Retention and Writing Instruction

• How do composition courses fit into first-year students' perceptions of the the school they have chosen and their success (or not!) in its curriculum? 
• How do students in composition classes perceive "challenge" and "conversation" and "enjoyment"? 
• What combination of strategies produces the best combination of "challenging materials and assignments," "strong progress in skills and content knowledge relevant to the course," and "fun"?
• Given what retention research tells us about factors affecting students' decisions to persist or drop out, do any of the above questions yield useful strategies to increase retention or is the "decision" already made before the students set foot on campus?

Pegeen Reichert Powell, "Retention and Writing Instruction," College Composition and Communication (60:4) (June 2009) 664-82.   Click on the hyperlink to read relevant excerpts and paraphrases from the article.  This article is available directly from NCTE if you have a subscription at this web URL:

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CCC/0604-june09/CCC0604Retention.pdf

Or you can read the PDF file version from the Composition Faculty public folder under "English Department."