Effective feedback is an essential tool for making learning explicit and an essential feature of classroom practice that promotes learner autonomy. Yet, it remains a pressing challenge for teachers to scaffold the active involvement of students as critical, reflective and autonomous learners who use feedback constructively. This paper seeks to…

This study aims to investigate preschool staff's view of emergent literacy approaches in Swedish preschools with the following research question: How do preschool staff describe and explain the approaches they use in the emergent literacy environment of preschool? Focus-group interviews were conducted with 52 participating preschool units.…

Over the years, educators have noted how writing can support mathematical learning; however, little research has been done examining how mathematics teachers respond to writing. In this study, I followed the experiences of six teachers as they took a graduate class which required that they explore mathematical concepts with technology and post…

Using textual analysis and interviews with student writers, this study aims to provide an insight into second language students' use of direct quotations in their MA theses by comparing direct quotations in high-rated and low-rated Master's theses, and by exploring student writers' own motivations to quote directly from sources. The corpus…

While literacy autobiographies, citizenship autobiographies, and family narratives are common first writing assignments in the freshmen composition classroom, they are usually followed by some kind of research proposal, annotated bibliography, or research essay. While there is nothing wrong with literacy and citizenship autobiographies or family…

This paper reports on a study designed to investigate (a) whether peer review is an effective pedagogical activity with adult Chinese students in the teaching of second language (L2) academic writing and (b) how factors such as perceptions of the influence of peer reviewers' L2 proficiency, previous experience with peer review, feedback…

Suggests assigning interview reports to students in order to avoid the problem of lack of teacher expertise on a technical topic. Discusses various formats for this kind of report and ways to implement the interview report. (SRT)

Proposes a freshman composition class writing assignment in which students plan, conduct, and write up an interview of an adult friend or relative, focusing on one stage or event in that person's life. (RL)

Describes a role-playing activity to help students effectively extract information from an oral source, as in an interview. (MM)

Describes a teacher's method of motivating her sixth- and seventh-grade students to become interested in interview pieces with authors. Provides a worksheet that encourages student engagement with the interview questions. (TB)

In a composition course, interview assignments have four key virtues: (1) they are interesting in themselves; (2) they ease students into the demands of working with other people's ideas; (3) they offer a rationale for improving rhetorical skills; and (4) they allow students to experience adult, responsible roles in a social context. In addition,…

The results of interviews conducted with 48 freshman writing/composition teachers in 11 two-year colleges in California are summarized in this report. After brief descriptive comments introducing each interview topic, responses are summarized by college to the following questions: (1) What placement procedures are used to assign students to…

Three types of written conversation are examined: the interview, the dialog in a comic strip, and fictional dialog. These are compared to the function of conversation in spoken language, and pedagogical indications are given for each of the types as well as in general. (AMH)

Describes how technical writing teachers, by using a system of peer critiques, self evaluation, and portfolio grading, can use process activities (student literacy autobiographies, interviews with professional writers, and writing peer groups) to extend the range of activities in technical writing courses. (MM)

This issue of "Classroom Notes Plus" contains descriptions of original, unpublished teaching practices, and of adapted ideas. Under the "Ideas from the Classroom" section, the August 2003 issue (v21 n1) contains the following materials: Reading Poetry with Wright's "Black Boy" (David Fuder); Finding Poetry Lost in Translation (James Penha); "Lord…