THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: At my university, students are required to take a two course sequence in freshman composition, EH 101 and EH 102. EH 101 covers six basic essay forms utilizing description, narration, process description, classification, comparison/contrast, and argument. Because EH 101 is a basic, required course,…

The typical assignment in introductory literature courses asking students to interpret the meaning of a work is inappropriate for most college students because it makes demands they cannot meet, it does not give them transferable skills, and it does not promote a love of literature. Instead, teachers should give assignments that encourage students…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: LEVEL: High school and college. AUTHOR'S COMMENT: Many would like to abandon the distinction between "lay" and "lie," but I still receive enough questions about it to continue teaching it. Finding that students did not believe me when I taught them to substitute…

A unit for teaching writing to senior high school students is described in this brief article. AUTHOR'S COMMENT (excerpt): I have used the following exercises to help writing students develop a stronger sense of audience. The sequence of activities is divided into three phases--prewriting, drafting, and rewriting--and a fourth phase of publishing…

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: LEVEL: High school and college. AUTHOR'S COMMENT: I used this mini-unit to initiate the class in working effectively as a peer group. Moreover, the task I assigned demands that students develop an awareness of their audience's needs by providing an immediate and concrete response. THE APPROACH: (1)…

Teachers who restrict their teaching of writing to elements of exposition are likely to fail because there is insufficient content, interest, or challenge in learning simple exposition, and the techniques that contribute to polished exposition are more easily accessible when approached through aesthetic writing. A teaching sequence for using…

An approach to using a student's own birthday as the basis of a library research project for college and high school students is described in this brief article. AUTHOR'S COMMENT (excerpt): I found my students became very excited about a topic that introduced them to the library while exciting their curiosity and interest: to investigate events…

A professional writing course can be both technical and humanistic by incorporating into the course a formal report assignment in which students pick a subject in the humanities about which they wish to know more. Once the students decide on topics to research, they develop a scenario in which they define a person or group who needs the…

(Text is in French.)

Techniques for encouraging personal writing in a non-threatening setting are discussed. (JH)

Imitation of organizational and sentence patterns is an ancient technique for teaching rhetoric, but to be effective, imitation must be informed, deliberate, and creative. Students must first learn to recognize the characteristics of a given style and then to appreciate the connection between specific stylistic qualities and their cumulative…

This annotated bibliography contains 28 references on the ways writing can be used in the study of literature and ways in which literature can be utilized to foster invention in students' writing. The bibliography contains citations from the period between 1982 to 1989 and is divided into three sections. The first section includes strategies,…

The Cooperative Principle posits four general ways in which a speaker is expected to be cooperative: (1) quantity--make a contribution no more and no less informative than is required; (2) quality--say only that which one both believes and has adequate evidence for; (3) relation--be relevant; and (4) manner--make a contribution easy to understand.…

While the classroom situation and textbook exercises are not irrelevant or useless, business writing assignments need a healthy dose of "real-world experience" to make their importance obvious to students. The instructor has only to ask a local employer if the business students can do some of the writing that is backing up in the employer's…

An upper-division graduate level course at a Northwestern university teaches storytelling by using a rhetorical approach. Students submit three story summaries in assigned format at each class session. Each summary includes a statement of the point or moral of the story, a complete bibliography, and a listing of the story's source. The assignment…