Some teaching strategies grow out of the curricula educators inherit or develop through professional reading; others originate in the aromatic humus of their autobiographies. This article presents a proposal that has its origins in the latter. The author recognized that what delights her in prose or poetry is the figurative language a writer uses…

In two-year college writing classrooms and beyond, peer review is one of the most widely used tools for helping students improve their writing. Despite its widespread usage, however, it is one of the most diffuse, inconsistent, and ambiguous practices associated with writing instruction. This essay aims to explore the widely varying terminology…

Offers heresies about reading, grading, and commenting on student papers which may relieve teachers from constant paper grading. Recommends using peer audiences, deemphasizing grading, expanding and elaborating the stages of the composing process, and modeling effective writing behaviors for students. (RAE)

Claims students' use of the cliche is unavoidable and relative to culture, place, and time, and that the cliche can, and often does, communicate efficiently. Suggests six techniques such as extending, inverting, punning, and combining, that combined with some imagination, can turn cliches into small teasures. (NH)

Indicates that using highlighters to mark errors produced a 76% class improvement in removing comma errors and a 95.5% improvement in removing apostrophe errors. Outlines two teaching procedures, to be followed before introducing this tool to the class, that enable students to remove errors at this effective rate. (JD)

Claims that writing logs constitute an effective teaching tool in basic college writing courses. Discusses one teacher's success using writing logs to assist the development of students' freewriting skills. Includes sample entries revealing students' comments and progress throughout the term and documenting the teacher's response to these…

Offers 4 brief descriptions from college writing teachers of activities they use successfully. Describes using a "round robin" process for group writing and revision; addressing stylistic and grammatical issues by using anonymous student writing; "showing" versus "telling" words; and using film to model "larger" meaning in personal narrative. (SR)

Explains problems with teaching the research paper in stages and suggests an alternative, the cumulative research paper. (EL)

Argues that composition students can become aware of audience and purpose and develop ideas for original essays through study of film reviews. Suggests relevant writing assignments. (RAE)

Offers five tips from writing teachers on writing activities that work well in their classrooms. (SR)

Discusses teaching students in the collaborative writing classroom to acknowledge influences and credit sources. Offers classroom exercises as well as options for acknowledging sources. (SR)

The purpose of this paper is to present a detailed analysis of the style of exemplary first-year writing in order to establish and understand those features of written discourse that first-year writing teachers most value and reward. Having established the stylistic features of exemplary first-year writing, the paper goes on to provide first-year…

Shows that reading and writing are closely related. Suggests techniques for integrating these studies in the classroom by writing on open and closed topics, such as readers writing ghost chapters, constructing possible worlds, keeping a reader-response journal, and students teaching punctuation, grammar, and syntax to each other. (RAE)

Recommends text-building routines for teaching students efficient ways to compose coherent paragraphs and longer documents, including frequently used plans for organizing goal-directed writing, means for highlighting to emphasize some ideas and de-emphasize others, and rule-governed ways to overlap previously mentioned information with new…

Explores the possibilities of the paperless classroom achieved through e-mail strategies and the use of Blackboard, an e-learning software platform. Claims that the system can be an efficient method for storing and evaluating papers and communicating with students. Concludes that the system allows the author to create a permanent electronic paper…