Describes a class activity designed to play up the blurred boundary between fiction and nonfiction. Notes that students filled out Internal Revenue Service tax forms for people who might exist and that other students created biographies and autobiographies from the fictitious tax forms. (RS)

Reflects on a thematic section on "The Status of Women" taught in a freshmen writing class. Discusses the resistance of the author and students and the angered and impassioned writing that arises when texts challenge the ideologies of readers. (MG)

Defines technical writing, the importance of audience awareness, and the fog index. Analyzes examples of technical writing and tips on developing skills such as writing instructions and assembling a model. Offers assignments and projects as well as class activities. (PRA)

Describes a course that integrates individual and collaborative group assignments while requiring students to work through multiple drafting processes involving teacher and peer intervention. Outlines specific assignments. Addresses issues such as establishing collaborative groups, analyzing group dynamics and writing processes, and the role of…

Discusses the problem of asking students to write for the teacher, an authoritative, superior reader. Asserts that a better approach is to ask the students to first address their papers to a small group, and second to choose a specific value system to characterize the attitudes and beliefs of the group selected. (PRA)

Compares students' solutions to a business writing problem-solving assignment to their personal beliefs about government regulation of business. Finds that although most students do not favor government intervention, they turned to the government when finding solutions to business problems. Suggests that this paradox is a result of students'…

Focuses on the collaborative writing done for a large report or proposal over a period of several weeks or months in a business writing course. Discusses short-term writing projects and nonwriting tasks for project administration, meeting management, student/instructor conference, project planning and time estimates, and oral presentations. (PRA)

Discusses the use of writing assignments for teaching social studies. Suggests that alternatives to the standard research paper may be more advantageous to students by providing increased opportunity for creativity. Describes oral history projects, diaries, letters, advertisements, monologues, brief investigations, and position papers as suitable…

Describes a series of writing assignments in which entry level graduate students in a personality theory class wrote four short papers interpreting the personality of a character from a children's story or comic strip. Explains that each paper utilized a different theoretical orientation: psychoanalytic, dispositional, phenomenological, and…

Discusses five classroom teaching methods: (1) creating audio-visual picture book presentations; (2) using written retellings of fables to teach dialogue; (3) writing letters; (4) planning a year-end "read-in"; and (5) turning story maps into game boards. (RS)

Shows how one teacher used innovative methods in teaching William Shakespeare's "Macbeth." Outlines student assignments including text renderings, rewriting a scene from the play, and creating a multicultural scrapbook for the play. (HB)

Describes one teacher's methods for introducing to secondary English students the concepts of Classicism and Romanticism in relation to pictures of gardens, architecture, music, and literary works. Outlines how the unit leads to a writing assignment based on collected responses over time. (HB)

Discusses one high school senior's fictional rendition of her family's experiences of immigration and the American myth. Describes how stories such as this one can be moving and powerful, and thus constitute a sort of "fictional dream" into which readers enter and are thereby changed. (HB)

Examines questions concerning the assignment of autobiographical essays. Discusses the links between gender and genre. Argues that writing teachers should reexamine their assumptions about "good" autobiographical writing and acknowledge the links between gender and genre. (MG)

Describes a research project conducted by twelfth grade students in American government classes. States that the project's objectives are to have students become aware of the approachability of legislators and to realize that input from informed citizens is central to the democratic process. (RDS)