BASIC WORK AND MATERIAL ACTS: THE IRONIES, DISCREPANCIES, AND DISJUNCTURES OF BASIC WRITING AND MAIN...

<p>"Basic Work and Material Acts" summarizes what we have learned from mainstreaming basic writers in first-year composition at California State University, Chico. We found that "basic writing" as an institutional structure (defined by the State of California as remedial and granted no baccalaureate credit) created basic writers. Once basic writers were in the context of first-year composition, "basic writing" as a concept and as a practice disappeared. Two related principles about learning to write emerge from this experience: 1) one learns to do college writing by being in the context of college writing, not in some other context; and 2) literacy learning does not come in discrete levels. Drawing upon these insights, we go on to describe the ways that our program supports writers in first-year composition through adjunct workshops. The material circumstances of our program support students' college writing in ways that lessen the punitive nature of basic writing and are coherent with recent research in literacy studies.</p>