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…

Maintains that cliches can improve students' writing style. Describes six techniques for polishing cliches into something original. (SR)

Suggests that the five-paragraph theme does in fact have value, and explains why assumptions about its ills are wrong-minded. (SR)

Discusses two intriguing ways of explaining error in student writing--the work of Michel Foucault and the work of Roland Barthes. Describes in-class activities and essay assignments that use these perspectives to help students to reach improved understanding of error in writing. (SR)

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

Describes a successful approach used by the author in "Composition and Literature" courses which teaches students to write in a relaxed manner about material unnatural to them (literary texts). Describes focusing on communicating to a generally ignorant reader who is knowledgeable about the work. Argues that papers became clearer as the semester…

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…

Describes a modified method of reader-response used as a core activity in a literature classroom in which students write a short written response at the beginning of every class to the reading due that day. Describes the procedure, its relationship to effective writing, and its benefits, including reading more critically, writing more effectively,…

Describes how the author uses the off-campus interview of a working professional as a foundation unit upon which to launch a first-year college writing course. Discusses teaching strategies to prepare for this real interview, and notes that the working professionals interviewed can become the writing instructor's best ally in motivating first-year…

Argues that, to deal effectively with sentence errors of basic writers, it is crucial to distinguish between what should be left alone and what can be productively marked and how it should be marked. Proposes a taxonomy of four sources of errors (knowledge, dialect, process, and developmental errors) and seven ways to address them. (SR)

Argues that connecting classroom practice to writing center tutorials prepares students to generate dialogic and democratic tutorials. Describes a liberatory writing center (rather than a skill-and-drill site of remediation). Describes classroom practices that help students develop critical approaches to the power arrangements they encounter both…

Describes a workshop used with classes doing Web research for their English papers in a computer lab. Shows how this is a good opportunity for students to learn to find, evaluate, and save Web sources, how to read critically and annotate the sources, and how to weave them into working drafts and avoid plagiarism. (SR)

Describes how instructors at two different colleges in Montana (a tribal college and a distant community college) collaboratively teach composition courses (using the same reading and assignments, and doing peer revision for each other). Describes how this approach breaks through cultural, ideological, intellectual "containments;"…