Techno-Rhetoric Cafe

I find myself focusing my energies in my Basic Writing classes on helping students not only become better writers, but also to build confidence in their writing. On a regular basis, I encounter students, both L1 and L2, who fear writing because of a fear of the countless red-marked grammar errors they must correct when [...]

“The first stage of Open Admissions involves openly admitting that education has failed for too many students” Mina Shaughnessey

“I cannot know for them what it is they need to free, or what words they need to write; I can only try with them to get an approximation of the story they want to tell” Adrienne [...]

Teachers of writing struggle every day to help their students overcome the belief that they are “bad writers.” Teachers of Basic Writing struggle even more with this problem because of the stigma automatically attached to the class they teach. Students of Basic Writing register for a class that, I believe, should require a supplemental class [...]

I’m finishing up my doctoral coursework with a class in Basic Writing Pedagogy. We’re two weeks into the semester and I’m already finding myself needing to write about this. So, I’m adding a series to the blog that focuses a bit less on technology and a lot more on the situation of Basic Writers in [...]

A concerned mother writes:
I found your site after my daughter’s history teacher has required her class to write a paper (7 pages). Her English class has not even had to write a paper that long. She is required to do an annotative bibliography an turn it in only two weeks after being assigned the paper. The [...]