This article uses systems and complexity theory to illustrate key characteristics of writing as a complex system. This illustration reveals how writing works on multiple levels of scale, and adds to the body of theoretical knowledge that can be taught within the discipline of writing studies. In so doing, it shows how a complex systems writing…

The authors report on a study of writing transfer using a relatively novel method. Specifically, they use screencast videos to study the work of a dozen undergraduates who had taken first-year writing and were now enrolled in an interdisciplinary biology class. The authors argue that students were able to adapt to the writing requirements in the…

While writing pedagogy instructors assign their students a range of writing tasks, often as central or repeated features of the course, a crucial question has not yet been addressed: does it matter what new teachers write? If pedagogy students are being assigned writing in part to further develop their attitudes and practices related to teaching…

Discusses factors that interfere with students' effective use of heuristic procedures for invention in composition. (HTH)

Argues that rather than intervening with one "ideal" composing style, teachers should acknowledge a number of effective overall composing styles--as well as options for performing each composing activity--to produce more flexible and resourceful writers. (HTH)

Presents a title-writing exercise which can be completed in class in 20 to 30 minutes. Asserts that the exercise works for many writers as a strategy for focusing and developing. (PRA)

Shares a Bakhtinian reading of a student paper to illustrate how to help students uncover discourses and their points of intersection and weigh the claims of each as they work toward developing a consciously critical point of view on what they read through what they write. (MG)

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)

Describes a teacher's presentation in the classroom of the drafts, notes, outlines, and other artifacts from his own papers. Recommends that teachers show their students evidence of their own struggle with the writing process in order to encourage them and convince them that all writers hesitatingly begin with a mess. (JG)

Categorizes the editorial changes on the transcripts of the William Haber Oral Biography Project to better understand how to adapt speech facility to writing. Discusses the implications for writing instruction in terms of voice, tense, and audience. (HTH)

Proposes as a follow-up to an article on controlled composition for basic writers a necessary bridge between strict copying and independent composing. (HTH)

Argues that metaphor offers students and teachers a significant (but little used) means of communication. Contends that by examining and extending student metaphors for composing, teachers gain valuable information about how students struggle to create a text and how they struggle with teachers over issues of power and authority. (RS)

Discusses tasks that students often overlook but need to address when completing "instructor/content-based" writing assignments. (HTH)

Advocates using the case approach in college writing classes. Suggests that asking students to play the roles of participants in a situation, whether real or imaginary, helps them learn to address a particular audience with a clear purpose. Offers a case approach with discussion questions and possible assignments. (RL)

Uses Thomas Kuhn's hypothesis on paradigm shifts--changes in a discipline from established models to newer ones--to examine the developing shift in writing instruction from the product-oriented to the process-oriented model. (RL)