This article argues that the intersection of invention and style is a rich site for rhetorical study, for amplification, and for critical-creative tinkering, a process of writing new versions of an old text. At this intersection, writers can tinker to amplify an existing text and thus work to continue or begin anew the inventive process. To…

"Primary research counts, but we don't teach it." This was the sentiment, if these were not the actual words, of Lynee Lewis Gaillet in her critique of the traditional composition curriculum at the spring 2011 annual meeting of the College English Association in St. Petersburg. Gaillet proposes an alternative to furthering students' sometimes…

This study investigated effects of background music on writing performance of nine 6th grade students with learning disabilities at one suburban public elementary school in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. A single-subject A-B-A design was utilized, and results from graded writing prompts with and without background music over 21…

Using popular culture in my developmental writing course has prompted me to reconsider what it means to create successful developmental writing assignments. Having slipped into the questionable habit of assuming that removing complexity makes an assignment appropriate for developing writers, I pared down a fairly open-ended "media…

Draws on Gerald Graff's work on conflicts over canonicity, pedagogy, and academic institutional structures to investigate ways of handling teacher-student tension over the use of popular songs in the classroom. Discusses two versions of a writing assignment dealing with such tension and what each assignment implies about the course's underlying…

Describes using music with eighth-grade students for generating story ideas to write about. (SR)

Describes the evolution of an assignment in a college-level English class in which students present to the class their analysis of lyrics to a favorite song of theirs (on a particular topic). Shows how students thereby are eased into interpretation, critical examination, and some of the principles of literature. (SR)

Presents a class activity in which student describe and classify music as an introduction to writing classification essays. (SR)

Describes a successful unit on poetry, characterized by collaborative planning, creation of the collection of poems used as the text, variation of the approaches and types of assignments, use of recorded music and poetry collected, use of local poets who read and performed for the students, online sharing and critiquing of students' poetry, and a…