This article describes the preliminary exploratory process used to develop the research questions that will be addressed during a project to be offered in the 2005-2006 academic year. The project will bring together Maine high school and college faculty to learn from each other about shared needs, methods and priorities, in a year long series of…

For one Sansei (third-generation Japanese American) university student who had been brought up by her Japanese grandparents, questions of who she was and how much upbringing and personal experiences had molded her were with her constantly. She questioned how much of her grandfather's and her mother's high expectations had to do with her lack of…

The problems of writer's block and writing apprehension have just started to be examined in conjunction with modern rhetorical theories and practices. One of the variables that can make students more vulnerable to writer's block and writing apprehension is the degree of freedom the student is granted in the writing assignments. Two such freedoms…

Most college students are not accustomed to writing about, reading, analyzing, or discussing 19th-century Black literature, especially slave narratives. As many educators try to include more Black literature in their curriculums, there is a growing need to develop successful methods to approach the texts so that students are prepared to write…

The act of reading is always interpretation through the lens of an individual's own culture and value system. In a World Literature class the encounter between American readers and a text from a different culture can produce 3 results: reading into it the individual's own world; translating the alien into the familiar; and appreciating its…

The writing program at the University of California at Santa Barbara offers a class for junior and senior art history or studio majors or film studies majors, although it attracts students from other related fields such as communications. It is specifically goal oriented and works best with students who have a knowledge of the arts. The class is…

Technical or professional writing classes may be enhanced through real-world writing assignments. Social-service agencies prove to be most agreeable and enthusiastic about working with students on various projects because they have limited--sometimes diminishing--financial support. In addition, most charities are accustomed to working with…

A teacher wants to help her middle school students who already hate poetry to appreciate William Carlos Williams' poem "This Is Just to Say," but her approach is ill-focused. In frustration, she assigns her students a punitive writing assignment. An approach that might have resulted in a better outcome could be achieved. It would have…

A rhetorical analysis procedure assists upper-division students in any academic field to learn how to read, interpret, and evaluate disciplinary arguments, and how to communicate this thoroughly and thoughtfully in a well integrated essay. In a warm-up exercise, the class discusses a representative article, research study, or essay in the…

A six-activity inquiry lesson (constructed to follow the "social inquiry" teaching model) provided students in two 11th-grade English classes with practice in theory building through data gathering and writing activities. Social inquiry has six instructional stages: students (1) are presented with a puzzling situation; (2) in small…

Teacher educators have recently devoted much attention to fostering reflection in teacher preparation programs. A teacher is most likely to reflect when he or she is faced with a conflict or tension. A post-baccalaureate English education program at the University of Minnesota employs a number of different activities to encourage its preservice…

Suggesting that all phases of writing, including revision, have a great deal in common across age groups and levels of accomplishment, this book presents 196 specific revision exercises, as well as numerous examples from students and from literature. The first part of the book looks at how the ability to revise develops, and at how people can use…

Content area teachers interested in using writing to learn activities need to be well informed about the learning promoted by certain writing tasks before assigning them. Writing assignments should not be thoughtlessly and arbitrarily assigned with the expectation that learning, somewhat miraculously or mysteriously, will occur. Although writing…

Viewing writing as a way to heal wounds and even reconstruct past experiences also helps heal the composition discipline's dichotomy between the academic and the personal, the self and the institution. Academicians are not the only writers undermined by this perceived separation: most incoming university students, in particular basic writers,…

A multicultural literature course at Loyola Marymount University (California) was designed to complicate ideas of culture with gender issues and explored a common but largely unexplored phenomenon--writers who write outside their own personal backgrounds and identities. The course drew from research on "women's way of knowing" and…