Presents a simple classroom exercise that transforms a remote future need for grammatical competence into a more practical, immediate, and useful skill. (HTH)

Describes a practical freshman composition writing assignment in which students composed career profiles of notable alumni, which were subsequently used by the college career planning and placement office. A sample letter and profile are included. (HTH)

Describes a freshman composition assignment in which students create fictional figures and approach a final biography about the figure through a series of shorter essays. (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)

Proposes combining peer-response exercises from Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff's book "Sharing and Responding" with the series of written peer critiques in Kenneth Bruffee's "A Short Course in Writing." Argues that these types of peer criticism work best in tandem in the collaborative classroom, capturing the struggle between individual expression…

Describes how a "strip story" activity (reassembling a text from strips of paper containing the text's sentences) develops reciprocity, the interaction between reading and writing as the reader negotiates a text and the writer assists the process. (MM)

Presents an exercise for teachers which illustrates the limitations of workbook drills and rule study by teaching a brief hypothetical grammar text of five rules and exceptions, then employing those rules in standard drill exercises and a writing assignment. Claims that traditional pedagogies of formal grammar are not effective in improving…

Describes an approach to composition instruction in which the students are given a body of real or fictional evidence about a particular case and asked to interpret or explain it by means of a closely-reasoned argument. (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)

Discusses how the development of critical thinking skills is inhibited in many students because they under-conceptualize the context in which controversy occurs. Suggests ways to raise students' awareness of being involved in a continuing debate, such as using written dialogue as a basis for extending a writing assignment that combines exposition,…

Argues that writing teachers need to encourage profuseness as well as concision, to teach not just brevity but also loquacity, to help students repeat inventively. Notes that the stylistic values implicit in writing theories, pedagogy, and culture so overwhelmingly favor conciseness that elaboration gets lost in the learning process. Presents…

Describes an historical narrative assignment that stimulates students' interest in questions of rhetoric and scholarship as it requires students to combine role-playing, research, and revision. Discusses how students' role as participant/persona in writing the story prompts an intricate multiplicity of decisions as it forces them to filter data…

Describes a method for teaching students to connect their ideas causally or logically in their writing by talking about the ideas before beginning to write. (HTH)

Notes the prevalance of advertising language and personae in student writing. Includes exercises that evoke the advertising voice, suggesting that using these as a stepping stone to teaching advertising is preferable to a separate advertising unit. (HTH)

Examines the sentence-based pedagogies that arose in composition during the 1960s and 1970s (the generative rhetoric of Francis Christensen, imitation exercises, and sentence-combining) and attempts to discern why these three pedagogies have been so completely elided within contemporary composition studies. Concludes that this erasure of sentence…