Providing feedback to students in a sustainable way represents a perennial challenge for secondary teachers of writing. Employing artificial intelligence (AI) tools to give students personalized and immediate feedback holds great promise. Project Topeka offered middle school teachers pre-curated teaching materials, foundational texts and videos,…

In this article, I describe my reflections on developing student authors through a class research project. I review the assignment origins and description and my role in the students' developmental journey from transforming a class assignment to a publishable work. (Contains 1 figure.)

The third goal of Zen practice, helping others achieve enlightenment, suggests that teachers should help students learn about their own composing practices and histories as part of their instruction, but they cannot help others until they learn to help themselves by reflecting on their own processes and histories, becoming enlightened, and…

For novice and experienced instructors alike, facilitating online discussions can seem like a daunting prospect. Many ask themselves how to do so in an effective and meaningful way that actually adds to the course experience rather than seeming like mere busywork. The MANIC discussion strategy is one that promotes deeper student interaction with…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the challenges faced by first-year students as they negotiated the transition from the writing environment of high school to the writing environment of university. The research for the dissertation was undertaken using a mixed-method explanatory design. This yielded a description of students'…

Examines the differences in quality ratings that 20 teachers in each of three high school curricular areas gave samples of written argument by college freshmen and investigates the relationship between the three groups of quality ratings and eight syntactic and mechanics-of-writing variables. (FL)

Analyzes the various circumstances under which "term paper mills" get papers written, how the assignments some instructors give may facilitate this process, and how instructors can work to inhibit the ability of their students to make use of these companies. (RS)

Describes a course that integrates individual and collaborative group assignments while requiring students to work through multiple drafting processes involving teacher and peer intervention. Outlines specific assignments. Addresses issues such as establishing collaborative groups, analyzing group dynamics and writing processes, and the role of…

In the struggle to find an acceptably academic voice that still felt personal, an instructor started thinking about what it would mean to say that academic writing is always autobiographical. Reading student work for how the autobiographical is presented in academic discourse, the instructor thought about how autobiographical writing could be used…

This digest discusses expressive writing and the expressive mode, which is seen as a recurring stage in a writer's process of writing. The digest suggests that by structuring expressive writing activities and correlating them with particular stages of the writing process, a teacher can draw the natural linguistic activity out of a student. The…

In their recent article, "Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities," Devitt, Bawarshi, and Reiff maintain that genre analysis can enable outsiders to a discourse community "to connect what community members know and do with what they say and how they say it--their language practices" (542). Genre analysis,…

Presents a checklist for a good writing assignment, illustrating its value through the development of an assignment based on a short story by Jack London. (RL)

Students can be motivated to write and be guided through the writing process without giving them the impression that they are doing it again until they get it right. To motivate students, make it known as specifically as possible what kind of written assignment will be required and how it will be graded. Then guide the students towards the goal by…

A sabbatical spent exploring the genre of travel writing began a writing instructor's journey to figure out what travel writing teaches--and how--and why it is so compelling to students. Her research in the genre of travel writing began as she was preparing students going abroad to keep meaningful journals. In middle- and advanced-level travel…

Breaking down gender barriers in composition and literature classrooms suggests that teachers rethink the forms of writing they demand of their students (e.g., argumentation and exposition) and that they encourage a wide range of approaches which account for gender-specific modes of writing and interpreting texts. Various writing assignments such…