In the best of times, students training to be writing center consultants are empowered to work creatively with writers and professors as part of an integrated enterprise that contributes to teaching and learning on their campuses. In the worst of times, students training to be writing center consultants are disempowered, caught between faculty and…

Presents five brief descriptions from two-year college teachers of writing activities that they have found to work well in their classrooms. (SR)

Describes successful teaching tips for writing instruction from six teachers. (SR)

Presents five activities: (1) transforming--requires that a student put aside a first draft and create a new piece on the same subject in a different genre; (2) meaningless words--encourages deleting unnecessary words; (3) group work; (4) definitions quiz; and (5) audience, synthesis, and the thematic analysis--considering these three when writing…

Presents teaching tips for (1) generating titles as a prewriting activity; (2) having students write a biography of a classmate; (3) asking students to determine scenarios for their business communication documents; (4) using interviewing as a method of primary research; and (5) sequencing writing assignments to help students clarify their…

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

Describes a number of techniques used in a developmental English class. Notes that listening to colleagues in other disciplines and using writing-to-learn strategies are two ways to make a classroom successful. Suggests that these techniques can help developmental students become active listeners and readers. (SR)

Describes how the author, in 3 to 4 50-minute class sessions of an entry-level composition course, uses popular culture to help students understand and appreciate the use of irony. (SR)

Finds that choices instructors make about reading assignments and classroom activities can influence the way students use their composition handbooks, encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors. (SR)

Proposes assigning polemics, suasive essays, and paradoxical encomia as a means to help students write in classical civic discourse forms, which enfranchise the personal in the service of the community. Presents guidelines for each assignment. (NH)

Presents six teaching suggestions from classroom teachers regarding creative scenarios with literary figures, lemons in the classroom (to aid descriptive writing), conferences using a computer, organizational patterns in writing, an epistolary icebreaker in composition, and using five-minute writings as review. (SR)

Describes how the author used sequenced assignments (and a range of other strategies) to engage students in genuine inquiry; to remove as much of the fear as possible from the research process; and to put the emphasis on process, not on product. (SR)

Describes a writing exercise with the "Oxford English Dictionary" that teaches students about research and attention to detail. Describes how the exercise, which involves the student in a set of serial tasks, makes students comfortable with the OED, teaches them how to extract full details of any word, and teaches students to take…

Describes five writing activities for college writing courses: (1) a documented opinion paper exercise; (2) breaking writing rules; (3) trip reports from absentees; (4) case studies to promote writing for particular audiences for pragmatic purposes; and (5) an organizing strategy for studying, using a chart format. (SR)

Describes five activities for college writing courses: (1) sports as a literary topic; (2) paragraph descriptions of a favorite meal; (3) interdisciplinary team teaching in the humanities; (4) use of "real" letters and memoranda in a technical writing course; and (5) a word-strength chart for a poetry-writing class. (MM)