It hardly bears noting that when writing instructors teach professional writing they focus on helping students learn to analyze complex communication scenarios, conduct careful research to support their position, and to responsibly and succinctly apply the process of writing any number of supporting documents. Developing these skills are essential…

It is well known, of course, that all Windows versions except for 3.1 have a brief (four to six second) piece of music indicating that Windows is booted and ready for use. While the music may indicate Windows has booted, it bears no immediately discernable relation to the various uses we might actually put Windows to--working, gaming,…

This article focuses on one aspect of rhetorical training that writing instructors have an opportunity--if not an obligation--to inculcate (or at least introduce) in students studying to be entrepreneurs and taking their writing classes. Specifically, through the use of an open source Content Management System (CMS) (e.g., Drupal or Moodle),…

Developing community writing projects that effectively benefit students, the community, and the goals of the writing program is a tricky task. Drawing from recent scholarship and the author's own challenges with integrating meaningful civic engagement into the professional writing classes at her university, she examines limitations of single…

The use of peer groups to respond to student papers is a long-established practice in the composition classroom, so well entrenched, that they may sometimes employ peer response without thoroughly evaluating underlying assumptions and beliefs about how such groups operate. As a central tenet of the writing process movement, peer response was…

In this article, we provide a theoretical framework for understanding how written peer critique can be used successfully to develop authority in students' writing in the disciplines. We suggest that having students respond to their peers in writing rather than orally and positioning students to write their critiques from a strong knowledge base…

Each of the four core composition units discussed in this paper presents its own set of challenges to both student and teacher. As writing teachers at mid-sized state universities, the authors offer four pedagogical approaches to exploring student identity through composition, literature, and rhetoric. One of the main goals is to allow new…

Argues that, by urging students to recognize their powerlessness and transform the structures of power governing their experiences, teachers can lead them to the awareness that they can determine their own educational lives. Discusses the author's experiences with encouraging educational literacy in a series of composition courses for the…

Highlights a peer response group in which students were given greater autonomy. Suggests that negative elements like adversity, tension and frustration can contribute to the success of response group activity, because they instruct students in the realities of group dynamics. (RS)

Describes a writing exercise which helps students understand the distinction between mere proofreading and actual revision. (MM)

States that students in writing response groups have to work through conflicting sets of role expectations, one connected to response to writing in general, the other created by the unequal power relations in classrooms. Discusses how students manage to juggle the demands of conflicting roles and how teachers can guide them to do so productively.…

Describes a course titled "Writing for Change," in which students learn to write with purpose and penetration by examining changes in their own lives, by questioning and deconstructing cultural myths, by researching topics together, and by writing letters together to officials with the goal of effecting a change. (TB)

This article talks about situated writing lessons and describes how to use this strategy in disciplinary context. The concept of the situated writing lesson is similar to the concept of "strategy lessons" advocated by Nancie Atwell and other whole language teachers who discovered a need for short, context-specific teaching of language conventions.…

Analyzes the various circumstances under which "term paper mills" get papers written, how the assignments some instructors give may facilitate this process, and how instructors can work to inhibit the ability of their students to make use of these companies. (RS)

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…