Despite the widespread acceptance of many kinds of nonliterary texts for first-year writing courses, primary scientific communication (PSC) remains largely absent. Objections to including PSC, especially that it is not rhetorically appropriate or sufficiently rich, do not hold. We argue for including PSC and give some practical suggestions for…

This research paper describes the benefits of using an activity-based rhetorical perspective to develop English for specific purposes (ESP) test specifications. This approach expands the potential of ESP test specifications to analyze and describe target language use (TLU) situations, TLU tasks, and ESP test tasks. Multiple activity systems are…

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…

Theorists have usurped English composition. They have banished great literature as the residual oppression of dead white males. They control groups like the NCTE and MLA, which announce that exercises in grammar and the mechanics of writing are "deleterious" for students tantamount to "malpractice." Nan Miller reminds those…

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…

Dialogic learning is what one instructor calls "speaking back to other voices as a reader and a writer." The idea is for students to situate their own voices in the voices of classmates and texts on subjects they are studying. Students interview each other, use each other's knowledge along with written sources as part of the…

The period immediately following the second World War is important for the history of the preparation of teaching assistants in this country because English instruction changed dramatically due to the enactment of the G. I. Bill in 1944. However, the long-term effect of the Bill on curriculum and pedagogy has not been documented. The G. I. Bill…

A study analyzed the discourse of four pairs of students participating in dyadic interactive communicative tasks (ICTs) to discover if and how their discourse styles influenced the dynamics of interaction. Students were paired according to their teacher's evaluation of their discourse style as active or non-active, and were designated sender or…

A composition teacher at Northwest Missouri State University completely redesigned the freshman composition course to include writing portfolios while meeting state requirements for direct assessment and allaying departmental fears. A unit on language history and a half-dozen literature selections were dropped in favor of timed, in-class essay…

A semester-long study examined the needs and goals of adult students. Subjects, 22 adults over the age of 25 years, were selected to represent, as much as possible, a cross section of the older students likely to be found in freshman English courses at a large but not highly selective university. Data included questionnaires completed by the…

A difficult task facing college English departments is the creation of a freshman English program that is coherent and theoretically sound and which allows instructors a certain flexibility. Recently, the English department at Francis Marion College undertook a major revision of its freshman program with these goals in mind. The result was a…

Allowing, or encouraging, students to write fiction has not received much attention from college composition teachers, despite recent attempts to bridge the gaps between composition and the study of literature. Based on experiences with a number of students in a variety of writing courses, a college composition instructor questions assumptions…

A study examined whether students actually used the composition processes they learned in their first-year college writing classroom when they leave the classroom. Subjects were 200 Florida State University students--a mixture of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors from a variety of majors during fall semester 1997. Subjects were asked to…

This paper asserts that by removing speech and rhetoric from the "English" department and making composition a stepchild of literature, Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities ultimately made it much more difficult for writing instructors today to capitalize on the strong physical underpinnings that speech and rhetoric provide to writing.…

Through the examination of case studies, this paper discusses a method in which the English Department at West Point can improve their junior military instructors' preparation to teach composition. Twelve departing and incoming instructors were surveyed on the quality of the preparation for teaching they received. Most were generally supportive of…