Noting that computers have fascinated teachers looking for new and better ways of teaching writing, not because the machines make students into better writers, but because they are useful tools that make editing and revising much easier, this paper explores the use of computers to teach writing, based on the experiences of a writing laboratory…

Criticizes views of literacy represented by Hirsch, Farrell, and others for assuming (1) the priority of alphabetic literacy over the social uses of orthographies; (2) a stable external world; (3) that literacy can be taught by skills instruction; and (4) that teachers are the centers of authority. Argues with reference to theoretical linguistics,…

Addresses the absence of a diagnostic instrument to help determine if a student is experiencing problems with invention. Provides two diagnostic models, one based on L. Odell's intellectual strategies, the other on the author's extrapolation of criteria from tacit informal diagnostic estimations. Includes evaluation of the instruments by 40…

Explores the culture of a summer writing course (at the University of Texas) for first-year ethnic minority students that is designed to help induct them gradually into the academic culture and improve retention rate. Observes and records behavior and discourses of the class's African American students. Focuses on learning strategies displayed in…

Reports on a project incorporating pragmatic analysis into the second language classroom. Cooperative learning groups of first-year ESL students in a composition class analyzed variation in the use of linguistic features across a set of texts. Exercises of this type are asserted to be useful in promoting awareness of the different potential uses…

Describes two cross-cultural composition courses offered at Valencia Community College using international readers and foreign films to help students gain insight on non-American cultures while learning about their own culture. Offers examples of reading and film worksheets, and discusses textbooks and assignments (e.g., student journals and…

Suggests how to reorient the typical English 1A writing course, with the help of computer technology, so that more time and effort are focused on the students' writing. Discusses critiquing, peer response, the teacher's role, and drawbacks involved. (MG)

A year-long study of the interaction between a rural student and his first-year composition professor at an urban state university reveals the struggles of this nontraditional student with language forms and adaptation to academic culture. Universities must learn to recognize, acknowledge, and work within all students' potential for academic…

Describes the ongoing problem of graduate level preparation for community college teaching, and the need for such faculty. Describes a program in which two-year college and university faculty collaborate to train graduate students as community college faculty. Discusses getting the program started, implementing it, and taking stock. (SR)

Describes a study that investigated whether cooperative editing had lasting benefits for remedial freshman composition students. Reports that students who had been taught the application of standard written grammar made significantly higher mean grades in freshman composition than students who had been taught using only textbooks, discussion, and…

In 1992, the English Department of Florence-Darlington Technical College, in South Carolina, initiated a freshman composition program utilizing computer word processing in a full-term writing workshop format. The program includes 12 to 16 sections of English 101 taught in classrooms containing 22 networked computers, while software consists of…

This study identified courses associated with improvements in the writing skills of 455 first semester, freshman undergraduates at a large research university. Secondarily, faculty who taught these courses were interviewed to explore their teaching practices, course designs, and evaluation techniques. The same group of students was invited back…

A multimedia pilot program at Laramie County Community College, Wyoming, used a series of instructional modules with testing units to allow freshman composition students to review their own particular areas of weakness, to test themselves, and to move on at their own pace. The program used the technologies available in the school's…

Three students in an autobiography class--an African-American, a woman, and a gay man struggling to come out--used their writing to both affirm their places in the world and envision another place. Having reviewed her early educational experiences as an African-American, Holly focused her essay back to her present college days and her attempts to…

In a freshman composition course, the teacher attempted to motivate student interest in writing by assigning biographical readings and fiction that felt like real life. In reading the books, students found topics for writing about their own lives. During the first class session, students were given the topic "The Story of My Life: A…