Picture a group of classroom teachers gathered around a table late one afternoon discussing the results of the statewide writing assessment, the returned scored papers scattered across the table top. This article details research exploring which rhetorical elements are associated with statewide assessment scores and considers the role and…

This article interrogates some metaphors that Common Core State Standards (CCSS) proponents have used as arguments to characterize CCSS, and then checks the facts that others have amassed around the issue. The authors offer up considerations of metaphor as a rhetorical resistance strategy: Name, Frame, Fact (Check), and then Speak Up. Teachers…

How a person teaches grammar depends on what he or she believes it does. Some see grammar as a set of rules, inherited from wise forefathers. For them, teaching grammar means making students aware of, and then holding them to, these rules. Others see grammar as an expression of style, an invitation to the writer to explore how to create a…

Probes the way sexism is fostered by four different but related processes of communication: overgeneralization, exaggeration, metamorphical extension, and the adaptation of behavior to fit the exaggerations and metaphors that grew out of the overgeneralizations. (EL)

Describes how many of the phrasings attacked by cliche-hunters as trite, worn-out, or unoriginal can be legitimately defended on other grounds, by the criteria of speed and clarity, familiarity, social bonding, and personal delight. (CRH)