What is "College-Level" Writing?

Just what defines "college-level" writing? This book seeks to engage this essential question with care, patience, and pragmatism, and includes contributions by many well-known scholars such as Edward M. White, Lynn Z. Bloom, Ronald Lunsford, Sheridan Blau, Jeanne Gunner, Muriel Harris, and Kathleen Blake Yancey. This edited collection offers perspectives from high school teachers, who present their concerns about the discrepancy between what they tell their students is important in college writing courses and what students actually learn is important; student contributors, who write about their experiences transitioning from high school writing to college-level writing; and administrators, who address such issues as what other departments within a university consider college-level writing and how an English department develops its standard course syllabi, makes textbook recommendations, and interacts with adjunct faculty members. The collection also offers discussion among contributors, drawn from their exchanges on an interactive website.

Publication Information:Sullivan, Patrick, and Howard Tinberg (Eds.). (2006). What is "College-Level" Writing? Urbana, Ill: National Council of Teachers of English. Available at https://wac.colostate.edu/books/collegelevel/

Publication Date: March 15, 2011

NCTE on WAC

Books in this series are presented on the WAC Clearinghouse courtesy of the National Council of Teachers of English. This book can be purchased in print formats from the NCTE online bookstore.

This book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF).

Table of Contents

Open the entire book: 18.4 MB

Front Matter

Introduction

1. An Essential Question: What Is "College-Level" Writing?, Patrick Sullivan

I. High School Perspectives

2. Whistling in the Dark, Merrill J. Davies

3. Am I a Liar? The Angst of a High School English Teacher, Jeanette Jordan, with Karena K. Nelson, Howard Clauser, Susan E. Albert, Karen M. Cunningham, and Amanda Scholz

4. The Salem Witch Trials: Voicers), Alfredo Celedon Lujan

5. The Truth about High School English, Milka Mustenikova Mosley

II. College Perspectives

6. Good Enough Writing: What Is Good Enough Writing, Anyway?, Lynn Z. Bloom

7. Whose Paper Is This, Anyway? Why Most Students Don't Embrace the Writing They Do for Their Writing Classes , Michael Dubson

8. The Boxing Effect (An Anti-Essay), Jeanne Gunner

9. What Does the Instructor Want? The View from the Writing Center, Muriel Harris

10. It's Not the High School Teachers' Fault: An Alternative to the Blame Game, Peter Kittle

11. What Is College Writing For?, Ellen Andrews Knodt

12. Scripting Writing Across Campuses: Writing Standards and Student Representationsb, Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Ellenmarie Cronin Wahlra

13. From Attitude to Aptitude: Assuming the Stance ofa College Writer, Ronald F. Lunsford

14. Do You Believe in Magic? Collaboration and the Demystification of Research, Kathleen McCormick

15. A Community College Professor Reflects on First-Year Composition, John Pekins

16. Defining by Assessing, Edward M. White

17. Coming to Terms: Vocabulary as a Means of Defining First-Year Composition, Kathleen Blake Yancey, with Brian M. Morrison

III. Student Perspectives

18. The Great Conversation (of the Dining Hall): One Student's Experience of College-Level Writing, Kimberly L. Nelson

19. Putting on the Sunglasses: The Argumentative Thesis as the Keystone to "Good" College Writing, Mike Quilligan

20. Bam, Amanda Winalski

IV. Administrative Perspectives

21. College-Level Writing: A Departmental Perspective, James M. Gentile

22. A Lot Like Us, but More So: Listening to Writing Faculty Across the Curriculum, Susan E. Schorn

23. The Recursive Character of College Writing, Chris Kearns

24. College Writing, Academic Literacy, and the Intellectual Community: California Dreams and Cultural Oppositions, Sheridan Blau

Appendix: Continuing the Conversation: A Dialogue with our Contributors

Index

Editors

Contributors