In this interview, Susan Wells discusses the teaching of public writing and the work of public rhetoric as they respond to both shifting and recurring political and social contexts. Drawing on insights from her extensive and current work on public rhetoric, including her foundational essay "Rogue Cops and Health Care: What Do We Want from…

One associate editor's perspective on classroom experiment articles is detailed in this article. The associate editor provides recommendations for manuscripts for the Instruction (those that describe new classroom experiments) and Research (those reporting studies into the efficacy of classroom experiments as a pedagogical tool) Sections of…

This essay frames the connections between punk principles and writing theory in order to re-form what the author emphasizes in his own composition classroom, in particular the do-it-yourself ethic, a sense of passion and fearlessness, the agency to attack institutions, and the seeking of pleasure. (Contains 1 note.)

Reviews an instructional strategy for remedial writers which consists of four steps: identifying a strategy worth teaching; introducing the strategy by modeling it; helping students to try it out with workshop-style teaching guidance; and then, helping students to work toward independent mastery. (TB)

Discusses the teaching of writing and the focus of the writer's inner sense of well-being or fulfillment used by Romantic teachers. Mentions that some teachers believe that this is at the cost of suppressing the concept of discourse. Argues that writerly pleasure empowers students, and that this topic is relevant to the teaching of writing. (CR)

When writing, few students have any concept that word placement affects the content of their writing. They seldom rework their papers at the sentence level in order to assure that their grammar reflects and enhances their content. Recognizing the relationship of grammar to meaning, composition researchers are reasserting the place of grammar in…

Explains how the reading of young adult fiction can help young adults to write better. Presents exercises in writing good first lines; using detail; using simile and metaphor; and sharing significant insights. Provides excerpts from young adult fiction. (TB)

It is argued that college students can learn to improve their writing by being taught a number of basic strategies. A distinction is made between weak and strong strategies, and a number of each are identified and discussed. Classroom instructional procedures supporting improvement of skills are outlined. (Author/MSE)

The process approach to writing requires feedback. Peer feedback (which can be encouraged and taught) and teacher feedback are complementary; they should discuss both form and content of students' written work. Spoken teacher feedback on tape and student-teacher conferences (whether individual or group) augment the teacher's usual feedback…

Perhaps writing is equated with process. But, there are too many complicating factors that make it difficult to evaluate the success or failure of prewriting and drafting assignments--the process and the value of each step is different for each individual. By teaching students to recognize the cultural contingencies of textuality, the status of…

Students, either male or female, can be silenced by the adversarial discourse that often characterizes argumentative situations. Alternatives proposed by feminist rhetoricians should apply to any voice silenced in the classroom. Rhetoricians concerned with empowering writers of argument have illustrated three alternatives that enable writers to…

When students study the discipline of statistics, a domain that can be remote and abstract for them, it is critical that they understand what the numbers mean and how those numbers help people arrive at decisions. This paper presents different approaches that help students learn how researchers actually work with statistics and shows how students…

Teachers of first-year college composition, particularly instructors and graduate teaching assistants with little or no teaching experience, are caught up in a debate concerning the appropriateness of social action as a facet of their personal pedagogical strategies. On the one hand, they are encouraged to promote social activism by individuals…

The emptiness and nothingness associated with writer's block is often described as a kind of death, a place where there is nothing to decide, nothing about which to express an opinion. However, for students who enter the writing classroom from a different culture, the problem may not be lack of ideas, but conflicting ideas. Some of these students…

A composition instructor became interested in the playfulness of electronic discourse and how it might reshape student composition. He noticed that playfulness sets many hypertexts off from their better-behaved print ancestors, suspecting that the playful elements of student hypertexts were more than mere "play," that they opened writers…