摘要：In recent years, composition studies has seen a considerable growth of interest in the transfer of learning, with researchers asking what abilities and knowledge students take with them from first-year composition (FYC) and use in new contexts. Anyone familiar with this line of inquiry will immediately be struck by how dismal the discoveries have been. Study after study, starting from Lucille P. McCarthy’s 1987 research, has found that students fail to transfer writing knowledge from FYC to the writing they do in other coursework (Beaufort; Wardle, ”Understanding”; Bergmann and Zepernick; Carroll). Worse, sometimes students negatively transfer knowledge, applying precepts learned in FYC to contexts where such advice is rhetorically inappropriate (Beaufort; Walvoord and McCarthy). The news is not all bad: two recent studies have reported positive results for students’ abilities to transfer general rhetorical skills to later writing contexts (Brent; Johnson and Krase) and some teacher-researchers have proposed new curricula for FYC that they hope will encourage transfer (Downs & Wardle; Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak). However, absent these major curricular changes, most research suggests students see little occasion or need to transfer rhetorical knowledge from FYC to other disciplinary contexts
