Rethinking Basic Writing

Rethinking Basic Writing
Author: Laura Gray-Rosendale
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1999-12-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 113566417X

This book surveys the history of basic writing scholarship, suggesting that we cannot adequately theorize the situations of basic writers unless we examine how they construct their own conceptions of their identities, their constructions of their relationships to social forces, and their representations of their relationships to written work. Using a cross-disciplinary analytic model, Gray-Rosendale offers a detailed examination of the oral conversations that take place within one basic writing peer revision group. She explains the ways in which the students' own conversational structures impact and shape their written products. Gray-Rosendale then draws out the potentials of her work for basic writing administrators, curricula builders, and teachers.

Rethinking Writing

Rethinking Writing
Author: Roy Harris
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2005-03-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1847140998

The traditional Western view of writing, from Aristotle down to the present day, has treated the written word as a visual substitute for the spoken word. The eminent Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was the first to provide this traditional assumption with a reasoned basis by incorporating it into a more general theory of signs. In the wake of Saussure's work, modern linguistics has ignored or marginalized writing in favour of the study of speech. In all literate societies, however, speech in turn is interpreted by reference to the culturally dominant writing system. This puts in place a system of educational values which ensures that the more literate members of society maintain superiority over the less literate, and at the same time establishes a hierarchy among literate societies which favours the local product (alphabetic scripts in the Western Case). Roy Harris shows that the theory of writing adopted in modern linguistics is deeply flawed. Reversing the orthodox priorities, the author argues that writing is a far more powerful mode of linguistic communication than speech could ever be. His book is a major contribution to current debates about human communication written and spoken.

Dialogue on Writing

Dialogue on Writing
Author: Geraldine DeLuca
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2002
Genre: Basic writing (Remedial education)
ISBN: 9780805838619

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.

Writing Through Childhood

Writing Through Childhood
Author: Shelley Harwayne
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
Total Pages: 444
Release: 2001
Genre: Education
ISBN:

In Writing Through Childhood, Shelley dares us to rethink our beliefs about how we design writing workshops, use writer's notebooks, choose appropriate genres, and teach spelling.

Rethinking Foreign Language Writing

Rethinking Foreign Language Writing
Author: Virginia Mitchell Scott
Publisher: Heinle & Heinle Publishers
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1996
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Reviews the research of foreign language and ESL writing pedagogy and suggest new teaching methods for college and high school instructors based on recent developments in the field. Includes a comprehensive review of the literature, specific sugestions for activities and recommendations on integrating software into the writing curriculum.

Before Writing

Before Writing
Author: Gunther Kress
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2005-08-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134774028

Gunther Kress argues for a radical reappraisal of the phenomenon of literacy, and hence for a profound shift in educational practice. Through close attention to the variety of objects which children constantly produce (drawings, cuttings-out, 'writings' and collages), Kress suggests a set of principles which reveal the underlying coherence of children's actions; actions which allow us to connect them with attempts to make meaning before they acquire language and writing. This book provides fundamental challenges to commonly held assumptions about both language and literacy, thought and action. It places these challenges within the context of speculation about the abilities and dispositions essential for children as young adults, and calls for the radical decentring of language in educational theory and practice.

Rethinking Columbus

Rethinking Columbus
Author: Bill Bigelow
Publisher: Rethinking Schools
Total Pages: 197
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 094296120X

Provides resources for teaching elementary and secondary school students about Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America.

Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment

Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment
Author: Maja Wilson
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2006
Genre: Education
ISBN:

The conventional wisdom in English education is that rubrics are the best and easiest tools for assessment. But sometimes it's better to be unconventional. In Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment, Maja Wilson offers a new perspective on rubrics and argues for a better, more responsive way to think about assessing writers' progress. Though you may sense a disconnect between student-centered teaching and rubric-based assessment, you may still use rubrics for convenience or for want of better alternatives. Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment gives you the impetus to make a change, demonstrating how rubrics can hurt kids and replace professional decision making with an inauthentic pigeonholing that stamps standardization onto a notably nonstandard process. With an emphasis on thoughtful planning and teaching, Wilson shows you how to reconsider writing assessment so that it aligns more closely with high-quality instruction and avoids the potentially damaging effects of rubrics. Stop listening to the conventional wisdom, and turn instead to a compelling new voice to find out why rubrics are often replaceable. Open Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment and let Maja Wilson start you down the path to more sensitive, authentic style of writing assessment.

Reconceiving Writing, Rethinking Writing Instruction

Reconceiving Writing, Rethinking Writing Instruction
Author: Joseph Petraglia
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1136689230

To a degree unknown in practically any other discipline, the pedagogical space afforded composition is the institutional engine that makes possible all other theoretical and research efforts in the field of rhetoric and writing. But composition has recently come under attack from many within the field as fundamentally misguided. Some of these critics have been labelled "New Abolitionists" for their insistence that compulsory first-year writing should be abandoned. Not limiting itself to first-year writing courses, this book extends and modifies calls for abolition by taking a closer look at current theoretical and empirical understandings of what contributors call "general writing skills instruction" (GWSI): the curriculum which an overwhelming majority of writing instructors is paid to teach, that practically every composition textbook is written to support, and the instruction for which English departments are given resources to deliver. The vulnerability of GWSI is hardly a secret among writing professionals and its intellectual fragility has been felt for years and manifested in several ways: * in persistently low status of composition as a study both within and outside of English departments; * in professional journal articles and conference presentations that are growing both in theoretical sophistication and irrelevance to the composition classroom; and * in the rhetoric and writing field's ever-increasing attention to nontraditional sites of writing behavior. But, to date, there has been relatively little concerted discussion within the writing field that focuses specifically on the fundamentally awkward relationship of writing theory and writing instruction. This volume is the first to explicitly focus on the gap in the theory and practice that has emerged as a result of the field's growing professionalization. The essays anthologized offer critiques of GWSI in light of the discipline's growing understanding of the contexts for writing and their rhetorical nature. Writing from a wide range of cognitivist, critical-theoretical, historical, linguistic and philosophical perspectives, contributors call into serious question basic tenets of contemporary writing instruction and provide a forum for articulating a sort of zeitgeist that seems to permeate many writing conferences, but which has, until recently, not found a voice or a name.

Reading, Writing, and Rising Up

Reading, Writing, and Rising Up
Author: Linda Christensen
Publisher: Rethinking Schools
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2000
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0942961250

Give students the power of language by using the inspiring ideas in this very readable book.