In this essay, I offer William James's notion of pragmatic belief as a framework for re-envisioning religious discourses as rhetorical resources in composition teaching. Adopting a Jamesian pragmatic framework in composition teaching, I argue, entails two pragmatic adjustments to current approaches. The first adjustment concerns the way we think…

This paper is a preliminary investigation into how the context of student life influences student writing. Specifically, activity theory is drawn upon to explore how the role of assessment affects students' attempts to participate in knowledge-producing communities, a relatively under-researched aspect of student writing. To identify rhetorical…

The ESP School of genre study has been noted as increasingly bridging the linguistic and the rhetorical traditions in genre studies. However, some genre theorists have characterized the ESP genre approaches as treating rhetorical contexts as mainly, if not merely, the background for explicating texts. This paper explores this issue through…

In this essay, the author explores four fundamental, but contested topics in Genre-based Writing Instruction (GBWI) about which decisions must be made as curricula are developed. Drawing from the three major genre traditions (Hyon, 1996), the author examines the contested topics ("naming", "awareness/acquisition", "pedagogical focus", "and…

Early Reading First (ERF) was created to address problems related to language and development among economically disadvantaged and language-minority preschool children through quality classroom processes, professional development, and instruction. More than any previous initiative, ERF specifies what early literacy instruction should look like in…

This article examines six years of ethnographic research in Robyn Davis's pre-kindergarten classroom in the USA. Using a theoretical framework to embed writing within a social semiotic that is multimodal and has social intent (Street, 2003), the authors show how children used interactions during writing to create various written products. Three…

To address the issue of plagiarism, students in two undergraduate Research Methods and Analysis courses conducted, analyzed, and wrote up original research on the topic of plagiarism. Students in an otherwise identical course completed the same assignments but examined a different research topic. At the start and end of the semester, all students…

In the summer of 2009, this author devised a Saturday program with an emphasis on writing for publication targeting three students as his nucleus. One of the students, Mariano, was the only one of the three to accept the invitation. This was a strong indication of his passion for writing. Thus, three weeks before school began, the author and…

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of discourse markers that Yemeni EFL learners use in their composition writings. The research questions addressed in this paper are (1) what are the DMs that are frequently used by Yemeni EFL learners? and (2) is there a direct relationship between the use of such markers and the writing quality…

This paper describes the results of a pilot project designed to improve students' academic writing in a large (200-student) first-year Agriculture class at the University of Saskatchewan. In collaboration with the course's professor, the Writing Centre coordinator and a summer student designed curriculum for four two-hour Writing Group sessions…

This article offers a first-person account of an academic writing workshop from the perspective of a participant. What is significant is that the workshop combines traditional and creative writing approaches to the teaching of academic writing. This provides new insights into a process of academic writing that can have a significant effect on the…

This investigation examined the effects of self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) on the written expression of students with emotional and behavioral disabilities (EBD). The target students for this study were elementary students who receive special education services under the category of EBD. An AB Multiple Baseline Design (i.e., Baseline,…

It is possible to create a literacy block where teachers meet with students for guided reading and writing conferences, and provide daily explicit instruction in both reading and writing. A comprehensive look at literacy and learning, "100 Minutes" shows teachers how to fit balanced literacy into a daily 100-minute literacy block using a framework…

This National Writing Project 2011-2012 Report describes how Writing Project teacher-leaders study and share effective practices that enhance student writing and learning, work collaboratively with other educators, design resources, and take on new roles in effecting positive change. It includes a financial summary for years ended September 30 for…

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Practice Guide, "Teaching Elementary School Students to Be Effective Writers," offers educators four specific, evidence-based recommendations that address the challenge of teaching writing in elementary school. This summary focuses on the third of the four recommendations: Teach students to become…