Schiff; North; Arbur; Rose; Memering). For graduate students, oral questioning and dispu-
tation has persisted in candidacy exams, as well as in more public defenses of theses and
dissertations. To pass such exams, graduate students are expected to succeed both in pro-
ducing a written text and defending their ideas in disputational aural exchanges, forms rooted
historically in verbal argument and display (Ong, Fighting; Connors, “Teaching”).
Aurality and Silenced Voices

It is important to note that attention to aurality has also persisted in the work of scholars
who focused on the rhetorical contributions and histories of marginalized or underrepresented
groups. Individual scholars such as Jacqueline Jones Royster (Traces and “First Voice”) and
Beverly Moss, Scott Lyons and Malea Powell, Anne Ruggles Gere and Geneva Smitherman
(“CCCC’s Role”), among others, for example, brought to bear an understanding of aurality—
and its complex relationship to written literacy—informed by the historical richness of their own
families, communities, and experiences, and trained it on the complex problems associated
with race, class, and gender inequities, and the exercise of power in education and English
composition.
This richly textured scholarship—which holds great value for the profession and our larger
culture—contributes, in particular, to resisting simplistic binary splits between writing and
aurality that have informed instruction in mainstream college composition classrooms during
much of the twentieth century, despite linguistic evidence suggesting the erroneous nature
of such a division. At the same time, this work acknowledges aurality as an important way of
knowing and making meaning for many people in this country—especially those for whom,
historically, higher education has often been part of a system of continued domination and
oppression. Royster, for example, in her 1996 College Composition and Communication
article “When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own” and in her later book Traces in the
Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women, explored the cumu-
lative and multiplied power of her own authentic voice and those of other African American
women—and the responses of a racist culture to these voices. In doing this work, Royster
outlines a powerful argument for aural discourses (as well as, and in combination with, writ-
ten discourses and hybrid forms of communication) that take up the challenge of border
crossing and political action to confront the insidious “cross-cultural misconduct” (32) so
frequently characterizing racism, especially in educational contexts.
The work of Malea Powell and Scott Lyons, too, has helped compositionists complicate
the profession’s “uncritical acceptance of the oral/literate split” (Powell 397) which helps
mask the complexity, range, and depth of Native American texts and discourses, and per-
petuate the stereotypes that continue to sustain racism. Native Americans, these authors
point out, have employed both oral and written discourses as tactics of “survivance” (Powell
428), while acknowledging the many problems associated with communicating in discur-
sive systems—academic writing, legal writing, treaties, legislative venues—that have been
“compromised” (Lyons) as part of a racist, colonial mainstream culture. As Lyons reminds
us, because writing for many Native American people is bound so intimately to the project
of white colonization and domination, and oral discourse so often supports uncritical and
racist stereotyping, “rhetorical sovereignty” (449) is a centrally important feature of Native
American self-determination.
Aural Composing, Sample 3: Wendy Wolters Hinshaw’s Yelling Boy

Wendy Wolters Hinshaw’s Yelling Boy, a reflective examination of her interaction with an
undergraduate student in a section of first-year composition. The reflection, a painfully frank
and honest look at Wolters Hinshaw’s own teaching is rendered in stark terms—no music
and no soundmarks of the classroom,25 no chalk sounds on a blackboard, no scraping of
chairs as a class session ends, no rustling of papers or announcements of assignments
due. This piece, a memory of what took place in a “dirty grey office,” is focused on a single
exchange that happened across a “small teacher’s desk” and takes three minutes for Wolters
Hinshaw to recount in its entirety.
Aurality and Digital Environments for Composing

As many contemporary scholars have pointed out—among them Graff, Gee, Brandt
(“Accumulating” and Literacy), Barton and Hamilton, Powell, Royster (“First Voice”),
Hawisher and Selfe—we cannot hope to fully understand literacy practices or the values
associated with such practices unless, and until, we can also understand the complex cul-
tural ecology that serves as their context. Such ecologies both shape peoples’ literacy prac-
tices and values and are shaped by them in an ongoing duality of structuration (Giddens).
In the United States, then—especially at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning
of the twenty-first century—we cannot hope to fully understand aural or written literacy prac-
tices and values without also understanding something about digital and networked contexts
for communication, among many other factors.
Although digital environments have had many different effects at local, regional, national,
and international levels (Castells, End; Power; Rise), some of the most profound and far-
reaching changes have involved communication forms, practices, values, and patterns.
Although the relationship between digital technologies and literacy remains complexly articu-
lated with existing social and cultural formations, and digital environments continue to be une-
venly distributed along axes of power, class, and race, it is clear that the speed and extended
reach of networked communications have directly affected literacy efforts around the globe
(Human Development Report). Digital networks, for example, have provided routes for the
increasing numbers of communications that now cross geopolitical, cultural, and linguis-
tic borders, and because of this situation, the texts exchanged within such networks often
assume hybrid forms that take advantage of multiple semiotic channels. The international
versions of the Aljazeera Japan Times, BBC, and the International Herald Tribune websites,
for example, offer not only traditional alphabetic journalism, but also video and audio inter-
views. Similarly, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and the International Olympic
Movement, among many other international organizations, all maintain richly textured web-
sites that offer not only print reports and white papers, but audio, video, and photographic
essays as well. These communications—which consist of not only words, but also audio and
video transmissions, images, sounds, music, animations, and multimedia presentations—are
used by organizations, nongovernmental agencies, multinational corporations, international
financial institutions, governments, affinity groups, and individual citizens who form around
common interests and projects, and who compose, exchange, and interpret information, and
through these efforts and others, these communications help establish the cultural codes of
communication in the twenty-first century.
At the same time, new software and hardware applications—video and audio-editing sys-
tems and conferencing software, electronic white boards, digital video cameras, multimodal
composing environments, and digital audio recorders, among many, many more—have pro-
vided increasing numbers of people the means of producing and distributing communica-
tions that take advantage of multiple expressive modalities.
These two converging trends have had many effects,26 among them an increasing inter-
est in aurality and modalities of expression other than the printed word—not only in linguis-
tics, literacy, and language studies (Ong, Oral-ity; Kleine and Gale; McCorkle, “Harbingers”;
Halbritter; Hawisher and Selfe; DeVoss, Hawisher, Jackson, Johansen, Moraski, and Selfe;
Tannen, “Oral,” and Spoken) but also in medicine (Sterne; Sykes), legal studies (Hibbitts;
Gilkerson; Hespanha), cultural studies (Bull and Back), geography (Sui; J. Olson; Carney),
architecture (Labelle, Roden, and Migo; C. N. Brooks, Architectural, Kahn), film (Altaian;
O’Brien; Chion), and history (B. Smith; Yow; Richie) among many other areas and disci-
plines. As Hibbitts sketches the connection:
The history of Western culture over the past 125 years suggests that the recent turn
toward the aural is largely a product of new aural technologies. In essence, cultural
aurality has tended to become more pronounced as aural technologies have multiplied
and spread. At every stage in this process, the existence of these technologies has radi-
cally extended the power and range of aurally communicated information. As technologi-
cally transmitted and amplified sound has become able to assume more of the cultural
burden, culture itself has turned towards sound for information.
(3.12)
In composition studies, then, it is not surprising that some of the impetus for a new turn
toward aurality has been contributed by technology scholars focusing on electronic, multime-
dia, and multimodal composing. This early thread of scholarship resisted, for the most part,
simplistic distinctions between orality and writing, and connected digital writing to aurality
in metaphorical terms. Such work became increasingly important throughout the last dec-
ade of the twentieth century as computer systems developed to accommodate new forms
of communicative exchanges: online conferences (Bruce, Peyton, and Bertram; Faigley,
Fragments); listservs (Cubbison; Selfe and Myer); MOOs and MUDs (Haefner; Haynes and
Holmevik), and email (Yancey and Spooner), for example.27
By the end of the decade and the century, low-cost and portable technologies of digi-
tal audio recording, such as minidisc recorders, and simplified open-source audio-editing
software, such as Audacity, put the material means of digital audio production into the hands
of both students and English composition teachers.28 Many of these teachers were already
experimenting with digital video, using Apple’s iMovie or Microsoft’s Movie Maker,29 both
which contained an audio track and limited audio-editing capabilities, but digital audio-editing
programs made it possible for teachers and students to compose with audio in ways that they
could not do previously: recording and layering environmental and artificial sounds to create
a textured sonic context and collection of detail, weaving vocal interview and commentary
sources together to provide multiple perspectives on a subject; adding music, silence, and
audio effects to ways of changing emphasis, tone, pace, delivery, and content.
Although new software environments expanded the opportunities for experimentation
with audio compositions in English classrooms, the intellectual basis of such work was also
fueled by the germinal scholarship of the New London Group, Gunther Kress and Theo Van
Leeuwen, and Cope and Kalantzis—who identified the aural as one modality among many
on which individuals should be able to call as a rhetorical and creative resource in composing
messages and making meaning. These scholars argued for an increasingly robust theory of
semiosis that acknowledged the practices of human sign makers who selected from a range
of modalities for expression (including sound, image, and animation, for example) depending
on rhetorical and material contexts within which the communication was being designed and
distributed. They also noted that no one expressive modality, including print, was capable of
carrying the full range of meaning in a text, and pointed out that the texts sign makers created
both shaped and were shaped by the universe of semiotic resources they accessed.
This expanded semiotic theory brought into sharp relief the hegemony of print as an
expressive mode in English composition classrooms—especially for scholars studying
emerging forms of communication in digital environments. Many of these scholars had
observed the profession’s love-hate relationship with these new forms of expression during
the last decade of the twentieth century—blogs,30 homemade digital videos,31 multimedia
sites like MySpace32 and Facebook,33 digital audio and podcasting.34 Although such texts had
begun to dominate digital environments and self-sponsored literacy venues, print continued
to prevail as “the way” of knowing (Dunn, Talking 15), the primary means of learning and
communicating in composition classrooms. Although email, websites, and multimedia texts
were accepted as objects for study, critique, and analysis—and while many students were
already engaging in the self-sponsored literacy practices of creating digital video and audio
texts—composition assignments, for the large part, continued to resemble those of the past
hundred years (Takayoshi and Selfe).
In a 1999 chapter, “English at the Crossroads,” in Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century
Technologies, for instance, Kress described the cultural changes he saw literacy practices
undergoing in an increasingly technological world and compared these to the continued privileg-
ing of print by teachers of English. The exclusive focus on print and written language, he noted,
has meant a neglect, an overlooking, even suppression of the potentials of representa-

tion and communicational modes in particular cultures, an often repressive and always
systematic neglect of human potentials in many . . . areas; and a neglect equally, as a
consequence of the development of theoretical understandings of such modes. . . .Or,
to put it provocatively: the single, exclusive and intensive focus on written language has
dampened the full development of all kinds of human potential, through all the sensorial
possibilities of human bodies, in all kinds of respects, cognitively and affectively.
(85)
With the development of the Internet and digital audio and video applications, new depth and
scope were added to scholarship around aurality. In 2004, for example, Scott Halbritter, of
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote a dissertation that explored sound as a
rhetorical resource in multimedia compositions. In 2005, Tara Shankar, in her MIT disserta-
tion, described a project in which young students composed using a “spriting” software that
she had developed to take advantage of their oral exchanges; and in a 2005 dissertation
completed at Ohio State University, Warren Benson (Ben) McCorkle explored the remedia-
tion of aurality by print and writing, as well as the subsequent diminishment of professional
attention to the canon of delivery in nineteenth-century collegiate instruction.
By 2006, Computers and Composition: An International Journal published a special
issue on sound, edited by Cheryl Ball and Byron Hawk. In tandem with this collection of
print articles, Ball and Hawk also published a related set of online essays and resources in
Computers and Composition Online, an online version of the journal edited by Kristine Blair.
The collection contained not only print essays but also video and audio texts that offered key
arguments, illustrations, and examples that could not be rendered in a print environment.
As such scholarly works have emerged during the last decades, compositionists have
continued to experiment with assignments that encouraged students to create meaning in
and through audio compositions, focusing assignments on podcasting,35 mashups, voicemail
compositions and sound poems,36 radio essays,37 audio documentaries and interviews,38
audio ethnographies,39 as well as video, multimedia, and other forms of multimodal com-
position. Other rhetoric and composition scholars, taking their cue from increasingly visible
projects in history, folklore, and anthropology, began to involve students in recording and
collecting the oral histories of two-year college composition teachers,40 key figures in rhetoric
and composition studies,41 and pioneers in the writing-center movement.42
Aural Composing Sample 4: Daniel Keller’s Lord of the Machines:

Reading the Human Computer Relationship
Daniel Keller’s audio essay, Lord of the Machines: Reading the Human Computer Relationship.
This richly textured composition explores the complex relationship that humans have estab-
lished with computers through their daily interaction and through media representations.
By Way of Concluding, but Not Ending . . .

In this essay, I offer some perspective about the way in which U.S. composition studies has
subsumed, remediated, and rediscovered aurality during the past 150 years. This story, how-
ever, is far from complete, and far from as tidy as I have suggested. The recent attention to,
and rethinking of, sound as a composing modality—and the understanding and use of other
composing modalities such as video, images, and photographs—remain fragmented and
uneven, far from a broadly defined professional trend. Although many teachers who work
with digital media in this country recognize the efforts I describe here and have participated
in them or helped sustain them, for other teachers the bandwidth of composing resources
remains limited to words on a printed page.
Sustaining this situation is a constellation of factors—not all of them technological. Chief
among them, for instance, is the profession’s continuing bias toward print and ongoing
investment in specialization, understandable as historically and culturally informed methods
of ensuring our own status and continuity. Given this context, many English composition
programs and departments maintain a scholarly culture in which, nonprint forms, genres,
and modalities of communication are considered objects of study and critique, but not a set
of resources for student authors to deploy themselves. As Gunther Kress observes, “Control
over communication and over the means of representation is, as always, a field in which
power is exercised” (“English” 67).
It is also true that recording and editing sound—or images or video—in digital environ-
ments is still far from a transparent or inexpensive activity, and many composition teach-
ers lack the technology, the professional development training, and the technical support
needed to experiment with assignments such as those I have described. Although most
schools now have access to computers, and most departments of English and writing pro-
grams can count on some kind of computer facility, work with sound and video still requires
computers specially equipped for such projects, access to mass storage for student projects,
support for teachers who want to learn to work with audio, and sympathetic and knowledge-
able technical staff members who understand the importance of such work. These resources
are unevenly distributed in small state-and privately funded schools, historically black col-
leges and universities, and reservation schools, rural schools, and schools that have been
hit by devastating events such as Hurricane Katrina. None of this, of course, is helped by
the reduction of support for education in the wake of our country’s massive expenditures on
national security and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I should be as clear as possible here about exactly what I am advocating, and why. My
argument is not either/or, but both/and. I am not arguing against writing, the value we place
on writing, or an understanding of what writing— and print—contribute to the human condi-
tion that is vitally important. Indeed, it is evident to me that the ability to express oneself in
writing will continue to be a hallmark of educated citizens in the United States for some time
to come. Nor do I want to contribute to re-inscribing the simplistic terms of a writing/aurality
divide, a division that is as limiting as it is false.
I do want to argue that teachers of composition need to pay attention to, and come to
value, the multiple ways in which students compose and communicate meaning, the excit-
ing hybrid, multimodal texts they create—in both nondigital and digital environments—to
meet their own needs in a changing world. We need to better understand the importance
that students attach to composing, exchanging, and interpreting new and different kinds
of texts that help them make sense of their experiences and lives—songs and lyrics, vid-
eos, written essays illustrated with images, personal Web pages that include sound clips.
We need to learn from their motivated efforts to communicate with each other, for them-
selves and for others, often in resistance to the world we have created for them. We need
to respect the rhetorical sovereignty of young people from different backgrounds, com-
munities, colors, and cultures, to observe and understand the rhetorical choices they are
making, and to offer them new ways of making meaning, new choices, new ways of accom-
plishing their goals.
I do want to convince compositionists how crucial it is to acknowledge, value, and draw
on a range of composing modalities—among them, images (moving and still), animations,
sound, and color—which are in the process of becoming increasingly important to commu-
nicators, especially within digital networks, now globally extended in their reach and scope.
The identities that individuals are forging through such hybrid communicative practices,
as Manual Castells (Power 360) points out, are key factors in composing the cultural and
communicative codes that will characterize coming decades. Students are intuitively aware
of these related phenomena, being immersed in them, but they need help understand-
ing the implications of such cultural trends as well as managing their own communicative
efforts in ways that are rhetorically effective, critically aware, morally responsible, and per-
sonally satisfying. Responsible educators, critically aware scholars of semiotic theory and
practice, will not want to ignore these world-order changes or the opportunities they offer.
To understand how literacy practices change, especially in times of rapid transforma-
tion, Deborah Brandt (“Accumulating”) maintains that both teachers and students need to
understand how literacy forms emerge and contend and to study those contexts within which
“latent forms of older, residual literacies . . . are at play alongside emerging ones” (665). To
undertake such work in classrooms, Brandt suggests, we can talk to students about how
both “school based’ and ‘home-based’ literacies form and function within larger historical cur-
rents” (666). Composition classrooms can provide a context not only for talking about differ-
ent literacies, but also for practicing different literacies, learning to create texts that combine
a range of modalities as communicative resources: exploring their affordances, the special
capabilities they offer to authors; identifying what audiences expect of texts that deploy dif-
ferent modalities and how they respond to such texts.
Within such a classroom, teaching students to make informed, rhetorically based uses
of sound as a composing modality—and other expressive modalities such as video, still
images, and animation—could help them better understand the particular affordances of
written language, and vice versa. Pam Takayoshi and I have outlined this case elsewhere in
the following pragmatic terms:
[T]eaching students how to compose and focus a thirty-second public service

announcement (PSA) for radio—and select the right details for inclusion in this audio
composition—also helps teach them specific strategies for focusing a written essay
more tightly and effectively, choosing those details most likely to convey meaning in
effective ways to a particular audience, for a particular purpose. In addition, as stu-
dents engage in composing a script for the audio PSA, they are motivated to engage
in meaningful, rhetorically based writing practice. Further, as students work within the
rhetorical constraints of such an audio assignment, they learn more about the par-
ticular affordances of sound (the ability to convey accent, emotion, music, ambient
sounds that characterize a particular location or event) and the constraints of sound
(the difficulty of going back to review complex or difficult passages, to convey change
not marked by sound, to communicate some organizational markers like paragraphs).
Importantly, students also gain the chance to compare the affordances and constraints
of audio with those of alphabetic writing—and, thus, improve their ability to make
informed and conscious choices about the most effective modality for communicating
in particular rhetorical contexts.
(3)
The challenges and difficulties of such work cannot be underestimated. The time that stu-
dents spend in composition classrooms is altogether too short—especially during the first two
years of college. Indeed, many teachers will argue that they do not have enough instructional
time to teach students what they need to know about writing and rhetoric, let alone about
composing digital audio texts (or digital videos or photo essays, for instance). A variation
of this argument will be familiar to any compositionist who has offered a writing-across-the-
curriculum workshop to colleagues who understand their job as involving coverage of a set
amount of disciplinary material rather than the task of teaching students how to think through
problems using writing. Frequently, these colleagues—who design instruction around the
mastery of facts, procedures, or series of historical events—consider writing instruction to be
add-on content, material that detracts from the real focus of disciplinary mastery. Like most
writing-across-the-curriculum specialists, however, I would argue that the primary work of
any classroom is to help students use semiotic resources to think critically, to explore, and to
solve problems. In composition classes, this means helping students work through communi-
cative problems—analyzing a range of rhetorical tasks and contexts (online, in print contexts,
and face to face); deploying a range of assets (both digital and nondigital) effectively and
responsibly; and making meaning for a range of purposes, audiences, and information sets.
It is an understandable, if unfortunate, fact, as Patricia Dunn (“Talking” 150) argues, that our
profession has come to equate writing with intelligence. Even more important, she adds, we
have allowed ourselves to ignore the “back story” implications of this equation, the unspoken
belief that those who do not privilege writing above all other forms of expression—those indi-
viduals and groups who have “other ways of knowing,” learning, and expressing themselves—
may somehow lack intelligence. This unacknowledged and often unconscious episteme has
particular salience for contemporary literacy practices that are not focused solely on print or
alphabetic writing. As teachers of rhetoric and composition, our responsibility is to teach stu-
dents effective, rhetorically based strategies for taking advantage of all available means of
communicating effectively and productively as literate citizens.
And so back to what’s at stake. As faculty, when we limit our understanding of composing
and our teaching of composition to a single modality, when we focus on print alone as the
communicative venue for our assignments and for students responses to those assignments,
we ensure that instruction is less accessible to a wide range of learners, and we constrain
students’ ability to succeed by offering them an unnecessarily narrow choice of semiotic and
rhetorical resources. By broadening the choice of composing modalities, I argue, we expand
the field of play for students with different learning styles and differing ways of reflecting on
the world; we provide the opportunity for them to study, think critically about, and work with
new communicative modes. Such a move not only offers us a chance to make instruction
increasingly effective for those students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds,
but it also provides an opportunity to make our work increasingly relevant to a changing set
of communicative needs in a globalized world. As Gunther Kress (“English”) has suggested,
it may also make us better scholars of semiotic systems by providing us with additional
chances to observe, systematically and at close quarters, how people make meaning in
contemporary communication environments when they have a full palette of rhetorical and
semiotic resources on which to draw, new opportunities to theorize about emerging repre-
sentational practices within such environments, and additional chances to study the com-
municative possibilities and potentials of various modes of expression. It gives us another
reason to pay attention to language and to learn.
For students, the stakes are even more significant. Young people need to know that their
role as rhetorical agents is open, not artificially foreclosed by the limits of their teachers’ imag-
inations. They need a full quiver of semiotic modes from which to select, role models who
can teach them to think critically about a range of communication tools, and multiple ways of
reaching their audience. They do not need teachers who insist on one tool or one way.
Students, in sum, need opportunities to realize that different compositional modalities
carry with them different possibilities for representing multiple and shifting patterns of iden-
tity, additional potential for expression and resistance, expanded ways of engaging with a
changing world—as the four audio essays I reference in this article indicate. As student Elisa
Norris put it, “If we can imagine using these types of projects in our writing studios, we can
open up that learning space so that all students have room to express themselves.”
Students need these things because they will join us as part of an increasingly challenging
and difficult world—one plagued by destructive wars and great ill will, marked by poverty and
disease, scarred by racism and ecological degradation. In this world, we face some wickedly
complex communicative tasks. To make our collective way with any hope for success, to cre-
ate a different set of global and local relations than currently exists, we will need all available
means of persuasion, all available dimensions, all available approaches, not simply those
limited to the two dimensional space of a printed page.
Acknowledgments
l am deeply grateful to Diana George whose work on the visual (CCC 54.1) inspired this
piece, as well as to all the generous friends and colleagues who helped me think about
aurality as I wrote this article: Dickie Selfe, Gail Hawisher, Randy Freisinger, Marilyn
Cooper, Erin Smith, Gary Bays, Michael Moore, Dennis Lynch, Scott DeWitt, Debra Journet,
Ben McCorkle, Michael Harker, Jason Palmeri, Beverly Moss, and Peter Elbow, among
others. I am also most grateful for the valuable revision suggestions provided by the CCC
reviewers. All of these individuals have contributed to making this a better, more insightful,
and more thoughtful text.
Notes
1 With the term aurality, I refer to a complexly related web of communicative practices that are received
or perceived by the ear, including speech, sound, and music. In exploring aurality, I focus on both the
reception and the production of aural communications. I also focus on the purposeful composition of
aural texts. One of my goals in exploring the role of aural communication in composition classrooms
is to suggest that the written word is not the only way of composing and communicating meaning
or understanding, nor should it be the sole focus of composition instruction in a world where people
make meaning and extend their understanding through the use of multiple semiotic modalities in
combination— sound, printed words, spoken words, still and moving images, graphical elements.
In using the term aurality, rather than the more common orality, I hope to resist models of an
oral/literate divide and simplistic characterizations of cultures or groups as either oral or literate in
their communicative practices. Humans make and communicate meaning through a combination of
modalities—sound, still and moving images, words, among them—and using a variety of media. And
they read and interpret texts that combine modalities as well.
2 The term multimodal is used by the New London Group to indicate the range of modalities—printed
words, still and moving images, sound, speech, and music, color—that authors combine as they
design texts.
3 I borrow the term rhetorical sovereignty from Scott Lyons (2000), but extend it, advisedly, and in ways
that I recognize might not remain faithful to his use of the term. Lyons uses the term to describe the
right of indigenous peoples to have “some say about the nature of their textual representations,” to
determine their own representational needs and identities, their own accounts of the past and pres-
ent. For Lyons, rhetorical sovereignty is intimately connected to the land; to the history, the present,
and the future of native peoples; to culture and community. I use rhetorical sovereignty to refer to
the rights of students to have “some say” about their own representational needs, identities, and
modalities of expression. In making this statement, however, I do not want to suggest that all college
students are subject to the same systems of domination and cultural violence as native peoples.
They are not. Nor do I want to diminish, in any way or to any degree, the importance, of Lyons’s
insights or our professional responsibility for supporting the sovereignty efforts that native peoples
have undertaken. I stand in solidarity and support of these efforts.
4 As I suggest throughout this article, aurality remains a relatively small but valued part of the com-
position classroom—only, however, in limited and constrained circumstances: in the occasional oral
presentation, in classroom discussions, or in one-on-one conferences, for example. In these situa-
tions, aurality is valued and even prized. In the vast majority of compositions classrooms, however,
the formal expression of knowledge is reserved for writing, and written papers are the product toward
which students are taught to work.
5 In 1873, Harvard formed its Department of English. The mission of this unit was to teach written
English within the new secular, specialized university. For extended and informative discussions
of how rhetorical education was conducted during this period, see Russell (“Institutionalizing”);
Halloran; Wright and Halloran; Johnson; Berlin; and Congleton.
6 Within this context, David Russell (Writing) notes, writing:
was now embedded in a whole array of complex and highly differentiated social practices car-
ried on without face-to-face communication. The new professions . . . increasingly wrote . . . for
specialized audiences of colleagues who were united not primarily by ties of class but by the
shared activities, the goals, . . . the unique conventions of a profession or discipline.
(4–5)
7 James A. Berlin notes that “Charles William Eliot, Harvard’s president from 1869 to 1909 . . . con-
sidered writing so central to the new elective curriculum he was shaping that in 1874 the Freshman
English course at Harvard was established, by 1894 was the only requirement except for a modern
language, and by 1897, was the only required course in the curriculum, consisting of a two-semes-
ter sequence” (20). Influenced variously by the belles lettristic tradition, the pressures of increasing
collegiate enrollments, the influential move toward graduate education on the German model,
and continued moves toward specialized study in the new university, however, writing gave way,
in fairly short order, to a focus on the reading and analysis of contemporary and classical literary
texts. And by the first part of the twentieth century, the efforts of most departments of English were
focused primarily on literary works. For an extended discussion of this trend, see Halloran; Berlin;
and Russell.
8 In the Atlantic Monthly of March 1869, Eliot wrote:
No men have greater need of the power of expressing their ideas with clearness, conciseness,
and vigor than those whose avocation require them to describe and discuss material resources,
industrial processes, public works, mining enterprises, and the complicated problems of trade
and finance. In such writings, embellishment may be dispensed with, but the chief merits of
style—precision, simplicity, perspicuity, and force are never more necessary.
(359)
9 See Ben McCorkle’s article “Harbingers of the Printed Page” for an extended explanation of how the
canon of delivery fared in nineteenth-century composition classes and how orality became sub-
sumed to, and remediated by, writing in composition classrooms.
10 Ronald Reid describes these changes in terms of the Boyleston Professorship at Harvard—and the
occupants of this position—as cases in point.
In 1806, rhetoric was concerned primarily with persuasive oratory and sunk its roots deeply in
the classical tradition. By the time of Hill’s retirement [in 1904], what was called “rhetoric” was
concerned not with oratory, but with written composition, expository and literary as well as per-
suasive and made little direct reference to classical authors. And not even these new concerns
were those of the Boyleston professorship, which abandoned rhetoric for literature, oratory for
poetry. Such a dramatic shift took place not only at Harvard, but in higher education generally.
(239)
The Boyleston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory, was held by the following individuals from 1806
to 1904: John Quincy Adams (statesman, 1806–1809), Joseph McKean (former minister, mathemati-
cian, 1809–1818), Edward T. Channing (attorney, editor of North American Review, 1819–1851),
Francis James Child (who studied at Gottingen University in Germany and applied many German
practices to the revision of U.S. curricula, 1851–1876), and Adams Sherman Hill (1876–1904). For
an extended discussion of this professorship and the changes it underwent at the end of the nine-
teenth century, see Ronald Reid s article “The Boyleston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory,
1806–1904.”
11 Although oral composition—both scripted and nonscripted—waned relatively rapidly in English com-
position classrooms during the last half of the nineteenth century, it persisted in other locations. One
of these was the extracurricular literary and debate societies that gained popularity in the eighteenth
century and persisted throughout the nineteenth century in various collegiate and noncollegiate
forms (Gere; Halloran; Royster, Traces; Berlin). In colleges, this movement was often initiated and
carried on by students, often with little help from faculty, to support practice in public speaking and
debating topics of interest. Many such clubs engaged in intercollegiate contests.
Attention to aurality was also sustained by the popular Elocutionary Movement, which began its
rise to prominence in the late eighteenth century and continued throughout the nineteenth century.
This movement, too, was built on the general interest in systematic and scientific knowledge, iden-
tifying elaborately prescriptive texts with “highly encoded notational systems to precisely regulate
vocal inflection, gestures of the arms, hands, and legs, and even facial countenances as a means of
directly manipulating different faculties in the minds of listeners.” (B. McCorkle, “Harbingers” 35). In
this movement, oral delivery figured centrally and prescriptively.
12 As Hibbitts (2.25) describes this shift,
Within the white community, public speech became more dependent on visual, written scripts;
old-fashioned oratory was increasingly dismissed as “mere rhetoric.” Storytelling survived, but it
was largely, if not altogether accurately, associated with children, members of less literate lower
classes, and inhabitants of backward rural areas. Most white American authors jettisoned the
more obvious aural mannerisms and formats that had characterized so much American litera-
ture in the antebellum era. At the same time, white Americans gradually embraced silence as
both a social norm and a primary means of social discipline. Increasingly used to sitting quietly
in front of texts, white American theater- and concert-goers who had formerly been inclined to
spontaneously talk to each other and interact with stage performers became more willing to sit
in silent (or at least suspended) judgment on the musicians and actors who appeared before
them. In the schoolroom where white American teachers had once taught their students to read
by recitation, the most important meta-lesson became, as it today remains, how to sit, write,
and read in contented quiet.
13 I write about the complexly articulated effects of race, class, and gender from my subject position
as a white female academic. As Marilyn Cooper reminds me, this position limits my work: I can write
about people of color, but never as a person of color. I also recognize the great danger, especially
in such a brief article, of glossing over the important differences, cultural complexities, and rich
histories of different groups, ignoring the specific ways in which individuals and communities have
figured in the history of the United States, the distinctive kinds of oppression and discrimination
they have experienced, the ways in which they have been treated within educational, judicial, and
legislative arenas. I encourage readers to refer to more extended works by the notable scholars
cited in this section who write as people of color, as well as about people of color.
14 For a rich and insightful discussion of how African Americans have both retained a value on histori-
cal oral forms and skillfully deployed written discourses in resistant ways, see Adam Banks’s Race,
Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground. In this book, Banks notes how black online
discourse and spaces such as Black Planet have served as nonmainstream sites for keeping “self-
determination, of resistance, of keeping oppositional identities and worldviews alive, refusing to
allow melting pot ideologies of language and identity” (70) to prevail.
15 Bolter and Gruisins term remediation—explored in their 1999 book of the same name—refers to
the processes by which new media and media forms (for instance, flat-screen television) take up
and transform prior media (conventional televisions)—promising to fulfill a particular unmet need or
improve on some performance standard. Bolter and Grusin note, however, that new media never
completely supplant or erase prior media because they must refer to these forms in making the
case for their own superiority (54). Their discussion of remediation extends far beyond the simple,
limited, and metaphorical use of the term I make in this article.
16 Technical, professional, and business communication courses offer an important exception to the
diminishing role of aurality. In these courses, the oral presentation has consistently retained its cur-
rency as an important part of the curriculum. In 1994, Heather A. Howard reported that every single
one of the authors of the ten leading textbooks in business and professional communication con-
sidered “oral communication and public speaking as worthwhile topics” for inclusion in their books,
and 70 percent of these authors specifically mentioned “informative and persuasive” speeches (5).
And, in 2003, Kelli Cargile Cook noted that oral presentations were the most frequently assigned
tasks in 197 technical communication courses identified in a random sampling of ATTW listserv
members (54). It is possible that this situation persists because such courses are so responsive to
the needs of employers. In 1995, for example, Karen K. Waner noted that “oral communication skills”
such as “using appropriate techniques in making oral presentations”; using “appropriate body action
in interpersonal and oral communication”; “analyzing the audience before, during, and after an oral
report”; and “objectively” presenting information in oral reports” were considered “important” or “very
important” by both business faculty and business professionals (55).
17 Contributing to these practices, of course, was the cultural value that the academy placed—and con-
tinues to place—on written scholarship published in print journals. This value has been instantiated
at numerous levels of university culture and through articulated systems of salaries, raises, hirings,
and promotion and tenure guidelines. These related formations have shaped the professional culture
of composition studies and continue to do so in fundamental ways.
18 One of the notable exceptions to this trend can be found in the work of Peter Elbow, who has, for
years, reminded readers that writing and speech, far from being absolutely distinct activities, are
complexly connected through a constellation of cognitive, linguistic, and social relationships. See
Elbows “The Shifting Relationships between Speech and Writing” and “What Do We Mean When We
Talk about Voice.”
9
1 I thank Debra Journet, of the University of Louisville, for this insight and for many others.
20 The books with “voice” in their title included: Frank O’Connor’s The Lonely Voice: A Study of the
Short Story; Donald Stewart’s The Authentic Voice: A Pre-Writing Approach to Student Writing; Otis
Winchester’s The Sound of Your Own Voice; Jill Wilson Cohn’s Writing: The Personal Voice; Martin
Medhurst’s Voice and Writing; Jim W. Corder’s Finding a Voice; Kathleen Yancey’s Voices on Voice;
Johnny Payne’s Voice and Style; Michael Huspek and Gary P. Radford’s Transgressing Discourses:
Communication and the Voice of the Other; and Albert Guerard, Maclin Guerard, John Hawkes, and
Claire Rosenfield’s The Personal Voice: A Contemporary Prose Reader.
21 In this article, and elsewhere, George and Trimbur argue persuasively against this conception, as
well as English studies’ adherence to the historical distinction between high and low culture.
22 For further explanation of this technique and a bibliography see Susan Sipple’s and Jeff Sommers’s
“A Heterotopic Space: Digitized Audio Commentary and Student Revisions.”
23 My thanks to Peter Elbow for pointing out the persistence of aurality and lecturing in both composi-
tion classroom settings and testing contexts for graduate students.
24 Increasingly throughout the 1960s to 1990s, lecturing in composition classrooms became sup-
planted by peer-group and project-based work and the one-on-one conferencing approaches that
characterized student-centered pedagogies. This process, however, was slow, often uneven, and
certainly never complete.
In a 1965 Conference on College Composition and Communication workshop session (“New
Approaches in Teaching Composition”) that was attended by James Moffett, for example, William
Holmes reported on using “televised lectures” developed by Ohio University as a “solution to teach-
ing ever more freshman with ever more graduate students” (207), W. Grayson Lappert described
lecture sessions at Balwin Wallace (208); and Eric Zale described using lectures used to teach
composition at Eastern Michigan University (208).
In 1972, James R. Sturdevant—defending lectures as one effective method for teaching large
groups of students, especially when such methods were combined with other approaches—
described a pilot program at Ohio Wesleyan University. This program was developed to teach large
groups of students effectively and efficiently: “Students were exposed to the study of composition
through assigned readings in a rhetoric text and an essay anthology, large group lectures, short
diagnostic exercises, small group meetings, and coordinating writing assignments” (420).
And even later, in 1997, Martha Sammons, providing readers advice on using PowerPoint, noted:
Electronic presentations tend to make you lecture more quickly than usual, so remember to
move slowly from slide to slide. To maintain suspense, you can use the feature of hiding bullets
until you are ready. Use traditional lecturing techniques to elaborate on key points. Most impor-
tant, don’t lose your normal teaching style.
Indeed lecturing has never entirely disappeared from college-level writing classrooms, although
it has certainly become less popular. In 2000, Donald Finkel wrote in his book Teaching with Your
Mouth Shut:
Most people have a set of ready-made assumptions about what a teacher does. A teacher
talks, tells, explains, lectures, instructs, professes. Teaching is something you do with your
mouth open, your voice intoning . . . . After hearing their stirring lectures, we left their class-
rooms inspired, moved. But did we learn anything? What was left of this experience five years
later? These questions usually don’t get asked.
(1)
25 Soundmark is R. Murray Schafer’s (1977) term, derived from the word landmarks, to refer to sounds
that characterize the life of a particular place, time, or group, sonic markers that “make the acoustic
life of a community unique” (10).
26 I do not mean to suggest that digital technologies are the only reason for a renewed interest in orality.
The cultural ecology of literacy is a complexly rendered landscape and comprises a large number of
related factors.
27 It is important to note that one of the very earliest online conferencing systems— ENFI (Electronic
Networks for Interaction)—was used as a communicative environment for deaf students. As my col-
league Brenda Brueggeman has reminded me, innovations in communicative technologies often
begin in communities of people who have different abilities and forms of making and exchanging
information, of composing meaning. For more about ENFI, see Bruce, Peyton, and Batson. For more
about technology and disability, see Brueggemann and Snyder; Brueggemann; and Garland-Thomson.
8 The minidisc recorder was developed by Sony in 1991–1992 (“Hardware and Software”), providing
2
consumers with a low-cost and highly portable digital audio recording device that is still used today.
Audacity, a widely used open-source audio editor, was invented in 1999 by Dominic Mazzoni. As the
Audacity manual describes the project’s development, Mazzoni was a:
graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. He was working on a
research project with his advisor, Professor Roger Dannenberg, and they needed a tool that
would let them visualize audio analysis algorithms. Over time, this program developed into a
general audio editor, and other people started helping out.
(Oetzmann)
This combination put digital audio recording, editing, and production within the reach of teachers and
students in English composition, much like the personal computer put word processing within the
reach of such classes in the early 1980s.
29 Apple’s iMovie was first released to consumers in 1999 (“Apple Computer”). Microsoft’s MovieMaker
was released on 14 September 2000 as part of the Windows Millennium Edition (“Windows ME”).
30 According to Technorati, by January of 2006, over 75,000 new blogs were being created each day, an
average of one newblog every second of every day. In addition, 13.7 million bloggers are still post-
ing three months after their blogs were created. At this point, Technorati tracked 1.2 million new blog
posts a day, about 50,000 per hour. For further statistics, see the Technorati website at <http://www.
technorati.com/>.
31 In August of 2006, YouTube.com reported more than 100 million video views every day with 65,000
new videos uploaded daily and approximately 20 million unique users per month (<http://www.you
tube.com/t/fact_sheet>). Grouper.com, another site that allows users to upload their homemade
videos, reported 8 million unique visitors (<http://www.grouper.com/about/press.aspx>).
32 Kevin Poulson reported in 2006 that MySpace has “gathered over 57 million registered users (count-
ing some duplicates and fake profiles). As of last November, it enjoyed a 752-percent growth in Web
traffic over one year, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.”
33 Facebook, the “second most-trafficked PHP site in the world,” reports “175 million active (users who
have returned to the site in the last 30 days).”
34 The Arbitron/Edison Media Research report, Internet and Multimedia 2006, notes that the ownership
of MP3 players increased from 14 percent to 22 percent among all age groups in the United States
and from 27 percent to 42 percent among 12- to 17-year-olds in 2005–2006 (32), and that more than
27 million people in the United States have listened to audio podcasts (Rose and Lenski 29).
35 See Daniel Anderson, Erin Branch, and Stephanie Morgans website, Casting about with Sound: A
Podcast Workshop, offered at the 2006 Computers and Writing conference <http://www.siteslab.org/
workshops/podcast/>.
36 See Daniel Anderson’s blog, I am Dan: A Writing Pusher in the Media Age at <http://www.thoughtpress.
org/daniel/> for innovative uses of sound in the composition classroom.
37 See Jeff Porter’s course “Radio Essays” at the University of Iowa at <http://isis5.uiowa.edu/isis/
courses/details.page?ddd=08N&ccc=145&sss=001&session=20063> and Jonah Willihnganz’s
course “The Art of the Audio Essay” at Stanford University at <http://www.stanford.edu/~jonahw/
PWR2-W06/Radio-Home.html>.
38 See Lisa Spiro’s course “The Documentary Across Media” at Rice University at <http://www.owlnet.
rice.edu/~hans320/syllabus.html>.
39 See Katherine Braun’s course “Documenting Community Culture” at Ohio State University at <http://
people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/Braun43/teaching/10901Au05/index.htm>.
40 See “Oral History Project” (24 March 2005) on the Community College English website at <http://
twoyearcomp.blogspot.com/2005/03/oral-history-project.html>.
41 See The Rhetoric and Composition Sound Archives (18 Feb. 2006) at Texas Christian University at
<http://www.rcsa.tcu.edu/collection.htm>.
42 See the “Oral History Archive” on the Writing Centers Research Project website at <http://coldfusion.
louisville.edu/webs/a-s/wcrp/oral.cfm>.
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Appendix 1
Effective Writing Assignments
Writing Assignments
Here is an important maxim for teaching a writing class: well-constructed, thoughtful writ-
ing assignments enhance the possibility for effective student writing, and poorly developed
assignments, to which an instructor has not given adequate thought, are likely to minimize
that possibility. This is probably one of the most important ideas for teachers to understand,
whether they are teaching a stand-alone writing class or a subject-matter class that includes
writing. I cannot stress enough how important it is for composition instructors (or any
instructors) to develop thoughtful assignments—to give yourself enough time to plan, revise,
confer with other instructors, even to try responding to the assignment yourself. This section
provides some suggestions for constructing and presenting effective assignments, focusing on
purpose, structure, audience, and sources of information.
Effective versus Ineffective Writing Assignments

Many of us who teach writing or direct writing programs have also worked in writing centers
or labs where we have seen the difficulties students have with poorly conceived and inco-
herently written writing prompts. These are the prompts that Muriel Harris (2010) termed
“Assignments from Hell,” which she illustrated with the following example:
Analyze the problem of gender in Hedda Gabler and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Remember to
consider other relevant factors such as race, social conditions, economic class and author’s
nationality. I expect clean, tightly written, interesting prose that is free of literary jargon.
If your thinking is sloppy, the paper will be sloppy, and I grade accordingly.
(p. 200)
In her discussion of this prompt, Harris noted that although emphasis was placed on “think-
ing,” “clean” writing, and “interesting prose,” it is unlikely that students would understand
what was expected.
Another type of problematic writing prompt is one that is so general that students have
difficulty knowing what is expected. John Bean, In Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to
Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (2011) provides an
example of a traditional writing prompt, which is often presented as follows: “There will be a
term paper due at the end of the semester. The term paper can be on any aspect of the course
that interests you, but I have to approve your topic in advance” (p. 90). Bean maintained that
although some students, such as “skilled upper-division students who have already learned the
conventions of inquiry and argumentation in a discipline” (p. 91) may be able to respond to
this type of writing prompt and might, in fact, value the freedom it offers, most college writers
Appendix 1 447
are not yet comfortable with “academic writing or with the discourse conventions of a new
discipline” (Bean, 2011, p. 91). As a result, students will write essays that Beans refers to as
“all-about papers” (papers that present information but have no main point) or “quasi plagia-
rized data dumps with long quotations and thinly disguised paraphrases” (Bean, 2011, p. 91).
More effective assignments, according to Bean, are those that specify “rhetorical context—
purpose, audience, genre” (p. 93).
Developing Effective Assignments

Writing assignments work best when they are carefully planned, discussed thoroughly in
class, and segmented into various components or “scaffolded.” Assignments should include a
number of pieces that build upon one another, each aimed at fostering students’ understand-
ing of the writing task, and each with a specific due date. Without the building blocks of a
scaffolded assignment, students tend to procrastinate, delaying writing or even thinking about
the assignment until the night before it is due. This habit is likely to cause writing anxiety or
writer’s block—and the writing produced under such circumstances is not likely to be very
good, no matter how strongly students claim that they “work best under pressure.” More
likely—if a student works well under pressure, he or she will do even better work when the
assignment is scaffolded!
The suggestions below can help you develop effective writing assignments, and I also
include a model that might inform the assignments you develop for your own students:
1 Introduce the topic for a writing assignment in class, using exploratory writ-
ing, discussion questions, response to a reading, or another classroom activity
that will help students understand the topic and engage with it.
Be sure to prepare students for the assignment. Explain it carefully. Do not simply hand out
an assignment in class, or, worse, scribble the assignment on the board at the end of class.
2 Have students write responses to exploration questions.
Exploration questions enable students to become aware of what they already know or believe
about the topic. They can respond to these questions either in class, at home, or online, using
discussion lists of course management programs such as WebCT or Moodle. It is helpful for
students to share their responses in groups or with the whole class.
Example exploration questions:
•• When you were growing up, what experiences did you have with this topic?
•• To what extent was the topic discussed in your home?
•• To what extent was the topic discussed in your high school?
•• Describe your feelings about this topic.
•• Do you think this topic is important for people to understand or explore? Why or why not?
•• Are there controversies concerning this topic? If so, has the topic always been controversial?
3 Assign an initial reading(s) concerned with the topic. Students can then sum-
marize the content of these readings and/or write a response.
To use readings as springboards for writing, you can begin with one reading, go over it carefully
in class (depending on the level of the students) and ask students to summarize the article and
448 Appendix 1
then write a letter or some form of response to the author, indicating points of agreement or
disagreement. You can also assign two articles on the topic, each presenting a different perspec-
tive. In preparation for class discussion, students should summarize and respond to these essays.
Indicate to students that this component of the assignment will count toward the final grade.
Example assignment using summary and response:
Read Professor X’s essay on the topic. In one or two paragraphs, summarize Professor
X’s perspective and indicate why you think that perspective is important to understand.
In a second paragraph, discuss the extent to which you agree with that perspective.
Read Professor Y’s essay on the topic. In one or two paragraphs, summarize Professor Y’s
perspective and indicate why you think that perspective is important to understand. In a
second paragraph, discuss the extent to which you agree with that perspective.
4 Have students create a short annotated bibliography.
Locate __ additional articles on this topic from the (library, Internet, etc.). These articles
might support the positions of Professors X and Y, take a more moderate position, or present
a different position. Create an annotated bibliography in which you summarize the main
positions of these articles.
5 Present the assignment in writing.
Here is an example you can use as a model. It includes the following sections: background,
writing task, requirements, schedule of activities and due dates.
Background:
The topic of __ has increasingly attracted public attention, generating considerable debate
among scholars. One perspective, presented in the essay by Professor X, maintains that __.
Presenting another perspective, however, Professor Y maintains that __. Moreover, other
scholars, presenting less extreme positions, have argued that __. (Elaboration depends on the
complexity of the topic.)
Writing task:
Consider the perspectives of both Professor X and Professor Y on the topic of __ and those
expressed in the additional articles you have obtained. Then, in a well-organized essay of __
pages, develop and support a position on the topic of __.
Requirements:
Keep in mind that this assignment requires you to develop and support a position—that is,
a thesis or main point that you support throughout the essay. You should not simply sum-
marize various perspectives on this topic although you should acknowledge the positions of
Professors X and Y as well as those of the additional articles you have located.
Schedule of activities and due dates:

Exploration questions due __.
Reading, summary, and response due __.
Appendix 1 449
Annotated bibliography due __.
One paragraph overview due __.
Bring a paragraph to class in which you summarize the position you plan to support in your
essay. (Depending on time constraints, students can hand these in to the instructor, or read
them aloud in small groups.)
First polished draft due __. (Depending on time constraints, the instructor can make
comments, but not assign a grade.)
Peer review comments due __.
Final draft due. (This is assigned a grade.)
Problems Students Have with Assignments

The following is a list of problems students typically have in understanding the requirements
of their writing assignments:
1 Students are often unaware of the necessity of having a thesis.

Students are often unaware that the assignment requires a thesis, position, or main idea
that is developed and supported throughout the essay. As a result, they simply respond
literally to the questions in the assignment prompt without focusing their essays around a
central point. For example, when students are asked to “compare and contrast” two arti-
cles on a given subject, they simply discuss one article, then the other, without realizing
that they are supposed to be deriving a main point or perspective that will structure the
essay as a whole. Similarly, if the assignment uses the word “describe,” students assume
that description is an end in itself, whereas an instructor may conceive of description as
a mode of presentation used to support a thesis. In my classes, I ask students to evaluate
whether their writing is concerned with “an idea worth considering.”
2 Students often do not understand the role of definition in academic writing.
In working with assignments, students may not understand that definition can be used to
provide a context for discussing other facets of the topic. For example, in a prompt that asks
students to consider the extent to which Facebook could be considered “harmful” to the
concept of friendship, it is necessary for students to establish what they mean by “harmful”
and the concept of friendship. Becoming aware of values is an important element in aca-
demic writing. But many students are unaware of how values impact what they want to say.
3 Students are often confused by an assignment that asks a lot of questions.
Instead of synthesizing the prompts into a central question, they attempt to
answer each one separately.
Here is an assignment that asks a lot of questions:
In the film Avatar, what is being suggested about society? Do the aliens represent a particular group
in contemporary society? What image does the show provide of science and corporate development?
Of racial tendencies? Of moral leadership? Does the film have an ethical message? Is the message
consistent with the narrative?
Students may not understand that these questions are intended to generate thinking and that
they don’t have to answer every question in their essay.
4 Students will often write a bifurcated response to an assignment with a double

focus.
450 Appendix 1
A question such as “Is the political correctness movement helpful or harmful to a col-
lege campus and should the rules regarding political correctness be changed?” is likely to
lead to a double answer.
5 Students often do not know how to narrow an unfocused or vague assignment
prompt.
A prompt that asks students to sexual harassment on campus is likely to generate
description and perhaps many examples, but little analysis.
To Help Students Understand a Writing Assignment

1 Scaffold the assignment—that is, divide it into parts. Assign a due date to each part.
2 Read all components of the assignment aloud in class as students follow along. Do not
simply distribute the assignment and assume that students will figure it out on their own.
3 Point to key terms in the assignment that explain what students must do to write the
paper. Encourage students to circle these terms.
4 Define the nature of the writing task that the assignment requires. If the paper requires
a main point or thesis, provide a few examples. Caution students about selecting a thesis
too soon, before they have had time to explore the topic adequately. Explain that ideas
change through the process of reading, research, and writing.
5 Clarify terms, such as “discuss,” “explicate,” “trace,” “examine,” “analyze,” or “develop”
that students may not understand in the context of a writing assignment.
6 Discuss potential sources of information for the paper. Will the information be
based primarily on personal experience or opinion? Are there particular sources that
students
7 Are there particular sources that students should access before writing the paper? Should
students locate information from the library or the Internet?
8 Clarify any implicit requirements that may not be directly stated, but are necessary for the
assignment to be completed satisfactorily. For example, many college writing assignments
require students to define terms, consider questions of degree, or establish a relation-
ship between ideas. If possible, identify a possible audience or audiences for this paper
aside from the teacher who gave the assignment. Explain that although the teacher is, of
course, going to read the paper, many college essays are written for what is ambiguously
termed a “general audience.” To help the students understand this concept, have them
imagine that the paper has been left on a desk in the college library and read by another
student. Would this student be able to understand the paper without having access to the
assignment? What sort of background information on the topic is this unknown college
student likely to have? What sort of information needs to be included in the paper in
order for a general audience to understand it?
A useful strategy for enabling students to think about audience is to have them respond
to the following questions:
Before the people in my audience have read this paper, they are likely to think about
this topic.
After the people in my audience have read this paper, I would like them to think about
this topic.
For a discussion of approaching writing assignments from the perspective of genre, see Irene
Clark “A Genre Approach to Writing Assignments,” (Composition Forum 14.2, fall 2005).
http://compositionforum.com/issue/14.2.
Below is an example of a writing prompt that you can use as a model:
Appendix 1 451
Components of a Writing Assignment
Assignment #2 Changing the Law
Purpose: Goals of the assignment are
made explicit
•• To formulate a thesis concerning a law that you think should
be changed
•• To support that thesis with convincing reasons
•• To provide development and support for your ideas
•• To demonstrate your understanding of essay structure
Readings: Readings specified
At least three short readings that you find online. These may not
be from Wikipedia. We will have a library session to help
you locate appropriate sources.
Background: A context is set for the
assignment
This assignment requires you to choose a law that exists today
at the federal or local level that is currently enforced but
which you believe needs to be changed. Examples can
include seatbelt laws, helmet laws, drinking laws, voting
laws, drug laws, cigarette laws, speed limit laws—the list
is inexhaustible—but whatever you choose, it should be
something that interests you, something with which you have
some personal experience.
•• Have you had personal experience with this law? If so,
describe it
•• Why was this law passed in the first place?
•• When was it passed?
•• Who was in favor of its passage and who was against it?
•• Who is most affected by it?
•• Who benefits from it?
•• What purpose did it originally serve?
•• Is it outdated?/Why?
•• What is wrong with it as it stands now?
•• How would society benefit if it were changed?
Writing task: The writing task is specified,
isolated in a bolded
prompt. It is desirable to
have a short prompt
Once you have learned as much as you can about this law,
respond to the following question in a well-argued essay:
To what extent should this law be changed?
Further explanation: Students are reminded of
the type of essay this
assignment requires.
Audiences and grading
rubrics are specified
This essay will be constructed as an academic argument and
therefore should be well reasoned, supported with logic-
based evidence, and balanced through the inclusion of a
counter-argument. Preparation for this paper must include
brainstorming, a fact–idea list, and a points list. It should be
oriented toward a general, academic audience and will be
evaluated according to the grading rubric for this course.
Appendix 2
Developing a Syllabus
A syllabus is a very important document, serving as a contract between you and your students.
It describes as comprehensively as possible the focus and structure of the course, explains
course policies, and indicates responsibilities students will have to fulfill. Although many ele-
ments of syllabus will be dictated by the requirements of a particular program or department,
your syllabus will reflect your personality as a teacher and orientation toward the teaching of
writing. It is, therefore, important to reflect on what sort of persona you want to project and
the philosophy of writing and writing pedagogy you want to endorse. Whether the syllabus is
in electronic or paper form, be sure to go over it carefully so that students can ask questions.
Do not assume that students will read it carefully on their own.
Necessary components of a syllabus are listed here:
1 Course number and contact information.

These include course number; classroom location; class meeting time; and instructor’s
name, phone number, office location, e-mail address, and office hours.
2 Textbook information.
These include author, title, publisher, edition, and any supplementary information
included in the assigned readings.
3 Overview of course and rationale.
This includes an overview of the course, and an explanation of its goals and the theo-
retical underpinnings on which they are based. Indicate how you are planning to structure
the course, focusing on your primary concern of helping students develop an effective
writing process and acquire a writing style appropriate to an intended audience. If you are
incorporating online work into your course, such as blogs or courseware programs, you
should schedule some time to teach students how to work with them.
4 Requirements and policies.
Requirements include the number of essays or other types of asignments students will
be writing, the necessity for submitting multiple drafts, and other required elements such
as in-class exercises, homework activities, journals, listserves, and portfolios. Explain the
format and style you require for written work; your grading policies; and your attitude
toward class and group attendance, tardiness, and late papers. Be sure to address the issue
of plagiarism.
5 Additional information.
This might include the location of a Writing Center or services available for the disa-
bled or handicapped.
6 Course calendar.
Indicate in detail what is required for each class: readings, responses, activities, presen-
tations, conferences, due dates for papers—including first, second, and third drafts, and
portfolio submissions. Although it is useful to prepare your course in advance, feel free to
alter it according to the needs of your students.
Appendix 2 453
Below is an example of a syllabus for a first-year writing course, which focuses on aca-
demic argument. Note how the various components of the syllabus are explained in this
syllabus and feel free to copy parts of it. However, in constructing your own syllabus,
you should also obtain copies of syllabi that pertain to the courses at your own college
or university.
Welcome to English XXXX

Introduction to Academic Writing, Applied Rhetoric and Critical
Reasoning for Spring XXXX
Professor: Office Location:
Class Location: Office Hours:
E-mail: Phone:
Course Description
English XXXX is a course in expository writing designed for freshman and transfer students.
Its emphasis is on helping you gain experience with academic writing—that is, the text gen-
res you will be using in your college courses. You will practice exploring ideas, conveying
information, thinking critically about ideas in published works, and adopting a thoughtful
position about complex and substantive topics. You will also develop skills in organizing
an essay, using logical reasoning in support of a thesis, and expressing ideas clearly through
appropriate language choices. Beyond these fundamental concerns, the course will encour-
age you to develop a degree of grace and style which will make your writing interesting
and readable.
Essentially, this course is designed to improve your writing and prepare you for the
variety of writing tasks that you will meet throughout your college careers and probably in
your life beyond college. Thus, we will spend much time on learning strategies to approach
a given writing task and to carry it through to its conclusion. In short, we will attempt to
improve your individual writing process. While some writers have difficulty getting started,
others have problems developing their ideas as they write, or experience varying degrees of
writing anxiety. Still others have problems revising their writing; however, no two writers
have the exact same problems. Your writing process is as unique and complex as you are
as a person. For this reason, we will attempt to individualize as much as possible through
teacher–student conferences, peer reviews, and by exercising any other necessary measures
to foster success.
Course Objectives
• To reinforce the theory and practice of composition as a recursive process—this entails
exercises in invention, drafting, revision and editing.
• To encourage an understanding of the various contexts for writing, including timed and
extemporaneous expository writing, and the utilization of effective strategies for writ-
ing in a variety of forms appropriate for a writer’s multiple purposes. These include an
awareness of purpose, audience, and genre (the rhetorical situation); the use of effective
rhetorical appeals; and the use of the rhetorical methods of development.
• To develop fluency and style by practicing sentence variety, increasing vocabulary, and
using the conventions of Edited American English.
• To increase proficiency in research and documentation techniques required by various
disciplines, i.e., MLA, APA, annotated bibliographies, etc.
• To become acquainted with culturally diverse texts and encourage practice in the written
analysis of rhetorical strategies, the potential effects of biased language on both writers
454 Appendix 2
and readers, and the interdependence between critical thinking and college-level reading
and writing.
• To promote writing as a means of participation in democracy and social change.
Required Texts and Materials

• Textbooks and readings are listed.
• One standard two-pocket folder for the final portfolio project.
• A flash drive, memory stick, or floppy disk to save work completed in the computer
laboratory.
• An active university e-mail account (use of university e-mail is mandatory and
non-negotiable for this course).
Assignments
Major Essays (40% of final grade)
You are required to compose (4) substantive, thesis-driven essays four to six pages in length
which you will post to Canvas (or another course-management system). These are depart-
ment requirements; failure to meet any of these requirements will result in a lowered grade.
You will develop your work through multiple drafts, revisions, course readings and other
various assignments. During the semester, you will be introduced to a variety of helpful revi-
sion strategies that include tips on style, structure, focus, grammar/punctuation, and more to
help you through this part of the process.
Draft and Revision Requirements—Drafts and revisions are requirements for each major
essay; therefore, drafts submitted with your essays must demonstrate significant develop-
ment from copy to copy. They may not be carbon copies of each other with only slight
cosmetic changes. Please compose drafts that are distinguished from one another; those
that demonstrate the beginning and evolution of each of your essays into a finished
product. This requirement helps me to examine your personal process and transitions
through them.
Submission Requirements and Essay Format—Please see individual instructions listed on the
essay prompts you are given for each assignment. These will inform you of the specific tasks
being asked of you for your writing, i.e., genre, style, document layout, submission proce-
dures, etc., and will include a specialized grading rubric so that you may gauge your work as
you write.
Portfolio Requirement (30% of final grade)
All English XXXX students are required to submit a final portfolio that consists of their best
writing from the semester. For this reason, do not delete any of your writing and save copies of
each essay draft. Your portfolio should contain the following items:
• A two-to-three page reflective essay discussing the contents of your portfolio and the
knowledge you have absorbed as a student in English XXXX.
• One in-class timed essay with the assignment sheet attached.
Appendix 2 455
• Two individually stapled essay packets which will include: the assignment sheet; at least
one polished draft; and one final draft of your essay that has been revised beyond its final
submission stage.
Keep in mind that the appearance and quality of your work are a reflection of you and your
commitment to excellence.
Participation (20% of final grade)
The participation grade consists of how well you demonstrate engagement with the course. It
includes contributions to class or group discussions as well as your score on quizzes that may
be given in class at random points during the semester.
Here is a helpful tip—Stay on top of your readings, remain attentive in class, and take good
notes—if you do, you will succeed. I do not allow make-ups for quizzes unless severe and
verifiable circumstances prevent you from taking them on the day administered. These quiz-
zes help me to gauge your grasp of the material and other concepts while preliminarily indi-
cating potential weaknesses you may have.
In-Class Essay Exams—One timed essay composed during class will be assigned. An assign-
ment sheet will be given with the essay prompt instructing you to develop and discuss a topic
based upon certain issues/ideas. You will then address issues/ideas in-depth, thus creating
coherent essays. This helps to develop your ability to write on command and helps me to
determine where you need improvement.
Homework (10% of final grade)
Small homework assignments will be given occasionally, and shall encompass a random
variety of topics: questions regarding the readings; rhetorical techniques/writing strategies;
research methods, etc. Homework is a great way to stay actively engaged in learning outside
of the classroom.
If You Need Help

Let’s face it—we all need a little help with our writing every now and again. As always, I am
very approachable, and delighted to help you whenever possible. If you have questions or
problems regarding any part of this course, please contact me immediately! I also encourage
you to seek the professional assistance of our writing lab staff at the Writing Center located
in . They provide tutors, at no additional cost. It is a good idea to make an appoint-
ment but walk-ins are available on a limited basis. Look for the Writing Center hours on the
university website, or call—.
General Policies and Course Business
Late Policy
Late assignments are not acceptable at any time unless severe and verifiable circumstances are
the cause. All work is due at the start of class, on the due date specified. If you are knowingly going
456 Appendix 2
to miss class I must receive the assignment(s) before class begins. Failure to submit work in a
timely manner will result in a full letter grade reduction for the assignment.
Attendance
You are permitted to miss up to two class meetings during the semester for whatever reason
you choose; no excuses are necessary for these. I will excuse additional absences due to uni-
versity business and severe personal emergencies, but only with verifiable documentation. In
addition, you are solely responsible for finding out the assignments that will be due for the
following class. Please contact a classmate to obtain this information.
Classroom Etiquette
Always arrive to class on time and treat the instructor and classmates with the same respect
that you would want to receive in return. In addition, anything that beeps, buzzes, rings,
sings, chimes or vibrates—anything at all along those lines—must be turned off before entering
class. No exceptions! Also, you must refrain from chit-chatting while class is in progress. If
you have questions during class, i.e. what did he say? What page? Where are we? Rather than
ask your neighbor, please ask me instead.
Plagiarism
According to the university catalog, plagiarism is “intentionally or knowingly representing the
words, ideas or work of another as one’s own in any academic exercise.” Specific forms of plagiarism
include the following:
• Turning in material that was written for any other class (high school included).
• Offering a restructured, reworded, version of someone else’s text as your original work.
• Downloading essays from the internet, or paper mills, and offering them as your own
work.
• Practicing any variation of not turning in original work for grades.
Academic dishonesty by cheating, plagiarism or collusion (collaborative work designated

solely as your own) can result in your immediate failure of the course—no questions
asked! In class, we will discuss ways to avoid plagiarism and the proper citation of outside
sources. If you are ever in doubt, please consult me, your text, your handbook, or a writing
consultant at the Writing Center (located in—).
Special Accommodations
Any student requiring special accommodations for specific learning needs should speak with
me early in the semester. I am extremely sensitive to these requests and will put forth my
greatest efforts to assure your needs are met in order to achieve success in the course.
Adjustments to Syllabus
As the course instructor, I reserve the right to modify any and/or all parts of this syllabus
including policies, procedures, timelines, work schedules, etc., as necessary in order to best
serve the collective needs of the class.
Appendix 2 457
Tentative Work Schedule for Spring XXXX
*Please read selections below in the order that they are listed prior to the due date, and be
prepared to discuss in class for the date scheduled
Week 1:
January 22 Introduction to course, review of syllabus, and discussion of chapter 1 on why
writing is important and how it is learned.
January 24 Discussion of rhetorical genre theory, and the rhetorical situation. Begin rhetorical
exercise.
Week 2:
January 29 Complete rhetorical exercise and begin discussing elements of applied rhetoric.
Discussion of chapter 3 (pp. 72–98) on the genre of writing profiles.
January 31 Continue discussion of chapter 3 (pp. 100–124) and chapter 20 on planning class
exercise.
Week 3:
February 5 Continue discussion of chapter 3 (pp. 125–133) and chapter 25 (pp. 808–823) on
document designs for writing.
February 7 DRAFT DUE: Essay (1), peer critique training, peer critique workshop.
Week 4:
February 12 ESSAY (1) DUE, discussion of chapter 13 on cueing a reader.
February 14 Discussion of chapter 16 on defining, class exercise.
Week 5:
February 19 Discussion of chapter 4 (pp. 134–163) on explaining a concept.
February 21 Continue discussion of chapter 4 (pp. 164–165), class exercise.
Week 6:
February 26 Continue discussion of chapter 4 (pp. 166–190), and read chapter 21 (pp. 702–737)
on conducting library and Internet research.
February 28 DRAFT DUE: Essay (2), peer critique workshop, discussion of chapter 22
(pp. 738–779) on using and acknowledging sources.
Week 7:
March 4 ESSAY (2) DUE, discussion of chapter 19 (pp. 670–685) on arguing.
March 6 Wings TBD, class exercise.
Week 8:
March 11 Discussion of chapter 6 (pp. 272–293) on arguing a position.
March 13 Continue discussion of chapter 6 (pp. 294–295).
Holiday:
March 18 SPRING BREAK: NO CLASSES
March 20 SPRING BREAK: NO CLASSES
Week 9:
March 25 Continue discussion of chapter 6 (pp. 296–318).
March 27 DRAFT DUE: Essay (3), peer critique workshop, continue chapter 6 (pp.
319–341).
Week 10:
April 1 ESSAY (3) DUE, discussion of chapter 7 (pp. 326–359) on proposing a solution.
April 3 CLASS CANCELED FOR 4 C’S CONFERENCE
Week 11:
April 8 Continue discussion of chapter 7 (pp. 360–392), class exercise.
April 10 Discussion of chapter 9 (pp. 457–481) on speculating about causes.
(continued)
458 Appendix 2
(continued)
Week 12:
April 15 Continue discussion of chapter 9 (pp. 482–507), class exercise.
April 17 DRAFT DUE: Essay (4), peer critique workshop, continue chapter 9
(pp. 509–513).
Week 13:
April 22 ESSAY (4) DUE, discussion of chapter 23 on essay examination and timed writing.
April 24 Practice with essay examinations.
Week 14:
April 29 In-class writing
May 1 DRAFT DUE: Reflective Essay, peer critique workshop, review of chapter 23.
Week 15:
May 6 ESSAY DUE: Reflective Essay, portfolio assembly process.,
May 8 Final Class—Fully assembled portfolios due at the start of class.
Grading Scale
*Please consult this document before submitting writing assignments*
100–94 = A 86–83 = B 76–73 = C 66–63 = D

93–90 = A– 82–80 = B– 72–70 = C– 62–60 = D–
89–87 = B+ 79–77 = C+ 69–67 = D+ 59 or < = F
Scoring Rubric
(A) Papers: Represent a superior, well-polished, level of writing that satisfies all assignment
requirements
• Thesis is thoughtful, considerably clear, and skillfully supported.
• Sentences are free of grammatical errors, careless mistakes, and exhibit noticeable
variety.
• Paragraphs are extremely well developed, organized effectively with a strong focus,
and represent clear, connected units of thought.
• Essay is rich in detail with exemplary rhetorical control, stylistic fluency, and a wealth
of critical thinking.
(B) Papers: Represent a commendable level of writing that satisfies all assignment requirements
• Thesis is thoughtful, clear, and well supported.
• Sentences are free of major grammatical errors, careless mistakes, and exhibit suffi-
cient variety.
• Paragraphs are well developed, organized effectively, clearly focused, and represent
complete, connected units of thought.
• Essay contains noticeable detail, sufficient rhetorical control, and substantial evidence
(C) Papers: Represent an adequate level of writing that satisfies basic assignment require-
ments only
• Thesis is present, but possibly inadequate and/or ill-conceived.
• Sentences demonstrate lapses in proofreading/editing with enough careless mistakes
to significantly catch a reader’s attention in a negative manner, and exhibit little or
no variety. Grammatical and structural errors may affect readability.
Appendix 2 459
• Paragraphs are adequately organized, but contain only modest levels of focus and
support necessary to effectively illustrate assertions, or represent clear, connected
units of thought.
• Essay contains a minimally acceptable level of detail, rhetorical control, and critical
thinking.
(D) Papers: Represent an inadequate level of writing that ineffectively and/or inappropriately
satisfies basic assignment requirements
• Thesis is poorly conceived, ineffective, or absent.
• Sentences demonstrate significant lapses in proofreading/editing, insufficient vari-
ety, and several grammatical and/or structural errors that significantly diminish
readability.
• Paragraphs are inadequately organized, and lack sufficient coherence, support, and
focus necessary to appropriately illustrate assertions, or represent clear, connected
units of thought.
• Essay contains insufficient levels of detail, rhetorical control, and little or no evidence
(F) Papers: Represent an unacceptable level of writing that fails to satisfy core assignment
requirements
• Thesis is absent, erroneous, or completely unacceptable.
• Sentences demonstrate severe lapses in proofreading/editing, lack variety or appro-
priateness, and contain an abundance of grammatical and/or structural errors that
significantly diminish readability.
• Paragraphs are not organized, and lack any coherence, support, and focus necessary
to appropriately illustrate assertions, and represent clear, connected units of thought.
• Essay contains little or no detail, and exhibits a complete absence of rhetorical con-
trol and critical thinking.
Planning a syllabus for a writing course requires considerable planning because you have to
allow time for you to read each draft and then additional time for students to revise. New
instructors may not consider this element of assigning drafts and therefore find themselves
pressured to provide adequate feedback, especially if they teach several classes. If you find
that you haven’t allowed enough time between drafts or to begin a new essay topic, it is
perfectly alright to provide a revised version of your syllabus. Explain to your students at
the beginning of the course that you wish to tailor assignments to students’ needs (this is,
of course, absolutely true) and that in order to do so, you may have to revise due dates or
reading requirements. Be sure to post the revised version on whatever course-management
system you are using (Moodle, Canvas, a website) and remind students to keep checking fot
the most current version.
Online Syllabi
Increasingly, writing instructors are posting their syllabi online, sometimes through a course-
management system such as Moodle, Canvas, or on a website. In some instances, the online
syllabus is in exactly the same form as the paper version; students download the syllabus, print
it out, and bring it to class. In other instances, the format of the syllabus may be quite dif-
ferent, reflecting the map-like configuration of visual texts. Whichever type of syllabus you
decide to post, the same precepts pertain as those discussed above: be as specific as possible
about all components of your course and go over the syllabus with your students in class
through whatever means you use to communicate with your students.
460 Appendix 2
An online syllabus can include a number of frames and attachments, but however you
decide to structure it, it is important to construct a “welcome page” or some form of entrance
to the syllabus so that students will be able to find it easily. An online syllabus, like a paper
syllabus, constitutes a contract between students and instructors, defining requirements and
expected responsibilities, including due dates. One element that can be particularly confusing
for students if you are teaching in an online format is the definition of “participation.” Does
it mean sending messages to a discussion board, participating in real time, or simply logging
on and doing the assigned reading and writing? Clarify as much as you can, so students will
know what is expected of them.
Because of the increased importance of new media and new models of coursework, online
syllabi have become more prevalent. However, like all syllabi, an online syllabus should reflect
your philosophy of teaching writing and provide necessary information for your students
about the requirements of your course. It should be easy to navigate and clearly structured.
But it doesn’t have to be a work of art. Some instructors like to include pictures, videos, and
various elements that can make the syllabus visually attractive. Keep in mind, though, that a
syllabus does not have to be beautiful. It just has to fulfill its function.
References
Bean, J. C. (2011). Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking and active learn-
ing in the classroom (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Harris, M. (2010). Assignments from hell: The view from the writing center. In P. Sullivan, H. Tinberg,
& S. Blau (Eds). What is college level writing? Vol.2 (pp. 183–206). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Index
academic genres/discourse 49, 164–165; and genre basic writers 12, 97, 101, 149, 368
170–172, 180; imitating 214; L2 students 281, Bawarshi, Anis 63, 163–164, 181
290, 294 Bazerman, Charles 14, 20, 161, 163, 208, 209
access 280, 396–397 Berger, John 391
activity theory 175 bilingualism 339; see also multilingual writers
Adler-Kassner, Linda 21, 177–178 blogs 125, 136, 179
affect 85, 208; see also emotions; expressivism; voice Booth, Wayne 54, 125, 212
African American Language(s) 339 Borton, Sonya 412
African American women 423 brainstorming 69
agency, student 374, 393–394, 399–401 Bridwell, Lillian 32–33, 34, 91
ambiguity, (in)tolerance for 40, 66, 80, 287 Britton, James 11–12, 110, 148, 155
American Indians/Native Americans 416, 424 Bruner, Jerome 2, 5, 10
analysis, writer’s block 76–86 Burke, Kenneth 72–73, 162
antigenre 49, 50 Butler, Paul 213–214
anxiety see writer’s block
Arabic-speaking writers 289–290 Carillo, Ellen 208, 211, 212
argumentative writing/discourse 60, 98–99, 164–165 Chinese rhetorical patterns 288, 291
Aristotle 8, 54, 57–58, 88, 160 Chomsky, Noam 149–150, 321, 325–326
assessment 238–265; CCCC on 403; in the citizenship 358–359
classroom 246–248; digital/multimodal writing class/group discussion 68–69
401–403; direct 240–242; indirect 239–240; classical rhetoric 4–5, 54, 55–59, 88, 170, 213–214
internal and external 244–245; multi-authored closure, need for 41
papers 256–258; outcomes 245; portfolios clustering 69
242–243; programmatic 245; scoring 243–244; code-meshing 369, 371
and social justice 246, 258–259; summative cognitive psychology 10–12, 146–147, 175–176
and formative 245, 247–248, 251–252; see also collaboration 15–17, 125, 386, 387–388, 395
evaluation; feedback College Composition and Communication (CCC) 387,
audience 11, 119–140; awareness/unawareness 392, 420
140–147; and consciousness-raising 134; colonization 165, 358, 424
cues 135–136; digital/multimodal writing Common Core Standards (CCSS) 133
386; discourse communities and shared/new community 14–15, 55, 58–59
knowledge 132–133; feedback 82, 136; fictional composing: behaviors 32–46; developmental
and real characters as 123–124, 127–130, 134; models of 11–12; early research on 9–13; stage-
new media, multiple concepts of 130–131; model theory of 8, 9
perspectives on 120–124; and revision 101, Computers and Composition: An International Journal
115–116, 134–135; and rhetoric 73; self as, (C&C) 386–387
suppressing 153; stance and engagement conceptual conflict 84
193–194; student perspectives on 127–128; Conference on College Composition and
teacher as 120, 127–128, 155; see also language Communication (CCCC) 330, 362–363, 392, 403
audio recording 422, 425–426 conferences: one-to-one 95–96, 423; online 425;
aurality: history 412–420; and multimodal secondary school 102
composing 410–437; and pedagogy 421–423; context 135–136, 162–163, 322; see also transfer
and popular culture 420–421 conventions, knowledge of 385
creative nonfiction 180
Barthes, Roland 110–111, 391 creativity: digital/multimodal writing 403; and
Bartholomae, David 35, 170, 207, 214 genre 171–173
462 Index
Creole languages 334, 338 evaluation: aural 423; detection/diagnosis/strategy

critical literacies 22–23, 170, 212–213, 380, 385, 93; self-evaluation 32, 100–101; student
393; digital media 398–399, 404; see also equity collaboration 99–100; teacher 100–101; see also
cultural theory 20 assessment; peer response groups
exigence 9, 181
Dartmouth conference (1966) 5–6 expertise, digital 394–395
Derrida, Jacques 180, 418 exploratory writing 147
Devitt, Amy 160, 161, 172, 180 expressivism 13–14, 52, 171, 213; see also
dialect(s) 275, 325–326, 328, 329–331; see also freewriting
monolingualism
digital games 389 facilitation, instruction as 394–395
digital/multimodal writing/literacies 17, 379–409; Faigley, Lester 34, 400
and audience 119, 125; definitions 380–384; and feedback 84; audiences and 82; corrective 292–293,
genre 179–180; history 386–394; and identity/ 311–312; undergraduate writing 265–271;
agency 399–401; media literacies 398–399; see also assessment; peer response groups
pedagogical considerations 386, 396; see also figure legend titles 195–198
aurality; social media first-year writing 21, 200; L2 students 273;
disabilities, students with 216–217, 241 multilingual writers 370; reading scholarship
disciplinary writing, and genre 193–201 207–209; reading-writing connection 229; and
discourse: approach to grammar teaching revision 101; rhetorical reading 212; and transfer
291–292; communicative purpose 148–150; 175, 177, 180, 181; WPA Outcomes Statement
poesis function 148–150, 152; see also sentence 384–386
combining Flower, Linda 10–11, 33, 41–42, 79, 140, 143, 149
discourse communities 132, 160, 181, 182 freewriting 40, 69, 144, 147; see also expressivism;
discrimination 241, 246, 360, 363–364, 371–372 language, private
discussion groups 68–69, 422 Fulkerson, Richard 4, 5
dissonance 116, 117 function 324–325
diversity see linguistic diversity
Downs, D. 22, 87, 175 gender, and genre critique 49
drafting/redrafting 32–46, 307 genre(s) 159–204; antecedent 181; cognitive
perspectives 175–176; in the composition course
Ebonics 335–336, 338 161–162; and creativity 171–173; critique and
“Edited American English” 330 resistance to 49; explicit/implicit teaching of
editing 102, 284; digital 98, 389, 395, 425–426, 428 167–169; function 160–161; genre analysis 200;
E-language 321–322, 326 genre awareness 174–175, 181; and invention
Elbow, Peter 52, 54, 61, 96, 101; on academic 63; in literacy teaching 47–51; model texts,
literacy 164–165; on audiences 121, 130; peer use of 228–234; and multimedia 179–180; and
response groups 96, 102; on personal narratives process 23–24; and revision 98–99
170; on the relationship between writer and grammar 80, 322–325; L2 students 276, 278–284,
reader 125; on revision strategies 96; on voice 292, 302–316; see also errors
13–14, 419–420 Greenfield, Laura 363, 371
Emig, Janet 9, 10, 90
emotions 58, 161, 282; see also affect; writer’s block handbooks 3–5
empowerment 160, 168–169, 170 Harris, Joseph 19, 62–63, 99, 128
engagement markers 193–194 Harvard University 2–3, 89; study on feedback
English Department Writing Program (EDWP) 224 265–271
English Journal 3, 414 Hayes, John 10–11, 33, 79
English(es): African American Language(s) heuristics 61–62, 78, 79, 129
335–338; declarative knowledge 274; as a lingua hypertextual writing 388
franca 335; procedural knowledge 273–274;
vernacular 2; see also monolingualism identity: cultural/ethnic 164, 332–334; digital
English-Only 359, 361 399–401; discoursal vs autobiographical
equity, and the digital divide 396–397 165–166; and genre 163–164
errors 90; history 89; L2 writers 302–303, 305–306; ideologies 124–125, 165, 326–327, 329–331, 399;
see also grammar see also monolingualism
essay(s) 240–242; multimedia 119, 179–180, 427; I-language 326
Pedagogical Insight essay 47, 50; sound essays imitation/modeling 65, 213–215
411, 427; and standardized tests 133–134 individual conferences see conferences
ethnic identity, and language 332–334 intercultural rhetoric 285–291
ethos 57 international students 274–282
Index 463
intertextuality 63, 388 motivation 222–237, 280

Intro-Methods-Results-Discussion (IMRD) genre moves 62–64, 167–168, 193, 195
192, 195 multi-authored papers, assessing 256–258
invention 2, 52–86; approaches to 61–65, 67–73; multi-drafting 32–46
in classical rhetoric 55–59; and imitation 65; multilingual writers 272–316; grammar
importance of 7; “moves” 62–64; personal and language development, promoting
narratives 59–60; as social act 52; student problems 302–316; and language mixing 332–334;
with 52–53; writer’s block 65–67, 76–86 profiles 274–282
Multimodal Assessment Project (MAP) 402–403
Japanese rhetorical patterns 286–288, 290 multimodal writing 382–384; see also digital/
Jolliffe, David 206, 211, 212, 223 multimodal writing
journalism: digital 424–425; invention and 72 Murray, Donald 54, 89–90, 95–96, 102, 141
journals 3, 69, 147, 414; digital writing 386–387, 427 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) 40
Kaplan, Robert 285–286 narrative: literacy autobiography 59–60; personal

Keller, Daniel 427 169–171
Killingsworth, M. J. 8, 9, 120 National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE),
Kress, Gunther 382, 386, 390, 426, 428, 430 on multimodal literacies 393, 401
Native American literacies 416, 424
L2 students see multilingual writers needs analysis, L2 writers 305–306
labor, grading 258–259 New London Group (NLG) 390, 395, 426
language: developmental 148–150, 152, 304, new media see digital/multimodal writing; social
320; mixing 333–334; private 149–155; see also media
discourse; linguistics Norris, Elisa 417
language policies, English monolingualist 359–360,
364–366 oratorical education 412–414
learning disabilities, and reading 216–217
lectures, oral 422–423 Pedagogical Insight essay 47, 50
LeFevre, Karen Burke 52, 54 pedagogical memory 181
legislation, state, and English monolingualism 359 peer response groups 95–96, 99–100, 102–104, 136
liminality 177 peer writing groups, maximizing the value
linguistic diversity 325–331, 356–367; see also of 15–16
monolingualism pentad 72–73
linguistic naïveté 339 personal writing/narrative 59–60, 155, 169–171, 208
linguistics 20; critical period 274–275; patterns 50; Peters, Brad 49
register 281; syntax 322; systemic functional Piaget, Jean 10, 11, 121, 146–147
linguistics (SFL) 324–325; tagmemic system Pidgin 338
61–62 plagiarism 65, 177, 213
literacy autobiography/narrative 59–60, 171 plans 78–79
literary genres 160, 180; see also genre(s) Plato 8, 54, 56; on invention 54
poetry, and audience 155
Macrorie, Ken 13, 61, 95–96, 99, 170 points-to-make list 70–71
marginalized groups 168–169, 170–171, 423–424 popular culture, and aurality 420–421
meaning, as differential 116 post-process theory 19–20
memory (topoi) 58 power relations: and aurality 423; and
metalanguage 279, 280, 283, 324 language 370–371; see also colonization;
metaphor 96, 233, 290 empowerment
Mexican Spanish rhetorical patterns 288–289 pragmatics 323
microblogging 389 PREP—position, reason, explanation, and
mindful reading 212 proof 99
minority cultures: and assessment 241; aurality pre-texts 33
and 415–417, 423; see also marginalized groups; prewriting 7, 307; see also scaffolding
multilingual writers prior knowledge/skills 21, 174, 207, 225; see also
modeling/imitation 65, 213–215 mindful reading
Moffett, James 11–12, 126 private writing see freewriting; journals; personal
monolingualism 334, 356–378; classroom texts writing/narrative
327; definition/role 362; dominance of, US problem-solving theory/processes: concepts 77–79;
higher education 356; the myth of linguistic students and 79–85
homogeneity 366–368; pedagogical examples of process movement 95, 99–100, 160; criticism of
combating 369–370 18–20; and expressivism 13–14; history 2–6; on
464 Index
imitation 213; narrative forms, emphasis on 169; school genres 168–169

see also cognitive psychology scientific writing 292, 307
process transfer 176 second language acquisition (SLA) 273–282
processes: behaviors, modeling 215; knowledge of 385 second language writers see multilingual writers
purpose 101, 105, 200, 212 self-directed language study 310–311
Selfe, Cynthia 386, 392, 396, 400, 404
questioning 71–72 self-evaluation 32, 100–101
Quintilian 58, 88, 213 Selzer, Jack 45, 124
semantics 322
racism: and language discrimination 363–364, 371; semiotics 390, 422, 426
see also discrimination sentence combining 324
reader-based prose 12, 41–43 sentence-level revision 100
readership see audience Smith, Frank 205, 208
reading 205–221; connections to writing 223–235; social constructionism 14–15
disabilities and 216–217; literature, role of social justice 246, 258–259
210–211; as models 213–215; as a process 22–23; social media 388–389, 395, 398, 426
relationship with writing 209–210; scholarship social relations: collectives, and invention 54; and
on reading 207–209, 223; the writing class digital literacies 400; and genre 49, 50; power
211–213 and language 370–371
recursive writing process 9 sociolinguistics 325–326
redrafting see drafting/redrafting Sommers, Nancy 32
reflection 28, 147, 155, 201, 212; digital/ sophists 8, 56
multimodal writing 394, 395; language for 150; sound see aurality
reading experiences 207; revision and 93–94; speech: linear model based on 110–112; see also
see also language, private aurality
register 281 speech act theory 162, 181–182, 317
Reiff, Mary Jo 23, 119, 124, 181 stance markers 193–194
relative clauses 284 standard language ideology see monolingualism
remedial writers/writing 171, 360; see also Standard(ized) American (or Academic) English
discrimination (SAE) 329
research writing 68, 193–201 standard(ized) dialect 329–331
revision 9, 32–46, 87–118; audience and 134–135; standardized tests 133–134, 241–242, 338
cognitive processes 92–93; computers for 96–98; “Students’ Right to Their Own Language”
contemporary concepts 89–90; direct instruction (SRTOL) 362–363
98–99; experienced writers’ theory 115–117; sub-disciplines 191–192, 199, 200
genre and 98–99; global 101; history 88; subject scale 11
interventions, research on effectiveness 99–100; Swales, John 159, 162, 167–168, 181, 193, 195, 199
sentence-level 99, 100; strategies/resistance Sydney School 168–169
90–93, 110–118; student independence, helping systemic functional linguistics (SFL) 324–325
104–105; see also reflection
rewriting 62–63; see also drafting/redrafting talking see aurality
Rhetoric and Composition theory 5 threshold concepts 21, 177–179
rhetoric(al) 21, 181; classical 4–5, 55–59; history titles, scientific research writing 198–199
2, 418; intercultural 285–291; knowledge, Tobin, Ladd 3–4, 14, 19
digital/multimodal writing 385; oral 2; topoi, topics 58
reading 63, 212; renewed interest in 8–9; transcription 215
and revision 88–89, 99; written 2; see also transfer 174–176, 177–179, 181
classical rhetoric translanguaging 331–334, 339
rhetorical genre theory 160 translingualism 362, 367–368, 369, 372
rhetorical moves 62–64, 167–168, 193, 195 Trimbur, John 20, 363, 365
rhetorical sovereignty 400, 411, 428 Twitter 389
romantic writing 14, 54, 59, 170
Rose, Mike 65–66, 170–171 undergraduate writing: feedback 265–271; and
rubrics 254 linguistic diversity 372
rules 77–78 uptakes 181–182
Russian literary writing style 290
values 9, 53
Saussure, Ferdinand de 116, 317 vertical curricula 201
scaffolding 68, 247 video, digital 425–426, 428
Index 465
visual rhetoric/communication 391–392 working-class students 165, 168, 241

voice 13–14, 61, 420; see also aurality WPA Outcomes Statement 384–386
Vygotsky, Lev 10, 14, 146–147, 152 writer-based prose 12, 41–43, 143, 149
writer’s block 8, 65–67, 76–86
Wardle, E. 22, 175–176, 199 writing about writing 22
Web, the 387–389 Writing Studies: genre, redefined 160; threshold
web genres/webpages 179–180, 388 concepts 177–178
whole-class workshops 95–96, 102
Witte, Stephen 33–34, 44 Yancey, Kathleen Blake 20, 392–393, 420
Wolters Hinshaw, Wendy 424 YouTube 395

Concepts in Composition

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Concepts in Composition

ISBN: 978-1-138-08864-1 (hbk)

1 Processes: Approaches and Issues 1

Readings: Composing Behaviors of One- and Multi-Draft Writers 32

2 Invention: Issues and Strategies 52

Reading: Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language:

3 Revision: Issues and Strategies 87

Reading: Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced

Reading: Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for

5 Genre, Transfer, and Related Issues 159

Reading: “Emphasizing Similarity” but Not “Eliding Difference”:

6 Reading/Writing Connections 205

Reading: Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading

7 Assessment: Issues and Controversies 238

Reading: Across the Drafts 265

8 Teaching Multilingual Students in a Composition Class 272

Reading: Promoting Grammar and Language Development in the

9 Language, Linguistic Diversity, and Writing 317

Reading: Clarifying the Multiple Dimensions of Monolingualism:

Reading: The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and

Appendix 1: Effective Writing Assignments 446

• An overview of a significant concept in composition that informs classroom teaching.

The “Process” Movement

The Writing Process Movement: A Brief History

The First-Year Course and the Use of Handbooks

Once upon a time, in an age of disciplinary darkness and desolation . . . writing stu-

For Writing and Discussion

The Birth of the Process “Movement”

Influences on the Concept of Process Teaching

For Writing and Discussion

After the two drawings are completed:

The Stages of Writing

Renewed Interest in Rhetoric

Rhetoric, Exigence, and Process

Rhetoric, Authority, and Values

Early Research on Composing

The Role of Cognitive Psychology

The Work of Flower and Hayes

Developmental Models of the Composing Process

For Further Exploration

Rhetoric and the Composition Class

For Writing and Discussion

Expressivism and the Concept of Personal Voice

Collaborative Learning in the Classroom

For Writing and Discussion

Peer Editing Question Sheet

For Further Exploration

Criticism of the Process Movement

Recent Emphases in Composition Research and Teaching

1 Helping students understand that writing involves “rhetorical human interaction in

For Discussion and Writing

Writing about Writing

For Writing and Discussion

1 The First Pass—Reflection and Quick Overview

Genre and Process

For Further Exploration

Transfer and Threshold Concepts

Points to Note When Observing Composition Classes

The Importance of Reflection

1 Discuss your history as a writer, focusing on particular highlights.

Writing a Reflective Memo (to be used to help students reflect on a draft)

Preference for Beginning with a Developed Focus vs. Preference

Preference for Limiting Options vs. Preference for

Writer-Based vs. Reader-Based Early Drafts