The author has been tutoring and teaching writing for fifteen years, but has discovered that few people outside of academia know what it is that she does. Despite the rise in composition graduate programs and the improving market for composition specialists, even within the university, faculty from other disciplines frequently have vague notions…

There are not many English words for "anger." There's "wrath" and "ire," although no one uses "ire" anymore and hardly anyone "wrath." There's "frustration," "resentment," and "indignation," but they don't have the emotional intensity of "anger," a word that…

Argues that exploratory discourse, an old but little appreciated genre, may be particularly suited for revealing and enabling the kind of thinking in matters that do not lend themselves to absolute proof. Discusses exploratory writing assignments suitable for freshman composition courses. (RS)

Being "unfailingly conscious" of one's subject position (and performing it in a formal writing assignment) are the tenets of "initiation pedagogy," the intertextual analysis behind D. Bartholomae and A. Petrosky's "Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts," and their subsequent composition textbook "Ways of…

The issue of personal writing is hotly contested in composition studies. Some believe that personal writing has no place in academic writing. In a discussion with Peter Elbow regarding personal versus academic writing, David Bartholomae argues that "academic writing is the real work of the academy." Elbow, on the other hand, argues that…

Wrestles with the question of what kind of assignment to give to composition students at the University of Pittsburgh. Tries to strike a balance between critical reading and creativity, between work and play. Finds that "experimental writing" helps resolve the conflicts. Works to bring such writing into the classroom. (PA)

Characterizes academic discourse. Argues for the need for some nonacademic writing in freshman writing courses. Discusses the different styles of academic discourse within the field of composition. Notes stylistic conventions of academic discourse. Discusses implications for the teaching of freshman writing. (RS)

In the struggle to find an acceptably academic voice that still felt personal, an instructor started thinking about what it would mean to say that academic writing is always autobiographical. Reading student work for how the autobiographical is presented in academic discourse, the instructor thought about how autobiographical writing could be used…

Explains certain writing projects oriented toward real life situations (in this case a proposal to establish a museum display) can help college students bridge the perceived gap between academic writing and the kind of writing that will be asked of them in the professional world. Suggests that students' attitudes and writing improved as a result…

Proposes an alternative pedagogy and curriculum to one implied by the text, "Ways of Reading," which provides a set of difficult, theoretical texts for writing classes. Suggests that teachers should learn something of the student's world as the student learns of the teacher's. (TB)

Argues that both academic writing (academic jargon to some) and personal writing (soul-searching drivel to others) in all their diversity, with whatever purity they can attain or with whatever impurity they must reveal, ought to be a part of composition teachers' knowledge and practice. (RS)

Composition teachers and researchers recognize the difficulty young writers, especially females, face as they enter postsecondary education and attempt to learn the language of the academy. Addressing academic audiences "takes confidence and authority, qualities that are often challenged in women because of their historical exclusion from and…

Viewing writing as a way to heal wounds and even reconstruct past experiences also helps heal the composition discipline's dichotomy between the academic and the personal, the self and the institution. Academicians are not the only writers undermined by this perceived separation: most incoming university students, in particular basic writers,…

Satirical writing offers a means of encouraging students to criticize those forms of victimization and inequality that trouble them most without that overt, dogmatic indoctrination of a political agenda that many would consider an anathema to democratic teaching. The indirect, satirical jab provides students with an intellectually challenging and…

In a basic-level writing course at the University of Minnesota, students were asked to read and engage in intelligent conservation about Keith Gilyard's "Voices of the Self." The book is about education but alternates autobiographical material with scholarly analysis. Literacy researchers expect students to read a text, understand what…