The National Writing Project (NWP) at Work monograph series describes NWP work, often shared informally or in workshops through the NWP network, and offers detailed chronological accounts for sites interested in adopting and adapting the models. The New York City Writing Project (NYCWP), with over 20 years of inservice experience, has learned that…

This teacher research shows how peer reviews change draft papers. In the majority of cases, final papers improved in content. The study analyzes data collected from 40 intermediate/advanced nonnative speakers of English enrolled in freshman composition for international students at a large private university. It also examines student reflections…

This paper advances a taxonomy of college writing styles based on a broad spectrum of writing research. The taxonomy focuses on the constructs of deep and surface writing and the role of selfhood in affecting writing strategies and outcomes. It compares constructs such as reflective versus reproductive, hierarchical versus linear, active versus…

In teaching international students in Britain and students in the United States in multicultural and multiclass classrooms, a common resistance was found to the consideration of how culture and society shape identity. Even international students from collectivist cultures, who see their identities as inextricable from their communities in their…

Students who visit writing labs are often inexperienced writers who need help and even prescriptive teaching. Although some compositionists are leery of including prescriptive help among possible teaching strategies, the writing lab tutor's position as advisor rather than judge helps students accept the suggestions as the options they are. As…

This book recounts the story of the people who have studied and taught composition in American colleges since the early 19th century. It shows where many of today's teachers' practices and assumptions about writing come from, and it translates what theories and techniques of teaching have, over time, indicated about attitudes toward students,…

This paper reviews composition textbook publishing. It is not enough simply to examine textbooks themselves, rather a methodology of institutional critique demands an examination of the institutions that create and perpetuate instructional materials. It is now more important than ever to examine not only the textbooks themselves, and not only the…

Social rhetorics have historically and recently been criticized on ethical grounds. According to Kurt Spellmeyer, Cultural "Constructions of Knowledge" are oppressive and often lead to a betrayal of the individual, while Donald Stewart, is of the opinion that the "excesses" of social construction can lead to a police state, the…

Sometimes an assessment program becomes well-established, nationally recognized, "proven" effective, and thus stuck in its routines and reasoning, becoming just another university bureaucracy for the teachers and students who work within it. The pedagogical question was how to keep an assessment program, or writing program for that…

Evaluation is crucial for writing centers. Given increasingly tight budgets, writing centers should conduct more sophisticated evaluations. Writing centers should turn to educational program evaluation and select general types of evaluation most appropriate for writing centers, and, congruent with the appropriate types, writing centers should…

In this collection of 32 narrative essays, scholars and teachers of English and English education share their excitement as they reflect on their professional growth over the last 30 years. The firsthand stories in the collection represent "a study of theory and applied theory, grounded in personal experience and academic study over many…

Parents might be the last to know that "parent involvement" is one of this country's national educational goals. They may understand that success or failure in school is often an indication of success or failure in life; but they may not be aware of how significant parental influence really is on their child's learning. Children who see…

No matter how intimidated or how blocked, any writer can tap into the vast oceans of creativity within by following the exercises in this book. Broken into small steps, each exercise is easy and takes only minutes to do. Yet each one forms a wave that brings with it a rush of ideas, images, and scenes as it crests. Chapters in the book are: (1)…

The data gathered for this study does not support the hypothesis that second grade students, when they write, do not borrow characters, settings, elements of a story, authors' styles and information from nonfictional literature. Students writings were studied to determine the extent of the borrowing, and to answer the questions: (1) Did the…

In this lesson plan, students learn the rules and conventions of haiku, study examples by Japanese masters, and create haiku of their own. Its 4 lessons seek to help students be able to: (1) describe the traditional rules and conventions of haiku; (2) interpret examples of haiku; (3) characterize the image-evoking power of haiku; (4) develop a…