Jennifer Hitchcock’s summary of CCC article

Miller-Cochran, Susan K. “Beyond Typical Ideas of Writing: Developing a Diverse Understanding of Writers, Writing, and Writing Instruction”. College Composition and Communication 62.3 (2011): 550-559. ProQuest. Web.  21 Feb. 2011.

In this article, Miller-Cochran presents the ideas about writing instruction from four different recently published scholarly works in the field and focuses “on the ways in which the different approaches to researching writing instruction-though varied and distinct-inform each other because they provide us with a richer, deeper understanding through the diversity of their perspectives.”  She also argues that, “as the field of rhetoric and composition grows, our capacity to incorporate new perspectives into our study of writing and writing instruction will expand our possibilities for understanding how diverse students approach the task of writing.”  One of the pieces the author discusses relates to using the laboratory method for writing instruction, another relates to working with “Generation 1.5” students (or those ESL students who arrive in the US at a young age and receive most of their education here), and the last one is about teaching writing in the community college, which most directly applies to my situation.  Miller-Cochran’s article is useful not only for the ideas about teaching diverse student populations but it also presents some interesting new books, some of which I may be interested to now read myself, especially the one relating to teaching writing at the community college.