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122 T EAC H In G WI T H ST U D EnT T ExT S “academic writing” as a monolithic, classroom-bound genre, YSW helps instructors and students imagine—and write for—scholars beyond the classroom. Rather than showing static research papers, YSW demonstrates a public, intellectual community in dynamic conversation to which students can visualize contributing. It shows research-based genres that disseminate new research and fuel discussions and debates. For our discipline, YSW (particularly the First-Year Writing feature) models what student writing of research related to writing and discourse can look like. As the field explores “writing about writing” pedagogies (see Downs and Wardle 2007), a real pedagogical challenge is that most recent research in composition and rhetoric is enmeshed in disciplinary contexts that are challenging for many writing students to use. YSW articles give students tangible “goal-texts” or visual targets. And unlike professional articles about writing, which help students learn about the research in the field but also risk conveying that only professionals can research. YSW articles counter that impression. Finally, first-year students often struggle to understand writing as studyable. For them, writing tends to be a closed question—borrowing Keith Hjortshoj’s (2001) terms, a set of “‘laws of writing that every college student everywhere used to write effective papers” (40). Thus, students often draw a blank on research questions related to writing and literacy. A YSW table of contents, used in small-group and whole-class exploration and discussion , becomes a superb invention tool, with questions sufficient to fuel publishable research. “reali Zed ” STuden T T exT S i n ci rculaTi o n Beyo nd T he cla SSro o M Within the field of rhetoric and composition, many have pointed to the implications for and effects of having students read each other’s work (Ede and Lunsford 1984, for example; see also in this volume Anson, Davis, and Vilhotti; Warnock; and McMillan). Within our own classrooms , we often encourage or require students to circulate drafts, but far less often their finished texts, to in turn affect and shape each other’s scholarly inquiry. YSW articles clearly support claims that students have something to say and voices deserving to be heard; but even more we are struck—particularly on listening to YSW writers—by what these articles can show students and instructors about being read. Students have often in previous instruction lacked having their writing read rather than judged, evaluated, analyzed, diagnosed, or corrected. Students’ Texts beyond the Classroom 123 The Comment and Response section of the journal highlights for students how other finished student texts have been read, discussed, and written about by yet other students. It can help students understand that, and visualize how, their work could create genuine conversations with readers and might tangibly shape those readers’ thinking. For example, YSW author Emily Groves’s (2005) analysis of AIM (instant messaging) users’ roles of voyeur and narcissist is taken by writing student Jonathon Ellis (2006) as a jumping-off point to “examine three additional facets of the program to provide further evidence that the narcissist/voyeur dichotomy is used within AIM” (94). As they refer to, cite, and re-cite each other, these young scholars’ words build upon each other to accessibly demonstrate the cumulative, interactional nature of academic conversations that shape both the writer and the reader. YSW can also show a great deal of what happens after a student is “finished” with their paper for the class, and in so doing, it helps writing students see what it is to be read and cited. It reinforces the notion that teachers are not the sole audience for student work and that the creative, reflective process does not end with the last week of a writing class—or at least that it needn’t. ST uden T T exT S i n an exT ended i n Terac Ti o n Within our classrooms, as noted previously, situated writing processes can easily reify into “the” writing process. Given the constraints of university contexts, instructors inevitably require drafts, revisions, and feedback on schedule. YSW writers, though, experience meaningful revision far beyond the classroom. We wonder what of such experiences might usefully be brought into the classroom, and how? Along with our own perspectives about ways that YSW articles can make revising and being read visible, we have found it useful to listen to some young scholars for whom we have been FAEs. In order to compare our perceptions...

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