John Milton presented a wide spectrum of materials and ideas illuminating the literary landscape like a rainbow which critics and authors have been discussing for centuries. One example of the multiple layers of meaning in Milton's poems is found in Sonnet XIX, which can be useful for both forensic discussion as well as for composition…

A study determined the effectiveness of two computer-assisted programs for writing/language instruction. Three first-grade classes and three second-grade classes at each of five Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools (CMS) were selected for the study. Two schools were using Write to Read for the first time, two schools were using Acceleration Station 2000…

The traditional spelling curriculum emphasized that pupils learn to spell a specific set of words through memorization. However, major problems existed pertaining to using that method of teaching. Pupils soon forgot the correct spelling of memorized words. Educational psychologists have long advocated that pupils perceive knowledge as being…

In her much-quoted statement of principles "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf wishes for "a woman's sentence." In that essay, she doubts that a woman can use the same sentence as a man to write literature, because "the weight, the pace, the stride of a man's mind are too unlike her own for her to lift anything…

By the late 19th century, the new universities in the United States had become so closely intertwined with the research imperative that their future depended on their position at the center of knowledge creation. The tension between the liberal arts college and the "modern" research university initiated a process of differentiation that…

Modes of writing utilized within school systems leave little room for students to infuse personal perspectives as objective and formal expression are given higher merit. This approach has marginalized students and created environments not conducive to the process of written expression. Heeding the educational movement of experts in the discipline…

Writing has always been connected to technology. Following the formation of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), cultural studies flourished in writing and communications classrooms because of activities related to the nexus between rhetoric and composition, communication theory, emergent technological mediums and…

A study examined the effect of computer-assested instruction on fourth graders' writing skills. Two fourth grade classes from one elementary school in New Jersey participated in the study. One class (the experimental sample) was taught to use the computer as a writing tool, while the other class (the control sample) used only pencil and paper.…

Two colleagues in the field of composition studies speak to each other during a panel discussion titled, "Writing, Rhetoric, and 'Creative' Writing: Refiguring the Undergrduate Curriculum." The first respondent posits that academic department boundaries are out of date; they block the way to many useful collaborations. The same can be…

Girls and boys write differently. Girls like to write about subjects close to home: self, friends, parents, teachers. Boys write about activities in the community beyond the home: technology, sports, policemen, firemen, war. Boys not only write about vigorous engagement but demonstrate it in the classroom where they tend to dominate while girls…

Two college writing teachers share their viewpoint that people outside the academic setting often misunderstand the time-consuming activities involved with responding to student writing. They agree that teachers should envision evaluation as conducting a conversation with the writer of the essay. The key component of this conversation, depending…

During interviews conducted with Janet Emig, the true identity of "Lynn," the primary subject of Emig's influential 1971 monograph "The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders," was determined. Discovery of Susan Gzech's true identity led to an interview which shed some interesting light on Emig's case study and on composition…

By virtue of its interdisciplinary nature, the Humanities Base program at the University of Dayton encourages carefully designed composition instruction that reaches beyond the boundaries of traditional pedagogy. Because the Humanities Base themes are set in binary opposites--faith versus reason; autonomy versus responsibility; individual versus…

Presenting highlights from the past decade of East Central Writing Centers Association conferences, this book addresses the questions of how writing conferences foster the development of writing ability and how teachers can give students control of their own writing and of the writing conference and thus promote higher-order thinking. By providing…

Many English handbooks and "grammars" fail to offer sound advice to writers about matters of exactness in diction and precision in sentence structure. A gap between linguists and English teachers, the literary bias of most graduate departments of English, and a national obsession with the all-powerful capabilities of common sense, have…