| The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate how six first-year writing students in an open-enrollment community college and a private university described their writing experiences at home, work and school. Analysis of these descriptions indicates that the significant writing relationships and processes developed outside the classroom sometimes impeded or supported learning in the classroom.; To begin this project, I administered a questionnaire to over 150 first-year writing students at each site. I then selected research subjects from the pool of students who volunteered via the questionnaire. Selection was made with an eye toward diversity of writing experiences, races, and socio-economic backgrounds. Of the university students, one male and one female were selected; of the community college students, one male and three females. After in-depth, open-ended interviews, I transcribed student responses and shaped them into individual writing portraits, narrative accounts of their reading and writing experiences. The portraits were then analyzed for emerging themes.; Five students described important relationships with writing mentors who initiated them into particular writing practices and identities they valued. Students seemed to choose writing mentors according to their own desires and purposes. The most sustained and influential writing mentors were family members; employers and teachers provided more circumscribed mentoring. Through a variety of writing relationships, these students learned and developed a number of writing processes at home, work, and school. In particular, they learned to collaborate in ways that differed significantly from what they were taught in their first-year composition classes. Students' writing processes were not value-neutral strategies, but deeply meaningful ways of working. |
