Two views of coherence in written discourse can be analyzed and then blended into a theory of coherence that selects the best of both views. One view is H. Miller's observation that all coherences are tentative and that the composing process is richer than its products. Another view is A. D. Van Nostrand's suggestion that the two elementary…

Argues that discontinuities between sentences can often be explained in terms of syntactic relationships within individual sentences. (AA)

Uses a linguistic analysis of a sample freshman theme to argue that the motivating context must elicit a genuine speech act, that the students must conceive of their themes as semantic units or unified wholes, and that novice writers must learn to become readers of their own writing. (AA)

Presents a dialog between two speakers examining the nature of writing discourse, how it is categorized, how it is changing, how e-mail and other media are affecting it, and what is considered acceptable in certain discourses. (TB)

This book is about tutoring writing--about the techniques of tutoring, the theoretical and practical background that tutors will need to be successful--and the specific issues that make writing center work both challenging and rewarding. The structure of the book mirrors the structure of tutor training, starting with overviews of the writing and…

Considers how Bobbie Ann Mason's short story "Shiloh" contains a wealth of metaphoric imagery and has been analyzed through various lenses of the literary tradition, including that of the Grail quest. Suggests that it provides the necessary components for any unit concentrating on teaching the anatomy of the elements of the short story. Discusses…

Explains how the Sophistic tradition, an alternative to the Platonic-Aristotelian rhetorical tradition, provides the historical foundation for a paralogic rhetoric that treats discourse production and analysis as open-ended dialogic activities and not as a codifiable system. Argues that teachers must examine the powerful paralogic/hermeneutic…

This study focused on four students and a professor from a mathematics education doctoral program at a research university. Participant observation, informal interviews, and document collection were used to collect data on students' discourse competency development. Two overarching categories emerged during data analysis: (1) what students had to…

The narrative of personal experience is considered in this paper as a canonical discourse genre from which various forms of expository patterns can be derived in a move towards decontextualized academic discourse. More specifically, the paper analyzes the multi-draft transition from a narrative of personal experience to a classification. The…

Competing views of written texts, of the process of writing, and of the purposes of the scholarly investigation of written discourse appear inherently at odds. Today composition theory is often demeaned as being only pedagogical while literary study is granted the status of a self-fulfilling academic pursuit. What is needed is a model or matrix…

The issue of agency bedevils contemporary composition theorists and practitioners. In theory, scholars such as Lester Faigley, James Berlin, and Patricia Bizzell have critiqued the foundation priority of thought to language, yet their emphasis on language has cast disturbing doubts on the origins of an individual's thoughts. In practice, the…

Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of dialogism has applications to rhetoric and composition instruction. Dialogism, sometimes translated as intertextuality, is the term Bakhtin used to designate the relation of one utterance to other utterances. Dialogism is not dialogue in the usual sense of the word; it is the context which informs utterance, and…

Explores one-to-one communication in teacher-student conferences in a college-level technical writing course. Examines whether the need to access their different knowledge bases would foster substantive conversational exchanges between instructor and student. (RAE)

Argues the major problem with report writing is poorly developed or lack of audience awareness, not grammar and mechanics. Discusses reliability of such reports and how lack of audience awareness may be remedied. Suggests that teachers have students follow a 10-step outlining process. (PA)

The composing processes of four freshmen writers of varying proficiency who had been taught problem-solving strategies for one semester were traced to see whether they would differ in how they set up and followed through with strategic options. Each of the four students produced a think-aloud protocol as he or she planned and wrote an assignment…