Reports on a survey of college freshmen concerning how their high school teachers prepared them or could have prepared them better for college writing expectations. Reviews results that suggest that those students who wrote the least scored the lowest in college placement exams. (TB)

Reports on a research project for which an American literature high school class was observed every day for a semester. Presents a framework for understanding teacher responses to student writing, consisting of five orientations toward that writing: interpretive, social, cognitive/emotive, evaluative, and pedagogical. (TB)

Shares information about how four African American vernacular English speakers have successfully used their language abilities--the language of their everyday lives--within the context of their expository writing. Discusses principles that have guided one teacher in her work with language diverse students. (TB)

Reviews a teacher's approaches to her three language arts classes, taught during the same period of time but in different settings and to different ages: a seventh-grade class in an affluent suburb, a college class in a middle-class neighborhood, and a prison class housed behind razor wire. (TB)

Offers a detailed overview of how writing portfolios raise student interest and commitment, shift some of the responsibility for assessment from the teacher to the student, and shift some of the responsibility for writing assignment ideas from the teacher to the student. Reviews specific procedures for conducting peer response workshops and for…

Describes a study of how portfolios are used in grade seven with particular attention to three conversations between a professional writer and students who use portfolios. Argues that portfolios must not be static compilations of work but rather ever-evolving organic creations. (TB)

Investigates a gender-related issue raised by a 1990 study of 40 11th-grade writing students. Discusses what problems are posed by and what possible solutions there are to the tendency in young women writers--more pronounced than in their male counterparts--to please the teacher and meet his or her rhetorical expectations at the expense of…

Reports the results of a study for which 25 parents were asked questions about what they believed would constitute the ideal English curriculum. Offers suggestions for how teachers can enhance their relationships with parents and educate them about modern approaches to teaching literature and writing. (TB)

Describes a four-part writing project that requires students to write about family memories and recent history, literature and folklore of their family heritage, migration patterns that brought their people to the United States, and their reflections on all of these areas. Shows how the project involves research, computer skills, and cooperation…

Argues that outlining should not be abandoned as a means to teaching students how to organize their thoughts because it can be an invaluable tool in certain circumstances. Describes in outline form how one teacher goes about teaching outlines to her students. (TB)

Explains how a teacher asks her students to write on topics close to their hearts and how she, in turn, writes her own heartfelt essays and shares them with her students. Contains one such essay, in which the author describes how she narrowly escaped serious injury when, as a teenager, she jumped on a moving vehicle. (TB)

Describes a volunteer effort involving community church groups and secondary school children in an effort to provide a summer learning experience for children in public housing. Reviews advantages of the program and what can be learned from it. (TB)

Describes an approach to teaching the student research paper that improves the quality of arguments and prose. Reviews specific steps to writing and researching the research paper, which include free writing on a topic of interest, formulating a research question, interviewing and surveying, initial drafting of an argument, and (only after these…

Explains how pop-up art can be used for research projects by taking newspaper articles and transforming them into visual displays in which the various parts of the articles--pictures, captions, and headlines--are glued onto the display. Suggests that such work is especially useful to students who are not especially strong linguistically. (TB)

Examines support for mainstreamed English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students; support systems available to mainstreamed ESL students and their teachers; language learning issues; and practices and strategies for teaching these special students. Weaves throughout points related to second language acquisition theory as the basis for ESL teaching.…