[3] These programs of study usually include composition pedagogical theory, linguistics, professional and technical communication, qualitative and quantitative research methods, the history of rhetoric, as well as the influence of different writing conventions and genres on writers' composing processes more generally.
[5][6] The definition of "basic" has been disputed when framed around issues of writing proficiency in "Standard English", increasingly racially/ethnically diverse college demographics, which both resulted from post-secondary desegregation mandates.
[9] Basic writing coursework has diversified considerably since its beginnings in non-credit-bearing 'pre' college courses, including stretch,[10] studio,[11] and accelerated[12] offerings, although they remain typically understood as precursors to or supplements for mainstream first-year composition.
Some universities require further instruction in writing and offer courses that expand upon the skills developed in first-year composition.
Another approach is the social view which shows the importance of teaching writing by making students learn the different languages of discourse communities.
When ESL students have become good at grammar and style, they face a large problem when they enter their chosen academic field.
The social approach can be used by ESL teachers as a second step but they should make sure that their students master the basics of English writing such as grammar and style.
Moreover, the expressive view which is represented in Donald Murray's article "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product", allows for wittier creating and freer movement.
[23] Aaron Schutz and Anne Ruggles Gere's article for College English, "Service Learning and English Studies," described how Schutz's course, while it was mainly focused in service-learning and local activism, engaged students in collaborative research and writing surrounding campus-wide issues, such as an instance of racial discrimination that occurred in the local student union; this allowed students to engage in cultural awareness as well as a cultural critique (129-39).
[25] The Freirean approach for teaching literacy and writing that Shor reviews in Empowering Education demonstrates how the generative words manifested themselves "[through] researching local issues and language in the students' communities.
For Shor's classroom, "[t]he generative themes [that have] emerg[ed]...from student culture have most often related to sex, abortion, drugs, family, education, careers, work, and the economic crisis" (56).
[25] Shor believes it is important to allow students to build a basis for problem-posing upon their prior knowledge and experiences to make it multicultural.
Shor insists "subject matter is best introduced as problems related to the student experience, in language familiar to them".
[25] Overall, previous scholars' discussion of multiculturalism in the classroom seems to privilege "cross-cultural interactions" and valuing students' home languages as well as their cultural ideologies.
However, in Donald Lazere's Political Literacy in Composition and Rhetoric, Lazere criticizes Hairston, Daniell, Schutz, Gere, and other scholars for their approaches because of their singular focus on localism in lieu of more "global" and critical approaches to the study of culture in the composition classroom (152-153).
For example, Lisa Eck's "Thinking Globally, Teaching Locally" describes how Eck teaches world literature courses in which students read cultural narratives and problematize them—in the article, she references her use of Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions in her composition classroom.
[28] Through her teaching, she is attempting to answer the question of how multicultural pedagogical practices could still be based in research, critical literacy, and problem-posing education.
In her approach, she engages students in the kind of literary criticism that is necessary for analyzing and evaluating critical discourse: "I work to make hybrid postcolonial identities familiar, even analogous at times, to what we understand as the process of identity formation for the average postmodern college student....I [also] use the Otherness of the cultures reproduced in foreign texts to estrange the American familiar" (579).
[29] In other words, the four major elements of the course that Wilson describes, especially with respect to the ideas she offers for critical writing assignments, create alternative pathways for students to produce writing that has the potential to disrupt cultural and political ideologies represented in various avenues and niches of the dominant public discourse.
"[33]The apprenticeship approach provides one variant of the reading connection, arguing that the composition classroom should resemble pottery or piano workshops—minimizing dependence on excessive self-reflection, preoccupation with the audience, and explicit rules.
Writing instructors, according to this approach, serve as models and coaches, providing explicit feedback in response to the learner's compositions.
Students focus their attention on the task at hand, and not on "an inaccessible and confusing multitude of explicit rules and strategies.