Kristin Winet

Interests

Research

My research interests include feminist/women’s rhetorics, composition and professional writing pedagogy, and writing program administration (WPA).

Teaching

My teaching interests include digital journalism (travel & food), creative nonfiction, community writing/literacy, and professional writing (business/technical writing & visual design).

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Winet, K. K. (2023).

  Developing a “Just-in-Time, Just-Enough” Co-Teaching Certificate Program for Postdoctoral Scholars

  . College Teaching, 1-9. doi:10.1080/87567555.2023.2250044
• Winet, R. L., & Winet, K. (2021).

  We’re Here for You: The Unsolicited Covid-19 Email

  . Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 35(1), 134-139. doi:10.1177/1050651920959192
  More info

  Although companies have long used email to correspond directly with consumers in times of crisis (George & Pratt, 2012), the Covid-19 pandemic has incited an unprecedented flood of emails to our in...
• Winet, K., & Winet, R. L. (2016).

  Lingua Anglia: Bridging Language and Learners

  . English Journal, 106(1).
  More info

  Two months into our first semester teaching developmental reading at our former institution, we noticed a distinct hierarchy emerging between levels of perceived ownership students felt over the material: the ELL students were frequently deferring to their more proficient partners and silencing themselves in the process. The majority of our students were multilingual, speaking Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, Korean, and German as first languages, though some of our students were monolingual English speakers. Up to this point in the semester, we had been engaged in an English language immersive environment, encouraging all students to speak and write in the target language. However, we realized that if we wanted to promote the idea that we are all learners of English, we needed to address that explicitly in class. We decided to do something radical.We decided to introduce translation.The use of translation in the composition classroom is a complicated issue. Though some scholars have argued that courses for linguistically diverse students require a methodology that values students' "multi-competence," or a mind with "two grammars," the prevailing assumption for many teachers and instructors is that permitting home languages and integrating translation leads students to develop a language crutch (Cook 557). Critics of translation often argue it is a descriptive-as opposed to prescriptive-method that concentrates on rules and vocabulary, rather than natural acquisition (Huang). We believe that these criticisms follow a limiting assumption, especially in light of new research demonstrating how the effects of globalization have made acts of translation an ever-important theme for writing teachers to discuss in their classes (Leonardi). Instead of keeping translation entirely out of the classroom or embracing it too heavily, we believe there is a third way: that translation can be brought into the classroom not to promote the idea of rules and regulations, but rather to invite students to dialogue, to speak with their classmates about their home communities, about their favorite poets and writers, and about how their languages work.We know, too, that the ELL environment presents many challenges to reading and writing teachers, not least of which is encouraging a classroom culture that can be accessed and used by all students. Therefore, as we developed our lesson plan, we recalled that many of our ELL learners drew upon a rich Chinese literary tradition that is not always honored in the introductory composition classroom environment; it is quite often entirely ignored in lieu of promoting culturally specific texts written by Western writers. Therefore, to honor our students' rich literary traditions and to change the dynamics of the class in a playful manner, we decided to begin with these learners and did a little bit of investigating into Chinese poetry. Over and over again, the same poem came up in our searches: Li Bai's famous and deceptively simple quatrain ??? , often translated to English as "Quiet Night Thoughts." We printed out copies of the poem in the original Chinese on large sheets of paper:We then divided students into groups. Each group had at least one Mandarin speaker, a multilingual speaker, and a monolingual English speaker. We held up the poem in its original language and listened as the Mandarin students began chatting excitedly about this famous Chinese poem, one they have had memorized, they told us, since kindergarten. Other students looked at the poem in complete disbelief, feeling, they told us, how their Chinese partners must sometimes feel when looking at an unfamiliar text.To begin the lesson, we asked the Chinese students to guide the non-Mandarin speakers through an ideogrammatic translation of each character, using both groups' strengths to help "talk through" what each character means. The idea was to invoke Robert Weschler's claim that a blend of grammar-translation and active communication can create "a new, more powerful hybrid . …

Presentations

• Dixie, K., Dukes, A., Kearns, K., Winet, K. K., & Woods, L. (2023). Activating instructor empathy: Supporting students’ academic and emotional needs. 48th Annual POD Network Conference: #POD23 Envisioning the Future: Developing Equitable Opportunities for Success. Pittsburgh, PA.

Other Teaching Materials

• Winet, K. K., & Hempel, B. R. (2023. IA699 CIRTL Teaching as Research (TAR) 1-credit seminar: curriculum development, course building in learning management system (D2L), and pilot course (co-taught with B. Hempel). UCATT.
• Winet, K. K., & Schwaller, E. J. (2023.

  IA699 Teaching Writing in Your Discipline, 1-credit course: curriculum adaptation, course building in learning management system (D2L), and pilot course (co-taught with E.J. Schwaller)

  . UCATT.