Stories From First Year Composition

"Stories from First-Year Composition: Pedagogies that Foster Student Agency and Writing Identity counters perceptions of first-year composition (FYC) as a service course that prepares students for college writing. The collection identifies a new FYC "service", one that accommodates the realities of writing both within and outside of the academy. The collection also offers insights into effective FYC pedagogies and opportunities for readers to consider and think about their own teaching and their identities as FYC instructors. "Reflect Before Reading" prompts and questions and after-reading activities, including "Questions for Discussion and Reflection," writing activities that ask readers to apply ideas shared in chapters to their own FYC courses, suggestions for further reading, and multimedia components (accessible to readers through links within the collection itself and as resources available on the book's website) invite readers to interact with chapters and to develop deeper and more enriched understandings of their FYC teaching and an accompanying sense of agency so that they not only can teach FYC effectively but also advocate for its value and relevance"--

"Stories from First-Year Composition: Pedagogies that Foster Student Agency and Writing Identity counters perceptions of first-year composition (FYC) as a service course that prepares students for college writing. The collection identifies a new FYC "service", one that accommodates the realities of writing both within and outside of the academy. The collection also offers insights into effective FYC pedagogies and opportunities for readers to consider and think about their own teaching and their identities as FYC instructors. "Reflect Before Reading" prompts and questions and after-reading activities, including "Questions for Discussion and Reflection," writing activities that ask readers to apply ideas shared in chapters to their own FYC courses, suggestions for further reading, and multimedia components (accessible to readers through links within the collection itself and as resources available on the book's website) invite readers to interact with chapters and to develop deeper and more enriched understandings of their FYC teaching and an accompanying sense of agency so that they not only can teach FYC effectively but also advocate for its value and relevance"--

First-Year Composition: From Theory to Practice’s combination of theory and practice provides readers an opportunity to hear twelve of the leading theorists in composition studies answer, in their own voices, the key question of what it is they hope to accomplish in a first-year composition course. In addition, these chapters, and the accompanying syllabi, provide rich insights into the classroom practices of these theorists.

PERSPECTIVES ON WRITING Series Editors, Susan H. McLeod and Rich Rice In PLACING THE HISTORY OF COLLEGE WRITING: STORIES FROM THE INCOMPLETE ARCHIVE, Nathan Shepley argues that pre-1950s composition history, if analyzed with the right conceptual tools, can pluralize and clarify our understanding of the relationship between the writing of college students and the writing's physical, social, and discursive surroundings. Even if the immediate outcome of student writing is to generate academic credit, Shepley shows, the writing does more complex rhetorical work. It gives students chances to uphold or adjust institutional codes for student behavior, allows students and their literacy sponsors to respond to sociopolitical issues in a city or state, enables faculty and administrators to create strategic representations of institutional or program identities, and connects people across disciplines, occupations, and geographic locations. Shepley argues that even if many of today's composition scholars and instructors work at institutions that lack extensive historical records of the kind usually preferred by composition historians, those scholars and teachers can mine their institutional collections for signs of the various contexts with which student writing dealt. NATHAN SHEPLEY is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Houston, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Rhetoric and Composition. In addition to composition history, his specialization areas include composition pedagogy and ecological and neosophistic theories of writing. His articles have appeared in Composition Studies, Enculturation, Composition Forum, and Open Words: Access and English Studies.

The book explores the journey of 10 international students to better understand their experiences at a U.S. educational institution and how they constructed and revealed these experiences in this particular socio-academic space. The study features a series of three interviews during the semester that the participants were enrolled in a mainstream first-year writing course; their stories not only capture their experiences but reveal inspiring stories that “give voice” to students outside the dominant cultural and linguistic community. This study raises questions about how to support international students: In what ways can it inform our practices and policies relative to the internationalization of education and the development of global perspectives and competencies? What does it reveal that could impact daily instruction of L2 writing, particularly when it comes to international students’ need to meet the expectations of “university-level writing” in U.S. institutions of higher education? On an individual level, what can we learn from these students and about ourselves as a result of our interactions?

This book presents the authors’ attempts to interrogate the ways that white institutional, pedagogical, and curricular heteronormativity affects equity in writing instruction at Two Year Colleges. Written from a wide range of subject and identity positions, this volume explores issues that arise among students inside historically white-dominant classrooms, among faculty as curriculum and hiring decisions are made, and among colleagues when they attempt to engage the wider institution in equity work. Aiming to significantly change how urban Community College writing instruction is delivered in this country, the book operates on the principle that equity is essential to successful writing pedagogy, curricular development, and student success.

Stories have great power. This book attempts to harness that power to help students grow and develop as writers. It argues that stories and narratives can be utilized in the composition classroom, specifically first-year composition (FYC) to break down barriers. Throughout a given semester, stories and narratives can help students in composition courses to overcome academic, personal, and creative barriers, establishing a space for developing as writers and thinkers. Providing theoretical approaches, practical methods, and implications for using stories in FYC, this book explores the versatility of stories as teaching tools.

This primary textbook for courses on theories & methods of teaching at the college writing level brings together seminal articles, followed by questions for reflection, writing, and discussion.