This article explores how college instructors can use William Blake's unique pairing of image and text -- what W.J.T. Mitchell calls "composite art" -- to encourage students to think and write about the dynamic interplay of image and text in modern communications. Opening with an anecdote of teaching Songs of Innocence and of Experience…

As the future of the WPA Listserv (WPA-L) remains uncertain, this article reflects on the ways the WPA-L has functioned as an important site of disciplinary knowledge-making and emotion work for the field of composition studies. It examines the potential of the listserv format for democratizing participation in the enterprise of disciplinary…

This article presents an approach to reading like a digital writer to support adolescents' narrative writing in digital formats. By providing digital mentor texts for students to read like digital writers, a more comprehensive and perhaps deeper understanding of digital writing and the memoir genre can emerge.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this article presents online Peer-Review Circles (PRC) as an innovative and collaborative approach to academic writing, mainly proofreading and copy-editing processes. It aims to engage novice second language (L2) writers in online joint review and increase their understanding of pre-reviewing scholarly papers…

Grammarly's Tone Detector is included in the free version of the application and is available for major phone and computer program platforms. Its strength is in helping students compose pragmatically appropriate texts which could substantially increase their confidence and the feeling of autonomy. It accomplishes this by providing writers with…

This article describes the outcomes of a research project conducted at the Ministry of Stories (a London-based writing centre) which sought to develop an online, mentor-assisted, writing platform. Across a 3-month period, at four different sites across the UK, more than a hundred Year 7 pupils took part in the project, using the platform to write…

This article provides an update to the author's overview of developments in second language (L2) online writing that he wrote in 2008. There has been renewed interest in L2 writing through the wide use of social media, along with the rising popularity of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and telecollaboration (class-based online exchanges).…

Even though a first-year writing course remains a near-standard component of the college experience, its "content" and the "path" students take to enroll in it are not so standard. Two recent changes at a public, land-grant institution with a selective admission policy and an undergraduate population of approximately 10,000…

This article reviews research on peer feedback in second language (L2) writing published in the last decade (i.e. 2005-2014). We analyse first the theoretical underpinnings that have informed both peer feedback research and the pedagogical use of peer feedback in L2 writing instruction. We also provide a critical interpretation of existing peer…

This paper is set in the context of my experience in advanced ESL writing classes at two Canadian universities. Based on my experience and the research literature, several types of feedback should be administered by teachers to create more effective learning opportunities among advanced ESL writing students. In this paper, I examine the advantages…

This article responds to the need for more student voices in digital literacies research by discussing the results of interviews with two college students concerning the roles that their non-academic digital literacy practices can play in first-year college writing courses. The author reviews recent literature that has indicated that value of…

The purpose of this article is to explore ways in which blogs can support literacy communities while developing a writing community. Examples of how a classroom teacher uses blogs to strengthen the writing process is described. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

As new communication technologies enter the classroom, teachers must attend to how digital platforms impact the interpersonal practices of teaching and learning. In this article, I study email exchanges with three of my students--Jorge, Adriana, and Jason--over the course of one year in an 11th-grade English class at River High School, a…

In this paper, I will report qualitative research findings on how undergraduate students at a small-sized university in Thailand perceive Facebook group usage in a writing class. The findings suggest that the Facebook group can be used as blended learning (a hybrid instructional model) and learning management system (posting announcements and…

A middle school language arts teacher reflects on his experience in utilizing a school-housed online social network to create avenues for authentic audience, purpose, and response to student writing. With many technology proponents advocating a 21st century education, the fact that interacting with the Web 2.0 environment is essentially a reading…