In her recent "Teaching English in the Two-Year College" ("TETYC") article, Denise Marchionda argues for a grading system in her first-year writing course that turns over responsibility to students for earning grades. The approach, which she calls "the point-by-point grading system," is a variation on a contract grading approach in which each…

Almost all of the author's community college students feel self-conscious about their vocabulary. She thinks that their resistance to expanding their vocabulary has many tangled roots: sometimes the students seem nervous about what they leave behind as they notch their vocabulary up to a more formal, college level. This article discusses how the…

The author, who worked as an adjunct while completing doctoral coursework in English education, had been teaching for 10 years but during most of that time had been a high school teacher. While working in an alternative high school, she had a great deal of freedom in instituting a critical literacy approach and social justice curriculum. The…

Suggests that the practice of ethnography in the spirit of Clifford Geertz's "thick description," and the thinking that this practice demands, can give college students both a tool for inquiry and a sense of their positions as authorities in the writing process. Defines thick description and discusses how ethnography works in a…

Suggests that student's expression in composition will improve by daily journal writing. (HOD)

Shares successful teaching tips from six teachers. (MG)

Describes the use of anonymous daily journal entries (edited and graded at the end of the semester) in a literature survey course to nurture individual inquiry without sacrificing coverage. Maintains that anonymity encourages students to take risks, raise questions, and evaluate and shape the course. (SR)

Relates a teaching assistant's experience of assigning student journals in a first-year composition class. Discusses the assignment, responses to journal entries, discoveries, and dilemmas. Concludes that they are worthwhile. (SR)

In this article, the author describes how keeping an academic journal has helped him to become a more insightful and relentless evaluator of his teaching expertise, and to acquire an academic conscience. The keeping of such an journal can inspire teachers to continually evaluate unrehearsed events and can help them get down to the true heart of…

Suggests that expressive writing is important in the freshman writing course because of the motivation the writer's feelings and memories can offer. Outlines a unit on journal writing, including a cohesive series of both private and shared journal writing activities. (ARH)

Offers guidelines to help teachers with effective response when students self-disclose personal problems in writing (both beforehand and after students self-disclose). Discusses the rise in number of college students with psychological and mental disorders. (RS)

Includes five teaching suggestions: "From Marvell to Tennyson to Eliot: Or Are You a Prufrock or a Ulysses?" by Bill Shaw; "Attendance and Contact Records," by Kaye E. White; "Viewer Mail," by Paul Hunter; "Electronic Journal," by James W. Smith; "Responding to a Need-for-Advice Question," by John…

Describes how a weekly focused journal writing assessment (in which students note any use of language they find interesting, puzzling, amusing, or annoying as well as their response to it) enhances composition students' awareness of how language is used and where. Offers several different advantages of such journal writing. (SR)

Describes five teaching methods concerning the social nature of writing, basic writers writing letters to the editor, journal writing, homophones, and punctuation. (RS)

Notes that journal writing can be effective in cultivating formal discourse while respecting cultural differences. Considers how the author modified his introductory composition class to help students to communicate in a context that united or at least respected the diffusion of languages that permeated diverse classrooms. (SG)