Describes the author's transition from a recently divorced woman to an award-winning author of children's literature. Discusses her writing processes. Notes that she realized she could talk to kids, or to parents, but not to both at the same time, not with any truth, not without platitudes. (RS)

In the past few years, the number of students placing into developmental or remedial college courses has grown considerably. Research is needed to explore the learning dynamics of underprepared students and to offer insights for practice. However research in the developmental field so far has lacked a scholarly, rigorous approach, and research in…

As integrated tasks become more common in assessing writing for academic purposes, it is necessary to investigate how test takers approach these tasks. The present study explores the processes of test takers undertaking reading-to-write tasks developed for a university English placement exam. Think-aloud protocols and interviews of…

Although peer review has been shown to be beneficial in many writing classrooms, the benefits of peer review to the reviewer, or the student giving feedback, has not been thoroughly investigated in second-language writing research. The purpose of this study is to determine which is more beneficial to improving student writing: giving or receiving…

Written language is a complex set of skills that facilitate communication and that are developed in a predictable sequence. It is therefore possible to analyze current skills, identify deficits, plan interventions, and determine the effectiveness of the intervention. To effectively accomplish these tasks, educators need to choose appropriate…

Project Read at the San Mateo Public Library is one of 106 library programs in California helping adults improve their reading, writing, and communication skills. Like many adult literacy programs, Project Read trains and matches volunteer tutors with students. About 30% of the Project Read students are men in Project 90 (P-90), a residential drug…

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the company's iPod in October 2001, it was the first portable media player of its kind, and he predicted the technology would change the educational landscape forever. Today, more than six years later, a growing number of educators are using the iPod and a bevy of other tools to supplement lessons with that…

This article points composition scholars toward two bodies of theory that are gaining attention in our discipline, performance studies and multimodal discourse theory. Each raises important questions about the ways we teach writing, the kinds of composition processes we value, and the means by which students construct authority in the university.…

This qualitative case study of 1 teacher and 10 students in an Advanced Placement English class explores the role of computer-mediated feedback in the creation of a classroom learning environment that was supported through hybrid learning experiences. Data sources included classroom observations, online conversations, interviews with 10 high…

Education seeks to cultivate dispositions and skills that promote effective participation in democratic institutions, including the capacity to produce thoughtful written arguments about controversial issues. Unfortunately, students' argumentative writing is generally neither effective nor persuasive, and this is especially so for students with…

This article presents a new approach to teaching the process of writing research papers to college freshmen. Instructors explain the analogy that a student writing a research paper is like a lawyer defending a court case: lawyers frame their case (as students define their topic), search out evidence (as students search for sources), present the…

This is a qualitative case study (conducted in an urban, public school classroom in the United States) of the collaborative composing processes of two groups of first-grade students designated as English Language Learners (ELLs) as they wrote in a writing workshop context. I focused on a specific type of the students' hybrid composing practices:…

A. E. van Vogt's theory of "unreality" explains in part how he has become so prolific in a literary genre--science fiction/science fantasy--which only recently has experienced a rise in popularity. His theory states that the science fictional sentence must have in it something that requires a contribution from the reader. If the author…

Discusses the process of writing usable instructions, relying on organization, formatting, and visual displays to aid comprehension. (JAD)

Compares the steps in the writing process to the stages of having a baby. (RL)