This article presents a curated collection of nine teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 89th conference in the "oil capital of the world," Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as online, in October 2024. Many of the MFA presenters demonstrated how AI can be used, integrated, and analyzed in business…

Many students struggle when they are asked to write. They may feel the lack of ideas, or they believe their ideas are not good enough. Prewriting techniques (e.g., brainstorming, clustering, and freewriting) help students develop their ability to think and their confidence in generating ideas. Collaborative prewriting activities expand students'…

This article develops a pedagogical approach to increase students' ability to locate and (re-)create publics for the issues about which they care most. By drawing Rhetorical Genre Studies into public sphere theories, this approach blurs the boundaries between widely-dispersed genres (those with large readerships across communities) and…

With artificial intelligence (AI) now producing human-quality text in seconds via natural language generation, urgent questions arise about the nature and purpose of the teaching of writing in English. Humans have already been co-composing with digital tools for decades, in the form of spelling and grammar checkers built into word processing…

In this article, the author discusses composition studies by examining how incorporating "songwriting" into a first-year writing course enables students to begin expressing their own ideas/perspectives, while also developing the ability to create the concise, detailed texts associated with academic writing. The discussion offers a…

This article describes a version of the Seminar in Basic Writing Theory and Pedagogy, a Master's level course that Marcia Buell taught in summer 2017 at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. Buell argues that because many MA students enter graduate courses in Basic Writing expecting that the course will show them how to "fix"…

Engaging young students in an authentic writing process is an important part of their literacy development. Equally important is maintaining a developmentally appropriate classroom where young students explore, create, and play. In this article, the author shares her endeavors into implementing an illustration study during writer's workshop and…

Underprepared students often need assistance building writing skills and maintaining confidence in their abilities and potential. The authors share the philosophy, pedagogy, and experience of freshman developmental education and the writing center at a four-year, private, not-for-profit urban college. They describe high-impact educational…

This essay explores what the development of writing might look like and how it might take shape in a secondary English classroom. The study problematises current definitions of progress. In direct opposition to standards-driven models, I propose an alternative way of thinking about the development of writers through a series of narrative accounts…

Within a Technical Communication classroom, policywork has been used to teach students the vital discursive and conceptual skills valued by technical fields. However, given the move of technical communicators into the public sphere, these skills can and should be expanded to include diverse practices and modes of thought. As such, this article…

In the best of times, students training to be writing center consultants are empowered to work creatively with writers and professors as part of an integrated enterprise that contributes to teaching and learning on their campuses. In the worst of times, students training to be writing center consultants are disempowered, caught between faculty and…

In the English language arts classroom, social justice is a way to increase students' abilities to articulate their experiences, critique their world, and address those identified issues with subsequent action. Teachers who practice social justice education cultivate student voice through class activities, readings, assignments, and assessments…

An important part of student success in school is the involvement of families. However, the communication between students and families regarding school is often sparse at best and caregivers can feel left out as to what is happening. Friday letters improve communication between students and families and also provide a myriad of instructional…

Each semester the author asks her first-year composition students to write a profile essay. The assignment, based on one in "St Martin's Guide to Writing," requires that students develop a thesis ("dominant impression" or "angle") about a place that they visit. The author is convinced that this essay is one of the most valuable and challenging…

"Techno-velcro to Techno-memoria" is an intergenerational collection of techno-memories illustrating the impact of techno-literacies on family communication practices. Guests participating in "Techno-velcro to Techno-memoria" add their voices to create a rich resource of techno-rhetorical connections. Our guest-collaborators remember and describe…