Sugie Goen's articles on Integrated Reading and Writing and Eliminating Remediation

"Integrating Reading and Writing: A Response to the Basic Writing 'Crisis'"

• Nearly half of the 440,000 entering freshmen, nearly half are at the basic skills level in reading and writing. 
• The CSU Board of Trustees mandated in 1997 that remedial instruction would be limited to one year with the penalty of disenrollment from the university for students to complete this requirement during the first year.
• The integrated reading and writing program combines reading and writing in a remedial set of courses in the first semester (3 units writing, 1 unit reading) and then the second semester is an integrated course of English 114, the freshman level composition course.
• There were six principles which guided the creation of the courses and their curriculum:
• Integration: the idea that good writers are good readers and the need for faculty who can teach literature, composition, and/or reading.
• Time: learning and improvement in reading and writing develop gradually, so adequate class time is necessary for this to occur.
• Development: a year is necessary for students to learning basic reading and writing strategies
• There are five objectives that this curriculum hopes to achieve: 1) understand the ways that readers and writers write in and beyond the university; 2) to develop a metacognitive understanding of the processes of reading and writing, 3) to understand the rhetorical properties of reading and writing, including purpose, audience and stance, 4) to understand and engage in reading and writing as a way to make sense of the world, to experience literacy as problem solving, reasoning and reflecting, and 5) to develop enjoyment, satisfaction and confidence in reading and writing.
• The initial cohort of students in this curriculum was assessed in Fall 2001 and the authors measured end of year grade comparisons, reading outcomes, writing portfolios, student self-assessments and second-year passage rates in composition courses. 
• The outcomes were overall positive in all categories, demonstrating that integrating reading and writing is effective.
• The students became competent readers and writers and wrote with their audience in mind. 
• Other colleges and universities should consider using this approach for their remedial students. 

Questions: I'd like to learn more about K-W-L+. Also, I'd like to get more nuts and bolts on the actual curriculum used in these remedial classes to consider in forming my own curriculum.

"Critiquing the Need to Eliminate Remediation"

• The author's research led her to find a close link between the development of reading and writing skills, and thus the need to teach the subjects in an integrated way.
• The course designed was intended to "invit(e) students to look at a text they read for clues to its production, and a text they produce for clues to how it might be received".
• The curriculum does this by building in self-reflective activities such as the "difficulty paper". 
• The assessment of the pilot was overall positive: higher retention rates, higher remediation pass rates, portfolios of work throughout semester and in second-year composition which showed improvement and importance of integrating reading and writing.
• Integrated reading and writing offers a solution to the dilemma of CSU to provide accessible and high-quality education but acknowledging the lack of skills many students bring with them from high school to college and developing them into competent readers and writers of English within the first year of university studies.
• Programmatically and historically, the first year of college is the place for remediation to take place, instead of blaming high schools and arguing for the need of elimination of remedial courses. 
• Because of this need, community colleges are the proper choice for teaching basic skills, but only 3 CSU campuses have master's degree programs that teach students how to teach basic skill learners. 
•  Question: Again, I'd like to know more about KWL+ and how to design an assignment around that structure. I'm wondering how many community colleges and UC/CSU campuses today offer IRW courses for their basic skills students?