What is writing? How does it work? Why do the “rules” seem so inconsistent? Why is grammar so hard? Why is it so easy to misunderstand each other? And how, given all these variations and challenges, can one course help me learn to write more effectively?  

In LANG 120, we will explore all of these questions, partly by considering our own experiences, partly by reading published research by writing scholars, and partly by undertaking our own investigation of what experienced writers do. Our goal, ultimately, is to help one another develop our own working “theory” of writing, with answers-in-progress to all of these questions.

Scholarship Informing This Course

Laura Wilder, Tracing the Impact of First-Year Writing: Identity, Process, and Transfer at a Public University, Utah State UP, 2024.

Laura Aull, You Can’t Write That: 8 Myths about Correct English, Cambridge UP, 2024. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/you-cant-write-that/29BF4BB4FD226B2A6DCB3AAB2791B794

Ellen C. Carillo, The Hidden Inequities in Labor-Based Contract Grading, Utah State UP, 2021. https://www-jstor-org.proxy177.nclive.org/stable/j.ctv20zbkwn

Susan D. Blum, Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), West Virginia UP, 2020. https://wncln.wncln.org/record=b11428970~S1

John Warner, Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities, Johns Hopkins UP, 2018. https://wncln.wncln.org/record=b10777956~S3

Adam J. Banks, “Dominant Genre Emeritus: Why It’s Time to Retire the Essay,” CLA Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, December 2016, pp. 179-190. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26355916

Jerry Won Lee, “Beyond Translingual Writing,” College English, vol. 79, no. 2, November 2016, pp. 174-195. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44805916

Linda Adler-Kassner & Elizabeth Wardle, Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, Utah State UP, 2015.

Asao B. Inoue, “A Grade-less Writing Course that Focuses on Labor and Assessing,” in Deborah Teague & Ronald Lunsford, eds., First-Year Composition: From Theory to Practice, Parlor Press, 2014, pp. 71-110. 

Kathleen Blake Yancey, Liane Robertson, & Kara Taczak, Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing, Utah State UP, 2014. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wrr95

Gary R. Hafer, Embracing Writing: Ways to Teach Reluctant Writers in Any College Course, Jossey-Bass, 2014. https://wncln.wncln.org/record=b6372559~S3

Teresa Thonney, “Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse,” Teaching English in the Two-Year College, vol. 38, no. 4, May 2011, pp. 347-362.

Vershawn Ashanti Young, “Should Writers Use They Own English?” in Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan, eds., Writing Centers and the New Racism, Utah State UP, 2011, pp. 61-72. https://wncln.wncln.org/record=b5592787~S3

Laura Greenfield, “The Standard English Fairy Tale: A Rhetorical Analysis of Racist Pedagogies and Commonplace Assumptions about Language Diversity,” in Laura Greenfield & Karen Rowan, eds., Writing Centers and the New Racism, Utah State UP, 2011, pp. 33-60. https://wncln.wncln.org/record=b5592787~S3

Rebecca Moore Howard, Tricia Serviss, & Tanya Rodrigue, “Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences,” Writing and Pedagogy, vol. 2., no. 2, 2010, pp. 177-192.

Anne Beaufort, College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction, Utah State UP, 2007.

Amy Devitt, “Transferability and Genres,” in Christopher J. Keller & Christian Weisser, eds., The Locations of Composition, SUNY Press, 2007.

Douglas Downs & Elizabeth Wardle, “Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)envisioning ‘First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies,” College Composition and Communication, vol. 58, no. 4, June 2007, pp. 552-584. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20456966

Richard A. Lanham, The Economics of Attention: Style and Substance in the Age of Information, U of Chicago P, 2006.

Laura R. Micciche, “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar,” College Composition and Communication, vol. 55, no. 4, June 2004, pp. 716-737. https://doi.org/10.2307/4140668

Mary J. Schleppegrell, The Language of Schooling: A Functional Linguistics Perspective, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004.

Ken Hyland, Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing, U of Michigan, 2004.

Patricia Roberts-Miller, Deliberate Conflict: Argument, Political Theory, and Composition Classes, Southern Illinois UP, 2004. https://wncln.wncln.org/record=b5621885~S3

Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication, Blackwell, 2004.

T. R. Johnson, A Rhetoric of Pleasure: Prose Style & Today’s Composition Classroom, Boynton/Cook, 2003.

David Blakesley, The Elements of Dramatism, Pearson, 2002.

David Russell, “Activity Theory and Its Implications for Writing Instruction,” in Joseph Petraglia, ed., Reconceiving Writing, Rethinking Writing Instruction, Erlbaum, 1995, pp. 51-77.

John M. Swales, Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings, Cambridge UP, 1990.

Kenneth Burke, “Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education,” in Nelson Henry, ed., Modern Philosophies and Education, U of Chicago, 1955, pp. 259-303.