Presents a simple classroom exercise that transforms a remote future need for grammatical competence into a more practical, immediate, and useful skill. (HTH)

Proposes that a systematic program of summary writing may be particularly effective tool for helping students overcome egocentrism by requiring them to focus objectively on someone else's ideas. Describes a program of summary assignments that foster dialectic thinking. (HTH)

Describes a practical freshman composition writing assignment in which students composed career profiles of notable alumni, which were subsequently used by the college career planning and placement office. A sample letter and profile are included. (HTH)

Describes writing assignments that help students make the transition from concrete to formal operations. The assignments confront the writers with an idea or piece of experience, ask them to respond to it and how they arrived at this response, and what other responses could be made by them or by someone else. (HTH)

Describes a freshman composition assignment in which students create fictional figures and approach a final biography about the figure through a series of shorter essays. (HTH)

Discusses how the development of critical thinking skills is inhibited in many students because they under-conceptualize the context in which controversy occurs. Suggests ways to raise students' awareness of being involved in a continuing debate, such as using written dialogue as a basis for extending a writing assignment that combines exposition,…

Describes an historical narrative assignment that stimulates students' interest in questions of rhetoric and scholarship as it requires students to combine role-playing, research, and revision. Discusses how students' role as participant/persona in writing the story prompts an intricate multiplicity of decisions as it forces them to filter data…

Describes the use of a succession of freshman English assignments that begins with a paper not based on research and concludes with a paper based on extensive research, designed to prepare students for term paper assignments. (HTH)

Outlines a basic writing skills course organized around the process of transcribing reading and lecture notes from students' other classes. (HTH)

Describes the emphasis on creativity in expository writing in a college composition class. Outlines four traits of creativity promoted and encouraged in student nonfiction writing and writing assignments for that purpose. Includes samples of students' creative nonfiction. (HTH)

Describes an assignment sequence using photographs to introduce developmental students to conventions of academic inquiry, and to give them practice analyzing and synthesizing. Reports that students link details observed in the photos to inferences drawn about them. Concentrates on the assignment linking a photo of E. B. White with an essay by him…