This chapter will describe the ways wikis can benefit students, teachers, and administrators as well as provide examples of ways they can be used in the language and culture classroom for Virtual Exchange (VE). It will specifically examine how the tool was used for a collaborative research paper and explore how students can think critically to…

Two-course writing sequences are valuable because they extend the time that students spend focused on developing as writers and researchers, yet they cannot rely on a "more is better" argument to justify their ongoing implementation, especially when general education curricula are shrinking and one course often looks much the same as the…

Responding to student writing is one of the most challenging aspects of the writing instructor's job, and it is certainly the most time-consuming. Preparing future teachers to respond to L2 writing thus becomes an important aspect of any pre-service training course. In this paper, the author describes her own approach to training writing…

Stockton State College, New Jersey, recognizes that the teaching of writing is not the responsibility of the English department alone, but of the entire college faculty. Stockton's writing across the curriculum project is designed to give all faculty members general theoretical information and practical training in writing instruction and the…

A five-week tutorial minicourse offered by the Douglas/Cook College Writing Center at Rutgers University helps students develop skills in research writing. The first service the Writing Center offers is a "term paper strategy session," in which students meet with a reference librarian to examine the various reference sources available.…

Outlines a program in journal writing and self-assessment for college students. (AEA)

Recounts the story of how the writing faculty at Washington State University successfully reclaimed their university's writing assessment program. Argues that writing teachers should be leery of assessment programs made by others, and should create their own assessment tools. (HB)

Based on the Bay Area Writing Project, The Jefferson Parish (Louisiana) Writing Project (JPWP) was developed, focusing on improving writing instruction and writing itself. Each year, one public high school becomes a demonstration center for intensive staff development, school-wide writing assessment, and workshops for teachers at neighboring…

Describes several diagnostic tools used to determine specific problems of students referred to a writing lab, including structured interviews, protocols (asking a student to compose aloud for 15 to 20 minutes on a short topic), and back-pedaling (questioning what a student already knows about a given topic). (AEA)

Discusses the design and scoring of the writing proficiency exam conducted at San Francisco State University. Explains the program's counseling system for those students who do not pass the proficiency exam. (HTH)

This document describes a software program, CREATE, which was developed at Drexel University to guide students in creating English compositions. A second program, ReCREATE, guides students in reading their finished papers and making global revisions. CREATE asks 20 questions that a teacher might ask a student in a pre-writing conference. Unlike…

Reviews the importance of assessment in placing students in two-year college composition courses and describes the development of the objective English Qualifying Examination used at Northern Virginia Community College. Includes sample test items. (MKM)

Describes the Colorado Writing Project, a teacher-consultant inservice training program, and presents the results of holistic scoring of papers by students whose teachers had attended inservice meetings conducted by the teacher-consultants. (HTH)

The development of the portion of a basic skills test that would adequately assess the writing ability of entering college freshmen in New Jersey is described in this paper. The stages of the test development process that are discussed include the decision to incorporate a writing sample in the form of an essay on a specified topic, the selection…

Articles in this publication address the writing process, teaching writing, and research on the teaching of writing, and take the form of personal experience or opinion, or explore the work of others who have contributed to the field. Articles in the first issue of this volume include: "What the Children Convey: On Matters of Time, Talk, and…