While templates for academic writing, like those offered in the popular textbook "They Say/I Say," have been embraced by some, others still question the extent to which an emphasis on form comes at the expense of substance. But ancient rhetoricians offer a theory of rhetoric that unites style and substance, and Jeanne Fahnestock's modern…

This paper considers the work of James Gee as a methodological lens for conceiving of the teacher-writer identity. Gee's (2000) Four Ways to View Identity are employed to examine the way that teachers discuss their writing identity. The paper reports on findings from a broader qualitative study that examined the writer identity in subject English…

Teachers of writing have two options available to them when it comes to teaching paragraphing. There are, broadly speaking, either "laissez faire" approaches, or tightly prescriptivist ones. While the latter approaches have, at times, been challenged, they are entrenched in textbooks and testing rubrics, and are highly influential in…

The language of science, which emphasizes reasoning about the causes and conditions of scientific phenomenon and use of visuals to convey information, can be difficult for young readers and writers without a lot of teacher scaffolding (Pappas and Varelas 2009). It is important that teachers understand these linguistic requirements to support…

The use of writing models with nonnative English speakers has received a certain amount of criticism--especially from teachers whose students copy models in their entirety or follow them too closely. The misuse of models has brought some teachers to the point where they believe that the best kind of pedagogy is to abandon writing models…

The purpose of this qualitative action research study was to explore how critical pedagogy can foster writing competency and critical consciousness among adult basic writing students in a community college writing classroom. To this end, critical pedagogy and related critical discourses were used to theoretically frame this study. These theories…

James Moffett's "Teaching the Universe of Discourse" set out an agenda for the study of development in writing, which influenced James Britton's work in the UK. Subsequently, however, the work of both these thinkers was largely set aside in the approach to writing taken by national strategies in England. In this article, we trace the…

The ethics and efficacy of explicitly teaching disciplinary discourse conventions to undergraduate students has been hotly debated. This quasi-experimental study seeks to contribute to these debates by focusing on the conventional special "topoi" of literary analysis--conventions that previous Writing in the Disciplines (WID) research indicates…

Writing courses are increasingly popular in higher education. This paper presents a pedagogic approach that combines theory and practice, in an accessible way, to help students appreciate the interrelation of styles and contexts, and develop skills for writing in a range of genres. The approach is characterised as "adaptive application".…

Explores the discourse modes put forth in Bain's nineteenth century college textbook "English Composition and Rhetoric." Discusses his rationale for shifting from the previous belletristic schemes to the forms of description, narration, exposition, persuasion, and poetry. (HTH)

Examines cognitivist approaches to writing instruction by focusing on the pedagogy of problem-solving, specifically as presented in Linda Flower's "Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing." Emphasizes the need for a language of discourse which connects rather than excludes students' discourse from academic discourse. (MM)

Offers three responses to a question about discourse synthesis and how it can be applied in the elementary classroom. (MG)

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…

Includes: (1) "A Comment on 'Lacan, Transferences, and Writing Instruction'," Janet Hiller and Barbara Osburg; (2) "Robert Brooke Responds"; (3) "A Comment on 'Writing (with) Cixous'," Debra Raschke; and (4) "Clara Juncker Responds." (RAE)

Describes a writing assignment designed to help students incorporate into a single essay Moffett's writer-subject progressions: dramatization, narration, exposition, and logical argumentation. Describes one student's progress through successive drafts to arrive at this goal, and how discussions of her draft helped the other students. (HTH)