Examines the sentence-based pedagogies that arose in composition during the 1960s and 1970s (the generative rhetoric of Francis Christensen, imitation exercises, and sentence-combining) and attempts to discern why these three pedagogies have been so completely elided within contemporary composition studies. Concludes that this erasure of sentence…

Suggests the value to modern students of paraphrasing and describes exercises in paraphrasing. (DD)

Suggests the value of a prewriting sheet which asks remedial students to specify an occasion, audience, and purpose for each of their one-paragraph papers. (DD)

Describes the evolution of a "scrambled paragraph" exercise to show how to bridge the gap between laboratory exercise and students' criticism of their own writing. (DD)

The discipline of writing well is fundamental to the concept of writing as a liberating activity. (JH)

One can learn a great deal about teaching composition by writing the essays he assigns to students to write. (JH)

Common approaches to composition teaching are satirized. (JH)

An assignment to write a comment in less than fifty words encourages conciseness and precision. (JH)

Students asked to write directions for assembling a tinkertoy structure learned valuable writing skills as well as critical ability. (JH)

The ways in which our common ways of teaching the art of writing differ from successful practices in teaching the fine arts are analyzed.

Use of dialect literature increases student awareness of dialect features and reduces the occurrence of such features in student writing.

Describes an exercise in which Black college students composed sentences saying "White is ugly" and "Black is beautiful" without using those words. Presents some of the sentences and discusses the inherent biases in the English language. (TO)