This essay, in letter form, introduces graduate-level study in Basic Writing to practicum students. It situates teaching practices within Basic Writing histories and pedagogies, and invites readers to focus widely, read deeply, and keep writing. Included are lessons from Bernstein's experiences in presenting David Bowie's artistic and cultural…

Against a Racial Real backdrop, I argue for consciously adopting a sociocultural approach to style in linguistically and racially diverse Basic Writing classrooms. To make this argument, I focus on a multilingual writer named Tejada, who reveals how she had internalized a racialized stereotypical discourse about herself as a minority--a discourse…

Explores the author's experiences with freewriting. Argues that freewriting has gradually given the author a profoundly different experience of and relationship to writing. Concludes that freewriting is at the root of the author's sense of his progress in writing. (RS)

Asserts that imitation is an effective way to teach form and sense of language while encouraging creativity. Suggests several imitation assignments, including exact sentence imitation, controlled composition, and model compositions. (MM)

Suggests an alternative to traditional revising for basic writers. Describes how "interrupted" writing assignments can reveal students' writing processes. (MM)

Describes a program in which upper-level content courses feature a workshop on the writing assignments required in the course. The workshops focus primarily on prewriting and revision techniques. (HTH)

Explains how and why three crises caused a paradigm shift in one professor's way of teaching new teaching assistants to teach writing. Explains how as teachers and students became a family--a community of writers--each person in that community found a voice. (MG)

Examines three English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) student writers and their experiences in two different classrooms to better understand the relationship between writing development and writing instruction. Suggests the need to examine constraints that shape instructional decisions and underlines the importance of investigating contexts in which…

Responds to Myra Kogen's article, "The Conventions of Expository Writing" (JBW; v5 n1). Discusses several misunderstandings about models of intellectual development. Argues that developmental schemes are useful when interpreted cautiously, but risky if used to classify a student's intellectual development. (MM)

Describes a method for reorienting the deeply ingrained attitudes of teaching assistants toward writing by introducing them to a variety of writing problems that will give them insights into the difficulties both teachers and students encounter in the classroom. (HTH)

Describes the various stages of instructor-basic writer conferences at a writing laboratory. Stresses the importance of minimizing the teacher's role, and of posing questions as informed readers to stimulate student writing and revision. (MM)

Notes that while informed teachers of writing have moved toward more dialogic approaches, they still have colonial tendencies when responding to student writing. Suggests an activity that invites students to talk back to the teacher-reader as a means of helping them move more effectively toward revision. (PA)

Describes efforts of the faculty writing workshop at New York University to help teachers redefine themselves as writing teachers based on being a writer rather than a teacher. Describes the activities and rationale for each workshop. (HTH)