College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction

by Anne Beaufort

Composition research consistently demonstrates that the social context of writing determines the majority of conventions any writer must observe. Still, most universities organize the required first-year composition course as if there were an intuitive set of general writing "skills" usable across academic and work-world settings. In College Writing and A New Framework for University Writing Instruction, Anne Beaufort reports on a longitudinal study comparing one student’s experience in FYC, in history, in engineering, and in his post-college writing. Her data illuminate the struggle of college students to transfer what they learn about "general writing" from one context to another. Her findings suggest ultimately not that we must abolish FYC, but that we must go beyond even genre theory in reconceiving it. Accordingly, Beaufort would argue that the FYC course should abandon its hope to teach a sort of general academic discourse, and instead should systematically teach strategies of responding to contextual elements that impinge on the writing situation. Her data urge attention to issues of learning transfer, and to developmentally sound linkages in writing instruction within and across disciplines. Beaufort advocates special attention to discourse community theory, for its power to help students perceive and understand the context of writing.

Genres: Nonfiction

242 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 2007

Reviews

[Waynestatecomp · Rating 5 out of 5]

On Chapter 1:

Anne Beaufort’s discussion of the many difficulties surrounding Freshman Composition, WAC, and Writing Center pedagogy accurately depicts the limitations of writing instruction in American universities. She begins with the problem that graduates tend to be unable to produce adequate writing in academic or professional contexts outside of the compulsory writing sequence. She highlights three major interconnected issues that, for her, have created this trend. First, writing courses (particularly freshman writing) are largely taught in isolation from other academic and professional disciplines. Writing is then perceived as a “general” task to be completed for a grade rather than an act of communication set within and responding to a specific context. Secondly, as a result of generic writing instruction, students struggle to transfer writing skills into other, more specific contexts. They “get little instruction in how to study and acquire the writing practices of different discourse communities” (11). Thus lastly, when students are expected to actually produce substantive content for a discourse community, their generic writing skills are insufficient for developing appropriate subject matter “within the context of a particular discourse community’s values and standards” (12).

Beaufort proposes a heuristic model for attacking these problems. She argues that we should explicitly teach students how to transfer their writing skills into new contexts as well as integrate into specific discourse communities. She bases her heuristic model on “five overlapping yet distinct domains of situated knowledge entailed in acts of writing [see Figure 1 pg 19]: discourse community knowledge [the overarching concept], subject matter knowledge, genre knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, and writing process knowledge” (18). Beaufort’s point is that writing instruction should focus on helping students to recognize, comprehend, and use these knowledge domains with increased fluency. Explicit instruction on transferring skills from each domain will then greatly increase students’ own ability to develop and execute writing skills for different contexts. As students become more fluent with each particular knowledge domain, it becomes easier for them to abstract and transfer principles from the domains into a variety of writing contexts.

The upshot of Beaufort’s chapter is her heuristic model for the division of situated knowledge into domains, especially the overarching concept of discourse knowledge. In the planning of an intermediate writing course, the concept of discourse knowledge allows the instructor to structure the syllabus and create lesson plans that not only give the students a grounding in this model, but also allow the students to begin to define what discourse community(ies) they will enter. Once the discourse communities are explored, the students can then conduct further research and writing within the other knowledge domains—genre, rhetoric, subject matter, and writing process—encountered within their discourse community. The heuristic model also gives the students a graphic depiction of the interconnectedness of these domains.

-Conor & Christopher

[Traynor · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of a handful of essential books for anyone who takes college writing instruction (and administration) seriously.

[Bay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beaufort advocates modeling writing curriculum after a five part schema “employed in expert writing performances” that will aid transfer of learning for students. These five knowledge domains are: discourse community, writing process, subject matter, genre, and rhetorical knowledge. College Writing applies this conceptual model to a university student, Tim, who Beaufort interviews and follows throughout his four years as an undergraduate and afterwards as a mechanical engineer. Her argument is that too often first-year composition is taught as “general writing skills” that could be applied within any discourse community; this approach (as evidenced by Tim) leads to negative transfer of writing skills. For instance, Tim’s first-year writing class focused mainly on expressivist, narrative writing; when he applied that same style to a history paper, he received low marks from his instructor. Beaufort urges educators to clearly situate the context and discourse community for the genres students are reading and writing within. She believes that “[a]ll faculties can benefit from being grounded in the research on transfer of learning and in genre and discourse community theories." Beaufort concludes that modeling curriculum and assessment after her five knowledge domains – through “teach[ing] a set of tools for analyzing and learning writing standards and practices in multiple contexts” – students will be much more likely to transfer these writing strategies to other situations.

Overall I find Beaufort to be really useful for my own personal research and for designing writing curriculum. One part of her argument though really bugs me. She talks about how situating subject matter is so important, but then she says in her writing classes she focuses on any subject matter that is an intellectual pursuit. I haven't read a ton of genre theory, but my understanding is that genre is extremely difficult to teach out of context. To me, teaching a subject matter besides composition wouldn't make sense in a writing classroom because it would be out of context and inauthentic. I feel like she contradicts herself about the importance of context if a Composition instructor can teach any old subject matter of intellectual pursuit. However, that is my own personal bias...that composition classes should be about COMPOSITION. Seems obvious right????

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sure there's only one person involved in this study, but the longitude is dizzying--freshman year up to 2nd year of employment. It's possible that Tim's an aberration and it would be nice have to this data correlated with some broader studies, but this level of depth is amazing and, besides, Tim is the kind of student who would sign up to have his writing style studied--he's successful. He works hard and gets A's. If were setting Tim up to fail, I can only imagine what we're doing for first generation, multilingual or less motivated students.

My other major criticism, that poor Carla the FYC instructor gets taken to town for her expressionist teaching philosophy, is slightly off-set by a very thorough course plan for a class based on Beaufort's discourse communities theory.

I think discourse communities are incredibly important, but it's hard not to just throw up your hands in the face of institutional obligations (can we really have a world without FYC? Are we really all doomed to our specialization only? should we just apprentice ourselves out?) at Beaufort's claims.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really great book that makes the compelling argument that it is more important to educate students in recognizing the various discourse communities that writers in various disciplines and professions are part of than emphasizing the traditional types of literary writing and analysis that are standard in freshman composition classes. Though I don't agree wholeheartedly that what Beaufort is advocating is as far away from teaching students to understand and write in different genres as she does (for her genre knowledge is only one part of a discourse community, the other types of knowledge pertaining to writing process, subject matter, and rhetoric), I overall agree with her argument that composition instructors should be more attuned to teaching these skills of recognition and rehearsal that will aid knowledge transfer when students move on to write in different courses, disciplines, and professions. Moreover, some of the sample exercises and assignments she provides in the back of the book are excellent guides.

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

some really great insight on the whole, and appendix A on writing instruction alone makes this book worth it. However, I'm a little skeptical due to the fact that there's only one student in this study... as she says, triangulation is good in research, and a more comparative approach might have provided more illuminating conclusions