Crossing the threshold from high school to college-level writing expectations constitutes a challenge for many students since secondary and post-secondary composition instructors often work under different constraints and are guided by different curricular philosophies. Dual enrollment classrooms provide a space where these differences can be…

Ethical issues make writing assignments more than academic exercises, especially when the ethical issues involve the writing itself. Such issues arise in every aim and mode of discourse and in every stage of the writing process, from choosing a topic to editing the final draft. Informative discourse must be factual and comprehensive, and have…

To determine the reliability of evaluation decisions about student writing competency across modes of discourse, a large sample of students was randomly assigned a writing task in one of four modes of discourse. Results provide evidence that mode of discourse must be considered when judging the adequacy of student writing. (Author/LMO)

To explore student facility with argumentative writing, 40 persuasive essays of 5th, 7th, and 11th grade students were analyzed for their relative percentage of reporting (narrating), interpreting, generalizing, and speculative sentences. Fifth and seventh graders were found to use significantly more narrative and fewer generalizations than older…

This text tries to explain what students need to learn to read and write in tertiary academic settings in Australia and to suggest some ways of teaching them. An introduction maps out what this text contains and summarizes the main features of the approach used to teach adults how to read and write academic discourse. The next section describes…