For my purposes, I approach writing assessment as more than just grading or responding to a set of student papers within a classroom context. Instead, I look at writing assessment as a complex act that links to teaching and learning, that affects the educational environment and students, that acknowledges the consequences of the assessment, and…

The pedagogical principle of experiential learning embodied in the oral interpretation of literature through Readers' Theater provides an avenue to accomplish a seemingly daunting task. Students' participation in reading, interpreting, discussing, writing, assessing, and performing their own creative responses to a literary work promotes a…

I propose that we think about what a paragraph is by considering its "function," what it does in a piece of writing, whether in a popular novel, a newspaper article, an e-mail, a business report, or a lofty piece of literary criticism. We might think about a paragraph as a "rhetorical dwelling."

Our thesis is more finely tuned to Thomas Merton (1915-68) the writer, more specifically, the poet/artist/writer and thinker. These are the components of the "Merton" voice. Merton senses the quality of innocence as the "sine qua non" of the poet or writer's vocation: "His art depends on an ingrained innocence which he would lose in business, in…

The historical transition from the 20th Century to the 21st has sparked a boom in identifying names and classifying characteristics of the young American adults and teens coming of age at that time. Though there is much discrepancy about the starting birth year and the life span parameters of "Generation Y", generalizing descriptions abound in an…

"Primary research counts, but we don't teach it." This was the sentiment, if these were not the actual words, of Lynee Lewis Gaillet in her critique of the traditional composition curriculum at the spring 2011 annual meeting of the College English Association in St. Petersburg. Gaillet proposes an alternative to furthering students' sometimes…

This essay concerns the methods I use in my 300-level Shakespeare course at Winthrop University to foster research worthy of frequent conference presentation and occasional publication. In short, my approach is to provide suitable topics and to require multiple stages in the composition and research process. The results, I have discovered, are…

This essay has been one of the hardest professionally to write as it documents some very personal and professional soul-searching that involved myself, many of my colleagues, and the students in our department over the span of four years. When I first presented our initial reform attempts at the 2010 CEA in San Antonio, much of this paper was…

Integrating writing instruction into the content-area classroom poses a variety of challenges for instructors at all levels. Beyond the need to embrace a new skill set involving writing instruction, there is the resistance of students (and faculty) who find a disconnection between content-area and literacy learning. Developing a method for…

Describes some of the beneficial effects of studying the heritage embodied in Afro-American Literature. (RB)

A teacher of creative writing discusses some of the problems students encounter in writing fiction and suggests the teacher's role is to provide a stimulating climate. (RB)

Examines the results of a team teaching approach used in a freshman English literature course at Rutgers College. (RB)

Discusses the importance of research and scholarship in relation to the fine and liberal arts and examines its relationship to teaching also. (RB)

Argues that writing teachers must assist students to be more sensitive to the finer points of writing and to the power of language to move and persuade. (HOD)

Describes how the author changed his pedagogical stance to address students' interests and concerns in a college composition course. Argues that this approach helps explore students' educational values and improves the quality of their writing. (MM)