During the last 20 years, the teaching of writing has grown worldwide as a dynamic field of international academic practice and research, as attested to by the emergence of disciplinary societies, conferences, and publications. This paper builds on common nodes that have shaped the original contributions to Latin America's university-level…

Increased attention to genre in writing studies has brought a proliferation of new terms and concepts for capturing the complexity of writers' knowledge about genres, including genre knowledge, genre awareness, recontextualization, conditional knowledge, and metacognition. Definitions of these concepts have at times conflicted, and their…

Modern secondary courses in English differ from classical tradition in their tendency to avoid direct instruction in the content and style of writing. Such avoidance is partly a function of anxieties about the role of English in students' personal development and a fear of limiting their self expression. Neither of the dominant writing pedagogies…

We offer this piece as an essay, a dialogic, many-voiced attempt to represent the tensions and contradictions in our work and the work that goes on in London schools. Locating our work within a polyphonic, narrative-based tradition of inquiry into practice (Burgess & Hardcastle, 1991; Doecke & McClenaghan, 2011; Parr, 2010; van de Ven…

A Norwegian study of the effectiveness of teaching young children to read and write using their vernacular as the medium of instruction is reported. In 1980-81 and 1981-82, ten classes of beginning primary students were given all initial instruction in reading and writing in the vernacular. Because no language standardization occurs in the…

Discussions about the value of language-across-the-curriculum policy are often clouded by confusion over two different underlying principles or motives for its implementation: that it stimulates and enhances learning and that it consolidates the teaching and learning of writing in a variety of subject contents. In practice, it is the second…

This paper reviews research about how speaking a dialect can influence students' writing and how writing should be taught to students who speak a dialect of English. Literature on the writing errors commonly made by speakers of Black English and other American dialects is summarized. (PP)

Eduardo Galeano's "Memory of Fire: Genesis" raises a number of questions concerning the "politics of location," a term that may be defined as the intersections, tensions, and complications that people of color bring to space and what space means in terms of hierarchies and power, racial and gender stratifications. Text can also…

A technique to teach the drafting of contracts in legal education is offered. Two form contracts, for real estate sale and purchase, are compared to illustrate the need for careful drafting of contracts. Examination of provisions for repair and maintenance reveals potentially significant differences in language usage. (MSE)

Bringing popular culture into the composition classroom is useful not because it erases the conflict between student and academic discourses, but rather because it serves to heighten this already extant conflict, thereby allowing it to become one of the subjects of study. Writing samples by two students early in the semester and class discussion…

One college professor finds that while supplemental instruction (SI) sessions in the humanities resemble those in social, physical, and biological sciences, there are also qualitative differences that derive from discipline-specific expectations. These are rooted in the epistemology and axiology of the humanities, the expansive nature of…

The evolution of a British communicative language teaching project at the University of Leicester is chronicled. The project brought together local education agencies, examination boards, advisors, teachers, and researchers to develop three levels of graded instructional objectives across the ability range in grades 7-9 and a standardized test,…

Provided in this report are (1) a discussion of the effects of historical events and linguistic complexities on elementary education in the People's Republic of China and (2) information on the Chinese educational system from early childhood education through the middle school (the equivalent of junior and senior high schools in the United…

A student assignment designed for a business French course is described. The assignment, a student research paper, is intended to promote both active learning and integration of skills. It is short and completed early in the course. Students are assigned topics and must research, organize, and summarize in French. It is expected that each student…