“Fresh Eyes on Freshman Composition:

Energizing the classroom through techniques that let students ‘be writers’”

April Carothers

In 1990, Robert J. Connors described freshman composition instructors as a “…permanent underclass … oppressed, badly paid, ill-used, and secretly despised.” Depressing words that seem more true today than ever before. More and more colleges and universities are hiring part time, temporary instructors where once there were permanent positions, even tenure-track positions. Those of us who feel called to teach composition find ourselves hitting the glass ceiling early and hard. To compound the issue, freshman composition has always been a particularly difficult course to teach, one that most students are required to take in order to achieve a degree, so they are not there by choice. Often, we face a room full of resentful faces.  Working conditions combine with student reluctance to create an environment that anyone would find discouraging, with no relief currently in sight-- certainly, nothing will change before next term starts. We have gone into survival mode. 

Yet we have not surrendered our responsibility to do our best for our students.  How we motivate ourselves  may lie in the long standing question of what freshman composition is for. The simple answer—“to teach them to write correctly”—is not enough. What students actually need has been demonstrated in recent research: a sense of exchange between themselves and their teachers, who represent the college environment. The freshman comp classroom should be a workshop where students experience what it means to be read, heard, and responded to as writers… not a gateway course but a bridge, creating connections that guide students toward what It means to be a college level writer. 

Freshman Comp: What’s it good for?

In fall of 1994, Paula Foster attacked the idea of the freshman composition course (sometimes WR 121 or ENG 101) as a service course, which is how the course is still widely viewed today. This is the general understanding that most of the university has, and I have to admit, I often tell students, “This course is intended to prepare you to write for college.” But we’ve been asking for decades now, what does that mean? Foster explains that as a service course, it is intended to “teach freshmen, once and for all, ‘How to Write,’ so that when they reach the classrooms of other professors, those professors can go about the business of teaching their subjects…” (7). Freshman composition as service course, Foster states, is based on the following false assumptions:

"a) that writing is not all that difficult to teach, b) that college freshman have already attained a certain level of competence by the time they walk into Freshman Composition, c) that both the “writing process” and “academic discourse conventions” are homogenous enough that they can be taught in one or two all-purpose semesters, and e) that composition itself is not worthy of study in its own right" (7).

These assumptions create problems: writing is a learned skill, one that takes years to master, just like any other complex skill, and it takes skill to teach. Competency is another issue that even writing instructors cannot always agree on. Process differs from one writer to the next. And “academic discourse conventions” is a dangerously misleading umbrella term. Yet other disciplines—engineering, business, social sciences— all assume that a single writing course  will leave students perfectly prepared. And if it does not, why that must be the fault of the instructor. 

Enter composition instructors, in the role of martyr, feeling called to take their place in those “permanent low-status [jobs]… not filled by upwardly mobile scholars” (Connors). It’s been my experience that other professors seem deeply grateful that I have taken on this job, even as they pity me for the lack of pay, lack of permanence, and lack of status. Twenty years ago, Connors had hoped that eventually things would change:

The fact is, as everyone knows who has taught both, that composition is harder and more energy-consuming than literature to teach well. Literature teachers do not delegate composition instruction to instructors only because literature has more cachet; literature is less work to teach. Because it is not required, attracts upperclass students, and has infinitely variable content, it is often more enjoyable to teach. Unless and until teaching and studying writing can be made work the entire English faculty wants to share in, irresistible social forces will maintain the underclass and all of the unhappiness and poisonous inequality that have always followed in its train.

I fear that the problem with Connors’ view is that as long as we view composition in this way, as a burden to be shared, it will never be more than a chore for anyone who teaches it, and it will never gain the attention it needs from the university in order to be shaped into a truly useful and beneficial class. Foster’s view of freshman comp as a subject course (a course taught for its own sake, because writing is a complex skill worthy of study for its own sake)  may be a more realistic way to work toward achieving respect and thus more consideration for composition courses. As long as we view this course as a service course, it will never be more than a one-stop fix-all for incoming students, and as long as we try to teach the course with this view, we will always struggle under unbearable pressure to achieve what cannot be done in a single term or even a single year.

American culture promotes the view that one should be able to acquire any number of complex skills practically overnight. Look at martial arts films: the Karate Kid is only one example of a student reaching the level of expert in only a few weeks. Having taught Taekwondo for over twenty years, I can assure you that one does not achieve expert skill in martial arts in a only weeks—or even a year, and one does not become an expert college writer in a year. Yet colleges view writing as a skill that can be picked up easily and quickly. Some courses are designed exactly for such a purpose, like CS 101, meant to introduce students to Word, Excell, and other basic computer programs. Learning to use a tool like Word is a concrete skill; a basic familiarity can give students a boost toward mastering the tool later on their own. But imagine if a more complex subject like math were taught as a single, eleven week course… or science, or engineering, or business. A crash course designed to teach a few disposable tricks is not sufficient when it comes to more complicated knowledge… like the art of composition. 

A June, 2007 essay, “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions,” addresses these issues again, with frustration. “When we continue to pursue the goal of teaching students ‘how to write in college’ in one or two semesters… we silently support the misconceptions that writing is not a real subject… We are, thus, complicit in reinforcing outsiders’ views of writing studies as a trivial, skill-teaching nondiscipline” (Downs & Wardle 553). We as writing teachers have to stop accepting the common view of writing courses as service courses. If change doesn’t start with us, it will not happen at all. Like Connors, Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle call for improving the status of writing studies in the university, but while Connors’ article calls for sharing the burden of teaching, Downs and Wardle call for a complete change in attitude toward freshman composition. Like Foster, they see serious problems with current views:

A number of assumptions inform the premise that academic writing is somehow universal: writing can be considered independent of content; writing consists primarily of syntactic and mechanical concerns; and academic writing skills can be taught in one or two introductory general writing skills courses and transferred easily to other courses (555). 

As we know, writing within the university alone is a complex act, with each different community demanding a different set of rules, different terminology, different tones and audiences, different purposes. Downs and Wardle argue that even using the term “academic writing” is dangerous, an “umbrella term” that suggests writing for college involves a simple set of skills. If a student cannot absorb this simple set of skills in a term or two, either the student must be incompetent, or the teacher is. They offer a charming analogy, that the use of a single term for a complex skill set is similar to philosopher Gilbert Ryles example of a category mistake: “mistaking a single building on a university campus for the university itself” (Ryles qtd. in Downs & Wardle 556). It is impossible to offer one writing sample and say, “This is what all writing for college looks like.” So why do we continue, after decades of arguing the point, to present freshman composition as an umbrella course, a service course to teach “academic writing?” 

Simple definitions persist: A strong paper has a clear thesis, the body supports that thesis, and the paper ends with a logical conclusion. At first glance, I think, “Yes, that sounds right.” But Downs and Wardle demonstrate the holes in this explanation by sharing what they feel is a more accurate depiction from Keith Hjortshoj:

Features of good writing vary from one situation to another. These variations depend, for example, on the subject of the writing, its purpose, and the reader’s expectations. The form of writing used in a field of study often structures those expectations. As a consequence, the features of good writing in a literature course will differ greatly from the features of good writing in business or astronomy, and what seems clear to one audience might not be clear to another (Hjortshoj qtd. In Downs & Wardle 558). 

It seems deceptively easy to teach how to produce a paper with a clear thesis, a body that supports that thesis, and a clear conclusion, but when we look more closely at the definition above, we begin to realize the immensity of the task in front of us. What students need is not a template or two but a deeper understanding of audience and purpose. That kind of understanding can only come from experience. What can we teach in a few weeks that might give students that kind of experience? Downs and Wardle argue that instead of teaching one or two genres and assuming that students will automatically transfer these skills to other tasks, we should be teaching how writing is used in the world (558).

Which leads to another problem,  that even after so many years of study, we still do not know exactly how writing skills transfer. We aren’t entirely certain what students need from a writing course. What we need is research into the experiences of students over years of university study, possibly examining what kinds of teaching or activities led to improvement in student writing over time. Actually, such research has been done recently, and it is rather eye-opening: the Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing (1997-2001), conducted by Nancy Sommers and fellow researchers, followed four hundred students from their freshman year through graduation. Researchers found that what led to gradual improvement of student writing was feedback from teachers that gave students a sense of exchange, a sense of being involved in a dialog with their teachers, being a part of the “conversation” taking place in college writing. According to an issue of the Harvard Writing Project Bulletin, put out soon after the study to report findings informally,

Sommers reports that freshmen who received feedback early and often during their first year of college made the greatest gains as academic writers. These freshmen are best able to make the transition from writing papers that are ‘a shot in the dark,’ as one study participant puts it, to meeting new and higher expectations for thinking and writing… Feedback also serves an important social function for freshmen, Sommers suggests, giving them a sense of belonging and helping them feel connected to faculty (HWP 2).

What students need most from their instructors is to feel that they are members of the academic community they have entered and that their work is really being read and considered. They need to feel like writers.

Let’s take the false assumption introduced earlier of considering writing “independent of content.” According to the Harvard study, effective feedback facilitates a student’s ability to move from “private and idiosyncratic” writing to work that takes into account the needs of real audiences. Effective feedback takes into account context, along with content. Additionally, “When their instructors encourage them to confront opposing viewpoints and sources that don’t support their claim, or ask them questions that enlarge their vision, students see that their writing is being taken seriously” (Sommers, “Shaped by Writing”). This kind of response encourages students to see what they are writing in terms of audience and purpose: “who is your reader and will s/he accept what you are saying?” “Is this source going to be considered acceptable by this audience?” For example, the student writing about the evils of abortion will have to let go of the statistics she found on a religious website and look at more scholarly sources, and the student writing about texting and driving will realize that while formal statistics and data are compelling, it is his own personal testimony that will most convince young readers.

The instructor is guiding the student to look again at their work and consider a concrete audience, to consider the needs of that audience. This also happens to be an effective way to explain why errors matter: errors confuse readers. Instead of simply marking errors and problems and making  a student possibly feel incompetent, the instructor treats the student as a junior colleague, demonstrating the way an experienced writer views their work and the work of their peers. At the same time, we can communicate the reality of what other professors in the university will expect as readers. Students begin to feel like writers, and when they begin to feel like writers, they begin to behave like writers: writers have a vested interest in audience understanding and perception. 

Freshman Composition as Workshop

Learning the ins and outs of college composition, of academic discourse, even the writing process itself is complex and takes time, time to build “habits of mind and thought” as Nancy Sommers put it-- time to learn to think and behave like writers. That is what the freshman comp course should be teaching: what it means to be a writer. Currently, the course tends to teach certain skills: process, how to clarify and shape one’s thoughts into something coherent and worth sharing; content, how to develop and support a clear thesis, which includes; research, how to locate, evaluate, then use outside sources, synthesizing these sources with one’s own thoughts; how to get and give useful feedback.  But these skills are taught with the attitude that students must master them before moving on. Instead, the focus should actively and openly be on introducing these skills in order to  give students the experience of being writers. Until they have an idea what that means, they cannot begin to tackle the variety of writing tasks other professors will assign, tasks we as comp instructors do not have time to prepare them for.

                So what does it mean to think and behave like a writer? My favorite discussion on this topic comes from Alice Horning and Jeannie Robertson. They compare basic writers (writers who struggle to communicate in the most basic way) with professional writers. The latter have three kinds of awareness that most inexperienced writers lack: metarhetorical awareness, or knowledge of the self as writer and of regular practices the self employs to produce strong writing; metastrategic awareness, or knowledge of the self as an individual who can solve problems using whatever strategies might be necessary; and metalinguistic awareness, or knowledge of the various features of language and how to use these features effectively (Horning and Robertson 53). These professionals are established members of the community in which they write. They have confidence in their own expertise and a metaview of what “writing” involves:  they are aware of various tools and strategies available to them for problem solving, and they are aware of the choices they and others make as writers, noting which choices, for them, result in effective writing. 

                Inexperienced writers (most students) often cannot see themselves as writers at all. They usually lack confidence in their ability to create meaning at the college level, and they lack awareness of what resources are available. I don’t mean that they don’t know where the writing center is—I mean that they aren’t aware of just how much benefit there is in using that writing center, or even in bouncing ideas off of roommates. They lack understanding of or experience with academic level discourse, and they know it, so they see themselves as outsiders. This is not necessarily bad: first year students are aware that the demands of college writing differ significantly from the demands of high school writing assignments, and they struggle to find a way to cope with being asked to write as if they were experts in a community they are new to. In the Harvard Study, those who could accept their role as novices and could see that there was more to be gained from each writing assignment than just a grade were most successful in adapting to college—they were also more engaged. “Being a novice allows students to be changed by what they learn, to have new ideas, and to understand that ‘what the teacher wants’ is an essay that reflects those ideas” (Sommers and Saltz, “Novice” 134).

                Why would a first year student resist seeing him/herself as a novice? Sometimes just being in a new environment can trigger anxiety, even fear, and this can interfere with learning. Fear can be masked as arrogance, as can boredom.  A bored or anxious student may not be willing to accept the vulnerability that may result from admitting to being a novice (to themselves or to others). And this is another good reason to avoid making students feel incompetent and exacerbating the situation: we can focus instead on showing them how writers read each other’s work by providing feedback that demonstrates this behavior and by guiding peer feedback activities. 

                It is not a great leap to assume that if student writers behave and think more like professional writers, they will be better able to adapt to different writing tasks. For example, professional, experienced writers have a knowledgeable view of possible audiences and of how audiences may differ from situation to situation. Experienced writers can adapt to possible audiences while remaining focused on their own purposes in writing. This is what it means to take a “metaview” of writing, to step back from one’s work or someone else’s and see it from an analytical standpoint… to write purposefully, not with accidental skill.  If a student writer is able to imagine a real audience, their purpose becomes much more focused. I have seen student papers transform drastically when I offered the student a “real” writing task and audience, such as, “Imagine that you are writing this essay as a newspaper article” or “Imagine you are writing an article for a magazine… what kind of magazine would be appropriate to your topic, and what kind of people would read that magazine?” Suddenly, with a concrete audience, the student finds what s/he meant to say. Content and context cannot be separated from writing; human communication does not happen in a vacuum: there is always audience and purpose. But for students, teacher as audience and grade as purpose is often too vague a context.  Yes, getting a passing grade (or an A) is a goal, but it is not a purpose in terms of what the writing task itself is trying to communicate. The goal of the paper may be an A, but the paper is not about getting an A.

I am not saying that teaching freshman comp should be easy or that assignments within the course should be easy. Foster makes an interesting point: she states that the essay is the place to reflect and make meaning. The college essay demands reflection on one’s own experience alongside that of others. She states that while freshmen rarely have the life experience to draw from in making meaning, “there is no better time to destabilize students’ fetishistic desire for fixed boundaries and clearly defined tasks than when they enter college” (9). Now is the time to show them how to think in new ways, how to see from different angles… and that a college assignment cannot always fit into a template, no matter how much they may prefer step by step instructions. Now is the time to guide them toward becoming “sharp-eyed, self-directed questioners, analysts, and synthesizers” (14). Foster clarifies that this can facilitated by teaching the personal essay with research and making that essay a project done in steps. This allows the essay itself to teach process, and the instructor, Foster points out, gets a chance to view the students’ learning strategies as they accomplish a series of tasks (12). The process of doing research, Foster argues, the struggle itself must be part of the project, so that students can overcome that misperception that “real writers” create strong papers in a single sitting… and that they should be able to do so themselves. 

In practice: Writers at Work

                While Foster focuses on the personal essay, Downs and Wardle argue that if we are to teach freshman comp as a subject course instead of a service course, we must teach it as an Introduction to Writing Studies, or writing and reading about writing. Many of us have used a partial approach similar to this: many instructors begin the course with a personal essay on the student’s own literacy, how s/he learned to read and write or how s/he uses reading and writing today. Such an essay is an effective way to begin to talk about the elephant in the room: problems students may have transferring what they know about literacy to writing tasks in college. Students can begin to develop a metaview, as Horning and Robertson described above, of the way they think of writing. By calling their attention to how they use language, we might introduce them to the idea of seeing themselves as writers. I particularly like Christine Harvey Horning’s literacy essay on discourse communities: I didn’t understand clearly what topic a student might focus on until I imagined writing it myself. Like the human beings around me, I belong to various discourse communities: in martial arts we use language in specific ways just as my colleagues and I used language in specific ways when we talk about teaching writing. A church group or an athletic team are also discourse communities. Each student will be able to identify a discourse community and begin to think consciously about how that group uses language. 

                To return to the idea of seeing writing as one with its content and context, Downs and Wardle argue for three grounding principles for a writing-as-subject course: “…the more an instructor can say about a writing’s content, the more she can say about the writing itself” (559). In other words, writing instructors need to be expert readers. I interpret this to mean that expert writing instructors are needed who can diagnose problems in student writing and address those problems clearly, not just mark errors but explain why something is considered a error. Second, they ask that we not claim to be teaching students to write but to be introducing them to “some activities related to written scholarly inquiry…In this course, students are taught that writing is conventional and context-specific rather than governed by universal rules” (559). We are teaching them the dialectic qualities of scholarly writing. Third, they believe that students should be treated like scholars and not told that there are two sets of standards for experts and students. “For example, students learn to recognize the need for expert opinion and cite it where necessary, but they also learn to claim their own situational expertise and write from it as experts do” (559). They are encouraged to behave like writers. 

                As a comp instructor, I’m not sure I’m ready to completely revamp my course to teach it as an intro to writing, but I can see the value of focusing on the act of writing itself. I open the course with discussions about what it means to be a writer and what problems students might encounter in trying to see themselves as such. I’ve found three articles I’ll be sharing next term: “Good Video Games and Good Learning,” by James Paul Gee discusses the ways students learn by examining closely why video games, which are difficult and challenging, are so engaging (and classroom activities often are not). He argues that all of us need certain conditions for engagement, briefly: Identity, or the ability to see oneself as a member of the learning community one is entering—in the writing classroom, the ability to project an identity as a writer; Interaction, or “words and deeds… placed in the context of an interactive relationship between the player and the world.” In the writing classroom, feedback that creates a sense of exchange. Production: players sometimes modify the games they play, and their consumption affects which games are produced; in the writing classroom students should have a say in the curriculum. I’ll come back to this. Risk taking and agency are two more factors Gee considered critical. Students need to feel encouraged to take risks, and students need to feel ownership of what they are doing. 

                Another essay I’ll be using is “Shitty first drafts” by Anne Lamott. She explains how freeing it was for her to realize that she did not have to produce something intelligent the first time. Students may benefit from hearing from a real writer that it’s good to let go and be messy at first. The third essay is one by Terry Tempest Williams, “Why I write.” It’s a nice piece, almost a stream of consciousness essay giving the various reasons the author chooses to write. I’m interested to see how students engage with this one… or not. As we proceed into the actual work of the course, the essays, I will have a way into the conversation about how they will begin and how they will go on. 

                For the formal writing assignments, I use a multi-step essay, with students choosing the topic for themselves. One argument against letting them choose their own topics might be the worry that free choice of topic is not something that happens often in college. I address this issue by providing plenty of in-class activities during which students must write on a specific topic or prompt that I assign. Another objection might be the difficulty that many students face when given the chance to choose a topic. It is true that many seem to prefer to be given a topic and concrete guidelines, and it is difficult to give exactly the same advice to all students when their topics vary so much. However, as Foster pointed out, now is a great time to encourage new ways of thinking about writing.

As they work toward choosing their formal assignment topic, I encourage them to explore their interests if they do not yet have a major. If they have a major, I encourage them to choose a relevant topic. Granted, many need serious guidance in discovering what interests them, and I have a library session (designed by librarian Tracy Sharn) just for this purpose. This free choice encourages engagement because students are interested in what they are writing and researching. As they begin to shape their projects, and as I provide feedback, they begin to feel ownership in their work. In a way, they have designed the focus of the course for themselves. I have had many students approach me halfway through the term to say that they had never realized they could enjoy writing until they had the chance to write about something they cared about.

Inherent in this ongoing project is the need to communicate with the instructor: we discuss the essays step by step in the classroom throughout the term, students come to my office, and some email with questions, so I have the opportunity to provide feedback repeatedly and in different forms as the work progresses. This creates a strong sense of exchange and connection between myself and each student—with less work: in steps 1 and 2, I can prepare them for what kinds of sources are acceptable and how to create works cited entries; I give guidance on the exploratory essay in step 3; when they turn in the researched version, step 4, I comment on how well they are developing their original ideas or how those ideas are changing as they work. In conferences, I can quickly give verbal guidance toward what kinds of revision would be effective in step 5 for that student and that topic. By the time the final draft comes in, only a few comments are necessary, mainly to do two things: call attention to what the student did well this term, and offer advice for one skill to keep working on in the future. It doesn’t feel like I’m spending much time writing comments, yet students feel very satisfied with the feedback they are getting. Some of that satisfaction, they tell me, comes from my enthusiasm for their topics, my supportive attitude, and the atmosphere of respect in the classroom and outside of it.

                The multi-step essay also encourages more in-depth research than three separate papers on three separate topics would. Each step requires students to dig deeper, and this process is aided by three library sessions, the later ones led by Robert Monge or Tracy Sharn. Students locate a topic and find four relevant sources, creating an annotated bibliography; explore the chosen topic from three different points of view; write a researched, argument on this topic; restructure the argument by addressing the opposing viewpoint first and by locating and using two more sources. 

                Advantages: students are usually emotionally invested in their topics, which encourages engagement and ownership. Students are required to consider other viewpoints and are required to consider an appropriate forum for their paper (newspaper? Blog? Magazine?). They are required to explain how their chosen sources are appropriate and effective, and finally they are required to consciously consider the structure of their argument. 

                Disadvantages: as the term draws to a close, I find that I have a hard time seeing the same topic repeatedly with fresh eyes. It does make reading and grading much easier than having to digest a new topic and a new thesis each time, but unless students are required to submit all drafts every time, it’s easy to lose track of what changes they have actually made from one version to the next. 

What I’m looking for as I’m evaluating papers is how students are revising, what skills they are using, what information they are adding (or not). When I see the same paper repeatedly, I experience what Foster earlier argued could be done with the personal essay: I observe their learning strategies as they go through a series of tasks. I’m better able to see patterns in their work, like problems with run-ons or citing sources. I’m better able to see if they understand what I mean by revision and whether they are developing the skill to do the kind of revising I’m asking for. I’m better able to see what kind of research they are doing, what kinds of sources they are using and whether they are understanding the difference between a “good” source and a “bad” one. It takes less effort on my part to target specific problem areas for each student. It also makes it easier to develop a relationship with students as I work with them on this single project instead of multiple papers, each of which represents, in a way, starting over. 

Conclusion

It’s an ugly climate now for the teaching of freshman composition. Nothing will change soon. We can only, as composition teachers, look at our own classrooms and what we need to accomplish: we need to survive teaching this course, and we need our students to get as much out of it as they can. At WOU, we have only one required writing course, so we have only eleven weeks to create a change in our students’ attitudes toward writing. Many of them come into the class with resentment. We can try to relieve some of that negativity by allowing students to choose their own topics and take some responsibility for their own learning. We can demonstrate how real writers behave and think and act, the tricks we have up our sleeves. We can show students what resources and tools are available to them as writers.

It’s time to change our focus to something more productive than getting rid of comma splices: giving our students the experience of being writers in college. Teaching freshman composition could be a more invigorating enterprise approached as a subject course… with the focus on showing students what it means to be a writer in a university setting. They may not make vast improvements in their writing that we can see, but it is astonishing what can be accomplished by a change in attitude toward the task of writing. When my students begin to act and think like writers toward the end of the term, I can see how much more relaxed they are about their projects, and conversely, how much more work they are willing to do. Whether the course is focused on the subject of writing itself, as Downs and Wardle suggest, or focused on other aspects of the art of writing, we may be able to actually make some inroads in the time we have with students. It’s less important to worry about what readings to assign or what kinds of essays to ask for than it is to focus on the idea of guiding them toward thinking and acting like writers.

I had to smile at one of the disclaimers at the end of Downs and Wardle’s paper: they warn that “[s]tudents will produce imperfect work” (575) in a subject focused course. I smile because what is implied is that anyone would expect perfect work after only a few weeks ( it’s laugh or cry). It’s not necessary, they argue, to look for flawless work: “…accepting imperfect work recognizes important truths about all research writing: it takes a long time, is inevitably imperfect, and requires extensive revision” (575). Expecting students to learn to think like writers means demanding that they expect more from themselves… and puts more of the burden of learning on them. In terms of future research, we need more information of the kind Nancy Sommers’ study produced: how student writers develop as they progress through years of study. Not enough attention has been paid to the 2001 study nor to its telling results.

Most of my students, at the end of the eleven weeks of working on the multi-step paper, feel proud of what they have created. They’ve thrown out some misconceptions, and they have been introduced to the idea of taking a metaview of writing. They have a little more confidence than they came in with. And they know where the writing center is.

Works Cited

Connors, Robert J. “Overwork/Underpay: Labor and Status of Composition Teachers since 1880.” Rhetoric Review 9. 1 (Autumn, 1990): 108-126

Downs, Douglas and Elizabeth Wardle. “Teaching about Writing: Righting Misconceptions: (Re)envisioning ‘First Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies.’” College Composition and Communication 58.4 (June 2007): 552-584.

Foster, Paula. “What is Freshman Composition For? Reasserting the Personal Essay and Retheorizing Academic Reading.” The Writing Instructor (Fall 1194): 5-15.

Gee, James Paul. “Good Video Games and Good Learning.” Academic ADL Co-Lab. Resources: Past Articles. <http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/documents/Good_Learning.pdf>

Harvard Writing Project Bulletin. Special Issue: Responding to Student Writing. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2000.

Horning, Alice and Jeanie Robertson. “Basic Writers and Revision.” Reference Guide to Revision History, Theory, and Practice. Ed. Alice Horning and Anne Becker. Colorado: Parlor Press and the WAC Clearinghouse, 2006. 22 February 2007. <http://wac.colostate.edu/books/horning—revision/>.

Lamott, Anne. “Shitty First Drafts.” bird by bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anchor Books: New York, 1995. 21-27. Retrieved online, 16 March 2012. <http://buddha-rat.squarespace.com/shitty-first-drafts/>.

Sommers, Nancy. “Shaped by Writing: The Undergraduate Experience. A brief guide to the film.” Insert. Across the Drafts and Shaped by Writing (same disk). DVD. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2005. The Harvard Study of Undergraduate Writing. 2002. 1 July 2008.

---. Laura Saltz. “The Novice as Expert.” College Composition and Communication 56.1 (September 2004): 124- 149.

Tempus Williams, Terry. “Why I Write.” Writing creative non-fiction: instruction and insights from the teachers of the Associated Writing Programs (Google eBook).  Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard. Writer’s Digest Books, 2001. Retrieved online, 16 March 2012. <http://books.google.com/books?id=Pk_yfhTR3scC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false> or <http://rvannoy.asp.radford.edu/rvn/312/whyiwrite.pdf>.