Two ways to understand the needs of ENGH 0890 and 0990 students is (1) to measure how many reading/writing experiences they bring with them to college and (2) to compare the "amount" of their reading/writing experiences as compared to other groups of basic writers.

January 21, 2003: A Qualitative Perspective: How UVSC Students Describe their Past English Courses. A Quantitative Perspective: How UVSC ENGH 0890 & 0990 Students Compare to Three Groups of Student Writers in terms of Writing and Reading Backgrounds

One way to address our students' needs is to lower the class size in ENGH 0890 and 0990.

October 23, 2002: Empirical Research Relevant to Composition Instruction and Class Size

November, 2002: New Building, New Class Size?

Here is a link to a research report by Rich Haswell at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, on the class sizes for over one hundred composition courses at colleges and universities across the country:
http://comppile.tamucc.edu/classsize.htm. Rich Haswell’s report is entitled “Class Sizes for First-Year Regular and Basic Writing Courses.”

Rich Matzen wrote another report that refers to the book Research on Written Composition, New Directions for Teaching (1986) and to NCTE’s “More than a Number: Why Class Size Matters” in order to explain why the Department of Basic Composition’s current maximum number of students in a class (26) fails to meet national standards or accommodate students’ needs in composition courses.