Stretch Composition

Printer friendly version: http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/comp/StretchComposition.pdf

The Composition Committee has presented to the English Department a proposal to pilot stretch composition at CSULA. Much remains to be resolved and many levels of approval are still required, but the initial response has been encouraging.
Some might wonder why the department is considering changing its developmental writing program. A recent assessment found that CSULA students were effectively placed, successfully prepared, and ultimately retained at a higher rate than non-developmental students. While the success of the current program is impressive, stretch composition offers the promise of even greater successes while retaining what has so far proven most effective.

First implemented in the early 1990s at Arizona State University, stretch composition is based on a simple principle: some students need more time and more experience to develop competence in and confidence with academic writing. Stretch composition takes the “content” of a first-year writing course (such as ENGL 101) and “stretches” it over two or three quarters of instruction. The “content” of ENGL 101, of course, is not so much a thing or even a skill—it is a complex intellectual, social, and cultural activity best developed in communities over time.
Time and community are two of the three characteristics found in all stretch composition programs. When given more time to write, revise, and discuss writing, students do better with their writing coursework and feel better about their learning experience, especially when that experience takes place within a community of writers. Cohort models, where students stay with the same instructor and same students, lead to effective learning (and writing) communities and allow the instructor to determine pacing and even curriculum appropriate to a specific group of students. The third key characteristic of stretch programs is college credit for all writing classes. College-level work should be rewarded with college-level credit. Since both the stretch version and the un-stretched version of ENGL 101 achieve the same learning objectives, stretch courses should be credit-bearing.

Research from the last decade conclusively supports the effectiveness of the stretch model. Programs that have adopted stretch models have seen a conclusive rise in student retention, pass rates, and performance. These benefits can be traced to the following:

• Because stretch programs are “college-level,” students are no longer stigmatized as “remedial.”
• Because stretch programs use cohorts, student engagement increases.
• Because stretch programs keep students and instructors together, classes are able to build on content and skills from prior quarters and achieve nearly seamless curricular alignment.
• Because the stretched nature of the courses effectively teaches writing and revision as a task to be completed over time, students perform better on writing tasks in their majors.

Much work remains to be done, from data gathering and report writing to course design and development. Course design begins with a relatively easy question: What would a two-quarter or one-year ENGL 101 look like? We often think to ourselves, “If only I had these students for a little longer...” With the stretch model, we will have them for a little longer. What will we do?

The Simple Principles of Stretch Composition

• Separate developmental courses imply well-defined points that divide one writing course in a sequence from another. This assumption, drawn from other disciplines such as developmental mathematics, does not take into account what the research shows—that writing and language competence develops recursively, not linearly and incrementally.
• Students can be offered different paths to the same end-point. Some paths might involve a single course, others more than one course.
• The most important determinant of the effectiveness of writing instruction is time. Some students need more time to attain competency; others can achieve it in less time.

The Design of the Pilot

The initial pilot would involve less than 300 students out of an incoming first-year class of 1,800-2,000. Six sections of ENGL 110ABC and eight sections of ENGL 112AB would be offered in 2010 2011.

ENGL 110ABC: Stretch Composition (30-week first year writing course)
ENGL 112AB: Accelerated Stretch Composition (20-week first year writing course)

Summary of 2009 Report on Placement and Retention

Printer friendly version: http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/comp/SummaryOf2009ReportOnPlacementAndRetention.pdf


At the beginning of 2009, the Department of English at CSULA initiated a statistical review of its developmental writing program (i.e. “remedial” writing courses). The need for this review was suggested by several factors, including “high” pass rates for ENGL 095 and ENGL 096, little data on the effectiveness of ENGL 100, and questions about the efficacy of the EPT in placing students in their first writing course.

The high pass rates in ENGL 095 and ENGL 096 can be interpreted in a variety of ways. For example, the current placement mechanism might be placing students too low. Such a downward shift of the placement criteria appeals to the extreme budget environment of 2009.

The findings of this study, however, disproved this and other assumptions. While the pass rates in ENGL 095 and ENGL 096 might be “high” (bearing in mind that “high” and “low” are relative terms based on no known standard), short-term and long-term measures of student performance suggest that the current placement mechanism effectively places developmental students, that these students are effectively “remediated,” and that this “remedial” population not only performs at levels comparable to the non-remedial population but is more likely to stay at the university.

The purpose of the developmental writing courses (ENGL 095, ENGL 096, and ENGL 100) is to prepare students to be successful in ENGL 101. Ultimately, of course, the goal is larger, the aim of all writing courses being to help students succeed at the university. Student performance in ENGL 101 provides an appropriate measure of the first goal, and student two-year retention provides a measure of the second goal. By both measures the developmental writing program has been successful.
First, developmental writing courses are effectively preparing students for success in ENGL 101. Students placed in ENGL 095 eventually earn grades in ENGL 101 that are comparable to the grades earned by students placed directly into ENGL 101. Students placed in ENGL 096 eventually earn grades in ENGL 101 that are slightly below the average for the course. In general, these two findings suggest that grades earned in ENGL 101 directly correlates to time spent in developmental writing courses.

Second, students enrolled in developmental writing courses are more likely to stay at the university than students not enrolled in such courses. Some possible explanations include the smaller class size of developmental writing courses, which foster greater student engagement, as well as the connection between developmental writing courses and academic support services such as the University Writing Center.
Furthermore, ENGL 100 not only effectively helps developmental students bypass developmental writing courses, but appears also to have a significant effect on student retention. Students enrolled in ENGL 100 are 12% more likely to stay at the university regardless of their performance in ENGL 101.

In short, the developmental writing program effectively prepares students for success at the university. Our goal for this and upcoming years is to build on these successes.

The entire report can be downloaded from
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/Report-CompProgram2009-Rev-090905.pdf

The slides from a Powerpoint presentation of this report made to the composition faculty at CSULA (September 25, 2009) can be downloaded from
http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/Report-CompProgram2009-Powerpoint.pdf

Data Highlights

Average (Eventual) Grade in ENGL 101 for Students Placed

Directly in 101	2.95
in ENGL 101 with ENGL 100	2.70
in ENGL 096	2.51
in ENGL 095	2.80

Percentage of Students Still Enrolled at the University after Two Years (2-yr Retention) (based on 2005-2006 data) Placed

in ENGL 101 and earned B or higher	70%
in ENGL 101 and earned B- or lower	38%
in ENGL 096 and earned a CR	70%
in ENGL 096 and earned an NC	26%
in ENGL 095 and earned a CR	68%
in ENGL 095 and earned an NC	33%

Percentage of Students Still Enrolled at the University after Two Years (2-yr Retention) (based on 2005-2006 data)

All Students	61%
Exempt from EPT	57%
Placed in ENGL 101	58%
Placed in ENGL 101/100	66%
Placed in ENGL 096	60%
Placed in ENGL 095	62%