Stance is a growing focus of academic writing research and an important aspect of writing development in higher education. Research on student writing to date has explored stance across different levels, language backgrounds, and disciplines, but has rarely focused on stance features across genres. This article explores stance marker use between…

In this essay I present the results of a national study of over 2,000 writing assignments from college courses across disciplines. Drawing on James Britton's multidimensional discourse taxonomy and recent work in genre studies, I analyze the rhetorical features and genres of the assignments and consider the significance of my findings through the…

Outlines a set of terms which can be used (in sequencing writing assignments from simple to complex) to make distinctions between kinds of sequences and notions of complexity. Shows how these terms allow teachers to understand the logic of various sequences, compare and contrast related sequences, and evaluate the concept of assignment sequence.…

A doctoral student's interest in self-culture connections led her to observe an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing class focused on autobiography and read all the students' papers. Autobiographical writing not only gives ESL students a chance to write about what matters to them, but the teacher can capitalize on students' cultural…

Examines the writing assignments and instruction in 30 introductory literature textbooks. Finds three types of writing assignments: the "ever popular" critical paper, the expressive paper, and the literary paper. Presents excerpts of student papers to demonstrate that writing on expressive and literary topics can help students see the…

Reports on a study that examines the planning and revising of ninth-grade coauthors to determine how collaborative writing socializes and impacts the writing process. Finds that the students' writing processes tended to resemble those of more expert writers--planning, composing, and revising collapsed into a truly recursive process. (TB)

The University of North Dakota possesses an archive containing the schoolwork, writings, and artworks of 32 children. In a study, all of the fiction and poetry of three of the children were gathered, as were teachers' descriptive records and examples of the children's drawings. It can be concluded from a study of the randomly selected children…

This paper uses two case studies to explore the risk and opportunities of writing from students' personal experiences. Anthony, a high-achieving, Hispanic fifth-grader, and Anita, a low-achieving, African-American sixth-grader, participated in a writing workshop in which students kept notebooks of their personal experiences and reflections. The…

Though popular in the late 70s and early 80s, the instructional technique of sentence combining attracts little support today, even though practice has proven that teaching the processes of combining and expanding sentences can enhance syntactic maturity. A student writer who is made aware of the expectations of form will be prompted to generate…

Describes a freshman honors writing course in which students submit research papers and then write letters to the teacher about the experience. Identifies four concerns raised by students: (1) managing time; (2) managing the topic; (3) integrating sources; and (4) following a structure. Concludes that peer interaction is a valuable resource for…

English or rhetoric and composition faculty must work to collapse disciplinary boundaries in their institutions. The challenge facing English departments is to collapse the "we-they" mentality, to develop productive partnerships with other departments, and to develop a healthy respect for other disciplines. At Yavapai College in Arizona,…

An advanced composition curriculum was designed for a class of 20 juniors and seniors, and because of the constraints of a university grant with which it was associated, the majority of assignments had to be collaborative. The subject of investigation was composition. That is, the students were challenged to do what composition researchers and…

Presents an overview of research and unanswered questions related to gender issues in technical communication. Addresses the consequences of the feminization of technical communication, research on gender differences in technical communication, and the means for encouraging a more gender-balanced view of business and industry. (SR)

A study examined the effects of coauthoring, also referred to as collaborative writing, on student learning. Subjects were 24 students in a ninth-grade English class. Data were collected over the first 9-week quarter of the year. Eight collaborative writing triads were formed with a primary criteria in establishing heterogeneous groups in gender,…

The Writing to Read Program (WTR) objectives for 1988-89 included: to extend and support the implementation of the WTR program in New York City elementary schools; to promote the reading and writing achievement of kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students; and to introduce students in early childhood to computer technology. In 1988-89 the…