Theorizes the site of teaching and learning. Suggests that the current model of the classroom as multicultural contact zone applies best in those circumstances where there is substantial critical mass, but that in locations where the hegemonic mass far outnumbers the oppositional groups, the model of borderland (broadly conceived) is more…

Asserts that writing programs tend to neglect the brightest seniors. Close scrutiny, however, shows very few of the academically gifted write as well as they should, that is, to master a demanding assignment; they should be required to take honors composition classes. (EV)

Argues that a workable definition of transitions must take into account not only the word's meaning but also the writer's intentions and the way a transition changes depending on placement and function. Explores a group of transition words related to the idea of summary. (TB)

Argues that outlining should not be abandoned as a means to teaching students how to organize their thoughts because it can be an invaluable tool in certain circumstances. Describes in outline form how one teacher goes about teaching outlines to her students. (TB)

Suggests a system for teaching punctuation, in which the independent clause is recognized as the fundamental building block of all language. Maintains that punctuation is not based on rules but on principles governing the relationship between one independent clause and the next. (TB)

Argues that Frederick Douglass's "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" motivates students to write by opening up issues of adolescence, self-esteem, identity, rebellion against unjust authority and laws, individual dignity, and personal control over life and working conditions. Provides a summary lesson plan…

One minor but irritating problem that most composition teachers face--especially those who handle masses of papers at the high school level--involves coming up with a method of grading that is demonstrably objective but not so rigid that it allows no room for judgment. The author proposes a hybrid grading system: combining numbers and letters. The…

The writing of academic abstracts is more than a tiresome necessity of scholarly life. It is a practice that goes beyond genre and technique to questions of writing and identity. In this article we deconstruct a series of abstracts from a variety of refereed journals to 'read' for the representation of data, argument, methodology and significance.…

The multigenre paper is a collection of very different pieces of writing that are combined into one unified work in which students interpret researched information and illustrate that knowledge in different forms of writing. The students state which genre would best illustrate the information learned from each source, those genres, along with a…

Two high school teachers share six principles for making a publications class work democratically, as they know the benefits and the associated difficulties of democratic classrooms. Some of them include keeping the curriculum flexible and fluid, establishing role distinctions, and giving students a chance to fail.

The purpose of this study was to describe what three first grade teachers and their students in a Midwestern school learned when engaged in the writing process. The teachers and their students were observed for one year while engaged in the writing process via a workshop environment. Different data sources were collected over time, i.e.,…

The study focused on five elementary Mandarin-speaking students' development as writers over a two-year period in US classrooms. Mandarin speakers who came to the US in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grades demonstrated some language loss in their Chinese writing. We found differences in terms of sentence complexity, character complexity, rhetorical features,…

In this article, I argue that critical discourse analysis (CDA) can complement and extend existing critical and radical writing pedagogies; CDA provides the theoretical and methodological context that can articulate explicitly the relationship between language practices and politics. I use CDA to analyze texts that circulated on the campus of…

In the current scholarship several possible routes exist to help students look more carefully at the world around them and become more savvy consumers, thoughtful citizens, and sophisticated communicators. One of the most promising avenues for teaching students the situatedness of both writing and of the self is ethnography: a method of inquiry…

For beginning college students, effective paraphrasing is the most difficult of the research-writing skills they must learn and demonstrate. Many students understand summarizing, and the frequent appearance of unwieldy block quotations in their essays suggests their preference for using a source's exact words. But the art of paraphrasing escapes…