Four years of data on the academic performance of 256 students who self-selected online developmental writing rather than a face-to-face section (about 10% of the 2,275 students enrolled in the course overall) are examined in this empirical study. The research controls for self-selection effects related to demographic variables, student status,…

The author argues that first-year students understand "writing" narrowly and that introductory writing courses should deepen that understanding. The article describes class projects designed to help students see themselves as authors (closely related to "authorities"), create a "community of dissensus," and raise awareness of ideology--their own…

In an effort to use adolescents' enthusiasm about blogging to design more effective writing experiences, Read analyzed its appeal and found that blogging satisfied two of Maslow's "hierarchy of needs": relatedness needs and growth needs. By studying the blogs of 6 adolescents, Read also discovered that the process of writing in blogs helps…

Cauley's books about snakes demonstrate intentional and interesting decisions by a beginning writer. The conclusion states that learning to choose topics for writing in thoughtful ways is an important part of the curriculum in writing workshop.

For schools to effectively teach literacy, they should work with, not against, the cultural tools that students bring to school. Outside school, students' lives are immersed in visually mediated narratives. By tapping into the cultural, artistic, and linguistic resources of popular culture and multimedia, teachers can create more willing readers…

Writing verse is a learning experience. Arranging words, sounds and syllables can turn everyday language into metered language (language that can be measured), and metered language is the definition of verse. This article discusses the use of meter in helping students establish sets of syllables and lines that can be counted, enabling them to…

An English teacher describes his use of advocacy project for writing instruction and its ironies in the classroom. He asserts that such projects meet the instructor's educational aims while helping students recognize their place in a democratic society with the ability to influence institutional change.

Each Fall, the nation's newspapers are filled with laments over the decline in the writing skills of college students. What makes this trend especially depressing is that a good many of the complaints are leveled by those who should know better--writing teachers. Today's students, "don't know how to--or even care to--express their views," churn…

A comparison between composition and literature is presented in Harriet Malinowitz's "Business, Pleasure, and the Personal Essay". The importance of praising and analyzing various interpretations of a text to English studies is emphasized.

The challenges faced by the teachers while teaching the writing process to their students are discussed. It is every teacher's job to assist in making professional development attainable and sustainable for which they should always revise himself or herself in order to meet the needs of the students under their care.

By drawing upon numerous real-world experiences with reluctant writers, the author illustrates how tapping their interests can lead to improved writing skills and attitudes toward writing. The critical link between identity and writing is emphasized. Though the experiences in this article are drawn from the author's work with basic writers at the…

Typeface personality impacts the rhetorical effect of students' documents, yet it receives little attention in textbooks. Technical writing students should stand the definition of "appropriate" in relation to typeface selection, the difference between type's functional and semantic properties, the difference between type family and personality,…

Four different kinds of grammars that can define crossing dependencies in human language are compared here: (1) "context sensitive rewrite" grammars with rules that depend on context; (2) "matching" grammars with constraints that filter the generative structure of the language; (3) "copying" grammars which can copy structures of unbounded size;…

New-media writing exerts pressure in ways that writing instruction typically has not. In this article, we map the infrastructural dynamics that support--or disrupt--new-media writing instruction, drawing from a multimedia writing course taught at our institution. An infrastructural framework provides a robust tool for writing teachers to navigate…

This note offers suggestions for using microthemes in diverse classes across the curriculum. Microthemes are short essays (100 to 250 words) that can be used in any class to address any issue. They are so versatile that Ray Smith has called them the "Swiss Army knife of writing assignments" (1) because they have so many applications: they can be…