Developed by instructors from the Los Angeles Community College District, this guidebook provides materials to aid community college instructors teaching in a variety of subject areas to integrate writing and student learning in their classrooms. Chapter 1 addresses a number of common concerns that instructors have about using writing in their…

The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) movement has gone from valuable but less effective individual efforts to organized, district- and campus-supported projects based on goals for improved student learning in every area and every program. On the college level, WAC takes two forms: a more traditional, formally structured approach from faculty…

This report provides questions and answers about writing across the curriculum, along with a series of 11 writing projects for instructors in the general education core courses (i.e., Energy in the Natural Environment, Humanities, Individual in Transition, and the Social Environment) at Miami-Dade Community College. First, the questions and…

Instructors often criticize student writing styles in abstract, nebulous terms which further serve to alienate student writers from the concept of style. College instructors should direct students to such concise, recognized discourses on improving writing style as Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." In these manuals, specific, effective…

This description of "Introduction to College Composition," a credit-bearing developmental writing course offered by the Community College of the Finger Lakes, provides an overview of the writing, grammar skills, and reading components of the course. Introductory information indicates that the course adopts a process-oriented approach to…

A writing-across-the-curriculum program has been initiated at the East Campus of Pima Community College in an effort to improve student literacy. The program operates in the following manner: (1) faculty in all disciplines on campus are asked to get involved in the program, those who participate being paid a one-time fee of $100 for their efforts;…

Responding to the increasing use of the DACUM (Developing A Curriculum) process as a means of meeting industry demands for relevant curricula, this paper describes an approach supplementing DACUM with direct contact with industry. Following introductory material on the increasing emphasis on meeting industry's needs for training, discussions are…

Offers guidelines on using student journals and microthemes in writing across the curriculum programs, drawing from the experiences of faculty at Queensborough Community College. Includes sample assignments. (DMM)

The results of interviews conducted with 48 freshman writing/composition teachers in 11 two-year colleges in California are summarized in this report. After brief descriptive comments introducing each interview topic, responses are summarized by college to the following questions: (1) What placement procedures are used to assign students to…

Designed as a looseleaf resource, a supplement to established teaching plans, and an aid to meeting individual needs, this compilation of writing exercises represents the responses of 157 teachers from 87 two-year colleges to the request, "Describe a successful writing task -- what it is, how you teach it, and why." The compilation includes tasks…

This digest draws upon the thirteen published volumes of "Inside English" to offer a summary of practitioners' advice on techniques to improve two-year college students' writing skills. First, the paper summarizes underlying principles of writing instruction, indicating that: (1) usage, formal grammar, phonics, and spelling are best…

Community college students tend to perceive a gap between their current writing ability and the level of writing skill they expect to need as employees in the future. Unfortunately, college composition classes generally do a poor job of capitalizing on the true value of writing to career development, and fail to have students practice the kind of…

Arguing that remedial/developmental students' lack of exposure to the fine arts relegates them to a permanent underclass within the student body, this paper describes the use of poetry, music, and other materials drawn from the fine arts in a remedial writing class. After presenting a rationale for including artistic concerns in the developmental…

In 1989, a project was undertaken to improve the student success rate in a writing course (Communications I) at a Florida multi-campus institution. Of the 489 students who had taken the course, 18% were unsuccessful in completing it in one semester. Three observed student behaviors which contributed to poor writing performance were an inability to…

Describes some ways in which community college faculty are using writing to teach the subject matter of vocational-technical courses. Provides a definition of thinking and suggestions for teaching and curriculum development, focusing on working collaboratively, devising writing assignments, integrating writing into the class period, and learning…