Every teacher knows the challenge of trying to engage reluctant readers and struggling writers--students whose typical response to a writing prompt is a few sentence fragments scribbled on a sheet of paper followed by an elaborate shrug of the shoulders. The best way to engage less confident readers and writers is to give them something powerful…

Via interview data focused on instructor practices and values, this study sought to describe some of what performing and visual arts instructors do at the university level to effectively teach disciplinary values through writing. The study's research goals explored how relationships to writing process in visual and performing arts support…

We used Problem-Based Learning (PBL) as a new pedagogy in an intermediate composition course. Our course design was based in constructivist pedagogical practices, which suggest that knowledge is co-created through social interactions. Although professors have much to offer students, students can also learn important lessons through interactions…

This study investigated how the critical language awareness (CLA) framework can be implemented with an emphasis on writing and how English-language learners respond to CLA. The findings suggest that the students directed their attention away from the sole emphasis on reading for learning vocabulary and grammar to other dimensions of texts and…

This paper offers a narrative framework for understanding how multilingual graduate students make sense of the continuous and frequently contradictory talk they engage in as they write. It illustrates how attention to the telling, form, and content of the stories such students relate about their ongoing interactions around academic writing can…

For the last four semesters my courses in Shakespeare have used QwikiWiki and MediaWiki, two versions of the wiki software, for writing exercises and directed reflection on language--including both by the students about Shakespeare's language, and by the teacher/researcher regarding the students' performance in "Writing to Learn". In experimenting…

"The Routledge Applied Linguistics Reader" is an essential collection of readings for students of Applied Linguistics. Divided into five sections: Language Teaching and Learning, Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, Identity and Power and Language Use in Professional Contexts, the "Reader" takes a broad…

To help students meet the demands of society, the University of Houston is using the framework of learning communities and constructivism to create a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching to provide media-rich thematically linked courses to engage a diverse student population. A case study investigated three semesters of thematically linked…

When composition educators talk about either "theory" or "practice," they are not referring to a monolithic and unified field, but instead to any number of competing, ideologically charged metacommentaries. The "problem with practice" refers to its own socially complex and temporally diffuse nature. Applications of…

Suggests that incorporating popular culture into freshman composition classes can help students understand and engage in course content and can increase interest and motivation. Discusses the idea of discourse communities, or spaces in which meaning is negotiated. Reviews strategies for making students aware of different discourse communities when…