The most powerful and profound thoughts known to humankind are the result of freedom to write whatever it is that the soul must purge; whatever a person is thinking that troubles him or her; anything that hinders his or her ability to be in that particular moment of living. On the first day of class, one writing instructor tells her students that…

An instructor who teaches composition, poetry, and creative nonfiction at Delta Community College in central Michigan language makes connections and helps people imagine their way fully into subjects. People have a deep, if unconscious and unfocused, need to discover and tell the truth. For one semester his students act like writers. They keep…

A sabbatical spent exploring the genre of travel writing began a writing instructor's journey to figure out what travel writing teaches--and how--and why it is so compelling to students. Her research in the genre of travel writing began as she was preparing students going abroad to keep meaningful journals. In middle- and advanced-level travel…

To encourage students of an upper division writing class to recognize the nuances of voice or tone in their written work, one instructor began the first day of each class by discussing voice and tone. After the instructor reviewed their first-day writings, students were paired with a peer partner. At the end of each semester students were…

Critical consciousness is essential to the praxis of a democratic culture. Both composition and literature instructors on the college level may be using the reflective or dialogue journal under the false assumption that recursive writing leads naturally to critical thinking. Experience with college sophomores indicates that the narrative pressures…

Self-assessment occurred daily in the act of learning in a professional writing class, which met in a computer-networked writing classroom. Strategies for self-assessment were based on James Britton's "expressive writing" and Peter Elbow's believing game. Students recorded and assessed this active learning in a Writer's Notebook (a…

Investigating the relationship between learning and academic journal writing, a study examined features of journal entries and students' characteristics. Subjects, students enrolled in an introductory linguistics course for English, English education, and elementary education, were asked to keep a journal during the course. To determine students'…

The examination of the journal (written in 1875) of a student of the Patterson Institute, a "female college" in Kentucky, reveals a young woman with a divided self--one part accepting her teacher's demands, the other undermining the daily writing assignment and the school's rules through acknowledged deception, sly subversion, mockery,…

A teacher at Western Illinois University, who had resisted using the portfolio system in a writing classroom, developed a shorter portfolio unit to incorporate the best aspects of portfolios without many of the disadvantages. By the beginning of the fifth week of the semester, the students had written three papers, participated in a peer exchange…

An autobiography course for nontraditional students at community colleges can foster appreciation for cultural diversity and integrate discourses that challenge writing genre hierarchies. Students who signed up for such a course developed processes that worked best for them. Selected as texts for the course were autobiographies that reflected…

This report describes an approach to third-year college-level French literature instruction that used a more informal approach to student writing than that traditionally used in such a course. The approach evolved from a comparison of students' formal writing skills with the skills defined in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign…

The development of a composition segment in a course in English as a second language for graduate students in a Chinese technological university is described. The approach used in tailoring the program to student needs and university requirements under the severe constraints of scheduling and available resources is discussed. Letters to the…

This paper describes two different English programs for international students at the American Language Institute in San Diego, California. One is English for Academic Purposes (EAP), and the other is Intensive English for Communication (IEC). The paper focuses on one teacher's experiences teaching IEC writing after 2 years of teaching EAP…

Through journal writing children have the opportunity to explore learning, feelings, experiences and language. It is a very effective means of helping students develop writing skills through a process approach. Here is a framework for exploring the possibility of including a journal writing program in an elementary school curriculum: (1) consider…

This paper describes and evaluates three wholly integrated classroom programs at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh, in two different writing/communication curriculums, involving the students' creation of a portfolio as an organic and expanding set of inter-related narrations, written and spoken, based on constant, though diversified reflections…