Transculturation in introductory composition

The Transculturation in Introductory Composition research team seeks to increase undergraduate students’ intercultural competence by designing and implementing first-year writing courses that encourage meaningful intercultural interaction among international and domestic students.

Our innovative model links mainstream and second-language-focused first-year writing sections to expose students to diverse texts, structured intercultural interactions, and sequenced writing assignments supported by team-taught pedagogical interventions.

More about the curricular model, its assessment, and our findings can be found at: writeic.org. Grant funding for this project currently stands at $34250 USD.

Our team wanted to increase the intercultural competence (skills, attitudes, and behaviours required for effective interaction with people of different cultural backgrounds) of undergraduate students. As writing teachers, we saw an opportunity to revise the curriculum of our classes to achieve this end. Because students tend to spend time with people most similar to themselves, we specifically focused on integrating international and domestic student populations at our university.

Detailed results can be found here: https://writeic.org/results/

Briefly:
1. Reflective writing is an effective way to support the development of intercultural competence as well as to measure the development qualitatively
2. Intercultural development is not linear, but it does respond to specific interventions
3. Our program seems to have a greater impact on the development of domestic students than international students
4. Students who integrate what they are learning in the class with concurrent university experiences make greater gains in intercultural competence