Describes a writing assignment (designed as an alternative to a traditional literary analysis paper) for a sophomore-level introduction to short story course, in which students assemble their own thematic anthology of short stories with introduction, headnotes, and annotated bibliography. (SR)

This document provides complete collections of columns from the journal "Assessment Update" for the past 10 years. By-lined columns from Trudy W. Banta, Editor, include articles on: (1) encouraging faculty involvement in assessment; (2) the growing variety of assessment methods; (3) assessment in response to external pressures: performance funding…

Provides an overview and several examples of the "reader's theatre" approach to teaching literature, which dramatizes literature to provide both a visual and an oral stimulus for those unaccustomed to using imagination to experience literary works. (FL)

A project was undertaken by the Two-Year College Development Center to identify programmatic efforts in New York State two-year colleges that were effectively serving special needs populations and were due, in some measure, to the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act. The project involved a survey of the chief academic officers at 62 State…

Notes that there are two common definitions of writing style, one monistic and one dualistic, both of which make style unteachable. Reviews these two concepts and then offers an alternative definition of style that unites the advantages of each. (FL)

This article presents an interview with Karl Kroeber that was originally published in "English Department Updates" (Fall 2009), a semiannual alumni newsletter of the Columbia University Department of English & Comparative Literature. In this interview, Kroeber, who taught at Columbia for 57 years, discusses the range of courses he taught during…

This study explored the effects of cultural and linguistic background, L2 proficiency, and gender on language learning strategies for 263 college-level learners from Chinese, Russian, and Latino backgrounds. Data based on the SILL (Oxford, 2001) revealed that Russian students used significantly more strategies than the Chinese students in three…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate online dictionaries from faculty prospective. The study tried to obtain in depth information about various forms of dictionaries the faculty used; degree of awareness and accessing online dictionaries; types of online dictionaries accessed; basic features of information provided; major benefits gained…

Motivation is one of the most popular topics on language teaching and learning. Many studies on language learning focus on students' motivation; however, teachers' motivation is easily overlooked in the area of the applied linguistics field. In this paper, the researcher presents a study to investigate how satisfied English teachers at…

Describes methods for teaching student writers basic principles of organization. Argues that teachers should help their students learn the process of discovering organizations appropriate for their material instead of merely teaching traditional forms of written organization. (HB)

The College English Test (CET) is an English language test designed for educational purposes, administered on a very large scale, and used for making high-stakes decisions. This paper discusses the key issues facing the CET during the course of its development in the past two decades. It argues that the most fundamental and critical concerns of…

Argues against requiring students to prepare formal outlines before writing papers and recommends instead that students prepare the rough, idiosyncratic lists that working writers use before they write. (AEA)

Examines the personal writing method proposed by Ken Macrorie and explains how it can help students conceptualize and form generalizations that extend their personal reminiscences into more objective expository writing. (HTH)

This article reports on a case study of an exemplary teacher who was a participant in a professional learning project, WriteIdeas. The teacher provided instructional support in writing to a targeted student with learning difficulties in an inclusive Year 8 English classroom. Analytical frameworks were developed and applied to the data that had…