Project Background: A great deal of recent research in the field of rhetoric and composition studies has focused on the transference of skills learned in first-year writing courses to other courses across the disciplines, but little research has been done on the knowledge of conventions that students bring to the university from their previous literacy experiences in home communities, publics, or their previous schooling. In order to understand more fully what transfers from first-year writing courses, we need to understand more fully what genre knowledge students bring with them into first-year writing courses. At the same time as some researchers have been concerned with the question of transfer, others have recently called on teachers of first-year writing courses to become more attentive and responsive to the linguistic and cultural differences students bring with them to the university, looking for ways that students could be encouraged to utilize their discursive resources as they encounter and adapt to academic writing conventions. But research has not yet identified what these resources are and how students deploy them when they encounter academic writing tasks. This research study will fill these gaps by addressing writers’ prior discourse knowledge and experience reading and writing genres and investigating how this experience influences their ability to adapt to (and adapt) academic writing expectations.

Time Frame: Fall 2006 to present

Research Question or Hypothesis: The study will address the following research questions: What genres (written, oral, digital) do students already know when they arrive in first-year writing courses? How do students use their prior genre knowledge when writing new genres for first-year writing courses? To what extent does this prior knowledge help or hinder the student’s ability to gain access to academic discourse? What factors contribute to how and why students transform prior genre knowledge into new genre knowledge? How do the antecedent genres that students draw on reflect and reinforce broader cultural variables such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, educational history, family literacy patterns, and to what extent do these variables play a role in students’ ability to access academic genres?

General Research Approach: Mixed / Multi-Modal

Participants and Setting: UT Student Sample: Surveys distributed to 10% of all English 101: Composition I courses (Fall 2006) or 12 randomly selected sections of 101 (N=276) Number of students responding to the survey: 52 Follow-up interviews with 9 students UW Student Sample: Surveys distributed to all students enrolled in 33 sections English 131: Expository Writing (Fall 2006) (N=748) Number of students responding to the survey: 64 Follow-up interviews with 18 students

Research Methods: We asked participants to fill out a survey describing past literacy experiences (reading, writing, digital literacy), both in school and out of school (including family literacy experiences and literacy experiences on the job, if applicable). We then asked students to participate in discourse-based interviews that pose questions based on early texts students have produced in FYC (the first-week writing and Paper 1), with the purpose of reflecting on how they called on previous discursive resources in order to write their first paper in FYC. We also collected and analyzed all writing produced in English 101 in order to deepen our understanding of the evolution of students’ genre knowledge and how, over time, that either helps or hinders their ability to approximate academic discourse.

Data / Information Sources: Survey responses, transcripts of recorded discourse-based interviews, samples of academic writing

Design Comments: Follow-up focused interviews with a few select students/case studies

Funding: The UW team received funding from a WPA Grant.

Intended Audience: Rhetoric and Composition scholars and researchers; educators, secondary and postsecondary

Data Available: View data at http://utuwpriorgenre.blogspot.com/

Results Available: View results at http://utuwpriorgenre.blogspot.com/

Related URLs: http://utuwpriorgenre.blogspot.com/