Influencing Pedagogy
Do we need to work to influence the pedagogy in the Basic Composition classes so that Current-Traditional rhetoric is not so firmly entrenched? The answer to this question is clearly "Yes." How to accomplish that goal is complicated by social and political realities, as well as the realistic barriers previously mentioned in this text (i.e., basic writing teachers are typically over-worked, underpaid, and undertrained).
Research on the OWL has refocused our interest in the Basic Composition course, challenging us to make the course a serious topic of discussion at our annual English Department retreat and encouraging the compositionists on our faculty to become more involved with the course.
A "Turbo" variant of the Basic Composition course is now offered. This version of the class offers both Basic Composition and Composition in one six-credit-hour, one-semester course, which, because of the requirements of the Composition portion of the class, demands less attention to Current Traditional goals and more focus on the Social Epistemic goals of the Composition course.
The text adopted for Turbo is Texts and Contexts by William S. Robinson and Stephanie Tucker. If this text is positively received by the instructor and the students, Texts and Contexts may be adopted for the other sections of Basic Composition.
