As promised, here’s the rest of that useful WAC/WID glossary from the CUNY WAC/WID Handbook. Again, please feel free to comment on any of these definitions.
High-Stakes Writing
High-stakes writing assignments are expected to be completed according to formal academic and disciplinary conventions and usually count for a significant part of a student’s grade; examples include essay exams, research papers, lab reports, and critical response papers. This term is generally paired with the term “low-stakes writing” (see below), and distinguished from informal writing that is often exploratory and non-graded. In Britton’s framework, the function of high-stakes writing would be “transactional,” that is, to get the business of college done.
Journal
Generally informal, journals can be a productive place for students to record their thoughts, experiences, questions, and informal writings throughout college, in all disciplines, as well as in their daily lives. A variation on the journal is a “double-entry journal.” Students write in two columns: the first column contains quotations from a reading; the second column contains their reactions or responses to those quotations. Many variations are possible. Students might be asked, for example, to use paraphrases or summaries in the first column instead of quotations. Triple-entry journals, in which the third column might be used for peer responses, research questions, etc., are also commonly used.
Language
To talk about writing is to talk about the uses and functions of language, as well as to talk about politics, history, and culture. All converge at CUNY, which is an extraordinary crossroads of languages: our students speak (and may write in) 131 first languages other than English.
Literacy
The term literacy refers to the ability to use language—to read, write, listen and speak. In recent years, educators and administrators have added “numeracy,” “multimedia literacy,” “information literacy,” and “quantitative literacy” to the literacies expected of college students. Of course, what it means to “use language” successfully is a cultural and political question.
Low-Stakes Writing
Low-stakes writing activities provide students with an opportunity to experiment with ideas, form, and style without the pressure associated with correctness. The term “low-stakes” represents the level of expectation that a student and instructor bring to a particular assignment, meaning that low-stakes writing should count very little (if at all) toward the student’s final grade, while high-stakes writing is presumably graded. Examples of low-stakes writing include: journals, reflective responses, and freewriting. Some argue that the more frequently students engage in low-stakes writing, the more confidence and expertise they will apply to formal, high-stakes assignments. In Britton’s framework, low-stakes writing would be “expressive.”
Minimal Marking
The principle behind minimal marking is that correcting each technical mistake is not the most useful way to respond to students’ work; minimal marking encourages a focus on the larger ideas the student is trying to communicate, and emphasizes responding to those. Faculty may choose to point out one or two recurring technical errors, but should focus their responses on the work as a whole. Many faculty are concerned that they spend a great deal of time marking and correcting grammatical and other technical errors, and proponents of minimal marking argue that this practice reduces the amount of time spent correcting, and therefore allows for a greater number of writing assignments. Moreover, some research has shown that students can be overwhelmed by too many comments, and have difficulty prioritizing and addressing them in effective ways.
Paper
Common college short-hand for a formal, graded assignment of a specific length. “Paper” covers a lot of ground, from “essay” to “report,” and is also often modified by adjectives like “research,” or “compare/contrast.” Some argue that WAC/WID provides a space for educators to reflect on the many assumptions that cohere around vague terms such as “paper” or “write” or “composition.”
Peer Review
Practice of having students read and provide comments and suggestions for each other’s writing. This is generally done in class in pairs or small groups. Also referred to as peer editing, peer review is often guided through the use of handouts or worksheets that assist students in reading others’ writing through various critical lenses.
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of speaking or writing effectively, using the principles and rules of composition drawn from classical traditions, typically tied to the art of persuasion. Classical rhetoricians were interested in dividing rhetoric into its component parts. For example, Roman rhetorician Cicero identified five rhetorical components: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciato. Early scholars and teachers of composition tended to discuss and teach rhetorical modes: persuasion, description, argument, compare-contrast, etc. More recently, WAC practitioners have focused on the rhetorical nature of all language, emphasizing the rhetorical dimensions and methods of the various disciplines. (For a set of definitions of rhetoric offered by rhetoricians both ancient and contemporary, visit this site.) All these approaches share the fundamental belief that a speaker or writer will use any given language more effectively if s/he is consciously aware of its rhetorical dimensions.
Scaffolding
Scaffolding is a term drawn, primarily, from the work of Russian cognitive psychologist Lev Vygotsky, to represent the centrality of social interaction in the development of cognition. The term has come to be used within education to refer to the ways in which complex projects can be broken down into manageable pieces, with the instructor/expert guiding the students/novices through the entire process, and encouraging students to move to higher levels of expertise. Faculty can monitor how students are developing their ideas throughout, and provide assistance if students encounter obstacles.
SWE (Standard Written English)
There exist many language communities within the larger rubric of the English language. SWE refers to that form of written English that is agreed upon by most publishers, colleges, and standardized tests to be the most “correct” and thus most understandable by all speakers and users of English regardless of differences in dialect or usage. This variant is sometimes called “Standard American English” (SAE), as well. The debate about how to teach what students need to know to gain fluency in Standard Written English (see below) is an important, current cultural, political, and historical debate throughout the English-speaking world.
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