First Semester Composition in the Life-Worlds of University Students.

Abstract

The Current-Traditional, New Rhetorical, and Liberatory approaches to first semester college writing each creates well-defined roles for students and teachers by restricting literacy instruction to classroom writing networks. This study suggests the Social Heuristic approach to college writing instruction that acknowledges de facto student writing networks extending beyond the literacy classroom. During Fall Term 1985, I met individually with my 15 Introductory Composition students for more than 40 hours outside of class: as a normal part of our talk about their essays, students often mentioned people who affected their writing. I encouraged critical dialogue about the various attributions made regarding students' writing contacts often separated in time, space, and expertise. My ethnographic investigation and analysis, derived from Gadamerian ontology, attribution theory, and New and Liberatory writing pedagogies, creates a sense of the range of student writing networks based on intersubjective, class-related discussions. Talk during our audio-taped conferences and miscellaneous outside-of-class meetings showed that the self, the writing teaching assistant, writing classmates, roommates and hallmates, other peers, high school and university teachers, and family members all played parts in the processes and products of my students' written discourse. The Social Heuristic approach can help teachers of first semester composition develop courses that identify and apply relevant influences in students' social networks extending awareness of literacy in their lives.