Talking about Transfer: Students' Language, Writing, and Reflection as Indications of Near Transfer in a First-Year Writing Course

Abstract

This dissertation project reveals that students in my English 101 course in the fall of 2013 at a large, mid-western university were able to demonstrate near transfer with the use of high-road strategies. The analysis of the materials collected for this study indicates that a course that is explicitly designed to teach for transfer does indeed foster the transfer of writing related skills. The analysis also reveals that students self-reported transfer and used their language to report and identify their transfer of writing knowledge with terms related to the genres they wrote most often. Students demonstrated an evolution of their rhetorical awareness through their writing samples and reflections: some students were able to directly state such a transfer of knowledge, while others’ transfer was uncovered during the analysis process. This project uncovered the ways in which students communicated and demonstrated transfer within a course and reveals ways in which composition studies’ scholars can design courses that foster transfer, making students hyper-aware of our desire for them to transfer writing knowledge and helping students use high-road transfer strategies, which gives researchers and instructors in composition studies a place to start when understanding the transfer process and moving on to studying high-road, far transfer.