Category: Reviews

“Naming What We Know About Writing” by Barbara Fister

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date May 5, 2016

Barbara Fister reviews Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, edited by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, in light of new threshold concepts that reframe the way we think about what we know. Fister also writes to warn against the undue haste she believes some librarians have with this new Framework. Instead of checklists and learning skills, she would have librarians and faculty think about sharing these Framework ideas in full, fleshed out form. Foster recommends this collection of essays to librarians and those across the disciplines.

Most interesting for WI course faculty is the focus of the book Fister reviews.

Reviews Teaching Writing

Stacey Cochran “My WID Assignment Sequence and Conferencing Experience; or How I Became an Expert at Being a Non-Expert”

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date April 21, 2016

Conferencing is an excellent way to not only build rapport with students, but to support and grow student writers. In a conference, a writing professor can address the individual needs of each writer: checking in on their writing progress, asking questions that help the student develop as a writer, and even proofreading assignments. Unlike marks on a student’s paper, conferencing allows for personal, timely feedback in the context of a dialogue about the student’s writing. Moreover, conferencing puts the responsibility on the student, and makes the professor a support to ask questions that guide the student writer.

Reviews Teaching Writing Technology

Helpful links: Appalachian State University’s Glossary of WAC terms

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date April 7, 2016

We’d like to share Appalachian State University’s wonderful resource, a glossary of WAC and WID terms. This glossary (below) may be helpful to faculty in all disciplines who teach writing and work with student writers, as it provides a flexible and easy to adapt vocabulary. Terms included describe the the writing process, the various conventions of written texts, and other aspects of academic writing.

Reviews Teaching Writing Technology

“How to Read a Book”: Paul Edward’s guidebook to reading techniques for students

Post author By Emily Chambers
Post date March 31, 2016

From a piece by Paul Edwards of the School of Information at University of Michigan.

So unless you’re stuck in prison with nothing else to do, NEVER read a non-fiction book or article from beginning to end.

Instead, when you’re reading for information, you should ALWAYS jump ahead, skip around, and use every available strategy to discover, then to understand, and finally to remember what the writer has to say. This is how you’ll get the most out of a book in the smallest amount of time…