Offers an eight-stage activity which promotes critical thinking. Notes that the activity starts with analysis of literary characters and culminates with presentations based on interviews of respected adults. (PRA)

Presents a class activity in which student describe and classify music as an introduction to writing classification essays. (SR)

Offers a model lesson that uses television commercials to foster in students a more sophisticated awareness of audience. (SR)

Examines the use and various kinds of writing undertaken by people in different professions. Outlines an activity in which students write to famous people and inquire about the kind of writing they do in their everyday lives. Shows how this activity stimulates and inspires students. (HB)

Offers examples of science reading and writing activities (used in a study of the effects of an integrated curriculum strategy on the achievement, attitudes, and self-confidence of fourth- and fifth-grade students) which integrate the language arts and encourage the development of skills through content-based context instruction. (SR)

Describes an effort to provide students in an introductory human anatomy course with an experience that both allows them to be creative with the facts they are learning and to be supported throughout the writing process. (ZWH)

Describes, in a case study-like format, a cognitive strategy that might be helpful to the learning-disabled (LD) college student who must organize and write a longer text. Presents a brief description of an LD student and an actual writing assignment. Describes how the student completed the task. Discusses educational implications. (RS)

Describes an assignment that requires students to organize, prepare, and revise a case study in abnormal behavior. Explains that students employ a single theoretical perspective in preparing a report on a figure from history, literature, the arts, or current events. Discusses the value of the assignment for students. (SG)

Argues that the notion of writing as the expression of a fixed and unified individual identity is inappropriate for the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) student. Suggests that composition teachers recognize that writing in English engages the nonnative speaker in a dialectic of identity and difference and promote this difference rather than…

Describes a simple introductory in-class writing assignment that serves to clarify the multiple issues involve in effective letter writing of the persuasive type. Examines the diagnostic value, the lesson learned, and objectives served by such an assignment. (KEH)

Describes a study in which undergraduate college students, composition instructors, and noncomposition faculty evaluate the same student writing assignments. Reports that the three groups have very different views of what constitutes good writing. Suggests a possible need to reexamine prevailing notions of academic writing. (SG)

Outlines an assignment in which a teacher used portfolios as the basis for a final examination to give students a chance to assess their own writing and their progress. Discusses the success of the assignment and the teacher's surprise at the students' insight into their own strengths and weaknesses. (PRA)

Discusses the difficulties with anticipating reader needs and evaluating a text's effectiveness. Reviews current methods of evaluating audience needs such as peer review and audience testing. Describes a reader-focused assignment detailing the class preparation, peer review, reader testing, reader response, and student response to reader…

Describes how the geology department of Bucknell University integrated its Senior Program with Bucknell's writing program. The program stresses the importance of the following: (1) teaching appropriate writing skills and style; (2) providing clearly articulated writing assignments; (3) writing multiple drafts; (4) using the peer-review method; and…

Discusses a variety of writing assignments emphasizing critical-thinking skills for a geology curriculum. The assignments include question and answer assignments, reaction papers, short papers, and position papers. The authors contend that several short writing assignments are better than a single term paper because students improve their writing…