Advocates using James Baldwin's essays to motivate high school and college students to write and think critically. Contends Baldwin is the greatest American essayist since World War II. Cites Baldwin's love of language and his carefully crafted prose. Describes assignments in which students write about their mother or father or about growing up.…

Using findings from a pilot study, discusses why there is good cause to believe that the five-paragraph essay has significant strengths as a tool for the development of writing competencies among low-income and first-generation college students. (EV)

Discusses the difficulty involved in moving from writing a journal entry toward writing an essay. Uses the background of a trip to Ireland and writing an "Irish" journal as an example. Gives four strategies to use from journal to essay: double-entry notebook, defamiliarization (or "persona switching") techniques, cross-genre…

Barone and Britzman, each in a short essay, discuss the books, poetry, performances, music, and other cultural media that influence them. Cites the publications of each and lists the works discussed. (MLF)

Because the new General Educational Development Test emphasizes essay writing, the author presents ideas for teaching and evaluating essays, teaching critical thinking and reasoning skills, and using the concept of teacher-as-learner as an effective role model. (SK)

Examines whether certain student essays produce widely diverging holistic assessments from trained readers, using an essay from the 1986 Early English Composition and Assessment Program (from Miami University's Ohio Writing Project) and evaluating rater response with a questionnaire. Finds that the same paper evoked very different scores and rater…

Describes a graphic technique using concentric circles to increase student comprehension of narrative essays. Argues that the method will help students identify events, relationships, and the significance of narrative essays. (RS)

Reviews the arguments for and against teaching the traditional five-paragraph essay model. Describes a teaching approach in which students critically examine these arguments while learning the principle features of the five-paragraph essay. (SR)

Paper reviews a book of essays on interpretive approaches to educational policy making. The essays are categorized as mythological/practical, evolutionary/transformational, and normative/critical. Though the quality of the essays varies, the book is seen as useful as an introductory textbook for senior undergraduate courses in interpretive…

Teacher education students (n=47) wrote essays in response to what they would change if they could live their high school days over again. In retrospect, 38 percent would have improved their attitude toward high school. Thirty-six percent indicated that high school was a positive experience, though this attitude was often unrelated to academic…

Discusses the architectonics of four essays: John McPhee's "Travels in Georgia," Richard Rhodes'"Death All Day," and two by student writers. Diagrams each essay, showing how these writers built bridges of words over experiences. (SR)

Explores the use of essay writing in increasing the cognitive social skills of inmates. Shows that essay writing helps many inmates examine and weight their values in light of the demands of participating positively in the general society. (Author)

Describes an approach to teaching the essay exam unit in a university reading and studies skills class. Notes that students grade their own essay answers. (SR)

Discusses the argument among critics of American higher education on the relationship between theory and practice. Compares the ideas of John Dewey and Bernard Lonergan and examines the movement from classicism to method and its significance to education. (DM)