Describes a writing assignment that uses the song "America the Beautiful" to point the following six reasons why America is beautiful: skies, mountains, grain, Pilgrims, heroes, and dreams. (NKA)

In order to minimize the dread which students and teachers alike often feel toward freshman composition courses, it is important to involve students in reading and writing assignments which are of interest and importance to them. Autobiography, as a subject for study and a focus for writing, can be a great motivator and an expediter of the…

To help students understand the processes by which they should gather, organize, and write material for an assigned theme, this book presents a series of steps for students to follow as well as some specific guidelines for composition teachers. Theme assignments, procedural steps, sample themes, and questions for classroom discussion are provided…

Students in college basic writing courses need to consider their own written language and to compare it with other students' work before they can develop a sense of the symbolic relationship between language and experience. Because of a lack of previous writing experience, basic writers have no sense that the "facts" about which they…