Explores the particular maneuvers students in a class on writing about film make as they encounter and attempt to absorb the languages of the academy. Examines the discourse of the class as a whole and the formal writing of a student who resisted academic discourse. Argues for the value of an incomplete conversion to the academic style. (RS)

Shows how microethnography can be an effective tool for analyzing the possibilities and constraints of electronic discourse by overviewing two electronic mail ethnography projects. Suggests that such approaches can help students better understand electronic rhetoric as well as electronic ideology (the power relationships and cultural values that…

Examines the number of relative clauses and percentages of subordinate clauses in two sets of research reports from "Physical Review." Finds a slight decrease in percentages of relative clauses from the first set (1893-1901) to the second (1980). Finds striking differences in patterns of what relative clauses modify. Suggests a stylistic…

Finds that joking in computer-mediated communication constitutes a hybrid form of discourse, mingling the conventions of print and speech. Notes that students use typography and space to better capture the rhythms and inflections of oral joking, but such joking instantly organizes participants into hierarchically differentiated groups, creating…

Defines a two-stage process by which a holistic rubric is applied to the assessment of open-ended items, such as writing samples. Indicates that the use of rating augmentation can improve the inter-rater reliability of holistic assessments, as indicated by generalizability phi coefficients, correlation coefficients, and percent agreement indices.…

Presents a historical study of early mainframe computing that demonstrates ways in which computer documentation genres grew out of other document types. Suggests early forms of documentation were borrowed from existing genres, and that official and unofficial documentation existed concurrently, despite efforts to consolidate these divergent texts,…

Draws on research in a fourth-grade classroom to show that teachers can teach composing strategies that encourage a variety of ways of interacting socially while writing. Shares various views of social interaction and student choice in writing classrooms as a way of establishing support for exploration of the social interactions that occurred in…

Presents 34-item annotated bibliography of journal articles addressing issues such as: bilingual/foreign language/second language education; classroom discourse; literacy; reading; and writing. Notes that most of the studies appeared during the six-month period from June to December, 2000 but some studies that appeared earlier are occasionally…

Reports on a study that explored, first, how metadiscourse can enhance college students' awareness of readers' needs and, second, how the use of metadiscourse is related to the quality of the texts that students produced. Suggests that metadiscourse produces better student writing. (TB)

Presents a study where 148 students in 15 grade 4-6 classrooms were taught over an 8-week period how to evaluate their work. Notes that treatment group students became more accurate in their self-evaluations than controls. Discusses how, contrary to the beliefs of many students, parents and teachers, students' propensity to inflate grades…

Investigates relationships between the quality of cross-gendered interactions online and often-expressed complaint that women are ignored in these environments. Finds women initiating more agreements and open-ended questions, but equivalent numbers of disagreements as their male classmates; however, they fail to speak in their own defense when…

Finds that when using e-mail, students made significantly greater reference to documents, their contents, and rhetorical contexts than when using synchronous conferencing; made greater reference to both writing and response tasks using synchronous chats than using e-mail; and students' individual media preferences showed no significant differences…

Explores how writing instructors at "City University" grappled with crises of standardization in evaluation of students' portfolios. Details the two most severe experiences in multiple breakdowns in the project of standardization: crises of textual representation and crises of evaluative subjectivity. Examines conflicting interpretations…

Presents the concept of directiveness (regarding the behavior of a consultant/tutor in a writing conference) as a continuum that can be defined in terms of particular characteristics. Examines students' and tutors' attitudes regarding the directiveness of tutors. Finds perceptions between consultants and students differed considerably on a number…

Assesses research published between 1994 and 1999 in this journal about teaching writing with distance learning technology. Describes two emerging categories of research in distance education: articles that theorize distance education in the context of writing instruction and articles that describe distance education in practice. (SG)