Developing literacy in a remedial college classroom setting: A study of writers in a community college basic skills program

This one year study investigates college level remedial writing students during the Fall 1993 semester at a suburban open-access community college. Five students with varied backgrounds who were identified as underprepared and placed in an intensive writing course participated in the classroom based research. Traditional research has tended to give expansive often categorical rationales for why student writing fails to reach college level criteria. The ethnographic style focus which includes background and cultural factors as well as student writing has not been encouraged or advanced to offer educators a clearer image of the remedial writer. This multi-case study approach involves interviews, field study methods, and teacher/researcher observations. The data was analyzed to determine the attitudes of the student writers and characteristics of their literacy practices. Findings suggested that students classified as remedial entered the community college writing classroom with preconceived expectations concerning the difficulties involved in academic writing. Beyond these pre-established expectations, each of the five student participants held individualized perspectives which underscore the vast complexities of the interrelated dynamics of school, family culture and community. Expectation confusion and labeling resulted in low self esteem which impeded motivation and writing success. The five students demonstrated minimal changes in their attitude toward writing. They appeared to leave the course viewing writing as either difficult or an unappealing general requirement. Three of the students passed the course and went on to the next level of composition. Two graduated with a two year degree. One dropped out after two more semesters. One student now attends a four year institution and still struggles with written assignments. Two never returned to the college. They had no plans to return. One has taken a full time job in a factory and the other cannot be located. The findings point toward a very real need for a radical, enlightened, and educated approach to the college\u27s commitment (particularly in respect to curriculum) to remediation, the teacher\u27s preparation and view of the remedial writer, and the remedial writers\u27 needs as they enter the open door to the academic world