Describes a sales letter lecture and writing assignment in which students write sales letters on real products of personal interest using product information from "Consumer Reports" magazine. (SR)

Presents a collaborative essay by a writing teacher and a writing student in which they try to make sense out of a situation in which the student was fired from her off-campus job for what she had written in the context of a writing assignment in the university setting. (PRA)

Maintains that cliches can improve students' writing style. Describes six techniques for polishing cliches into something original. (SR)

Outlines a process by which senior high school students study Jonathan Swift's'"A Modest Proposal" and then write their own satirical essays by modeling the tone and style of Swift's essay. (SR)

Explores the quality of "voice" in writing, and how an individual's early experiences and heritage influence voice. Advocates using exploration of voice with students in freshman composition. Uses "In Praise of What Persists," a collection of essays, as models for the students and a source of writing assignments. (PA)

Presents five brief descriptions from two-year college teachers of writing activities that they have found to work well in their classrooms. (SR)

The developing discourse which moves assessment away from a measurement model towards one of learner empowerment and the development of assessment for lifelong learning sets the context for this paper. Within this framework, we explore how the demands made on practitioners may influence current reported assessment practices. The reasons given by…

Reading, writing, and mathematics are best learned by children in meaningful, integrated experiences. In an engaging project combining math and literacy, primary children in Michelle Piwko's classroom followed the framework of verses from a classic children's book to structure their own writing about geometric forms. They brainstormed geometric…

There is nothing worse than hearing moans and groans when writing time is announced to students. Motivation for writing begins when students' interests are mixed with opportunities for creativity. This article presents an idea shared by a writing coach who found a way to spark students' interest in writing by developing recipes for more…

The main aim of the study is to explore the role of self-assessment in EFL learning in developing lifelong language learning skills and in furthering the development of more comprehensive and thereby fairer assessment practices. The study explores how students perceived their own general and specific writing abilities in relation to syllabus goals…

This research study had two purposes, (a) to design and develop a Web-based learning environment that supports the use of a set of reading strategies, and (b) to investigate the impact of this Web-based learning environment on readers' "memory" and "understanding" of an instructional unit on the human heart (Dwyer &…

Writing is the ability to compose text effectively for different purposes and audiences. When many of us reflect on our own school experiences, we recall writing in English and history classes, but not in mathematics. Math classes previously relied on skill-building and conceptual understanding activities. Today, teachers are realizing that…

A random sample of language arts, social studies, and science high school teachers (N = 361; 53% women) from the United States were surveyed about what their students wrote, their use of evidence-based writing practices, the adaptations they made for weaker writers, how they assessed writing, their preparation to teach writing, beliefs about the…

For the last four semesters my courses in Shakespeare have used QwikiWiki and MediaWiki, two versions of the wiki software, for writing exercises and directed reflection on language--including both by the students about Shakespeare's language, and by the teacher/researcher regarding the students' performance in "Writing to Learn". In experimenting…

The purpose of this study was to examine students' perceptions of a self-study assignment, a requirement for a life-span human development course. A survey assessing attitudes regarding the value of the writing assignment was completed by 278 students. Results suggested that students had an overall positive evaluation of the assignment. The…