WAC Bibliography
Welcome to the WAC Bibliography. The bibliography, developed and presented in collaboration with CompPile, was developed to support teachers across the disciplines who are interested in using writing and speaking in their courses; scholars who are interested in WAC theory and research; and program administrators, designers, and developers who have interests in the latest work in faculty outreach, program design, and assessment.
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Category: Argument
Your search found 36 citations.
1. Andrievskikh, Natalia. (2024). Student-Created Tabletop Foresight Games as Advocacy: Exploring Alternatives to the Op-Ed Genre in First-Year Writing Courses. Prompt 8.1, 28-37. https://doi.org/10.31719/pjaw.v8i1.169
Annotation: This assignment asks first-year writing students to collaboratively create a tabletop game design that would expose players to possible future developments of climate change. The multimodal component is accompanied by a series of writing, research, and communication assignments that are scaffolded to guide students through the iterative process of composing. As students explore alternative formats to make a persuasive argument, they gain a more nuanced understanding of their topic, hone critical thinking skills, and practice addressing different audiences. The final project includes a research paper and a formal project proposal. The author argues in favor of the affordances of game-based pedagogies in a writing and technical communication classroom.
Keywords: technical communication, advocacy, persuasive arguments, first-year writing, project-based learning, procedural rhetoric, game-based pedagogy, multimodal composition
2. Aull, Laura; Valerie Ross. (2020). From cow paths to conversation: Rethinking the argumentative essay. Pedagogy 20.1 [Special Issue: Ideological Transparency], 21-34. https://doi-org.unco.idm.oclc.org/10.1215/15314200-7878975
Keywords: academic writing, argument, explanatory writing, alternative discourse, writing in the disciplines (WID), writing across the curriculum (WAC)
3. Bell, Elizabeth S.; Ronald N. Bell. (1985). Writing and mathematical problem solving: Arguments in favor of synthesis. School Science and Mathematics 85, 210-221.
Keywords: WAC, mathematics-course, write-to-learn
4. Beyer, Catharine Hoffman; Gerald M. Gillmore; Andrew T. Fisher. (2007). Inside the undergraduate experience: The University of Washington's study of undergraduate learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Annotation: The University of Washington's Study of Undergraduate Learning (UW SOUL) tracked 304 entering freshmen and transfer students as they moved through their college experience from fall 1999 to spring 2003. Unparalleled in its scope, this longitudinal study focused on six areas of learning: writing, critical thinking/problem solving, quantitative reasoning, information literacy, understanding and appreciating diversity, and personal growth. This book provides faculty, staff, and administrators at two- and four-year institutions with a model of assessment that both captures the complexity of the undergraduate experience and offers practical information about how to improve teaching and learning. Data from surveys, open-ended email questions, interviews, focus groups, and portfolios make it possible for the authors to create case studies of individual learning paths over time, as well as to report the group s aggregate experience. Honoring the authenticity of student voices, this book illuminates the central roles played by the academic disciplines and by faculty in undergraduate learning, offering powerful evidence for the argument that assessment of student learning is most complete and most useful when conducted at the department level. [publisher's blurb]
Keywords: longitudinal, data, University of Washington, undergraduate, critical-thinking, problem-solving, quantitative reasoning, diversity, information literacy, personal growth, development, survey, focus group, case-study, portfolio, self-report, self-evaluation, argumentation, WAC, research-based, undergraduate
5. Brashers, Dale E.; Stephen M. Haas; Judith L. Neidig. (1999). Satisfying the argumentative requirements for self advocacy. In van Eemeren, Frans H.; Rob Grootendorst; J. Anthony Blair; Charles A. Willard (Eds.), Proceedings of the fourth international conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation; Amsterdam: Stichting International Centrum voor de Studie van Argumentatie en Taalbeheersing (pp. 74-78).
Keywords: argumentation, self-advocacy, requirement
6. Clark, Irene L. & Fischbach, Ronald. (2008). Writing and Learning in the Health Sciences: Rhetoric, Identity, Genre, and Performance. The WAC Journal, 19(1), 15-28. https://doi.org/10.37514/WAC-J.2008.19.1.02
Annotation: Clark and Fishbach argue that discussions of linked courses often overlook the need for students simultaneously to develop their professional identities as they work toward becoming more proficient writers. To explore this claim, the authors turn to their experience developing a link between a public health education course and a course in health sciences writing and rhetoric. Clark and Fishbach discovered that students benefited from the opportunity 'to 'perform' as writers and speakers within a particular field or profession' (18). More particularly, the link helped student writers to reconceptualize genre as a form of 'social action' as they became more familiar with the professional discourses they were learning. Clark and Fischbach subsequently consider the ways their focus on genre in the linkage put pressure on the shared term 'argument', but also discuss ways that researchers have shown the term to be similar across humanities-based writing and scientific writing. In closing, the authors assert that their experiences with this linkage affirm that role-play is essential to an increase in professionally situated rhetorical awareness for student writers. [Michelle LaFrance, Linked Writing Courses; WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies, No. 14]
Keywords: basic-skills, genre, health-sciences, learning-theory, WAC, linked, skill-transfer, public health course, intensive, assignment, syllabus, genre, identity, career, identity, performative, role-playing, interdisciplinary, 'argument', conflict
7. Clark, Irene L. & Hernandez, Andrea. (2011). Genre Awareness, Academic Argument, and Transferability. The WAC Journal, 22(1), 65-78. https://doi.org/10.37514/WAC-J.2011.22.1.05
Annotation: The authors report on a preliminary study of the use of FYW instruction in genre-awareness as a means to facilitate transferrable writing skills and techniques across disciplines. By defining genre-awareness as a ""threshold concept,"" they are able to address issues that arise in transfer-based instruction, namely, ""transferability, troublesomeness, and liminality."" A distinction made between genre-awareness and the explicit teaching of genre occurs, in which the re-defining of genre-awareness as threshold concept attempts to eliminate the restrictive method of genre instruction cited by Freedman. The authors address several critiques regarding transferability, noting issues of mimicry and cross-disciplinary inconsistency. They present methods and results of a semester-long survey-based study in which students compose two essays in different genres (argumentative and disciplinary), and one essay reflecting on their differences. Comparison of statistical and commentarial data taken before and after the course occurs, wherein analysis of student awareness of audience, authorial persona, purpose, formatting, and structure transpires. Clark and Hernandez conclude that student focus on structural and surface level elements rather than rhetorical features support issues of instructor expertise in foreign genres posed by Russell, Wardle, and Downs, and that due to an admittedly small sample size, possibilities for future research are vast and necessary.
[Clark, Irene L., and Andrea Hernandez. ""Genre Awareness, Academic Argument, and Transferability."" The WAC Journal 22 (2011): 66-78. Print.]
Keywords: genre-awareness, WAC, student-opinion, knowledge-transfer, skill-transfer, persona, formating, citation
8. Condit, Celeste Michelle. (1989). Feminized power and adversarial advocacy: Leveling arguments or analyzing them?. Argumentation and Advocacy 25.4, 226-230.
Keywords: argumentation, advocacy, adversarial, feminization, power, discourse-analysis
9. Currie, Pat. (1996). Fullness and sound reasoning: Argument and evaluation in a university content course. In Berrill, Deborah P. (Ed.); Perspectives on written argument; Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press (pp. 121-138).
Keywords: argumentation, WAC, content-course, reasoning, evaluation
10. Dixon, Dwayne. (2017). Imagining the essay as digital assemblage: Collaborative student experiments with writing in scalar. Prompt 1.1, 35-46. http://thepromptjournal.com/index.php/prompt/article/view/13/11
Annotation: Abstract: This essay describes a digital, collaboratively designed and interconnected series of essays that were the final project for a first-year class in media and anthropology. These essays were composed using a digital, publically accessible, scholarly publishing platform that allows students to experiment architecturally with arguing related ideas through non-linear text. The result is an intricate, flexible pathway of pages. The assignment is informed by, and attempts to experimentally enact, Felix Guattari's concept of the assemblage, emphasizing movement and process of argument and evidence over static, reified trajectories of traditional essay composition. By examining the periphery of their own ideas, students encounter the interpretations of their classmates and discover alternate readings of key themes, which they can then fold into their own writing networks, ultimately creating a textual flow which challenges the singularity of the author and the boundaries of disciplinary thinking.
Keywords: ANTHROPOLOGY, MULTIMODAL, MIXED-GENRE, COLLABORATION, WID, WAC, ASSIGNMENT-WRITING, ASSIGNMENT, PEDAGOGY, REFLECTIVE PRACTICE,
11. Flowers, Katherine S. (2019). Resisting and Rewriting English-Only Policies: Navigating Multilingual, Raciolinguistic, and Translingual Approaches to Language Advocacy. Literacy in Composition Studies 07.1, 67-89. https://doi.org/10.21623/1.7.1.5
Annotation: The field of writing studies has highlighted the limitations of a monolingual orientation towards language, particularly in the context of English-only language policies, but there have been fewer accounts of how people actively navigate and advocate for alternatives. Drawing on a recent ethnographic, discourse analytic study of how writers reshaped a local language policy, I argue that there are advantages to cultivating and combining multilingual, raciolinguistic, and translingual approaches to language advocacy, yet at the same time, arguments for multilingualism risk eclipsing, and ultimately undermining, these other approaches.
Keywords: Language policy, writing-studies, advocacy, monolingualism, multilingual, economics/economist, racial, translingual, English only
12. Forman, Janis. (1993). Business communication and composition: The writing connection and beyond. Journal of Business Communication 30.3, 313-352.
Annotation: This article considers business communication's current and potential borrowing from composition studies as well as the constraints on such borrowing. It uses a citation analysis and a study of the arguments in business communication articles published in The Journal of Business Communication to identify the current state of composition's impact on research in business writing. After exploring the factors that may impede additional borrowing from composition, it discusses three major areas of composition studies that may profitably influence research in business communication: the historical and theoretical study of composition as a discipline, multicultural and literacy studies, and contemporary critical and social theory. [author's abstract]
Keywords: business-communication, WAC, cross-disciplinary, composition-studies, citation-analysis, discourse-analysis, argumentation, historiography, English-profession, multicultural, literacy-studies, critique, critical social-theory
13. Freedman, Sarah Warshauer. (1983). Student characteristics and essay test writing performance. Research in the Teaching of English 17.4, 313-325.
Annotation: In this innovative study of student self-assessment and the quality of their essays, Freedman had college freshmen write on topics typical of those "found on proficiency and placement tests which call for expository/argumentative essays" (p. 315). Raters of the essays were graduate students at Stanford with at least three years' experience teaching, all of whom had had previous experience with holistic evaluation. The holistic procedure (used also in Freedman, 1977; Freedman, 1981; and Freedman and Calfee, 1983) pooled four raters' scores on a 4-point scale. The strongest predictor of the holistic score was the student's selection standards for schools attended. If students claimed to be better writers, they scored higher. But there was no correlation with student age, declared pleasure with writing, and believed difficulty of the topic. [For other early studies of writing assessment and student self-evaluation, or "self-efficacy," see Olson and Martin, 1980; McCarthy, Meier, and Rinderer, 1985.] RHH [Rich Haswell & Norbert Elliot, Holistic Scoring of Written Discourse to 1985, WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies, No. 27]
Keywords: FYC, topic, student-opinion, student self-evaluation, evaluation, holistic, pooled-rater, teacher-student, prompt, readability, apprehension, gender, data, pleasure, age-correlation, topic difficulty, self-efficacy
14. Fulwiler, Toby. (1986). The argument for writing across the curriculum. In Young, Art; Toby Fulwiler (Eds.), Writing across the disciplines: Research into practice; Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook [ERIC Document Reproduction Service, ED 264 592] (pp. 21-32).
Keywords: WAC, objective, poetic, grading, evaluation, assignment, pedagogy
15. Grabau, Larry J.; Patricia S. Wilson. (1995). Jumping on thin ice: Values argument writing assignment for a large enrollment plant science class. Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education 24.2, 185-189.
Keywords: biology-course, plant science, class-size, large-class, lecture, library skills, argumentation, WAC, assignment
16. Johnson, J Paul. & Krase, Ethan. (2012). Articulating Claims and Presenting Evidence: A Study of Twelve Student Writers, From First-Year Composition to Writing Across the Curriculum. The WAC Journal, 23(1), 31-48. https://doi.org/10.37514/WAC-J.2012.23.1.03
Annotation: Found gains in argumentation (including conciseness and clarity) from early to late papers in first-year composition. Also found improvement from lower-division to upper-division writing in seven of the twelve students, with three more remaining 'stagnant' and two 'regressing' [Richard Haswell]
Keywords: college-span, growth, FYC, pre-post, improvement, data, WAC, Toulmin, development, argumentation, claim, conciseness, clarity, qualification, support, evidence, citation, genre, skill-transfer
17. Lancaster, Zak. (2011). Interpersonal Stance in L1 and L2 Students' Argumentative Writing in Economics: Implications for Faculty Development in WAC/WID Programs. Across the Disciplines, 8(4), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2011.8.4.22
Keywords: ESL, L2, argument, WID, economics, WAC, stance
18. Loucks, Kathleen Ann. (1994). Advocacy in the courts: Narrative and argument in Lysias [doctoral thesis]. Seattle, WA: University of Washington.
Keywords: legal, courtroom, advocacy, oratory, Athenian, classical-rhetoric, narrative
19. Luna,Maria, Ruth Villalón, Mar Mateos, and Elena Martìn. (2020). Improving university argumentative writing through online training. Journal of Writing Research 12.1 [Special Issue: Technology-based Writing Instruction: A Collection of Effective Tools], 233-262. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2020.12.01.08
Keywords: academic writing, argumentation, online training, self-efficacy
20. Mandell, Dan. (1979). Developing analytic and argumentative skills in philosophy. In Vacca, Linnea (Ed.), Papers from Saint Mary's college writing seminar; ERIC Document Reproduction Service, ED 176 311.
Keywords: WAC, philosophy-course, argumentation, analysis, skill, pedagogy, philosophy
21. Mays, Chris; Maureen McBride. (2020). Learning from interdisciplinary interactions: An argument for rhetorical deliberation as a framework for WID faculty. Composition Forum 43. https://compositionforum.com/issue/43/interdisciplinary-interactions.php
Keywords: WAC, WID, interdisciplinarity, rhetorical deliberation, collaboration
22. Odell, Lee & Swersey, Burt. (2003). Reinventing Invention: Writing across the Curriculum without WAC. Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, 6(3), 25-37. https://doi.org/10.37514/LLD-J.2003.6.3.07
Annotation: We propose that writing specialists collaborate with faculty in other disciplines in making explicit—and demonstrating to students—the often tacit processes of thinking that are important for a given assignment in a given discipline. In other words, we propose that writing faculty collaborate with their colleagues in understanding and teaching the processes of invention that are fundamental to understanding a given academic subject. As faculty do this, we argue, they can concentrate on the primary business at hand (teaching engineering, for example) while contributing to one aspect of effective writing—the development of well-thought-out claims and arguments. To illustrate our proposal, we'll analyze excerpts from two design reports created by a team of students in an engineering course, Inventors' Studio.
Keywords: WAC, WID, writing across the curriculum, invention, reinvention
23. Palczewski, Catherine Helen. (1999). Neutrality as advocacy: The argumentative dynamics in a state-sponsored, 'neutral', educational abortion video. In van Eemeren, Frans H.; Rob Grootendorst; J. Anthony Blair; Charles A. Willard (Eds.), Proceedings of the fourth international conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation; Amsterdam: Stichting International Centrum voor de Studie van Argumentatie en Taalbeheersing (pp. 626-630).
Keywords: argumentation, advocacy, neutrality, governmental, video, abortion, dynamic
24. Patton, Martha D. (2011). Writing in the research university: A Darwinian study of WID with cases from civil engineering [writing in the disciplines]. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Annotation: How do engineers learn to think and write like engineers? How do art historians learn to think and write like art historians? How do journalists or biologists learn to think and write like the professionals that they become? Do we learn to think and write primarily by enculturation-or can we be taught how to write in various disciplines? If anything can be taught, what practices stand out as best practices? Needed to address these questions is a cohesive theory of writing in the disciplines (WID), one that accounts for both discipline-specific features of writing and features that cut across many disciplines. To that end, this book re-examines contemporary sociohistoric theories of writing from an evolutionary perspective. An evolutionary perspective of WID suggests that disciplines (complexes of academic arguments) not only change, but they evolve much like species do via a dual process of variation and selection in forums of competition. An evolutionary perspective puts a spotlight on what endures as well as what changes in complexes of academic arguments [author abstract]
Keywords: academic, activity-theory, affordance, assignment-design, case-study, commenting, cultural, Darwin, data, disciplinary, ecology, enculturation, engineering, ethnographic, evolution, feedback, genre-theory, habitus, intellectual development, peer-review, professionalization, response, revising, science, sociohistorical, technical-writing, WAC, WID, writing-to-learn
25. Paul, Narmada, Tzu-Jung Lin, Seung Yon Ha, Jing Chen, and George E. Newell. (2021). The role of achievement goal orientations in the relationships between high school students’ anxiety, self-efficacy, and perceived use of revision strategies in argumentative writing. Journal of Writing Research 12.3, 657-684. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2021.12.03.05
Keywords: goal orientation, writing anxiety, argumentative writing, writing self-efficacy
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