New Book Gives Insight into Teaching First-Year Composition
A new book co-edited by UNC Charlotte English Professor Ron Lunsford and published in April 2014 gives insight into teaching first-year composition at the university level.
Lunsford co-edited First – Year Composition: From Theory to Practice with Deborah Coxwell-Teague of Florida State University. The book, part of the Lauer Series in Rhetoric and composition, was published by Parlor Press.
In describing their work, Parlor Press says, “Responding to a widespread belief that the field of composition studies is less unified than it was in the late twentieth century, editors Deborah Coxwell-Teague and Ronald F. Lunsford ask twelve well-known composition theorists to create detailed syllabi for a first-year composition course and then to explain their theoretical foundations.”
Contributing theorists such as Chris Anson, Suresh Canagarajah, Douglas Hesse, and Kathleen Blake Yancey wrote essays about the major goals and objectives of their course. These theorists discuss issues such as handling assignments, the use of outside text, methods of responding to students, and the nature of classroom discussion. Lunsford and Teague frame each essay with an introductory chapter listing crucial moments in composition’s history. The final chapter marks helpful ways these contributors tackle the challenge of the first-year composition course. One of the essayists, Yancey, is a former UNC Charlotte faculty member in the English Department and directed the UNC Charlotte site of the National Writing Project.
Lunsford teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in composition theory, rhetoric, and linguistics, and authored numerous essays and books on composition. Along with this book, He and Teague also contributed two essays: “Setting the Table: Composition in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century” and “A Cornucopia of Composition Theories: What These Teachers Tell Us About Our Discipline.”
Coxwell-Teague is a the director of Florida State University’s First-Year Composition Program, where she assists in training and supervising up to 150 teachers, and has taught composition at the high school and community college level.
Words by Bryant Carter, student intern