Discusses how freshman English separated from other courses. Considers many different points of view regarding the development of freshman English versus composition and communication. Ponders what composition would be like in the last half century had it incorporated communication. Concludes that when freshman English won the "Turf…

Discusses Ron Smith's article, "The Composition Requirement Today: A Report on a Nationwide Survey of Four-Year Colleges and Universities" (published in this journal in 1974) that presented survey findings gathered about the state of the writing requirement in United States four-year colleges and universities. Determines whether the status of…

Outlines strategies for teaching freshman composition courses and discusses the similarities between teaching graduate courses and teaching survey courses. Finds that (1) thinking, exploring, and testing ideas in the freshman composition classroom can provide material for research; and (2) teaching in the area of one's scholarship provides an…

Considers the wide variation of first-year composition programs and if they do indeed vary so widely. Considers what the programs have in common. Asks if it would be possible to articulate a general curricular framework for first-year composition, regardless of institutional home, student demographics, and instructor characteristics. Presents a…

Describes some of the thinking behind learning communities, how they have been defined, and considers why they can be effective. Suggests a direction that educators might go to rehabilitate the idea of learning communities because it represents something fundamentally good about human beings in their relations with one another. (SG)

This article presents an exchange between Kip Strasma and Elizabeth Tomlinson. Strasma responds to "Gender and Peer Response" by Tomlinson, and Tomlinson responds to Strasma's ""Spotlighting": Peer-Response in Digitally Supported First-Year Writing Courses." Both of them respond to each other's cross talk.

The author has been tutoring and teaching writing for fifteen years, but has discovered that few people outside of academia know what it is that she does. Despite the rise in composition graduate programs and the improving market for composition specialists, even within the university, faculty from other disciplines frequently have vague notions…

Many students occupy a minimal space between the profession of composition studies and larger social and institutional constructions of composition, writing, and literacy. For most people outside the field, writing is viewed as a set of skills, rather than a substantive area of study. If students would only learn the rules--and if composition…

Writing and reading in hypertext environments have more similarities with incompetent student research writing than the model of research writing that dominates the freshman composition enterprise. The research paper becomes a rite of passage and capstone writing experience, taxing the student writer's skills of organization and deft manipulation…

Much existing historiography is either based too exclusively on the evidence of old textbooks or concerned too narrowly with theory or the epistemological assumptions underlying theory. Those who study the history of composition in this century need both to consult such new sources of information as course materials, student papers, and oral…

Three studies examined the effectiveness of teaching an unfamiliar prose form using prose modeling (duplicating defining characteristics of a model text using different content). First, English department instructors at four universities were surveyed and of the 70 who responded, 76% stated that they did use modeling in their classrooms. In the…

The personal essay does not rely on the straight, even rows of a carefully laid out vegetable garden, on strings pulled tight to connect beginnings to ends. Instead it meanders, pulls from here and there, thinks out loud, asks questions, and proceeds leisurely through disconnections to make connections, as an ever-changing flower garden in which…

A freshman composition text (or "contextbook") that invites readers to take the initiative in their learning, this book is a revised edition of a 1980 work. It consists of the following chapters: (1) "Free Writing"; (2) "Loopy Learning"; (3) "Throwing Back the English"; (4) "Truthtelling"; (5)…

Illustrates Toulmin's simple three-step model of argumentation (claim, grounds, backing) with various proposition and syllogisms. Implements such heuristic quests at each step as "What position do I want my audience to take?" Proposes Toulmin logic as a strategy for teaching inductive and deductive thinking in composition. (JG)

A library skills program for freshman composition students was redesigned to correct problems caused by a lack of uniformly accepted methods of implementation. Changes made included a revised workbook, streamlined class sessions, enforcement of due dates for exercises, and improved communication with faculty. Three references are listed. (MES)