Describes the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College (Michigan). Asserts that a writing center staffed by English/writing faculty offers advantages in comparison to a tutorial facility in a separate learning center. (5 references.) (SL)

Writing an environmental autobiography is an opportunity for students to reflect on the ways that their relationship to nature is constructed through experiences with such things as food, music, particular places, the outdoors, or acts of creativity. A collection of passages is presented that led to environmental autobiographies in an…

Describes a writing assignment (useful for junior high through college age students) that seeks to improve students' descriptive writing through a set of class writing assignments using visual and concrete objects. Allows students to gain awareness, gain knowledge and discuss it, and ask questions as a body of learners rather than in isolation.…

Describes an assignment in which students read a travelogue excerpt and then must determine specified aspects of the writer's character based on evidence from the text. Notes how this exercise shapes students' awareness of how character influences writing, and how biases and assumptions influence reading. (SR)

Describes how short assignments such as peer critiques, progress memos, and practice documents can be fairly assessed by incorporating them in a performance review at the middle and end of the business writing course. Notes that such a review also helps prepare students for the evaluation process they will face and use in the workplace. (SR)

Presents of set of questions developed for use as heuristics when students decide whether and how to develop a Web page for a client. Notes that these questions help students design a communication strategy considering audience, purpose, and informational content before they design the Web site. (SR)

Presents a case study for use in business communication classes to help students understand and learn both the context and the strategies for communication with business and management. Deals with communications gone wrong between a company and a very important potential client and what might be done salvage the contract. Includes correspondence…

Presents a case study for use in business communication classes to help students understand and learn both the context and the strategies for communication with business and management. Deals with responding to a customer complaint, including customer service philosophy, specific product information, and the fine line between sympathy with the…

Describes a successful approach used by the author in "Composition and Literature" courses which teaches students to write in a relaxed manner about material unnatural to them (literary texts). Describes focusing on communicating to a generally ignorant reader who is knowledgeable about the work. Argues that papers became clearer as the semester…

Presents 13 short descriptions from 13 different English teachers describing the most effective writing assignment they have ever given. (SR)

Proposes a turn toward "social-process rhetorical inquiry" in composition, a turn that requires further pedagogical adaptations of cultural studies methodologies in writing classrooms. Notes that the social-process heuristic is based on a cyclical model of writing processes, a model comprising cultural production, contextual…

Demonstrates how students' metacognitive skill may be enhanced through writing learning statements. Uses a framework of multiple intelligences and learning style theories to describe how teachers can guide students through reflective writing exercises to help them understand how they learn. (SR)

Lists 24 writing lesson plans or teaching approaches designed to keep students engaged toward the end of the school year, including list making, ABC stories, fractured fairy tales, cut word stories, "bummer behavior" letter writing, and using children's books as a stimulus. (TB)

Makes a case for teaching integrity in the classroom through writing assignments and case studies of ethical situations that teenagers would face in their daily lives. (TB)

Suggests that students can improve their writing by being instructed on how to write badly. Applies the criteria of testability, tunnel-vision, excessive vagueness, flying in the face of established fact, and hazy authority to tabloid newspaper stories. Discusses how students can write their own "rotten" tabloid stories by taking these…