Journal article selected as one of best for 2014

The 2014 article by Associate Professor of English and Chair of English and Applied Linguistics Kathleen Cassity, Ph.D., published in the Journal of Teaching Writing, "Practice, Patience, and Process in the Age of Accountability: What Cognitive Psychology Suggests about the Teaching and Assessment of Writing," has been selected for inclusion in the Parlor Press anthology, Best of Independent Journals in Rhetoric and Composition.  

Cassity developed an interest in this field of research after attending a conference presentation by a cognitive psychologist, who specializes in the cognition of writing. She was fascinated by what the  psychologist said about the way the brain works and chose to do follow up research.  

Her journal article is targeted at writing teachers and draws on findings in psychology to make teachers more aware of how the writing process works. The idea behind this is the more about writing people can get into long-term memory, the more it will free up the working memory to do specific writing tasks. 
   

One of the other ideas covered in Cassity’s article is a coaching model — much like a coach training an athlete — works better than a traditional classroom model. If a writing student practices every day and gets constant feedback, it yields better results.   

Cassity joined the University in 2005. Her scholarly interests are 20^th Century British and South Asian Literature, and memoir and life writing and the teaching of writing. Courses she teaches or has taught at HPU include Writing 1100 (Writing and Analyzing Arguments), Writing 3340 (Creative Nonfiction), World Literature and British Comic Literature.