Presents a model for a composition workshop using topics generated from the popular media. Designed to help students explore the mimetic characteristics of popular culture and to analyze the appeals, claims, and techniques used in advertising. Grouped under thematic guidelines of social roles, assignments are flexible in length but easily changed…

Explores why it is both difficult and vital to model nonauthoritarian, student-centered, collaborative learning in a teacher workshop on writing. (SRT)

Discusses materials in the ERIC system that deal with the concept of scaffolding, building on children's natural language, and ways teachers have translated the concept into instructional strategies. (HTH)

Three articles discuss: (1) a Montana State University pilot project utilizing a local area network for word processing; (2) an interdisciplinary arrangement between Purdue University's Electrical Engineering and English Departments which utilizes computers to teach writing to engineering students; and (3) whether computers should be used to teach…

Discusses nine orthodoxies, including the idea that spelling, grammar, and punctuation are unimportant, that decrease teacher effectiveness. (DF)

Describes students' reactions to and comments on an experimental writing course in which all essays were composed on computer terminals using XEDIT and WATERLOO SCRIPT. Students had favorable reactions to revision ease and enjoyability factor, but reacted unfavorably to learning word processing, equipment failure, and confinement to one writing…

Uses complaints leveled against English teachers in l912 to support three points about the crisis in literacy: (1) the "writing crisis" is not new, (2) teaching basics will not solve crisis, and (3) solution to problem should be based on what is known about history and theory of composition instruction and about successful and unsuccessful methods…

Shows the unexpected consequences of being a part-time guidance counselor and a part-time English teacher at the same time. Shares two experiences, in literature and in composition, that show a greater understanding of students' reactions. (EL)

Examines data from a survey of the kinds of writing students are required to do in a university, revealing that essay tests, research papers, and reports are the most common writing tasks. Discusses the curricular implications of the findings. (FL)

Argues, in a discussion of the benefits of collaborative writing, that teaching writing as a solitary activity belies actual experience and research pointing to it as a collaborative effort. Shows how to use peer response groups to introduce students to collaborative writing. (EL)

Teaching can no longer be defined as going into the classroom, shutting the door, and doing an exemplary job. Teachers--especially teachers of English--can and should have an influence upon the curriculum by assuming responsibility for purposes, programs, and progress made. (Author/TE)

Presents responses to three "College English" articles, C.H. Knoblauch and Lil Brannon's "Writing as Learning through the Curriculum" (September 1983), Helen Schwartz's "Monsters and Mentors" (February 1982), and James C. Raymond's "Rhetoric: The Methodology of the Humanities" (December 1982). Includes the…

Explains how student writing clubs can be used effectively in a middle school English class. Suggests that the required club publications not only provide a strong incentive for students to develop their writing skills, but also encourage student control and decision making, demand student leadership, and elicit parent involvement. (MM)

Indicates that students and teachers must begin to develop awareness and skill at collaborative learning and that educators must create and maintain a demanding academic environment that makes social engagement in intellectual pursuits a part of students' educational development. (CRH)

Takes a retrospective look at a decade's change in the role of English at a midwestern university, and the English department's attempt to create a working community of scholars through a focus on writing improvement. (AEA)