Barb Blakely Duffelmeyer and Anthony Ellertson’s “Critical Visual Literacy: Multimodal Communication Across the Curriculum”

In “Critical Visual Literacy: Multimodal Communication Across the Curriculum,” Barb Blakely Duffelmeyer and Anthony Ellertson argue that multimodal compositions should be integrated into the composition classroom to allow student to better experience the technology, visual, and information literacy that is required for the environments in which students are currently writing and reading texts. In many ways, multimodal composition represents an extension of computers in the classroom to be able to address contemporary issues of communication in a wired, net-savvy world. Specifically, the authors argue that undertaking multimodal composition allows students to better understand: 1) how texts are not a mirror of reality, but rather a construction; 2) how rhetorical awareness impacts the way in which texts are composed and received; and 3) develop an active production of media rather than just a passive consumption. All of these goals allow students to address the critical goals of traditional composition, but do so in a way that actively engages new technologies and provides access to new forms of literacy. Moreover, these considerations take into account not only the type of composition that students will be asked to do within the university, but also the type of media they interact with in everyday life and the communication environment that they will enter in professions.

Melanie Yergeau, Kathryn Wozniak, and Peter Vandenberg “Expanding the f2f: Writing Centers and Audio-Visual-Textual Conferencing”

In “Expanding the f2f: Writing Centers and Audio-Visual-Textual Conferencing,” Melanie Yergeau, Kathryn Wozniak, and Peter Vandenberg create an interactive web-based text which looks at the applicability of on-line writing center strategies of audio-video-textual conferencing in order to conduct on-line tutoring without sacrificing the non-verbal communication that e-mail tutorials loose. The authors explain that on-line audio-video-textual conferencing tools are more inexpensive than face-to-face conferencing and more productive than exclusively text-based e-mail or chat tutorial sessions. Audio-video-textual conferencing also promotes writing centers focus on individualized, interpersonal conversations that allow clients to learn from not only the tutor’s words, but the speech in a context of facial expressions, gestures, and other non-verbal cues. While, both tutors and clients must negotiate the technology and virtual space in which sessions take place, the authors assert that once initial complications are overcome tutors and clients both emerge more technologically literate. They can actually forget the virtual space that separates them and interact in a way that is similar to face-to-face tutorial sessions. In addition, since students are in more “homey” spaces, the authors even suggest that they might be more likely to take possession of their work. However, authors warn that there are problems with audio-video-textual conferencing; for example, tutors having access to seeing the client’s home may make markers of race, gender, and sexuality more prominent.  In addition there may be added difficulties that English second language learners may have.

Nancy Sommers’ “Responding to Student Writing”

In “Responding to Student Writing,” Nancy Sommers examines ways in which instructors can engage students through comments and feedback in all stages of the composition process, which inspires students to understand and appreciate the need for revision. In other words, instructor comments should motivate a student to revise; however, some teacher comments actually serve to force a student to examine the teacher’s purpose in making certain comments, rather than the student’s own purpose in writing. Specifically, Sommers sees the teacher as appropriating student texts, in part, by comments which focus at local-level grammar error and don’t coincide with global level revisions that the teacher is asking the students to undertake. These dual-levels of vague comments can confuse the student and make them unsure  of what type of revision is of higher priority. In addition, local-level comments are often generic and can suggest that all students need to do is make minor changes and that the text already exists in an almost-finished mode. Thus, the process of revision is mistakenly seen more as a rewording activity. To solve some of these issues and confusions, teachers need to focus on providing students with thoughtful, individualized commentary that will allow the student to further develop their specific purpose and better engage with ideas in a specific text. Most importantly, comments should support the process that is occurring in the classroom.

Eric H. Hobson’s “Writing Center Pedagogy”

In “Writing Center Pedagogy,” Eric H. Hobson describes the role of writing centers in helping students receive one-on-one guidance about their writing process, as well as specific rhetorical and mechanical issues. It is misrepresentative to overgeneralize the writing center’s role in composition, since writing centers have evolved to help students at all stages in writing, from prewriting or planning, to research, to drafting, to global and local composition issues, to revision, as well as other stages and aspects of the process. While writing centers focus on the one-on-one, individualized support that they give to writers, there also is a process of collaborative learning that can occur in writing centers through the active learning between tutors and clients. The peer-to-peer relationship that can be built in the writing center has the potential to inspire self-motivated learners who feel like they produce knowledge in a community of like-minded peers. However, writing center’s individual and collaborative projects have also moved to cyberspace, where writing centers may exist partially or completely on-line and provide not only traditional composition guidance, but also help students with the technologies of composition. Both traditional and on-line writing centers remain committed to proving a structure that allows students to become better writers through process instead of evaluation.

Susan McLeod’s “The Pedagogy of Writing Across the Curriculum”

In “The Pedagogy of Writing Across the Curriculum,” Susan McLeod explains that WAC (writing across the curriculum) programs are marked by their introduction of transformational pedagogy, which teaches student to write, not only for English classes, but, more importantly, for success in their future academic disciplines. Specifically, WAC introduces both discipline contents and discourse elements that will allow students to be able to achieve success in writing assignments that come from a variety of departments. WAC teachers are encouraged to use ungraded assignments such as journals, freewrites, and quick-writes that allow the students to “write to learn” in a way that is similar to expressivist pedagogy. Pedagogy in “writing to learn” is both student-centered and reflective. However, in addition, WAC instructors want students to be able to “write to communicate” and, thus, provide genre and discipline theory that will allow students the tools to approach a variety of discipline-specific rhetorical situations. “Writing to communicate” is distinguished from “writing to learn” because it involves 1) taking into account an outside audience; 2) revising and polishing works; and 3) reader instead of writer based approaches. Pedagogically, the relationship between the student and teacher is slightly different in the “writing to communicate” model, as a teacher is seen as a experienced professional that helps students learn discourse of specific disciplines. Clearly, this pedagogical stance requires instructors to be knowledgeable of the writing conventions of disciplines other than their own, and requires that teachers have access to resources which allows their knowledge to be acquired.

Ann E. Berthoff’s “From the Making of Meaning”

In “From the Making of Meaning,” Ann E. Berthoff posits the central thesis that composition classrooms need to focus on cognitive aspects of the writing process in order to understand writing as a process of meaning making, just like all other meaning making processes humans’ undertake. In this model, composition becomes a part of a continual process of thinking, perceiving, and writing, which translates a dialogue of ideas into sign symbol language. Thus, writing is a constructive process of building meanings through channeling the power of language. Therefore, Berthoff states that writing is a process of “interpretive paraphrasing” where the writer composes from the dialogue among authorial and audience voices. However, the writer is aided in this chaotic process by the fact that the mind, not only abstracts and questions information, but the mind also naturally orders information. Therefore, in terms of classroom practice, Berthoff asserts that pre-writing needs to express the chaotic abstractions and allow students to list, name, and question information to eventually structure and order information. Also, Berthoff emphasizes that, overall, assignment sequences need to be structured to allow students to gradually learn to use the power of language as a meaning making tool.

Patrick Hartwell’s “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar”

In “Grammar, Grammars, and the Teaching of Grammar,” Patrick Hartwell critiques the inadequacy of experimental research in providing any type of resolution to the conflict of teaching grammar in the classroom, and, instead, he proposes to define what exactly critics are discussing when they talk about grammar. Hartwell defines 5 meanings of grammar:

1. Grammar as the mind’s internalized, naturalized rules of language usage. These are rules that we use to communicate, but they are not readily accessible if we are asked to state why we talk in a certain way. In other words, they are the unconscious rules of a language that we have acquired as native speakers.

2. The scientific study of grammar (linguistics). Native speakers do not have to consciously know that rules of a language in order to speak or perform the language. Therefore, according to Hartwell, learning rules has no affect on language production.

3. Actual grammar usage performance. This is able to occur without learning the rules of the language through direct instruction. Moreover, at times direct instruction can degrade performance.

4. Grammar instruction as taught in school. This is necessarily inadequate because it does not reflect either actually usage or the complexities of how language works in the mind.

5. Grammar as a stylistic tool. Language needs be be understood by how it can be manipulated in print contexts to impact meaning.

Within this context, Hartwell asserts that “error” need to be redefined to address it, not as a cognitive or linguistic problem, but as an unawareness about accessing the tacit language knowledge that a learner already has internalized.

Deborah Mutnick’s “On the Academic Margins: Basic Writing Pedagogy”

In “On the Academic Margins: Basic Writing Pedagogy,” Deborah Mutnick is writing at a time when basic writing classes in universities face the possibility of abolishment. It is in this context that Mutnick overviews pedagogical practices in basic writing classrooms as parables for our times, which can illuminate the current situation of writing programs. Specifically, Mutnick examines:

1) 1. The work of Mina Shaughnessy, who believed that basic writing courses altered both the students in the classes, as well as the institutions themselves. Although Shaughnessy’s research evolved, it demonstrated a steady commitment to looking at students underpreparedness in the college composition classroom and proposed strategies for dealing with this issue. For example, Shaughnessy saw error in writing as following a logical pattern.

2) 2. For decades after Shaughnessy’s work, the predominate theory in composition classes was to avoid direct grammar study that could detract from the instruction in writing and rhetorical situation. For example, Perl suggests that overattentiveness to errors undermines writings fluidity. There has been much debate over this practice.

3) 3. In the 1980’s there emerged a “social turn” in composition which looked at social and cultural differences of students. Bizzell’s research has examined the way that individuals must adopt the powerful academic social discourse over their own home discourse. Similarly, Bartholomae suggested that basic writing is used to introduce students to academic language.

4) 4. Select 1980s and 1990s research examined how work in the field of composition pedagogy has neglected to focus on the sociohisotrical structures that determine who is inside vs. outside the academy. Fox’s work critiques the approach of research such as Bizzell’s and he suggests the universal standard of literacy for academic success must be problematized. Once writing programs became institutionalized some critics such as Bartholomae suggest that they reproduced hierarchies that they were attempting to overthrow.

5) 5. Recent trends in writing instruction include: The Studio model where groups of students and teacher meet once a week to discuss assignments; Mainstreaming, which focuses on sociocultural and language diversity to teach writing; and the Yogurt Model that allows students to participate in a writing studio for as long as they need to in order to complete assignments.

Laura Julier’s “Community-Service Pedagogy”

In “Community-Service Pedagogy,” Laura Julier defines and provides an overview of community-service pedagogy, as well as identifying major theorists and critics in this area. She also stresses the fact that there are multiple, often conflicting, views about community-service pedagogy.

Julier defines community-service pedagogy as a way to engage students with first-hand experience in real-world local settings, and relate this experience to the discussion, readings, writings, and other assignments in the classroom. Community-service learning is often seen as a way to fuse actions in social justice with university teaching and research interests. In this way, community-service becomes a pedagogical approach for promoting civic engagements in the democratic process. There must be a reciprocal relationship between the actions in the community and the discussion in the classroom. In other words, community-service pedagogy depends upon extensively reflecting on the community actions that are designed and implemented for supervised educational benefits.

On one hand, community-service pedagogy has benefits such as providing composition students with “real” audiences,”real” purposes,” and “real world” learning situations (Although, Julier points out that not all critics agree that these elements are any more “real” than in the classroom). On the other hand, Julier stresses the fact that service activities also need to be questioned and problematized in order for students and instructors to inquire why community-service learning takes place and who it benefits. In addition, community-service pedagogies need to be scrutinized in order to insure that they are not reproducing hierarchies between service providers and recipients.

Jeffrey T. Grabill’s “Utopic Visions, The Technopoor, and Public Access: Writing Technologies in a Community Literacy Program”

In “Utopic Visions, The Technopoor, and Public Access: Writing Technologies in a Community Literacy Program,” Jeffrey T. Grabill asserts that the unequal distribution of computer technologies in non-school contexts must be addressed in scholarship that researches computers and composition. Currently, Grabill sees a void in this type of scholarship and an overall lack of work that addresses the “technology underclass” that exists outside of the university setting. Citing numerous private and telecommunications statistical reports, Grabill concludes that few individuals of lower education levels, lower incomes, and peoples of color have access to computer technologies or are on-line.

However, Grabill sees spaces where computer access can be introduced into these populations. For example, working from an experiencial context of adult literacy programs, Grabill notes that these programs are an ideal infastructure for allowing individuals access to technologies and the educational and employment opportunities that can result from computer literacy. Moreover, public places like libraries and community centers are key spaces which public access to computer technology needs to be focused. However, in all of these spaces of access, Grabill warns that not only must computers be avalaible, but so too must the proper and current software, hardware, and repairs. In addition, courses must maximize the benefits of computers in public spaces, such as literacy centers, by designing classes around the integration of this technology into classroom projects.

In conclusion, Grabill puts forth a four-part call for action toward public computer access, including: 1) Reseach Action; 2) Teaching Action; 3) Curriculum Action; and 4) Public Policy.