Argues lack of encouragement starves the young poet. Describes a teacher's effort to bring an appreciation of poetry and the writing of poetry into a classroom of 9-12 year olds. Suggests specific exercises in using metaphor, comparisons, wish lists, dreams, humor, and rhythm. Also suggests classic poetry for motivating students. (SD)

Discusses adolescent anxieties, rebelliousness, and media preferences in the 1990s, especially Hip Hop, and relates today's trends to past trends, from Sinatra to Break Dancing. Suggests classroom activities using music and music videos: analyzing fans; providing biographies, discographies, lyrics; writing reviews of albums and videos; studying…

This article offers strategies for implementing a process approach to teaching written composition, emphasizing prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Discussion of three functions of writing, including expressive writing, transactional writing, and poetic writing, is included. Writing process principles are linked to gifted education principles to…

Discusses the use of synchronous conferences via electronic mail in training new writing tutors, highlighting the benefits of such an approach. Describes two synchronous conferences held at the University of Richmond related to dealing with resistant writers and tutoring across disciplines. Provides recommendations for implementing synchronous…

This professional biography of Zena Sutherland contains her recollections of men and women in children's book publishing and assesses her impact on the field. Her work as professor, editor, reviewer, writer, and in professional associations is discussed, and establishment of the Zena Sutherland Lectures is described. (Author/LRW)

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…

Reflects on a former college instructor's student teaching experience in middle school and how he had to adapt his own teaching preferences and inclinations to a new circumstance. Critiques pre-service teacher education programs. (TB)

Considers two competing accounts of how writers construct meaning, the designative tradition (which holds that speech artifacts mediate people's thinking) and the expressive tradition (which focuses on the transformation of inner speech to public speech). Show how one student's writing experiences reveal the interrelated roles of these two…

Presents an address by the chairman of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, which reflects on the changing state of composition teaching and how it compares to the 1960s, an era when many composition teachers came of age with the discipline of composition and rhetoric. (TB)

A detailed description of the five-step scaffolded story writing process is provided and four case examples of the written narratives of adolescents with communication disabilities are presented. Implications for speech and language intervention include successfully connecting the individualized education program goals with the core curriculum.…

Reports on a small-scale study of recasts--a form of corrective feedback. Subjects were eight adult second language learners (L2) of English. Data consisted of oral and written narratives primed by cartoon series and produced by both subjects in both groups. Recasts were found to be successful because they heightened the L2 learners awareness and…

Examines the construction of children's identities as writers through their positioning in the multiplicity of official and unofficial discourses available to them in the primary classroom. Uses ethnographic observation to focus on how identities are constructed in the process of text construction, and the intersections of ethnicity, gender, and…

Argues that both personal and text-based essays should be used in teaching writing to students in developmental composition courses. Suggests that combining the two approaches and using short fiction or fictive autobiographies as course readings helps to initiate the student's transition from personal to text-based writing. (Contains 21…

Examined fourth grade teachers' self-assessments of their perceptions about writing development and writing instruction. Teacher surveys indicated that teachers revealed a wide range of statements about writing instruction with fluctuating perspectives about how writing develops. There was evidence that the state curriculum and writing test…

The tips discussed here center around favor asking and English as a Second Language, a collaborative writing activity, e-mail assignments nd online correction, and facilitating full-time employment in TESOL (Author/VWL)