One challenge faced by many writing teachers is meeting the needs of students with varying skill and confidence levels. This article describes strategies used in a Composition and Rhetoric I course to meet the needs of basic and college-level writers. Sample assignments focusing on the theme of literacy and learning are provided, including an…

With support and guidance, graduate students can successfully pursue academic writing for publication. In graduate circles, academic writing is presumed to be a solitary activity for which students already are prepared. Yet, the reality is that students tend to find academic writing difficult and stressful, and they often look to university…

The culminating project in completing a doctorate in education is the preparation and final defense of the dissertation. Specifically in educational administration and leadership, the student will have exerted hours of energy participating in course work, internships as well as in written and oral comprehensive examinations. By the time a student…

This article describes how one U.S. school district created a planned writing curriculum to provide strong, cohesive instruction for all students. Because of teacher preferences, some children received little instruction in expository writing, and scores on the state writing assessment fluctuated widely. The authors focus on how all teachers came…

In graduate circles, academic writing is presumed to be a solitary activity for which students already are prepared. Yet, the reality is that students tend to find academic writing difficult and stressful, and they often look to university faculty members for guidance. Faculty members, in turn, may provide hands-on practice and other classroom…

Many academics continue to approach the multi-path and multi-voiced capacity of the Internet's networked nodal structure as if it were a book with pages and paragraphs and sentences that flow together in one direction to make a whole. A different approach to that of traditional writing, is required to make effective use of the distinctive…

This paper looks at young ESL writers in Hong Kong and describes an action research project which involved the implementation of a new ESL writing programme designed to enhance students' motivation and engagement by taking more account of the young learners' own socio-cultural context. The study examined both the students' and teacher-researcher's…

After noting that the revisions made by corporate writers contained significant modifications in the original propositions, to the extent that they may have changed the meaning of the proposition, a study was undertaken to see if the same phenomenon occurred among students and teachers. Subjects were Hong Kong secondary school students and a…

Two interviews, one with an experienced instructor of General Education Development (GED) classes and another with a student working towards a GED, provided a neophyte instructor with insight into the similarities and the differences between the composition teaching techniques learned in college and those which seem to be effective in teaching GED…

Developed as a teaching aid for a General Educational Development (GED) preparation class, this essay writing guide gives students the tools they need to develop and organize ideas for writing an essay with confidence. By following a sequential procedure in this very structured approach, students learn to turn out a well-organized essay. The…

In a Purdue University English 101 class, students were told to identify an audience outside the classroom for each paper they wrote. The central challenge to composition teachers is preserving elements valued in teaching academic writing in the context of ill-defined problems to be addressed outside the classroom. Most useful for instructors…

This collection of essays is introduced by Paul Connelly, who focuses on how the essayists encounter problems boldly and recognize opportunity in them--the essays are less local reports of various successful process approaches to teaching writing than a record of the willingness to experiment, to take risks, to learn. The essays and their authors…

This guide presents a view of how to develop a personal program of productive publishing in scholarly journals and how to increase the chances of having articles accepted for publication. In the first chapter, the importance for academics of publishing articles in professional journals is explained. Chapter 2 outlines factors that should be…

Names themselves have great power. Teachers and students of language know that certain words resonate and have the power to make connections to forces that cannot always be identified, or, at least, named. Names are certainly in this category of words--they define an individual, tell who he or she is, and connect a person to his or her ancestors…

A qualitative pilot study investigated the influence of nonfiction learning activities upon the level of student engagement, writing growth, and the quantity of students' nonfiction compositions. The participants were 19 third-grade students and 19 fourth-grade students, plus the 2 teachers of the respective classes. Nonfiction writing instruction…