Argues that student use of quotation marks jars educators not because it departs from good practice but because, through them, students invoke voices educators do not want to recognize. Concludes that examining the ways both professors and students use non-standard quotes encourages an understanding of composition as a practice that brings…

Suggests the use of e-mail in the place of writing comments on individual papers. Notes the importance of using e-mail and the listserv in a student's writing experience. Considers some of the implications for professional benefit by exploring the relationship between online communication and oral discussion and between private and public…

Notes that the need to teach basic grammar has increased as journalism programs expand their focus to match workforce skills. Proposes that a Web-based Targeted Approach to Grammar System (TAGS) is a development in grammar checkers that is useful for teaching and learning. Discusses a pedagogical approach to using TAGS via the Web. (PM)

Notes that the curriculum in Canada includes viewing and visually representing, joining the traditional skills of reading and writing, listening and speaking. Concludes that viewing and representing can help students learn to read and write but they are also unique literacies unto themselves. Lists 10 sources of information in both electronic and…

Argues for a pedagogy of the posthuman that meets the needs of student writers in computer classrooms. Suggests that educators now fail to serve the needs of posthuman students whose subjectivities emerge at the conjuncture of consumer culture and cyberspace and emerge as commodities. Proposes that critically oriented compositionists should design…

Notes post-process theories of composition instruction suggest that process is no longer an adequate explanation of the writing act. Explains how post-process theory can contribute to composition pedagogy. Argues that post-process theory encourages educators to reexamine the definition of writing as an activity rather than a body of knowledge,…

Argues that writing should play a more prominent role in classroom-based studies of second language acquisition. Contends that an implicit emphasis on spoken language is the result of the historical development of the field of applied linguistics and parent disciplines of structuralist linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and child language…

Argues that student journals provide the basis for helping students learn to teach themselves and explore their attitudes and beliefs about writing, and strategies for writing. Reviews the historical uses of journals, the different educational uses of journals, and the use of the journal in the writing classroom. (DMM)

Evaluates the effectiveness of a writing improvement program outside the English department. Finds that the program prepared students for writing on the job. Considers changes in the writing program to make it a true writing-across-the-curriculum program. (RS)

Presents a case study focusing on a gifted student writer whose shyness and strong personal commitment to her writing is not well suited to the atmosphere of peer writing workshops. (MG)

Second-language texts and writing exercises based on the theme of request and refusal are presented and discussed. Texts vary widely, including a traditional fable, a worldwide plea to the major industrial powers for third-world debt reduction, and a United Nations statement concerning affairs in the Middle East. (MSE)

Notes that, although many composition teachers talk about the need to find "organic" forms in composing, students are often content to organize their writing in formulaic ways. Discusses the difficulties in teaching form arising from students focusing on a particular form's requirements instead of its functions. Discusses using the counterpoint…

Discusses the importance of considering theory to be rooted in observation and suggests that no observation stops with itself but instead yields another observation. Suggests that what must occur is that teachers become prepared to observe their observations: to look and look again. (MG)

Explains how the author has come to understand that all writing, in many different ways, is autobiographical and that autobiography grows from a few deep taproots that are set down in childhood. Shares some of his own writing as examples. (MG)

Illustrates the power of responsive teaching and how one teacher used a modern poem about cruelty to address a recent incident of her own students' cruelty to a classmate. Notes that the class responded with compassion, tolerance, and a sense of caring for those who are different. (MG)