Patterns and Possibilities for Basic Writers

Research in the language patterns that experienced writers use has now reached the point of providing useful suggestions for helping basic writing students achieve rapid and effective growth in writing. Shaughnessy, Hunt, Christensen, Williams, and the sentence combiners are among the many composition researchers and instructors who have observed that written English is different from spoken English, different enough for Shaughnessy to refer to "the 'dialect' of written formal English" (51). Basic writing students are normally competent users of oral language. In basic writing classes, discussions are intelligible, full of important ideas, at best even entertaining. But what goes wrong when these speakers write? Some composition instructors might answer that basic writers often do not explore in enough depth the content they choose to write about, so they include the information that readers expect. Other instructors believe that basic writers have not learned to imagine their audiences. Others might add that clear writing requires basic writers to conceive a clear sense of their purposes for writing. While these answers offer insight into problems faced by basic writers, another variable is present . Once students have explored content, imagined audience, and defined the purpose, how should they use language when involved in the act of writing? Basic writers must acquire the patterns-lexical and syntactic-that experienced writers use. Because these patterns can be identified, they can be taught. Because these patterns are not merely stylistic, but inherent to the time and space demands of writing, they should be taught. Teaching basic writers' the specific, recurring patterns they need to par-