Describes how and why the author has students in his composition classes collaboratively create scoring guides. Argues that this focuses students on the goals of the paper and provides a clear notion of how to improve their own performance. Offers scoring guides. Comments on the process that created them. Offers guidelines for using scoring guides…

Argues that understanding the crisis of youth must be central to any notion of literacy, pedagogy, and cultural politics. Offers suggestions for the political and pedagogical roles educators might play in addressing the crisis of youth as part of the broader crisis of public life. (NH)

Describes a project in which students photograph animals overnight at an outdoor site. Presents directions for building the camera stand and integrates the activity with writing. Lists some photographic tips. (YDS)

Believes that serious fun holds great promise for engaging special needs students in meaningful learning experiences in social studies. Describes how creative play with plastic action figures led to four students in a self-contained special education classroom collaborating on writing and illustrating their own book. (CMK)

Argues that the Trivium, a model for a basic education from classical times, is useful in providing students with a humanities education because students within this model learn skills in rhetoric, grammar, and logic. Defines a humanities education, describes the Trivium model in detail, and applies the Trivium to contemporary education. (CMK)

Argues that college writing courses are a convenient point for mediation and intervention to train students to be better able to participate in common space (classroom, work environment, governmental process) at effective levels of tolerance by extending their knowledge of others, being clear and articulate about their points of view, and…

Presents six short descriptions of activities for the first day of class, involving thinking critically from day one; reading and responding to each other's work; getting to know each other to develop class cohesion; promoting class participation; posing problems in an American literature survey course; and integrating a syllabus review with a…

A study compared university students' Japanese and English native-language essays (22 expository, 24 persuasive) in terms of organization and macrolevel discourse features. Results indicate inductive rhetorical patterns were more common in Japanese than English essays and more common in persuasive than expository mode across languages. However,…

Describes the role of a webmaster as designing, implementing, and maintaining an effective World Wide Web site; discusses needed skills in the areas of network configuration, interface and graphical design, software development, business strategy, writing, editing, marketing, and project management; and considers the webmaster's role in the online…

Shows that journalism students who have taken a special intensive journalistic writing course pass Advanced Placement English and Composition exams more often than other students, including those who have taken AP English writing courses. Describes workshops for high school journalism and English teachers offered each summer by the Dow Jones…

Describes Apex (Assistant for Preparing Exams), a tool for evaluating student essays based on their content. By comparing an essay and the text of a given course on a semantic basis, the system can measure how well the essay matches the text. Various assessments are presented to the student regarding the topic, outline, and coherence of the essay.…

Introduces the Magic in a Tube activity in which students formulate questions and practice science skills. (YDS)

Investigates English-as-a-foreign-language learner use of high frequency verbs and particular use of the verb, "make." Examines whether learners tend to overuse or underuse these verbs, whether high-frequency verbs are error-prone or safe, and what part transfer plays in misuse of these verbs. Authentic speaker data is compared with native speaker…

Locates the tensions of disciplinary turf, professional allegiances, and unexamined teaching practices that intersect in first-year, writing-with-literature courses. Examines confusions that surround these courses for new teachers and for English departments in general. Suggests changes to be made. (TB)

Two elementary boys in a deaf education resource room who did not complete a writing assignment within the allotted time were subsequently given tokens contingent upon their starting promptly. The use of tokens was effective in reducing response latency. (Author/PB)