It hardly bears noting that when writing instructors teach professional writing they focus on helping students learn to analyze complex communication scenarios, conduct careful research to support their position, and to responsibly and succinctly apply the process of writing any number of supporting documents. Developing these skills are essential…

The use of peer groups to respond to student papers is a long-established practice in the composition classroom, so well entrenched, that they may sometimes employ peer response without thoroughly evaluating underlying assumptions and beliefs about how such groups operate. As a central tenet of the writing process movement, peer response was…

In the summer of 2002, the authors' university offered an online course, titled "Swims with Words: Reading, Writing, and Teaching Creative Nonfiction" (referred to as "CNF"). "Swims with Words" is a seven-week online writing course that immersed students in reading and writing nonfiction texts so they could explore nonfiction's value and its…

Argues that diminishing the distinctions between oral and written text-making will harm students trying to transform oral to written text. Applies dialogic theory to the science essay, a genre that is a staple in cross-curricular writing courses. Presents five basic teaching strategies that balance oral and written conventions. (RS)

Lists eight ways to develop a topic for a composition. (DF)

Questions the effectiveness of incorporating collaboration into classrooms and expecting instant results. Discusses the highly individualistic pedagogy that students have already been steeped in. Calls for practical measures and instruction in collaborative skills which will foster collaborative learning. (HB)

Highlights exemplary moments from the first three writing courses that Youngstown State University has been teaching at a union hall for steel workers. Includes excerpts from student interviews; illustrates the teachers' evolving approach to teaching writing in a workplace setting; and explains student responses to writing assignments. (TB)

Describes a writing exercise which helps students understand the distinction between mere proofreading and actual revision. (MM)

Provides suggestions for helping student writers deal with predication. (FL)

Presents an exercise for teaching students how to document research papers. (MM)

Argues for increased emphasis on collaboration in the classroom. Compares the present educational system to the capitalistic economic system based on competition. Proposes an alternative system that provides society with a democratizing influence that features noncompetitive, collaborative learning. (HB)

Recommends an approach, derived from Derridean deconstruction, for the analysis of argumentative/persuasive texts. (MM)

Argues that, although Peter Elbow's and David Bartholomae's pedagogies attempt in different ways to authorize students to write, both rely on the experience and resistance to language as the primary means of empowerment. Suggests that Elbow and Bartholomae must continually defer authority, keeping it suspended between experience and its…

Presents three intertwined arguments for changed practices in the teaching of writing. Advocates storytelling as one means for monocultural teachers of writing to become multicultural teachers of their diverse student populations. (MG)

Observes collaborative activities in three writing classes. Offers two ethnographic reports: one illustrating the tension felt by the instructors as a result of stalled collaboration; the other demonstrating a more successful collaborative sequence. Concludes that once the instructors learned to think collaboratively, they began wholly to redesign…