Teaching reading in terms of its connections to writing can motivate students to read and increase the likelihood that they find success in both activities. It can lead students to value reading as an integral aspect of learning to write. It can help students develop their understanding of writerly strategies and techniques. Drawing on qualitative…

Central to the future of rhetoric and composition (or writing studies or whatever label we use) is the service mission of composition: to teach students to write. But that term "service" has not and will not serve us well. This essay examines the limitations and dangers of a service mission and explores a different model, that of a franchise, a…

As writing-program administrators and faculty are being called upon more frequently to help design and facilitate large-scale assessments, it becomes increasingly important for us to see assessment as integral to our work as academics. This article provides a framework, based on current historical, theoretical, and rhetorical knowledge, to help…

This article uses the convergence of our positionings as feminists, pragmatists, and rhetoricians to theorize communicative gaps related to different beliefs about writing instruction as sites of generative dialogue. We offer a WPA/TA discourse model centered on productive resistance and on discursive power, to posit feminist pragmatic rhetoric as…

This essay offers Neil Postman's thermostatic metaphor as a model for critical teaching. In this model, the role of the composition teacher is that of a thermostat that responds to a changing ideological environment by offering counterbalance. Such a stance is an anti-stance since it requires the teachers to enact philosophies and pedagogies,…

Recent appeal to the concept of design in composition studies benefits teaching writing in digital media. Yet the concept of design has not been developed enough to fully benefit composition instruction. This article develops an understanding of design as a matter of resolving wicked problems and makes a case for the advantages of this…

Discusses instructing writing tutors, and tutorial classroom technqiues. Contains a list of different kinds of tutorial sessions to serve as a model for tutors. (HTH)

Discusses the "stock issues" approach to argument, presents a contemporary stock issue system for the arrangement of a single composition, and constructs a model argument as a way of demonstrating how the system works. (FL)

Contends that students need to be taught how to analyze their audience and to adapt what they say to that audience. Describes teaching methods used to introduce students to the use of a heuristic model for audience analysis in written discourse. (FL)

Presents an essay refuting Hairston's proposal that the composition profession is undergoing a radical shift in paradigm to one based more on the writing process. Presents Hairston's defense of her proposal. (HTH)

Explores the discourse modes put forth in Bain's nineteenth century college textbook "English Composition and Rhetoric." Discusses his rationale for shifting from the previous belletristic schemes to the forms of description, narration, exposition, persuasion, and poetry. (HTH)

Examines three strategies by which competitive debaters generate and organize their affirmative cases. Discusses how the persuasive writer can use these same three strategies as heuristics for deliberative discourse and as models for its organization. (HTH)

Examines the four-category model developed by Andrew Wilkinson at the University of Essex (England) to assess growth in writing maturity. The four measures of development are stylistic, affective, cognitive, and moral. Each has several subcategories. Includes college student essays to illustrate the model. (HTH)

Argues that comparing developments in the process approach to writing and the design methods movement sheds light on the evolution and future direction of the writing paradigm. Argues that sensitivity to the variety of writing tasks and social contexts is more effective than a single amorphous model. (RS)

Suggests a number of criteria and procedures that represent a model of scholarly inquiry into the writing process. Discusses why some researchers are discontented with present models. Details what the author feels are acceptable, even desirable, operating assumptions, research methodologies, and ways of reporting results. (JD)