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Learning from Coauthoring 193 asking them to choose a scribe, and the students work for the rest of that class period on their paragraphs, not knowing what other groups are developing. Kami collects the paragraphs and then hands them back when the students come in the next time. Each group chooses a spokesperson, and those students line up at the front of the class in the order the sentences appear in the original paragraph. She asks them to read aloud the paragraphs they have developed with no break between them, creating an instant coauthored text, as the other students listen and make note of any words or phrases that strike them as memorable. The result can be hilarious—paragraphs about Kiss juxtaposed with paragraphs about Hanna Montana, or Green Day next to a church choir—and often applause spontaneously erupts at the conclusion of the reading. Kami then asks the groups to share their processes, and they talk about how they invented ideas (maps and webs, lists, freewriting), the challenge of incorporating everyone’s ideas, fun, conversations about which word sounded best for what they wanted to convey, the realization that they were making assumptions about their audience. Students also point out details that jumped out at them as they listened to the paragraphs. They talk about writing and the process of writing, using the text they have created as a result of an enjoyable and low-risk coauthoring experience. ST uden T S wri T i ng To geT her i n claSS The students have many more opportunities to coauthor during the semester. They collaboratively compose paragraphs; they coauthor paraphrases and summaries and works cited pages; they create a coauthored mini-researched paper using a template that helps them integrate outside texts with their own, a process most first-year composition students find quite challenging (see Graff and Birkenstein 2006). And, of course, they continue to read and respond to each other’s work. In addition, they write one coauthored essay, assigned when the semester is well under way. Kami gives the students the whole class period across several meetings to work on their coauthored essays, partly because she wants to watch them work, but mainly because the lives of community college students are often complicated and getting together outside class is almost impossible. Attendance often improves during this time because students know they must write all the “major” essays to pass the class and they cannot write this particular essay if they are not in attendance. They also know Kami will consider their responsibility to their peers as part of their final grades. 194 T EAC H In G WI T H ST U D EnT T ExT S Directions for this essay remind students that they already know how to coauthor and to continue to do what they have been doing so well all semester. Kami also asks them to change scribes for each writing session because scribe can be a powerful position (heads always nod when Kami brings this up), and she stresses that at the end of each coauthoring session, she will take up any writing the groups have done; if they have been working on a computer, they must her email what they wrote that day. She learned to take this precaution after, on several occasions, the student who took the writing home did not show up for the next class period. While the groups are working, Kami circulates but does not offer much direction or feedback unless a group is truly at an impasse. This essay gives students a chance to practice what they have been learning during the semester, so she wants them to rely on each other and not on her. Also, they have in each other an immediate diverse audience made up already of several perspectives, what Ede and Lunsford (1984) call the “audience addressed,” so conversations about the writing are rich and feedback is constant. Directions include the admonition to develop text together in class, creating one voice from three or four (or sometimes five) voices, rather than smooshing together sections written by individual group members. Successful coauthoring demands a great deal of talk. According to our research for our 2001 book (First Person)2, about eighty percent of coauthoring is talk. If students write separate sections and then simply stitch them together, they miss out on the process of word- and sentence-level negotiation—negotiation that is key to developing what Shannon Carter calls “rhetorical dexterity” (2008...

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