Serving as a way to sum up or apply many of the principles students have been studying in a general semantics course, a unit on advertising language is devoted to examining how advertisers select language for its affective and directive uses. The unit shows how language is used to stimulate consumer interest in a product and often to mask the lack…

The author maintains that middle level teachers can create curriculum connections that engage families in their children's learning and strengthen the home-school relationship. This article offers four examples of school-initiated partnerships, each of which connects students with their families. These are: (1) the Relative Letter, in which…

Are student-written reports posted on the Internet well written? Do business communications students think they are? This paper describes an assignment used during the first few weeks of a business communication course. The assignment gives business communication students a chance to evaluate a report from an Internet site that serves as a…

When teachers work to create empathy that transfers or translates the experience of the other into an experience an individual has had, they promote a kind of egotism that dismisses the other or that reduces the other to the category of the self. The key problem with empathy of this sort is that the focus is not on the other, but on the self. The…

"Online Writing Tutorial" (OWI) was designed and piloted in the summer of 2000 as a one to two credit writing course intended for Rensselaer Polytechnic students on co-op assignment in New York and across the country. Similar to its ancestor course, "Writing Workshop" (WW), which was a one-credit course designed to fit the…

Students sometimes respond to writing assignments automatically, almost as if they were a generic form, rather than by investigating the idiosyncrasies and unexpected possibilities of each assignment. Writing assignments can be structured to help students transcend such habits, shifting the focus from accumulating information to creating meaning…

Intended to take the fear out of what looks like a daunting task--writing a life story--this guide helps individuals record the events of their lives for family and friends and adds to a collective history. The guide outlines a method of autobiographical writing that can be used by a class but also by an individual writing alone at home. It…

Suggesting that students can be independent thinkers and writers, this book helps teachers implement an effective factual thinking and writing program into elementary, middle, and high schools. It demonstrates six different models of factual writing: narratives, procedures, descriptions, reports, explanations, and arguments. An introduction is…

Describes a way to give word-processed feedback on business communication assignments. Describes some advantages of this mode over both handwritten and audio comments, and identifies limitations of this method. (SR)

Discusses a teacher-training experience in which a systemwide inservice seminar was offered. Offers the following tips for novice inservice providers: foster professionalism, provide structure for reading and writing activities, support change, accept participants as they are, stress commonalities, vary activities, provide supplemental fuel…

Presents three brief articles written by teachers that 1) describe a collection of approaches that utilize newspapers and magazines as the "excellent teaching tools they are"; (2) plunge students into critical analysis through the use of advertisements in magazines; (3) present ideas on how to teach students to create writing prompts…

Describes a four- to six-week project for high school sophomores in which students create pamphlets and in the process learn basic research skills and practice several elements of the research paper. (SR)

Presents an assignment, conducted by the business communications instructor as "raconteur," that elicits discussions about ethics, decision making, channeling, legal questions, and the practical applications of business communications. Describes how the class completes a major report on a career and participates in three interviews so that they…

Highlights exemplary moments from the first three writing courses that Youngstown State University has been teaching at a union hall for steel workers. Includes excerpts from student interviews; illustrates the teachers' evolving approach to teaching writing in a workplace setting; and explains student responses to writing assignments. (TB)

Explains a writing assignment called "occasional paper," a brief written reflection that is read aloud and discussed but not turned in. Notes that it is important that these papers be easy to write. Contends that since adolescents experience nearly everything as personal, the occasional paper offers them an entry into thinking that is abstract and…