Examines a range of writing textbooks. Finds that many composition textbooks trivialize or misrepresent writing as process and process pedagogy. Outlines how composition theory becomes commodified. Calls for a radical revision of textbooks, including teachers helping students create their own texts. (HB)

Argues that courses in technical communication must have high status, be flexible, use distance learning techniques, and meet the needs of inservice communicators to satisfy demand for technical communicators in Europe. Suggests those courses concentrate on composition, text-handling, elicitation, and specialized technical areas. Suggests courses…

Discusses the impact of word processing on the teaching of college composition at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Describes seven design principles developed by writing teachers at the university in outlining a solution to the problem of how students can really work together collaboratively over a computer network. (RS)

Discusses some of the characteristics of the English language and also some of the pitfalls. Provides a list of writers' tips that are geared toward improving various aspects of writing. (HB)

Emphasizes the importance of teachers making a year-long plan of what they want to accomplish during the school year, as well making sure that their classroom schedule allows for large blocks of reading and writing time for the students. (MDM)

Considers how a writing center can become a place where nonnative writers can receive effective remediation and guidance. Explains how writing center personnel might be trained to deal skillfully with nonnative writers' concerns, including different rhetorical structures. (HB)

Compares native and nonnative speakers of English and the possible ramifications of these differences for the operations of writing centers. Reviews two recent books and their attempts to fill a need for helpful materials on linguistic diversity and the teaching of writing. (HB)

Describes an exercise for a technical writing course on documenting a problem within a corporate environment, thus giving students experience in appropriate documentation to tackle some of the operational, political, and ethical problems common in the workplace. (SR)

Lists and annotates 16 books and articles that deal with multicultural writing and literacy issues. (PRA)

Illustrates, through a description and examples, the collaboration between a university class and an elementary class. Describes pen pals and collaborative book writing as two approaches that provide student writers with the opportunity to receive rehearsal of strategies such as invented spelling, writing as a process, and integrating the language…

Evaluates three computer software programs designed to help writing teachers to respond to and comment on student papers. Asserts that these programs do not actually assist teachers in writing comments, but help them to avoid writing comments. Argues that teachers expect too much of the computer as an aid to response. (PRA)

Examines the composing processes of basic writers, examining their tendencies toward writer's block, low-level goals, and writer-based prose. Suggests that basic writers be taught that the purpose of writing is to communicate with other people and that errors, revisions, and general messiness are part of the complicated process. (PAA)

Defines four principles (goodwill building, course of action, bottom line, and most important first) that pose rhetorical problems for students making the transition from academic to business writing. Presents a problem-solving case to demonstrate reader-based business writing and provides samples of students' writing that illustrate the…

Examines the effect of the misuse and over-use of logical connectives in English-as-a-Second-Language undergraduate writing, and suggests that students use a small subset of relatively comprehensible connectives, employ connectives for phrasal expansion, and view logical progression as an integral stage in writing. (Author/CB)

Describes the writing theories of Lev Vygotsky, and how they are borne out by modern research. Asserts the Vygotsky's ideas show why cooperative learning strategies such as peer response groups fit into the beginning stages of the composing process. Discusses Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. (PRA)