During the last 20 years, the teaching of writing has grown worldwide as a dynamic field of international academic practice and research, as attested to by the emergence of disciplinary societies, conferences, and publications. This paper builds on common nodes that have shaped the original contributions to Latin America's university-level…

Increased attention to genre in writing studies has brought a proliferation of new terms and concepts for capturing the complexity of writers' knowledge about genres, including genre knowledge, genre awareness, recontextualization, conditional knowledge, and metacognition. Definitions of these concepts have at times conflicted, and their…

Although standard language ideologies have been well researched and theorized, the practices that lead to the reproduction and enactment of these ideologies deserve attention. Specifically, there remains a need to study language that both reveals reliance on standard language ideologies and perpetuates these ideologies within the field of writing…

This paper describes one academic author's consternation when he came across an annotation of one of his scholarly articles from the "Journal of Basic Writing" in the ERIC database. The paper recounts that the author was disconcerted to find that the annotation was misleading, describing as his main point something that his article warns…

Distinguishes three constructions which begin with "it is" (extrapositive, cleft, and inferential). Examines their linguistic characteristics, notes differences in meaning and function between them and their expletiveless counterparts, and explores the uses made of them by writers of fiction and nonfiction. (MG)

Two college educators, one a philosophy teacher, the other, a composition teacher, undertook a naturalistic study of students' initiation in an introduction to philosophy course. The philosophy teacher found it difficult to articulate his disciplinary ways of knowing, and both researchers had trouble identifying their tacitly held views of…

This Topical Bibliography and Commentary reviews the recent research literature which focuses on writing--specifically, word choice in writing. The bibliography/commentary first lays a foundation that chronicles the importance of writing instruction in school. It then summarizes the importance of choosing quality words when writing, gives examples…

Outlines a text-based, interactionist approach toward writing and written communication. A brief analysis of the working drafts and revisions of a first-year college student's essay is offered to illustrate how key textual features function reflexively to establish and sustain the evolving but mutually held rational grounds of school writing and…

Examines current reforms in writing assessment, including the California Learning Assessment System writing portfolio. Compares language writing to "the clay that makes the pot." Concludes that writing revolves around criticism, but if assessment stays on the surface, then criticism may not be helpful in pushing the generative aspect of…

Describes an ethnographic study of writing in one elementary classroom that identified four functions of writing: writing to participate in community, writing to know oneself and others, writing to occupy free time, and writing to demonstrate academic competence. (HOD)

This paper draws on research that was conducted in a computer-mediated basic writing class taught during the Fall of 1994--the study focused on how computer mediated communication influences students' discourse strategies. The paper discusses how the act of "writing up" a research report constructed the subjectivity of the researcher and…

This paper stems from a study of an eighth-grade writing club in an urban school. The study asked: How would students use a community-based set of texts to create identities for themselves and each other in relation to their communities, their schooling, and writing and to examine issues of personhood? The paper theorizes about what the notions of…

A study investigated whether or not Black characters were portrayed in a negatively stereotyped manner in Caldecott and Newbery Award and Honor books from 1963 to 1983. The 21 books studied portrayed Black characters in significant roles. Each of the selected books was examined for negative racial stereotyping using a checklist adapted from an…

Noting a recent trend in scholarship of using narratives to warn teachers of the possible dangers of un-theorized and uncritical utilization of technology in the writing classroom, this paper offers a story that does not involve students, anonymous messages, or private files that inadvertently become public, but instead concerns a series of…

A preliminary study examined what kind of writing goes on at a the university: what faculty assign; how they see the function of writing; and what they see as "good" writing. Survey respondents were 1300 regular faculty and teaching assistants in the liberal arts and sciences, with follow-up interviews of 17 selected faculty. The 103…