Argues that the punctuation system does have features that generally make systems learnable, such as binary contrasts, limitation of parallel categories to seven or fewer options, and repeated application of the same criterion to different kinds of entities. Concludes that the simplicity that allows some readers to learn this system unconsciously…

Proposes an alternative invention strategy for research-based argumentative writing. Investigates the coincidental usage of the term "whatever" in hip-hop, theory, and composition studies. Presents a "whatever-pedagogy" identified as "hip-hop pedagogy," a writing practice that models itself after digital sampling's rhetorical strategy of…

Echoes Robert J. Conners' call for a reexamination of sentence pedagogies in composition teaching. Offers an explanation of the unsolved mystery of why sentence combining improves student writing, using insights provided by work in contemporary research in linguistics and in language processing. Argues that educators invite words and phrases, the…

Illustrates key features of visual rhetoric as they operate in two professional academic hypertexts and student work designed for the World Wide Web. Considers how by looking at features like audience stance, transparency, and hybridity, writing teachers can teach visual rhetoric as a transformative process of design. (SG)

Shares insights and experiences of three students that might smooth the way for other graduate students who may be struggling to chart their own courses to the "PhD shore." Suggests that it is ultimately the student who must take ownership and chart a course through the "choppy dissertation waters." (SG)

Discusses how the eloquent "I" cultivates a deepened self-dialogue and offers students an epistemological and rhetorical discipline. Reconfigures Mikhail Bakhtin's ethics of "otherness" and his dialogic-prompted way of knowing. Discusses looking for the eloquent "I" in the writing classroom. (SG)

Argues for a context-sensitive understanding of plagiarism by analyzing a set of written institutional policies and suggesting ways that they might be revised. Offers examples of classroom practices to help teach a concept of plagiarism as situated in context. Concludes that plagiarism is an area where students need access to their teacher's…

Suggests that philosopher Donald Davidson's interpretative principle of charity can help explain why communication is impoverished or even impossible in classrooms governed by traditional, authoritarian practices that form a "pedagogy of severity." Notes that teachers should promote a "pedagogy of charity," which assumes that students are rational…

Considers how silence has positive as well as negative attributes, and composition teachers can help students understand and use its aesthetic, ethical, and political resources in their personal writing. Notes that approaching silence in these ways can establish new alignments among the expressivist, psychoanalytical, and social discourses that…

Argues that looking at students' uses of cliche in context can teach instructors about students' struggles to fashion new knowledge from what they already believe to be true. Examines students' most frequently used cliches. Suggests writing instructors who examine their response to cliche can learn how their pedagogical practices can deafen them…

Claims many student writers long for instruction in using writing to assess, define, and assert who they are becoming. Suggests these students would find Black feminist essayists useful for their ability to reconcile social and personal identities and for directing those identities toward rhetorically useful ends. (NH)

Examines two "success" stories about student writers. Addresses the conversation about teachers writing and writers teaching. Questions whether the first-success-story-student wrote a story that better served her purpose for learning, and whether the student in story #2 will know what to do with the excess of meaning the class has constructed…

Notes the perception among students that cultural critique is a privileged, elitist mode of inquiry. Argues that a dialogic, Bakhtinian approach to response could help address this problem. Discusses how two Bakhtinian concepts ("anacrisis" and the "superaddresse") might be applied to writing classrooms. (RS)

Summarizes the Ann Arbor "Black English" court case, focusing on teacher attitudes, knowledge, and practice. Argues that three distinct constructs of teacher knowledge are evident in writing studies today. Concludes that pedagogical theory in composition needs to more adequately address questions of language diversity and race to affect the…

Interrogates the reading/writing connection by evaluating how three essays by published writers affected the attitude and writing practices of university students in a course on the personal essay. Describes the course. Suggests what findings imply for current rationales about the reading/writing connection and for the use of anthology readings in…