A METHOD FOR DESCRIBING BASIC WRITERS AND THEIR WRITING: LESSONS FROM A PILOT STUDY

We present a holistic method for describing basic writers and their writing to encourage classroom research at two-and four-year colleges, the most under-represented sites, and enable comparisons of basic writers across institutions. Our method grows out of a pilot study of basic writers and writing...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of basic writing 2000-10, Vol.19 (2), p.93-123
Main Authors: Rossen-Knill, Deborah, Lynch, Kim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Basic Writing
Classroom Research
Colleges
Community colleges
Comparative Analysis
Cultural Differences
Error rates
Higher Education
Holistic Approach
Pilot Projects
Student surveys
Teachers
Writers
Writing
Writing Evaluation
Writing instruction
Writing teachers
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We present a holistic method for describing basic writers and their writing to encourage classroom research at two-and four-year colleges, the most under-represented sites, and enable comparisons of basic writers across institutions. Our method grows out of a pilot study of basic writers and writing at two community and one four-year private college. It makes use of a survey to understand the basic writers' backgrounds; "back talk," through which students respond to our preliminary interpretations of the survey; and analysis of student writing for use of some conventional discourse features and for rate, type and seriousness of error. We offer some preliminary results from our pilot study to illustrate the type of findings our approach yields and highlight the importance of such findings to classroom instruction.
ISSN:0147-1635
0147-1635
2164-5116
DOI:10.37514/JBW-J.2000.19.2.06