What lasting impact could a required general education writing course have on students' well-being? The authors examined this question in the context of the California State University- Chico Town Hall Meeting, a campus event sponsored jointly by the Academic Writing Program and the First-Year Experience Program from 2006 to 2009. In the Town…

In this article, the author talks about the college writing center, which is a place of political confrontation, where cultural issues involving dialect and values are probed, contested, and negotiated. He suggests a post-process approach to composition--one that ushers writers into a world of exploration and social engagement--one that transcends…

This article describes and analyses a specific mechanism, the writing consultation, designed to help academics to prioritise, reconceptualise and improve their writing practices. It makes the case for its potential to stimulate consideration of writing practices and motivations, a possible precondition for creating time for writing in academic…

This article presents practical suggestions and tasks to make it easier to teach second language academic writing at the college level. It discusses the necessity of a warm-up period in which learners produce first drafts in pairs or small groups and do peer error correction. The article offers tasks such as reacting to an academic review,…

In this article we propose, theorize, demonstrate, and report early results from a course that approaches first-year composition as introduction to Writing Studies. This pedagogy explicitly recognizes the impossibility of teaching a universal academic discourse and rejects that as a goal for first-year composition. It seeks instead to improve…

This article provides 10 reasons why it is important to do critical media analysis in the second language classroom and describes how a process-writing approach can be used for this in a university writing class. The authors explain how to prepare a lesson plan and the idea of an "Adbuster." They then describe 10 stages in the lesson…

Writing in Western culture requires mastery of both rhetorical theory and the expressive writing often promoted in composition studies, however great the conflict between them might be. The tension between these two poles can even be a source of excitement and motivation. Landmark composition studies such as those of James Britton and Janet Emig…

With support and guidance, graduate students can successfully pursue academic writing for publication. In graduate circles, academic writing is presumed to be a solitary activity for which students already are prepared. Yet, the reality is that students tend to find academic writing difficult and stressful, and they often look to university…

In graduate circles, academic writing is presumed to be a solitary activity for which students already are prepared. Yet, the reality is that students tend to find academic writing difficult and stressful, and they often look to university faculty members for guidance. Faculty members, in turn, may provide hands-on practice and other classroom…