The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is a United States professional organization dedicated to "improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. Since 1911, NCTE has provided a forum for the profession, an array of opportunities for teachers to continue their professional growth throughout their careers, and a framework for cooperation to deal with issues that affect the teaching of English." In addition, the NCTE describes its mission as follows:
The Council promotes the development of literacy, the use of language to construct personal and public worlds and to achieve full participation in society, through the learning and teaching of English and the related arts and sciences of language.
The Conference on College Composition and Communication is a national professional association of college and university writing instructors in the United States. The CCCC formed in 1949 as an organization within the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). CCCC is the largest organization dedicated to writing research, theory, and teaching worldwide.
Second language writing is the study of writing performed by non-native speakers/writers of a language as a second or foreign language. According to Oxford University, second language writing is the expression of one's actions and what one wants to say in writing in a language other than one's native language. Learning a new language and writing in it is the most challenging thing. Learning a new language first requires an understanding of the writing system and the grammar of the language. Because grammar is the basis of writing. Learning the grammar of a language is the only way to write in that language. The extent to which non-native speakers write in formal or specialized domains, and the requirements for grammatical accuracy and compositional coherence, will vary according to the specific context. The process of second language writing has been an area of research in applied linguistics and second language acquisition theory since the middle of the 20th century. The focus has been mainly on second-language writing in academic settings. In the last few years, there has been a great deal of interest in and research on informal writing. These informal writings include writing in online contexts. In terms of instructional practices, the focus of second language writing instruction has traditionally been on achieving grammatical accuracy. However, this changed under the influence of compositional studies, which focused on conceptual and structural properties. Another development in the teaching of second language writing is the increasing use of models and the emphasis on the properties of particular writing genres. Recent research has analyzed how second-language writing differs from native-language writing, emphasizing the cultural factors that influence second-language writers. In general, second language acquisition research has transitioned from a primary focus on cognitive factors to a sociocultural perspective in which writing is viewed not only as an acquired language skill and cognitive ability but also, more broadly, as a socially situated communicative act involving a target audience. Recently, particular attention has been paid to the integration of written texts with other media (multimodality) and to the mixing of languages in online media.
George Hillocks Jr. was an emeritus professor in the Department of Education, with a joint appointment in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. He received in 2011 the James R. Squire Award of the National Council of Teachers of English for having "a transforming influence and [making] a lasting intellectual contribution to the profession." He also received many other major awards. His teaching career included the preparation of English teachers in the Master of Arts in Teaching program, and the mentoring of Ph.D. students in the doctoral program, at the University of Chicago. After retiring from the University he continued to present seminars and workshops for writing teachers across the US. His primary research interests centered on the teaching of writing, literature, and language in middle and high school English classes, and on large-scale writing assessment. When not teaching and writing, he was an accomplished bagpipe player, performing frequently for Chicago audiences and in international competitions.
Raymond Keith Gilyard is a writer and American professor of English who teaches and researches in the fields of rhetoric, composition, literacy studies, sociolinguistics, and African American literature. Interested in the complex interplay among race, ethnicity, language, writing, and politics, his primary interest lies in identifying intersections of African American English and composing practices. Advocating African American English as a legitimate discourse, Gilyard has been a prominent voice in the movement to recognize ethnic and cultural discourses other than Standard English as valid. As a literary scholar and creative writer, his interests have been in the interplay among African American literature, rhetorical criticism, and bio-critical work.
First-year composition 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.
Reflective writing is an analytical practice in which the writer describes a real or imaginary scene, event, interaction, passing thought, or memory and adds a personal reflection on its meaning. Many reflective writers keep in mind questions such as "What did I notice?", "How has this changed me?" or "What might I have done differently?" when reflecting.
Anne Haas Dyson is a professor at the University of Illinois. Her fields are the study of literacy, pedagogy, and contemporary, diverse childhoods. Using qualitative and sociolinguistic research procedures, Dyson examines the use of written language from children's perspectives within their social worlds, and as they engage with popular culture. Books she has published include The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write, Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures (2003), Writing Superheroes, Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy (1997), Social Worlds of Children Learning to Write in an Urban Primary School (1993), Multiple Worlds of Child Writers: Friends Learning to Write (1989). Dyson has also written articles for professional journals.
Assemblage refers to a text "built primarily and explicitly from existing texts to solve a writing or communication problem in a new context". The concept was first proposed by Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart Selber in the journal Computers & Composition in 2007. The notion of assemblages builds on remix and remix practices, which blur distinctions between invented and borrowed work. This idea predates modernism, with the quote by Edgar Allan Poe, "There is no greater mistake than the supposition that a true originality is a mere matter of impulse or inspiration. To originate, is carefully, patiently, and understandingly to combine."
Geneva Smitherman is a University Distinguished Professor Emerita of English and co-founder of the African American and African Studies doctoral program at Michigan State University. Smitherman co-founded the first public African-centered elementary school in the country Malcolm X Academy within the Detroit Public Schools. She is also known as "Dr. G" and "Dr. Smitherman".
A digital studio provides both a technology-equipped space and technological/rhetorical support to students working individually or in groups on a variety of digital projects, such as designing a website, developing an electronic portfolio for a class, creating a blog, making edits, selecting images for a visual essay, or writing a script for a podcast.
The Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research is a non-profit organization, based in the United States but with international partners and operations, dedicated to conducting research on the impact of eportfolios on student learning and educational outcomes.
Writing assessment refers to an area of study that contains theories and practices that guide the evaluation of a writer's performance or potential through a writing task. Writing assessment can be considered a combination of scholarship from composition studies and measurement theory within educational assessment. Writing assessment can also refer to the technologies and practices used to evaluate student writing and learning. An important consequence of writing assessment is that the type and manner of assessment may impact writing instruction, with consequences for the character and quality of that instruction.
Cynthia "Cindy" Selfe is an author, editor, scholar, and teacher in the field of Writing Studies, with a speciality in the subfield of computers and composition. She is Humanities Distinguished Professor Emerita in the English Department at the Ohio State University where she taught from 2006 until her retirement in 2016. Prior to that, she taught at Michigan Technological University. Selfe was the first woman and the first scholar from an English department to win the EDUCOM Medal for innovative computer use in higher education.
Sondra Perl is a Professor Emerita of English at Lehman College and director of the Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the founder and former director of the New York City Writing Project. She writes about the composing process as well as pedagogical approaches to implementing composition theories into writing practices in the classroom.
Victor Villanueva is a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican academic and scholar in rhetoric and composition studies, serving the role of Regents Professor Emeritus at Washington State University. Villanueva was awarded NCTE’s David Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English for his groundbreaking book Bootstraps, From an American Academic of Color. In 2009, Villanueva was the recipient of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Exemplar's Award. Villanueva has written and edited a number of significant works on the topic of race, rhetoric, basic writing, and the social and political contexts of literacy education.
Janice M. Lauer Rice was an American scholar of composition, rhetoric, and linguistics. She was a founding member of the Rhetoric Society of America. She founded one of the first doctoral programs in rhetoric and composition at Purdue University in 1980. The Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition from Parlor Press is named in her honor, as well as the Rhetoric Society of America's Janice Lauer Fund for Graduate Student Support and the Purdue Foundation Janice M. Lauer Dissertation Award.
Diana Hacker was an American writer and educator who authored several prominent writing manuals. Her guide, A Writer's Reference, co-written with Nancy Sommers, became the number one best-selling college textbook in the United States. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Hacker is the most assigned female author on college campuses.
Multimodal pedagogy is an approach to the teaching of writing that implements different modes of communication. Multimodality refers to the use of visual, aural, linguistic, spatial, and gestural modes in differing pieces of media, each necessary to properly convey the information it presents.
Anne Ruggles Gere is an American scholar in the field of language education and literacy. She has published on topics such as the history of writing groups, best practices in literacy education, and integration of culturally responsive pedagogy.
