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Writing About Writing
Writing about Writing (WAW) is a method or theory of teaching composition that emphasizes writing studies research. Writing about Writing approaches to first-year composition take a variety of forms, typically based on the rationale that students benefit when engaging the "declarative and procedural knowledge" associated with writing studies research. History Composition is not widely recognized as its own discipline. Composition instructors strive to teach students how to become better writers. As public perception often shapes public policy, this uninformed view of composition as a legitimate field of study has contributed to a lack of funding and emphasis on composition classes in academia. "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions" In 2007, Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle published an article titled "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions" in which they propose a reform of first-year composition instruction based on the results of a test course they developed ...
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First-year Composition
First-year composition (sometimes known as first-year writing, freshman composition or freshman writing) is an introductory core curriculum writing course in US colleges and universities. This course focuses on improving students' abilities to write in a university setting and introduces students to writing practices in the disciplines and professions. These courses are traditionally required of incoming students, thus the previous name, "Freshman Composition." Scholars working within the field of composition studies often have teaching first-year composition (FYC) courses as the practical focus of their scholarly work. FYC courses are structured in a variety of ways. Some institutions of higher education require only one term of FYC, while others require two or three courses. There are a number of identifiable pedagogies associated with FYC, including: current-traditional, expressivist, social-epistemic, process, post-process and Writing about Writing (WAW). Each of these p ...
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Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz (; born December 31, 1968) is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and was fiction editor at ''Boston Review''. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freedom University, a volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience. Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Díaz immigrated with his family to New Jersey when he was six years old. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rutgers University, and shortly after graduating created the character "Yunior", who served as narrator of several of his later books. After obtaining his MFA from Cornell University, Díaz published his first book, the 1995 short story collection ''Drown''. Diaz received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel ''The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao'', and r ...
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Conference On College Composition And Communication
The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC, often referred to as "Four Cs") is a national professional association of college and university writing instructors in the United States. Formed in 1949 as an organization within the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), CCCC currently has about 6000 members. CCCC is the largest organization dedicated to writing research, theory, and teaching worldwide. Publications and conferences Publications CCCC publishes a quarterly journal, ''College Composition and Communication'' (CCC), that seeks to promote scholarship, research, and the teaching of writing at the collegiate level. CCCC also co-publishes ''The Studies in Writing and Rhetoric'' book series with Southern Illinois University Press and, between 1984 and 1999, an annual ''Bibliography of Composition and Rhetoric''. Annual convention CCCC holds an annual convention, which usually has over 3000 members in attendance. The location of the conventio ...
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Writing Across The Curriculum
Writing across the curriculum (WAC) is a movement within contemporary composition studies that concerns itself with writing in classes beyond composition, literature, and other English courses. According to a comprehensive survey performed in 2006–2007, approximately half of American institutes of higher learning have something that can be identified as a WAC program.Thaiss, Chris, and Tara Porter. "The State of WAC/WID in 2010: Methods and Results of the U.S. Survey of the International WAC/WID Mapping Project." College Composition and Communication. 61.3 (2010): 524–70. Web. In 2010, Thaiss and Porter defined WAC as "a program or initiative used to 'assist teachers across disciplines in using student writing as an instructional tool in their teaching'". WAC, then, is a programmatic effort to introduce multiple instructional uses of writing beyond assessment. WAC has also been part of the student-centered pedagogies movement (student-centred learning) seeking to replace teachin ...
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James Paul Gee
James Gee (; born April 15, 1948) is a retired American researcher who has worked in psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, bilingual education, and literacy. Gee most recently held the position as the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University, originally appointed there in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gee has previously been a faculty affiliate of the Games, Learning, and Society group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is a member of the National Academy of Education. Biography James Paul Gee was born in San Jose, California. He received his B.A. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara and both his M.A. and Ph.D in linguistics from Stanford University. He started his career in theoretical linguistics, working in syntactic and semantic theory, and taught initially at Stanford University and later in the School of Language and Communication at Hampsh ...
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John Swales
John Malcolm Swales'(born 1938) is a linguist best known for his work on genre analysis, particularly with regard to its application to the fields of rhetoric, discourse analysis, English for Academic Purposes and, more recently, information science. Biography He was born in 1938 in Reigate, in the south of England, and attended various private schools before going up to Queens' College, Cambridge in 1957, graduating with a degree in psychology. He first taught in southern Italy for two years, both in a high school and at the local university, and then went to Sweden for a year as an English language teacher. His next move was as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Libya from 1963-65. After a year studying for an advanced diploma in linguistics and English language teaching at the University of Leeds, UK he returned to Libya as Head of the English Section at the College of Engineering in Tripoli. After three more years at the Leeds Institute of Education, he returned t ...
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Dennis Baron
Dennis Baron (born May 9, 1944) is a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Department of English websiteRetrieved 2009-08-24.
of contributors to "Do You Speak American?" Retrieved 2009-08-24.
His research focuses on the technologies of communication; language legislation and linguistic rights; language reform; gender issues in language; language standards and minority languages and dialects; English usage; and the history and present state of the English language.Directory entry
from The Linguist List. Retrieved 2009-08-24.


Education and professional history

Baron received a B.A. from

Shirley Heath
Shirley Brice Heath (born 26 July 1939) is an American linguistic anthropologist, and Professor Emerita, Margery Bailey Professorship in English, at Stanford University. She graduated from Lynchburg College, Ball State University, and Columbia University, with a Ph.D. in 1970. She is a Brown University professor-at-large, and a visiting research professor at the Watson Institute. Awards * 1984 MacArthur Fellows Program * Guggenheim Fellowship * National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship * Ford Foundation fellowship * Rockefeller Foundation fellowship * 1995 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Education ''Ways With Words: Language, Life, And Work In Communities And Classrooms'' Shirley Brice Heath is best known as an anthropologist for her ethnographical work in ''Ways with Words: Language, Life, And Work In Communities And Classrooms'' Cambridge University Press, 1983, . She spent nine years,1969-1978, performing a cross cultural, ethnographical comparison of la ...
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Sherman Alexie
Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. (born October 7, 1966) is a Spokane- Coeur d'Alene-Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington. His best-known book is '' The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven'' (1993), a collection of short stories. It was adapted as the film ''Smoke Signals'' (1998), for which he also wrote the screenplay. His first novel, ''Reservation Blues'', received a 1996 American Book Award. His first young adult novel, '' The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian'' (2007), is a semi-autobiographical novel that won the 2007 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the Odyssey Award as best 2008 audiobook for young people (read by Alexie). His 2009 collection of short stories and poems, ''War Dances'', won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Aw ...
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Malcolm X
Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Islam until 1964, he was a vocal advocate for Black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the Black community. A posthumous autobiography, on which he collaborated with Alex Haley, was published in 1965. Malcolm spent his adolescence living in a series of foster homes or with relatives after his father's death and his mother's hospitalization. He committed various crimes, being sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1946 for larceny and burglary. In prison he joined the Nation of Islam (adopting the name MalcolmX to symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname while discarding "the White slavemaster name of 'Little'"), and after his parole in 1952 quickly became one of the organization's most influential leaders. He was the public ...
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Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her best-known works include the critical works ''Against Interpretation'' (1966), ''Styles of Radical Will'' (1968), ''On Photography'' (1977), and ''Illness as Metaphor'' (1978), as well as the fictional works ''The Way We Live Now'' (1986), ''The Volcano Lover'' (1992), and '' In America'' (1999). Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and leftist ideology. Her essays and speeches drew controversy, and she has been described as "one of the most influential critics of her generation." Early life and education Sontag was born Susan Rosenblatt in ...
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