This collection of essays brings together Mary Louise Pratt's original essay, the 10-year-old "Professing in the Contact Zone," with 14 responses that interpret, extend, and challenge Pratt's work. The essays examine how contact zone dynamics play out in various pedagogical spaces. Following an introduction by the editor, essays in…

This book presents 113 writing "workouts" (exercises) to help students, and especially teachers, think about the small steps writers take as they learn their craft. The workouts in Part I, Writers Speak Up, are intended to help novice writers develop confidence in the value of their experience. Part II, Writers Pay Attention, presents challenges…

This paper reviews recent publications on distance education and explores its promise and potential from the student's perspective, the faculty's perspective and the administrator's perspective. Findings indicate that only the self-motivated and self-disciplined students are most likely to succeed in distance education. Although the majority of…

This paper describes work in progress on a multilingual, interactive, Web-based learning tool for writers, which is run collaboratively by staff from two Dutch universities. The site is part of a larger package that links the editing and word processing capabilities of Word and the communication and document exchange features of an e-learning…

This guide to the Georgia Middle Grades Writing Assessment (MGWA) serves the purpose of improving writing and writing instruction. It includes a description of test administration conditions, a sample test booklet, and a structured overview of the writing assessment. Prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading are explained in the…

The most used model for empirical research on the writing process is based on cognitive psychology and does not take into account affective phenomena, although it has long been recognized that affect (that is, the noncognitive aspects of mental activity) plays a large role in writing and learning to write. To understand the complete picture, it is…

Writing teachers at the community college level who teach using a computer have come to accept the fact that it is more than "just teaching" composition. Such teaching often requires instructors to be as knowledgeable as some of the technicians. Two-year college students and faculty are typically given little support in using computers…

Based on the idea that good writing is developed with instruction, critique, and practice, this book, intended for teachers of grades 2-6, offers a comprehensive outline for guiding students to writing competence. For each month of the school year, the book gives sample daily sentences for primary and upper elementary grades, journal writing…

Composition instructors are particularly interested in the fact that hypertext, as the mode of discourse that computers promote and prefer, introduces a new problematic for those concerned with teaching critical thinking. What kind of discourse is hypertext, and to what extent does it encourage, enable and demand critical thinking? The issue is…

This British book is designed to help teachers recognize, challenge, and support children who show advanced skills in reading and writing. Individual chapters include: (1) "The Problem," which discusses the failure of schools to identify pupils who are more able users of language and to develop the pupils' potential in primary and…

This paper examines how pedagogical approaches in writing classrooms can better draw upon the whole of students' abilities--intellectual, affective, and creative. Many teachers know too well that students rarely respond well to writing prompts which monopolize their cognitive, linear capacities while ignoring creative strategies and affective…

Presented as a conversation rather than as a single-voiced academic paper, this paper describes the three people's experiences with experimental academic writing as students and as teachers. It describes such writing (or autobiographical scholarship) as a hybrid blend of autobiographical bits and scholarship, writing and reading, public and…

It is recommended that students of Chinese as a second language be introduced to characters corresponding to new vocabulary, rather than be taught to recognize characters after the words themselves are learned. An approach that breaks each character into its smallest meaningful units, then reassembles them into proper position to form characters,…

This report describes a literacy program that provides readers with materials and instructions that fit their individual levels of development. The targeted population consists of kindergarten students in a northwest suburb that is characterized by higher than average household earnings, highly educated residents, and a population encompassing all…

Designed to be a practical, comprehensive, and illuminating guide for both new and experienced teachers, this book confronts the challenges of the writing workshop head-on, with chapters on all aspects of the writing workshop, including: day-to-day instruction, classroom management, the development of writing identities, and the tone of workshop…