[Teaching_Basic_Writing] NEW MODULE POSTED!!!!

[Laura Gray-Rosendale]

Hi, everyone! The holiday season is already upon us. Eek! I hope that you
are all doing well and not too busy as the semester goes into its final
weeks :-).

Many thanks to Sherry and Duane for the wonderful discussions about teaching
life stories. They have been fascinating. We now have a new module posted
titled "Conversing in Marginal Spaces: Basic Writers' Responses to Teachers
Comments" by Dodie Forrest and Carolyn Calhoon-Dillahunt. Please see
http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/english/tbw/nov.html.

Dodie teaches writing courses from basic writing to college-level
composition, as well as courses in women's literature, introduction to
plays, and tutor preparation at Yakima Valley Community College, where she
also directs the Writing Center on the main campus.  She is an active member
of PNWCA and PNW-TYCA, having served as former coeditor of Pacific View, the
regional TYCA newsletter.  She has presented with colleagues and writing
center consultants at national and regional conferences and recently served
as a leader for the 2007 International Writing Centers Association Summer
Institute.

Carolyn teaches a variety of composition courses, both basic writing and
college-level, as well as humanities, public speaking, and literature
courses at the Grandview campus of Yakima Valley Community College in
Washington state.  She also directs the Grandview Campus Writing Center.
Carolyn is currently serving as National TYCA Secretary and is a member of
the CCCC EC.  She has also done some reviewing for the Teaching English in
the Two-Year College journal.  

Inspired by Nancy Sommer's longitudinal study on Harvard students, Carolyn
and Dodie have launched their own empirical study focusing on pre-college
level writers in a community college setting to better understand how this
group of writers responds to and makes use of instructor feedback on their
papers.  This module presents an overview of the first phase of Dodie and
Carolyn's study.  They are continuing their research by examining student
annotations of their revisions and conducting in-depth interviews.

Here are their discussion questions:
Discussion Questions:
o	What commenting methods have you used that students respond well to?

o	Is there a difference in the feedback you give to "basic writers" as
opposed to college-level writers? Should there be? 
o	How can we get students to read comments in the context of their
whole paper? 
o	What strategies can we use to teach student the "how-to's" of
academic discourse (analyzing, digging deeper, developing ideas)? 
o	Why do students make the changes they do? 
o	Why do they decide not to make suggested changes?
o	How much do students use other sources of feedback (e.g., peer
reviewers, writing center staff, friends and family members, themselves) for
the revisions they make?