Constructs a protocol of a teacher reading and responding to a student essay. Provides a map of the various concerns a teacher can take up in reading. Creates and models a heuristic to reflect on reading and responding practices in light of one's philosophy, assumptions, and practice. (PM)

Presents the idea that students should develop different writing styles. Encourages writing poetry regularly. Focuses on the need for a student to develop a prose style from his or her culture. Encourages students to develop professional, academic writing. (PM)

Proposes that emotions should be regarded as important components of learning. Focuses on recent trends in composition relating to how the emotions have or have not been included in discussions emphasizing writing instruction. Suggests opportunities for further research that give attention to emotion. (PM)

Proposes that general education curricula often have difficulty remaining faithful to goals of student empowerment. Provides case study of first year composition (FYC). Suggests that a strong commitment to reflection and revision of programs will create curricula that are more questioning and less comfortable with their own assumptions. Proposes…

Criticizes the hegemony of social constructivism in rhetoric and composition. Argues there are more options than social constructivism, positivism, and expressivism. Describes Jurgen Habermas' philosophy of universal pragmatics as one of a number of alternatives. (PM)

Argues for the importance of "gesturing" to the rhetoric and composition field's discursive conventions when writing for publication. Discusses two forms of gesturing, using graduate student submissions to the journal "Rhetoric Review." Shows how recognizing these gestures leads to important discoveries on how emerging scholars can participate in…

Notes that writing instructors want to resist authoritarian classroom arrangements because they want students to be active in their education and in their lives. Describes efforts to develop a "new model of authority, a new space," using peer group leaders, advanced standing students who facilitated writing groups in a first-year basic writing…

Reviews the inclusion of literacy lessons and rhetorical learning into the architecture and urban planning curricula. Reviews these curricula in order to demonstrate how they can be turned to inform attention to place in the teaching of writing. Concludes with a discussion of some assignments that such perspectives support. (SG)

Argues that while competence in interpretive analysis is a commonly acknowledged goal of a college education, it is rarely explicitly addressed in the curriculum. Notes that because interpretive analysis makes specific cognitive and generic demands on writers, expository writing students would benefit from both theoretical and practical training…

Considers defining "culture," noting how it is difficult to define because those individuals defining it cannot separate themselves from it. Relates these issues to student writing and their writing improvement. Addresses violence in relation to culture. (SG)

Presents a course design for a graduate level seminar in writing for students concentrating in either composition and rhetoric or TESOL for the Master of Arts in English at Wright State University. Notes that the course focuses on curriculum design and integrates the practices of teacher lore with the disciplined, critical thought expected in a…

Describes and discusses "Rhetoric 2001," the author's essay written in 1974 asserting that teachers of writing underestimate their role in the discursive construction and reconstruction of cultural structures and processes--and therefore underestimate the crucial, powerful role they can play. Notes that because of significant advances in theory…

Presents a conversation that is designed to get at the differences in definitions of basic writing across institutional boundaries, divergences in placement procedures and assessment mechanisms, and problems theoretical work has had historically in tackling the issues of central importance to educators and their students. Concludes with…

Considers how effective teacher feedback increases students' awareness of the choices they make in a piece of writing and enables them to discuss those choices with others. Describes the Comment to Comment assignment, an asynchronous written collaboration between teacher and student. Discusses the process of trial and error that the author went…

Explores three alternative approaches (conciliatory approach, integrative approach, and deliberative approach) that writers with a broad repertoire of argumentative styles should be able to adopt when they are addressing controversial issues and disputed topics. Focuses on finding differences among the alternative approaches and looking at…