We draw from critical pedagogy and work on radical democratic praxis when discussing ways to teach sexuality studies in a way that embodies revolt and resistance to inequitable social hierarchies. Together, we specifically look at three areas where we have worked to infuse the teaching of sexuality with themes of resistance and revolt: 1)…

This article seeks to theorize the pedagogical work disabled instructors navigate to create accessible writing classrooms. Through retroactive analysis, I introduce the concept of Access Negotiation Moments (ANMs) as limited, low-stakes contexts where disabled instructors define the limits of their own access needs. Ultimately, I theorize a…

Scholars and teachers often focus only on alphabetic texts in the classroom (Palmeri; Alexander and Rhodes; Jewitt; Selfe; Shipka); however, we do our students a disservice if we do not prepare them to compose with and understand the rhetorical consequences of using a variety of modes. In this article, I argue that we need to teach our students to…

This essay argues that multiculturalism-inflected composition classrooms often "flatten" or efface radical alterities with which students--and teachers--should be encouraged to grapple. The authors demonstrate some of the limitations of such pedagogies, offer examples of provocative texts that celebrate difference--not identity--as a…

This collaborative project explores the affordances of a translation assignment in the context of a learner-centered pedagogy that places composition students' movement among languages and cultures as both a site for inquiry and subject of analysis. The translation assignment asks students to translate scholarly articles or culture stories from…

Against the backdrop of proliferating research on multimodality in the fields of literacy and writing studies, this article considers the contributions of two prominent theoretical perspectives--Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Situated Literacies--and the methodological tensions they raise for the study of multimodality. To delineate…

Critical analysis of the literacy narrative assignment within the context of the other genres in a basic writing course complicates understandings of the political import of the assignment. While several advocates of the literacy narrative have argued that it has the power of what Jean-François Lyotard has called petits récits, the authors argue…

This article describes an assignment piloted in spring of 2008 called the Rhetorical Analysis Project, which required students to analyze three different texts addressing a common issue, compose an argument about the representation of that issue as illustrated by those texts, and revise that argument to match a rhetorical model they chose from…

Researchers and instructors have been interested in the investigation and teaching of formulaic sequences for the past four decades. In academic writing, for example, these expressions are extremely frequent in the production of published authors in academic disciplines but rarely used by university students. The present study focused on the…

Although writing instructors have a clear picture of how well our students can write by the end of a composition course, very rarely do we learn how well the students carry over the skills and strategies we teach them to the essays they write for other courses. I collected essays from other courses to determine how effectively students transfer…

The narrative concepts of the implied author and implied reader elucidate how business texts represent writers and readers. It is important, though, to distinguish carefully between writers' "implications" and readers' "inferences." Instructors should contrast implied versus inferred writers and readers, provide multiple ways to comprehend these…

Argues that college teachers will have an easier and more productive experience with student writing if they make and communicate the distinction between high-stakes and low-stakes assignments and between high- and low-stakes ways of responding to student writing. Specific suggestions are made for communicating assignments and commenting on them.…

The selection and use of instructional materials to develop technical writing skills in limited-English-proficient foreign students are discussed. Focus is on the influence of cultural differences in second language learning and the need for instructional materials that accommodate these differences. The first section examines American…

Ideas and guidelines for the organization of effective homework assignments, based on the principle that homework should offer opportunities for learning outside the classroom, are offered. The examples given are for English second language instruction as practiced in public secondary schools in Cyprus, but the principles outlined could be applied…

The Service Learning Writing Project at Michigan State University links service-learning and writing instruction. Students read and discuss American literary and historical texts, write academic analyses of ideas, and practice peer editing and revision in small workshops, while working in service placements in community and nonprofit…