Describes how a writing teacher teaches expository strategies to students within the engineering community. Demonstrates that expository strategies can invigorate--rather then suffocate--students when the composition course is linked to a disciplinary course where students can apply the strategies to concrete problems. (RS)

Examines why the relationship between plagiarism and collaboration seems so inherently problematic and suggests that it may have a great deal to do with the concept of "voice." (TB)

Presents and discusses three sets of texts that are excerpted from essays written for a second-semester, first-year composition course at a regional public university. Considers the relationship of the linguistic and sociolinguistic markedness of texts. Explores what the sociolinguistic markedness should be in the writing classroom given the…

Describes one student who resists personal writing. Explores reasons why some students resist personal writing. Considers how providing the conditions for students to speak surely entails that educators become engaged readers and interlocutors of their students' writing, that they regard their writing as ongoing cultural and constitutive teachings…

Recounts and analyzes how e-zines were used in first-year writing courses to enhance students' rhetorical sensitivity to considerations of audience. Concludes that through the use of e-zines, students, on their own initiative, began exploring ways to use writing to provoke an audience to consider alternative views, a project which encouraged some…

Examines prewriting and writing assignments designed to tighten the continuity between the personal essays typically written in English 101 and the more literature-based essays of English 102. Aims to help students blend personal and public voices. (MG)

Presents teaching tips for (1) generating titles as a prewriting activity; (2) having students write a biography of a classmate; (3) asking students to determine scenarios for their business communication documents; (4) using interviewing as a method of primary research; and (5) sequencing writing assignments to help students clarify their…

Describes a freshman writing course in which students practiced various forms of writing. Explains that students began by reading both a personal essay (Annie Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek") and poems (such as works by William Wordsworth). Notes that students later prepared scientific research papers. Suggests that nature writing…

Describes the processes involved in developing "Writers' Bloc," an annual anthology of outstanding student writing submitted in freshman English classes at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Describes project promotion, entry judging, financing and pricing, using computer software, and recommendations about solving problems…

Presents an extended sequence of reading and writing assignments using John Hersey's "Hiroshima" to introduce composition students to the nature of interpretation, understanding, and composing. Stresses learning through enactment. (RAE)

Examines gender differences in topic choice by analyzing freshman writers' narratives of an incident they witnessed. Finds that pronounced, gender-based patterns influence text production, with women demonstrating caring and nurturing values in everyday life and men engaging in romantic fantasies of self-aggrandizement or apocalyptic fascination…

Describes an initial writing assignment given to college freshmen that asks them to describe their experiences as writers. Argues that responses give the instructor preliminary information concerning students' assumptions, values, and attitudes about writing. Includes excerpts from a questionnaire that helps students recall their previous writing…

Investigates the effects of word processing on the quality of college basic writers' revisions. Finds that word processing does have a positive effect. (MS)

Asserts that previous research in cohesion has mathematically adjusted the data in ways that assume a linear relation between text length and opportunities for writers to make cohesive ties; but, because cohesion is often redundant, that relation probably is not linear, giving an advantage to writers of longer essays. (MS)

Describes how a short exercise in designing greeting cards for a "Teacher Appreciation Day" helps student identify and analyze the four components of rhetoric--purpose, content, persona, and audience. Includes samples of students' greeting card messages. (MM)