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Resources for Faculty

Writing Across the Curriculum resources for faculty, including presentations and recommended readings.

The Landmark College Writing Project

Presented during Landmark College "Brown Bag" Lunch Series, September 13, 2018
Presented by:
Sara Glennon, Associate Professor of Writing and Literature
John Kipp, Chair, Core Education Department

 

Teaching for Transfer: What We Talk About When We Talk about Writing

Presented during Landmark College Institute for Research and Training (LCIRT) Summer Institute, August 6, 2021
Presented by:
Sara Glennon, Professor, WAC Coordinator
John Kipp, Professor, LCWP Grant PI

View the presentation:

 


Recommended Readings

These selected bibliographies list some core readings that have inspired and guided the WAC program at Landmark College. Please contact [email protected] for more information or for assistance obtaining copies of any of these readings.


Click each heading to expand recommended reading content.

  • “Across the Drafts: Students and Teachers Talk About Feedback” and “Shaped by Writing, the Undergraduate Experience.” Expository Writing Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass, 2005. YouTube, uploaded by the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, April 25, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sbZnoFAZ9o.

    These 20-minute videos are products of the Harvard Study of  Undergraduate Writing. Students and writing faculty talk about the role of feedback in the writing process and the role of writing in an undergraduate education.

    Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom.  Jossey-Bass, 2021. Print.

    A new edition of an outstanding book about the use of writing to engage students in critical thinking.  This book is at the center of our initial professional development workshops in WAC at Landmark College.

    Bohr, Dennis J., & Rhoades, Georgia. (2014, April 27). The WAC glossary project: Facilitating conversations between composition and WID faculty in a unified writing curriculum. Across the Disciplines, 11(1). Retrieved September 16, 2015, from http://wac.colostate.edu/atd/articles/bohr_rhoades2014.cfm

    Created to facilitate transfer of writing skills from course to course and level to level, by giving faculty in composition program and the disciplines (WID) a common vocabulary and helping them understand how transfer can be encouraged. Also explains a new “vertical curriculum” developed to improve writing development and skills transfer.

    Cox, Michelle, Jeffrey R. Galin, and Dan Melzer. Sustainable WAC: A Whole Systems Approach to Launching and Developing Writing Across the Curriculum Programs. National Council of Teachers of English, 2018. Print.

  • Bergmann, Linda S. and Zepernick, Janet S., "Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students' Perceptions of Learning to Write" (2007). Purdue Writing Lab/Purdue OWL Publications. Paper 6.
    https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/writinglabpubs/6

    Berrett, Dan, “Students Can Transfer Knowledge if Taught How.”  The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 7 2014.

    Clark, Irene, and Andrew Hernandez. “Genre Awareness, Academic Argument, and Transferability.” The WAC Journal 22 (Nov. 2011): 65-78.

    Devet, Bonnie. “How Tutors of Academic Writing Can Use the Theory of Transfer of Learning.” Journal of Academic Writing, Vol. 8 No 2 Winter 2018 pp. 191-201. http://dx.doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v8i2.437

    Driscoll, Dana, & Jin, Daewoo. (2018, December 26). “The Box Under the Bed: How Learner Epistemologies Shape Writing Transfer.” Across the Disciplines, 15(4). December 2018, 1-20. Retrieved from https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/articles/driscoll-jin2018.pdf.

    Elon Statement on Writing Transfer. 2015. Web. March 9, 2022. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/elon-statement-on-writing-transfer/.

    Perkins, David N., and Gavriel Salomon. “Teaching for Transfer.”  Educational Leadership 46:1 (1988): 22 – 32.

    Wardle, Elizabeth, “Understanding ‘Transfer’ from FYC:  Preliminary Results of a Longitudinal Study”, WPA, Writing Program Administration, Vol. 31, Numbers 1 -2, Fall/Winter 2007

    Wolfe, Joanna, Barrie Olson, and Laura Wilder, “Knowing What We Know About Writing in the
     Disciplines: A New Approach to Teaching for Transfer in FYC”, The WAC Journal,
     January 2014.

    Yancey, Kathleen Blake, and Brian M. Morrison (2006).  Coming to Terms: Vocabulary as a Means of Defining First-Year Composition. Published in Sullivan, P., & Tinberg, H. B. (2006). What is "college-level" writing?. Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English.

    Yancey, Kathleen B, Liane Robertson, and Kara Taczak. Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing. , 2014. Print.

    This books outlines a pedagogy and curriculum for FYC called “Teaching for Transfer” developed and promoted by Kathleen Blake Yancey and her co-authors here.  Two central components of this approach are the use of “key concepts” and the use of the topic of writing itself as the content of the course.  This focus for FYC has become popular recently through the work of Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle (Writing About Writing: A College Reader, 2014).  Revisions to the required writing course sequence at Landmark in the last few years (2017-2021) were guided by this approach, and its emphasis on the issue of transfer of writing skills and knowledge to contexts beyond FYC.

  • Adler-Kassner, Linda, and Elizabeth Wardle, editors. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies. University Press of Colorado, 2015.

    Meyer, Jan, and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. London: Routledge, 2012. Print.

  • Clark, Irene, “Genre Awareness, Academic Argument, and Transferability,” The WAC Journal

    Downs, Downs and Elizabeth Wardle, “Readers, Writers, and Texts: Understanding Genre and Rhetorical Reading,” Chapter 2 in Writing About Writing, 4th ed. Bedford/St. Martins, 2020, pp. 30 – 48.

    Downs, Doug, “Rhetoric: Making Sense of Human Interaction and Meaning-Making,” Writing About Writing, 4th ed. Bedford/St. Martins, 2020, pp. 369-395.

    Johns, Ann, “Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice,” Text, Role, and Context: Developing Academic Literacies, Cambridge UP, 1997, pp. 51-70.

    Swales, John. “The Concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21–32.

  • Elbow, Peter, “Teaching Two Ways of Thinking by Teaching Writing,” Embracing Contraries, published 1986 by Oxford University Press. Reprinted in Dreams and Inward Journeys, 1998. Eds. Ford and Ford.

    Lamott, Anne, “Shitty First Drafts,” Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. , 1995.

    Larson, Reid, “Emotional Scenarios in the Writing Process,” in When a Writer Can’t Write, Ed. Mike Rose, The Guilford Press, 1985. Pp. 19 – 42.

    Lewis, Lesle, and Peg Alden,"What We Can Learn about Writing Blocks from College Students with Output Problems, Strong Writing Skills, and Attentional Difficulties." Journal of Teaching Writing 23.1 (2007): 115 - 146.

    Rose, Mike, “Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer’s Block.” College Composition and Communication 31.4 (1980): 389-401.

  • Bean, John C.,  Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, Chapters 15 & 16, Coaching the Writing Process and Handling the Paper Load,”   (especially pp. 304 – 316) and “Writing Comments on Students’ Papers” pp. 317 – 336)

    Busekrus, Elizabeth, “A Conversational Approach: Using Writing Center Pedagogy in Commenting for Transfer in the Classroom,” Journal of Response to Writing, Vol. 4, no. 1, 2018, pp. 100–116.

    Harvard Writing Project, “A Brief Guide to Responding to Student Writing,” 2007,  https://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/bg_responding_to_student_writing.
    pdf

    Fluckiger, Jarene, "Single Point Rubric: A Tool for Responsible Student Self-Assessment," Teacher Education Faculty Publications, 2010: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/tedfacpub/5

    Glennon, Sara, “Paper Evaluation Rubric for Comparative Analysis (Paper Three)”, WRT1011, 2019, adapted from The Cult of Pedagogy.

    Gonzalez, Jennifer.  “Meet the Single-Point Rubric,” The Cult of Pedagogy web site: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/single-point-rubric/

    ___________. “Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics, The Cult of Pedagogy web site: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/holistic-analytic-single-point-rubrics/

    “John C. Bean’s Priorities for Responding to Student Work” (from DePaul University) https://www.cui.edu/Portals/0/uploadedfiles/StudentLife/Writing%20Center/BeanHierarchyChart.pdf

    Lees, Elaine O., “Evaluating Student Writing,” College Composition and Communication, 30, Dec.1979.

    Sommers, Nancy, “Responding to Student Writing, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 33, No. 2, May 1982.

    WAC at Landmark College Handout: “Responding to Student Writing,” 2019.

  • Bean, John C.,  Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, Chapters 7, “Helping Students Read Mindfully across the Disciplines.”

    Carillo, Ellen C. Securing a Place for Reading in Composition: The Importance of Teaching for Transfer. , 2015.

    Horning, Alice S. “Reading Across the Curriculum as the Key to Student Success”.  Across the Disciplines:  A Journal of Language, Learning, and Academic Writing. 2007, May 14.

    Ihara, Rachel and Ann Del Principe. July 20, 2018. “What We Mean When We Talk about Reading: Rethinking the Purposes and Contexts of College Reading.” Across the Disciplines, 15 (2), 1 – 14. Retrieved from https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/articles/ihara-delprincipe2018.pdf

    National Council of Teachers of English, “CCCC Position Statement on the Role of Reading in College Writing Classrooms,” Conference on College Composition and Communication, March 2021.

    __________. “The Act of Reading: Instructional Foundations and Policy Guidelines”, National Council of Teachers of English, December 2019: https://ncte.org/statement/the-act-of-reading/

    Scholes, Robert. “The Transition to College Reading.”  Pedagogy, vol. 2, no. 2 (2002) , 165-172.

    Wolf, Maryanne, and Mirit Barzillai, “The Importance of Deep Reading,” Educational Leadership, Vol. 66, No. 6, March 2009, pp. 32-37.

    Wolf, Maryanne. Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. Harper, 2018.

    Wolf, Maryanne. “Skim Reading is the New Normal.”  The Guardian. August 25, 2018. Online.

  • Pedagogy:  Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture.  Special issue:  Reading.  January 2016. Vol. 16. Issue 1.

    Pedagogy:  Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture.  Special issue:  Reading and Writing in the Era of Fake News, Eds. Ellen C. Carillo and Alice S. Horning, April 2021, Vol. 21: Issue 2.

  • Bartholomae, David, “Inventing the University,” When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block and Other Composing-Process Problems, ed. Mike Rose. New York: Guilford, 1985.

    Bean, John C.,  Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom, pp. 22 – 24: “The View of Knowledge Underlying Academic Writing,” Jossey-Bass, 2011.

    Flower, Linda, “Writing for an Audience, ” Problem-solving Strategies for Writing. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981.

    Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. "They Say / I Say": The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2021.

    Greene, Stuart, “Argument as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument.” The Subject is Research. Ed. Wendy Bishop and Pavel Zemliansky. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2001. 145-64.

    Harvey, Gordon “A Brief Guide to the Elements of the Academic Essay,” Harvard College Writing Program, 2009: https://writingproject.fas.harvard.edu/files/hwp/files/hwp_brief_guides_elements.pdf

    Johns, Ann M. "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict and Diversity,” Text, Role, and Context:  Developing Academic Literacies, Cambridge UP, 1997, pp. 51 – 70. Especially section on “Academic Communities.”

    Sommers, Nancy, and Laura Saltz. “The Novice as Expert: Writing the Freshman Year.” College Composition and Communication . 56.1 (2004): 124-149.

    Thaiss, Christopher J, and Terry M. Zawacki. Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2006.

    WAC at Landmark College Handout: “What is Academic Writing?” 2019.

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