Teaching English in the Two-Year College - Volume 51, Issue 3, 2024

This essay seeks to add to existing conversations about the role of first-year composition (FYC) in relation to students’ subsequent literacy experiences. Using data from an open-ended survey of former students five years after they completed FYC, in which they describe their current reading and writing practices and reflect on how these practices connect (or fail to connect) to what they recall from FYC, this article positions the findings within the context of scholarship on WAW and TFT and ultimately calls for increased attention to the situated nature of writing as part of the FYC curriculum at two-year colleges.

This study examines the effects of a curriculum based on self-regulated strategy instruction in an accelerated developmental education (DE) English course in a community college. Faculty at the college had established a four-week, two-credit compressed course that enabled students to enroll in an eleven-week first-year composition (FYC) course in the same semester, reducing remediation from fifteen weeks to just four weeks. The course focused on writing argumentative essays using sources. The study used a quasi-experimental design with five instructors and sixty-six students to compare the experimental curriculum to a business-as-usual control condition. In the experimental curriculum, students learned strategies for writing using sources, including strategies for critical reading and for planning and revising. In addition to writing and reading strategies, students also learned metacognitive, self-regulation strategies, such as goal setting, task management, and reflection. The study found a large positive effect (ES = .96) of the treatment on quality of an argument essay written using sources. However, no significant effects were found on a summary outline, self-efficacy, or completion of the subsequent FYC course. The study demonstrates the value of strategy instruction in DE English courses; it is the first experimental study of strategy instruction in an accelerated DE course. Further research is needed to evaluate the effects of strategy instruction in corequisite courses and in FYC.

This Instructional Note provides information on having students create research posters to support oral presentations in their first-year writing classes. Creating digital posters connects to multimodal assignments and provides transferable skills.

Modifying inclusive creative workshop models for FYW classrooms empowers student engagement and persistence and allows instructors with creative practices to effectively draw on their expertise to guide students’ writing of persuasive argumentative prose.

This Instructional Note elaborates on how weekly anonymous wellness check-in surveys can be designed and implemented in English courses to support students’ purposeful awareness of their well-being and to create a sense of supportive community in the composition classroom.