This paper suggests that composition instructors must prepare their students for the ways in which the Information Superhighway affects professional and academic communication. Students must now be proficient in techniques of composing such as hypertext and the recursive writing process to perform various writing and research tasks as a…

It is necessary to continue efforts to adapt the composition curriculum to the diverse needs of the student population. The writing process, even if seen as recursive, varies from student to student and from situation to situation. Students must also be shown that the very conventions and forms of academic writing are culturally situated. The…

This paper discusses the content analysis of literacy narratives written in a college composition course in the Fall, 1996. The students developed their histories during the first weeks of class, using a journal format and sharing results with the class. They then wrote a polished and completed reading and writing autobiography. Using purposive…

Professional literature reporting the use of the "cliff-hanger" as genre as a teaching tool in writing instruction is relatively quiet. College students may become better writers and readers when they write cliff-hangers and allow other students to read their writing. Sixty-five undergraduate reading students at a southeastern Arkansas…

Addressed to teachers from upper elementary to adult level as well as to writers, this book gives teachers and students an entirely new way to learn about American history--by reexperiencing it from the vantage point of the imaginative writer. The book maintains that students will thus gain both a deeper understanding of the issues and conflicts…

A study used comparison-group methods to examine the effectiveness of dialogic journal writing in a content area classroom. Subjects were students in a sophomore-level course in Chinese literature at the University of California, San Diego. Students were divided into three comparison groups each of which was further divided into sections. Four…

In a high school writing workshop, students frequently would go through multiple essay drafts and conferences with the teacher and fellow students before realizing that their theses were incorrect. A teacher devised the "lexivision" to address this problem. Students used Venn diagrams, graphs, or flow charts to represent concepts in the…

A community college composition instructor with 32 years of teaching experience designed a semester-long writing assignment (developed at De Anza College (California) and also used at University of California, Berkeley) in which students compose a personal intellectual history. The assignment is based on several assumptions, including: (1) writing…

Writing proficiency is an important skill that can help teachers communicate what they know to colleagues, teacher educators, and researchers. The effectiveness of the writing across the curriculum movement supports development and implementation of a writing program in undergraduate teacher education. The Advanced Writing Proficiency (AWP)…

This document describes a form of curriculum infusion for college instruction in which information about alcohol and other drug problems relevant to the content of a course is provided and related assignments are made. Specifically, the paper focuses on an English writing assignment that involved student self-reflection on his or her use or…

The Dewey Center Community Writing Project is a community-based, summer writing program collaboratively designed by students, teachers, and community members in Detroit's inner-city. During the first summer of the project, fifth- through seventh-grade students, primarily from the Jeffries Homes (or "Projects") worked with seven teachers…

A two-phase study was conducted of home economics teachers' use of writing in secondary programs. In the first phase of the study, quantitative data were collected to compare three populations: (1) 125 home economics teachers who had not participated in university workshops on incorporating writing in the classroom; (2) 129 agriculture teachers…

Columbus (Georgia) College's Challenge Squared program consists of three 2-week enrichment day camps for gifted students in grades 5 through 10. In past years, students have worked with an artist to create local history murals and have written and produced video plays in cooperation with a media specialist. Most recently, students were involved in…

In 1989 the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools conducted a Direct Writing Assessment of approximately 6,000 students. A voluntary portion included 103 ninth graders who wrote essays on the same topic. The papers were scored twice: once in each student's handwriting and once in word-processed form. Papers were separated into short and long categories…

This document consists of six issues of a newsletter that provides a forum for the sharing of research findings and instructional strategies by faculty of Western Michigan University. Issue Number 1 addresses writing in the Writing Across the Curriculum Program with notification of a faculty workshop, hints on how to encourage good writing, and a…