Debating in English is a vital part of second-language acquisition. Not only does it help students with their speaking skills, but it also is an excellent way to prepare them to write opinionated essays. This article explores how educators can use "place mats" to organize a debate that gives each student the chance to speak, and then how…

The purpose of this article is to share with leadership educators a writing exercise designed to provide doctoral students enrolled in an Administrative and Policy Leadership course an opportunity to gain experience with building collective will for policy advocacy on a social justice issue. This article describes the use of a letter writing…

Writing and Rhetoric 3326: Legal Writing is an introduction to legal analysis and writing. It is offered at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, a Holy Cross liberal arts university of approximately 4,300 students, mostly undergraduates. This course focuses on applied rhetoric, and is designed to give undergraduate students experience in…

This article addresses the importance of teaching transformative usability and accessibility concepts through the lens of disability studies in general business and professional communication courses. It argues that when students learn to analyze audiences, include diverse users, and foresee accessibility "before" the final draft because…

Given the focus of recent standards-based reforms, K-12 students are expected to engage in reading and writing activities across disciplines to strengthen their literacy skills in all content areas. These students are simultaneously called upon to develop understandings of the practices of science and engineering through their K-12 science…

Although the worlds of professors and author-illustrators of children's and young adult literature are closely related, they rarely intersect in practice. In this column, readers are provided with a new perspective that crosses this divide. The authors are both professors of children's and young adult literature, as well as accomplished authors…

Today's adolescents write to communicate--via text messaging, instant messaging, and social networking posts. They are skilled at manipulating their out-of-school digital language to communicate with an intended audience and to capture individual voice. Because the writing is informal, teens have the ability to break rules, and they can do so…

Award-winning author Carolyn Coman has made a career out of writing stories for children and young adults as well as teaching writing to people of all ages. She believes that the essence of good writing, no matter the genre, is the ability to craft a solid story. In this innovative book, Carolyn provides advice, strategies, and inspiration…

People are writing as never before--in blogs and text messages and on MySpace and Facebook and Twitter. Teenagers do a good deal of this writing, and in some composing environments--for example, the text-messaging space of a cell phone--they are ahead of adults in their invention of new writing practices and new genres. At the same time, teenagers…

Outlines the procedures used in a writing course, in which students write summaries of selected articles or editorials from magazines or newspapers. Discusses the instructional, cognitive, and affective advantages and implications of the approach. (DMM)

In order for students to write like authors they need to read like writers. This requires direct instruction in attending to the writing craft through the use of quality adolescent literature and engagement in reading and writing. This article focuses on writing catchy introductions. The author offers the lesson objective and a teacher script…

Synectics, the making of analogies, was used with learning disabled high school seniors to provide them with a creative process that aids in developing a deeper understanding of literature. After studying Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the students completed a six-step process and produced a short writing assignment. (VW)

Discusses a method that reinforces and monitors "correct" writing and editing, reviews the rhetoric for "effective" writing, and demonstrates how specific technical writing tasks fit into an engineer's everyday writing. An example of a technical writing task used in sophomore engineering classes is included. (JN)

One of the author's main goals as a teacher is to impart the skills necessary for students to be successful in science, and that means teaching them how to think and write like scientists. At times, though, it seemed as though the author had exhausted all avenues without ever reaching this goal. At the beginning of each year, she starts her…

Four techniques are suggested for tutoring students of English as a second language in writing: taking a "writing history" of the student's experiences, failures, and successes at writing by asking open-ended questions in a non-judgmental way during an informal interview; brainstorming about a given writing topic, with the tutor taking close notes…