Explores dilemmas that arise as compositionists continue to develop theories and practices of mixed and alternative discourses. Focuses on how composition studies have attached spatial designations to discourses. Notes that the label "home" implies that such discourses have been protected from the onslaughts of a dynamic and changing world's…

Notes that new teaching assistants (TAs) and first year composition students similarly grapple with ambiguity, multiplicity, and open-endedness. Contends that new TAs' queries and early classroom experiences can provide a valuable occasion to re-balance the emphasis in a pro-seminar between teaching and learning. Presents strategies for addressing…

Presents and discusses three sets of texts that are excerpted from essays written for a second-semester, first-year composition course at a regional public university. Considers the relationship of the linguistic and sociolinguistic markedness of texts. Explores what the sociolinguistic markedness should be in the writing classroom given the…

Argues for the systematic use of patterns of arrangement to order and revise texts for a particular subject matter, purpose, and audience. Illustrates how writers mobilize textual patterns to some tangible effect and, as a consequence, how writing teachers and student-writers can overcome the pragmatic limitations ready-built into arrangement and…