This paper presents an exploratory analysis of treatment-control differences in the quality of classroom interactions in 4th through 7th grade urban classrooms. Word Generation (WG) is a research-based academic language program for middle school students designed to teach novel vocabulary and literacy through language arts, math, science, and…

Through the use of a case study, this article explores the role of talk in underprepared students' acquisition of academic discourse. Conversation analysis as a linguistic framework is used to examine the interactions of students participating in a small writing group. Tracing the progress of one student's paper, I explore how students'…

One intention that an instructor had for her new course called "Writing and Healing: Women's Journal Writing" was to make apparent the power of self-written text to transform the writer. She asked her students--women studying women writing their lives and women writing their own lives--to write three pages a day and to focus on change.…

Rhetorical ethos, or the character of the rhetor as she presents herself in discourse, is vital to the success of any student attempting to enter the universe of academic discourse. According to Aristotle, ethos is demonstrated by showing good sense, good character, and good will. However, in the modern university, with the diversity of…

The current public debate between the images of the smiling war hero and of the grimacing Vietnam veteran provide opportunities to define two discourse communities that manifest themselves in students' written discourse. These can be seen as akin to the first American jeremiads, which were Puritan treatises written by seventeenth century religious…