Jody Shipka (a contributor to this collection) suggested in a CCCC presentation in 2004, that we need to "increase the repertoire of semiotic tools with which students are encouraged to work, [asking] them to attend to matters associated with the delivery, reception, circulation, and distribution of their work."  She also noted that doing this kind of work "does not merely amplify but alters and enriches composing practices, as students become increasingly aware of the ways making meaning in academic spaces informs, and is informed by, the practices and materials associated with other communicative spaces."

If this is indeed our need, then first-year writing courses must become more fertile, flexible, and associative places for learning, but they must also become locations for research, places where students are asked to interrogate both their writing and their literate practices.

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