The Impact of Taking Basic Writing on Later Writing Course Performance and Graduation at a Career-Focused Four-Year University

Abstract

Since the 1970s, legacy Basic Writing systems have survived despite growing resistance grounded in an increasing awareness of their troubling roots and harmful effects. In this article, two 2017 basic writing students and their teacher conduct a mixed-method "postmortem" examination of the now eliminated zero-credit course and writing test placement system at their university. They combine a local desegregation history, an assessment validity inquiry, and a case study of growing resistance to Basic Writing for over a decade, including their own resistance in 2017. Adapting the "root and branch" metaphor from Green v. County Board (1968), the authors analyze reforms from 2007 to 2017 that significantly trimmed the branches of a decades-old, legacy Basic Writing system-but did not root it out completely. Finally, the authors examine their own failed efforts to obtain college credit for the work they did together in 2017 and the complex ways that Basic Writing has harmed each of them.

Challenging Assumptions about Basic Writers and Corequisites at Four-Year Institutions

“…5-35. doi.org/10.37514/JBW-J.2020.39.1.02. Nicoles, Justin, andCody Reimer. "The Impact of Taking Basic Writing on Later Writing Course Performance and Graduation at a Career-Focused Four-Year University" Journal of Basic Writing.…”

Grading Writing: A Poetic (Auto) Ethnography

“…Both teachers and students may understand grades as categorizing not only writing but also, even unintentionally, the writers themselves (Bloom, 1997). Even while students may crave grades to understand how they relate to others in class and how they fare in educational settings (Inman & Powell, 2018), and even while grades seem to offer predictor variables of writing and college success (Brunk-Chavez & Fredericksen, 2008; Garrett et al, 2017; Nicholes & Reimer, 2020a, 2020b), antiracist scholarship, notably those of Asao Inoue (2014), has underscored that writing assessment systems tend to unevenly affect “students who historically are closest to failure in writing classrooms—that is, students of color, multilingual students, and working-class students” (p. 332). Grades, then, have to be further understood to further push forward the vital talks we are having about linguistic justice on campus for all our students.…”