This document supports the following positions on building community: (1) as a society, there is a lack of a conceptual framework to engage in moral discourse, and a lack of a clear understanding of the notion of democracy; and (2) to build "real" community requires a means to engage in moral discourse, a clear understanding of…

Ellen Kreger Stark, in her article, "Reforming the Critical Space," in "Critical Quarterly" discusses the gap which exists for poets writing in academic discourse, saying that she could not tell when she was writing criticism and when she was being a poet. Usually, teachers/professors say such writing is too personal, too…

The majority of college English departments in America identify and categorize their writing courses by genre. Because of this, writing instruction as a field represents teaching interests and results in written products that are diverse enough to suggest that departments should hire writing specialists who have equally diverse credentials in the…

Students in college composition courses should experiment with a variety of discourse styles--referential, persuasive, literary, and expressionistic--as opposed to a more traditional focus on the mastery of academic discourse. David Bartholomae assigns freshmen writers the goal of becoming like academics by assuming a "language not their…

It is a good thing to demolish "magical thinking" if it refers to the view of language for which words have fixed, inevitable meanings. Words are often deprived of their meanings and reduced to verbal noises, producing involuntary responses like knee-reflexes. Various critics have discussed and written about the magical aspects of…

Composition teachers need to pluralize their notions of what constitutes viable discourse to enrich their own rhetoric and to "listen" more effectively to students' writing, so that their notions of written discourse may come to reflect the rainbow of international influences that exist in the United States. A good first step would be to…

Ethical issues make writing assignments more than academic exercises, especially when the ethical issues involve the writing itself. Such issues arise in every aim and mode of discourse and in every stage of the writing process, from choosing a topic to editing the final draft. Informative discourse must be factual and comprehensive, and have…

This collection of essays is intended to increase cultural awareness and provide new information about the nature of writing in a number of the discourse communities central to modern economic life. The book focuses on academe, journalism, industry, computers, finance, and law. Essays and their authors are: "Coming to Terms with Different…

Examined each book in 8 basal reading series (preprimers to sixth readers) to determine the variety of types of writing in these 1983 basals. Texts were examined for the number of selections representing narrative, poetry, plays, exposition, biography, hybrid writing types and for the number of pages devoted to each type of writing. (Author/NH)

Computer mediated communication (CMC) is a widely used communicative tool within various professional and social groups. The focus of the present article is on the Linguist List (LL), which can be described as an edited person-to-group international academic mailing list, and with a particular speech act: a request for information (RFI). Because…

This project opens a conversation about the use of discourse as the basis for encouraging students' mathematical thinking in classrooms and supporting professional growth. A collaboration of teacher practitioners and Math Forum staff, it reflects an attempt to integrate practice and research, reporting on findings culled from discussions of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the discourse in two different group-work contexts in a diverse Algebra 1 class to better understand what and how students working in small groups learn through talking about mathematics. The researcher gathered data in four categories: participant observation, interviews, collection of artifacts, and…

Presents an insightful approach to algebra that enhances both personal and classroom communication through the process of solving a linear equation. (KHR)

Describes the nature of online chats in terms of how graduate students structured their conversations in online group discussions, and how they participated and conversed in and across concurrent conversations. Characteristics of the computer medium contributed to the conversational structures and the kinds of structures affected interactivity and…

An Internet user talks about her experiences as a result of a graduate-level class, "Telecommunications in the Classroom," at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Discussion focuses on the Internet community and the various kinds of talk on the Internet, including bulletin boards, real time, creative, political, expert, international,…