Writing Across Contexts

Addressing how composers transfer both knowledge about and practices of writing, Writing across Contexts explores the grounding theory behind a specific composition curriculum called Teaching for Transfer (TFT) and analyzes the efficacy of the approach. Finding that TFT courses aid students in transfer in ways that other kinds of composition courses do not, the authors demonstrate that the content of this curriculum, including its reflective practice, provides a unique set of resources for students to call on and repurpose for new writing tasks. The authors provide a brief historical review, give attention to current curricular efforts designed to promote such transfer, and develop new insights into the role of prior knowledge in students' ability to transfer writing knowledge and practice, presenting three models of how students respond to and use new knowledge—assemblage, remix, and critical incident. A timely and significant contribution to the field, Writing across Contexts will be of interest to graduate students, composition scholars, WAC and writing-in-the-disciplines scholars, and writing program administrators.

Addressing how composers transfer both knowledge about and practices of writing, Writing across Contexts explores the grounding theory behind a specific composition curriculum called Teaching for Transfer (TFT) and analyzes the efficacy of the approach. Finding that TFT courses aid students in transfer in ways that other kinds of composition courses do not, the authors demonstrate that the content of this curriculum, including its reflective practice, provides a unique set of resources for students to call on and repurpose for new writing tasks. The authors provide a brief historical review, give attention to current curricular efforts designed to promote such transfer, and develop new insights into the role of prior knowledge in students' ability to transfer writing knowledge and practice, presenting three models of how students respond to and use new knowledge—assemblage, remix, and critical incident. A timely and significant contribution to the field, Writing across Contexts will be of interest to graduate students, composition scholars, WAC and writing-in-the-disciplines scholars, and writing program administrators.

Worlds Apart: Acting and Writing in Academic and Workplace Contexts offers a unique examination of writing as it is applied and used in academic and workplace settings. Based on a 7-year multi-site comparative study of writing in different university courses and matched workplaces, this volume presents new perspectives on how writing functions within the activities of various disciplines: law and public administration courses and government institutions; management courses and financial institutions; social-work courses and social-work agencies; and architecture courses and architecture practice. Using detailed ethnography, the authors make comparisons between the two types of settings through an understanding of how writing is operative within the particularities of these settings. Although the research was initially established to further understanding of the relationships between writing in academic and workplace settings, it has evolved to examining writing as it is embedded in both types of settings--where social relationships, available tools, and historical, cultural, temporal, and physical location are all implicated in complex ways in the decisions people make as writers. Readers of this volume will discover that the uniqueness of each setting makes salient different aspects of writers and writing, resulting in complex, and potentially unsettling implications for writing theory and the teaching of writing.

This book represents the most comprehensive account to date of foreign language writing. Its basic aim is to reflect critically on where the field is now and where it needs to go next in the exploration of foreign language writing at the levels of theory, research, and pedagogy.

Clearly explaining writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) pedagogy for English language teachers in university settings, this book offers an accessible guide to integrating writing and speaking tasks across the curriculum and in disciplinary courses. Teachers will find this book useful because its direct, practical advice can be easily incorporated in their classrooms to help their students develop advanced disciplinary English skills in writing, oral presentation, and graphical presentation. Enhancing its usefulness and relevance, each chapter includes coverage of the use of technology for teaching and learning; ways in which teachers can effectively and efficiently assess writing and speaking; and vignettes or examples to Illustrate writing strategies or assignments in different contexts. Pulling together the key features of writing-across-the-curriculum in one volume this book, is an efficient resource for busy EFL/ESL teachers worldwide.

This volume includes insights into, and reflections about, different perspectives of the relationship between L2 writing and technology with particular emphasis on the writing process, development of linguistic skills, development of writing competencies and literacy, educational approaches to writing, as well as task creation and assessmetn in diverse writing contexts. In this regards, the chapters incorporate the recognition of a connection between the fields of second language writing, pedagogy, second language acquisition, and CALL emphasizing the need for technological innovation and integration to be built upon a strong pedagogical and research-based foundation.

While education is based on the broad assumption that what one learns here can transfer over there– across critical transitions – what do we really know about the transfer of knowledge?The question is all the more urgent at a time when there are pressures to “unbundle” higher education to target learning particular subjects and skills for occupational credentialing to the detriment of integrative education that enables students to make connections and integrate their knowledge, skills and habits of mind into a adaptable and critical stance toward the worldThis book – the fruit of two-year multi-institutional studies by forty-five researchers from twenty-eight institutions in five countries – identifies enabling practices for, and five essential principles about, writing transfer that should inform decision-making by all higher education stakeholders about how to generally promote the transfer of knowledge.This collection concisely summarizes what we know about writing transfer and explores the implications of writing transfer research for universities’ institutional decisions about writing across the curriculum requirements, general education programs, online and hybrid learning, outcomes assessment, writing-supported experiential learning, e-portfolios, first-year experiences, and other higher education initiatives. This volume makes writing transfer research accessible to administrators, faculty decision makers, and other stakeholders across the curriculum who have a vested interest in preparing students to succeed in their future writing tasks in academia, the workplace, and their civic lives, and offers a framework for addressing the tensions between competency-based education and the integration of knowledge so vital for our society.

As the nation becomes increasingly divided by economic inequality, racial injustice, xenophobic violence, and authoritarian governance, scholars in writing studies have strived to develop responsive theories and practices to engage students, teachers, administrators, and citizens in the crisis of division and to begin the complicated work of radically transforming our inequitable institutions and society. Writing Across Difference is one of the first collections to gather scholars from across the field engaged in offering theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical resources for understanding, interrogating, negotiating, and writing across difference. No text in composition has made such a sweeping attempt to place the multiple areas of translingualism, anti-racism, anticolonialism, interdisciplinarity, and disability into conversation or to represent the field as broadly unified around the concept of difference. The chapters in this book specifically explore how monolingual ideology is maintained in institutions and how translingual strategies can (re)include difference; how narrative-based interventions can promote writing across difference in classrooms and institutions by complicating dominant discourses; and how challenging dominant logics of class, race, ability, and disciplinarity can present opportunities for countering divisiveness. Writing Across Difference offers writing scholars a sustained intellectual encounter with the crisis of difference and foregrounds the possibilities such an encounter offers for collective action toward a more inclusive and equitable society. It presents a variety of approaches for intervening in classrooms and institutions in the interest of focalizing, understanding, negotiating, and bridging difference. The book will be a valuable resource to those disturbed by the bigotry, violence, and fanaticism that mark our political culture and who are seeking inspiration, models, and methods for collective response. Contributors: Anis Bawarshi, Jonathan Benda, Megan Callow, James Rushing Daniel, Cherice Escobar Jones, Laura Gonzales, Juan Guerra, Stephanie Kerschbaum, Katie Malcolm, Nadya Pittendrigh, Mya Poe, Candice Rai, Iris Ruiz, Ann Shivers-McNair, Neil Simpkins, Alison Y. L. Stephens, Sumyat Thu, Katherine Xue, Shui-yin Sharon Yam