Walter Ong tells us that the noetic--the rhetorical characteristics of feeling, sensation, and intuition applied to a given communicative situation or act--stems from the oral tradition. The noetic contrasts with the print legacy of argument in which "teaching something is the same as 'proving' it'" ("Ramus" 156). Ong's sense…

Writing verse is a learning experience. Arranging words, sounds and syllables can turn everyday language into metered language (language that can be measured), and metered language is the definition of verse. This article discusses the use of meter in helping students establish sets of syllables and lines that can be counted, enabling them to…

This document contains some book suggestions to help introduce all the various parts of writing. Helping students understand figures of speech takes more than a book ? it takes a creative teacher and interested students. One book that teachers and students have had a great time with is Monkey Business by Wallace Edwards, (Kids Can Press, 2004,…

This essay examines a Brooklyn College-based research collective that placed African American languages and cultures at the center of the composition curriculum. Recovering such pedagogies challenges the perception of the CCCC's 1974 "Students' Right to Their Own Language" resolution as a progressive theory divorced from the everyday…

Though diversity serves as a valuable source for rhetorical inquiry, expressivist instructors who privilege diversity writing may also overemphasize the essential authenticity of their students' vernaculars. This romantic and salvationist impulse reveals the troubling implications of eighteenth-century Natural Language Theory and may,…

Describes a study showing how the classical Chinese world view finds its way into Chinese students' written compositions. English teachers must help students progress from writing based on reasoning and rhetoric indigenous to their own culture, to writing in line with the thought and rhetoric patterns of the English-speaking context. (CB)

Describes an assignment designed to dispel prospective English teachers' dichotomous ideas about language ("right" or "wrong"); gain a sense that more than one dialect could be accepted; and understand that the variations from the handbook rules ("errors") might even be rhetorically based. (TB)

Describes three pilot projects carried out with a special version of a computer-assisted language-learning activity, known as SEQUITUR, that seeks to develop awareness of cohesive devices and coherence features by displaying the start of a text and offering possible continuations. Usage logs of responses given by native and nonnative speakers of…

Research suggests that culturally distinctive first-language rhetorical patterns influence second language composing skills. Frequently, however, these patterns have never been taught formally and are not refined, leaving first-language composing largely underdeveloped. Teaching second language learners to compose often requires attending to the…