Suggests that composition courses can strengthen ties between reading literature and writing about it. Shows how writing assignments that originate in readings of literary texts encourage students'"writerliness." Provides a sample satiric sketch assignment sheet. (MM)

Notes that marking student papers is a rhetorical act requiring audience awareness. Describes how thinking of paper-marking as a conversation can make the task both more enjoyable and more effective. (HTH)

Investigates whether students revise more extensively and successfully with a computer than with conventional methods. Indicates that writing on a computer did not lead to increased revision for these students and that no positive relationship existed between extensive revision and the quality ratings. (AEW)

Argues that a writing-across-the-curriculum program should be designed, administered, and taught equally by all departments in a university. Stresses the importance of developing a dialogic program, with creative interaction between faculty members from various disciplines and between students and professors. (ARH)

Describes, through letters and narrative, how a teacher struggled with a stubborn adult student to teach him how to write. (SRT)

An instructor teaching a summer semester of freshman composition collected data for a descriptive study from five students in the class. Of the five students, one was Caucasian, and the other four were Hispanic; all had children. A central value of the study was its potential for demonstrating the benefits of teaching composition through…

This teacher research shows how peer reviews change draft papers. In the majority of cases, final papers improved in content. The study analyzes data collected from 40 intermediate/advanced nonnative speakers of English enrolled in freshman composition for international students at a large private university. It also examines student reflections…

Teachers of first-year college composition, particularly instructors and graduate teaching assistants with little or no teaching experience, are caught up in a debate concerning the appropriateness of social action as a facet of their personal pedagogical strategies. On the one hand, they are encouraged to promote social activism by individuals…

Unless questions about student performance and student retention can be answered and unless educators are proactive in finding and publicizing such information, basic writing programs cannot determine if what they are doing is working. Hard data, especially from underrepresented groups, is needed to support these programs. At Arizona State…

Traditionally, students taking an introductory English composition class have been encouraged to perform their research in the college or university library, but in recent years there has been a trend toward encouraging students to perform part or all of their research for composition research papers on the Internet or within an entirely…

The computer and the World Wide Web must be recognized for the new and different slant that they can offer to the assignments in writing classes, including as a method of embodiment for M. Bakhtin's concept of dialogism. While students encounter articles and approaches to controversial issues, many will not attempt to understand or embrace the…

This paper reports the results and educational implications of an experimental, comparative study evaluating the gains in overall writing quality in two groups of college freshmen composition students. The experimental group of 45 students learned to compose their first four of eight essays on the computer, while their professor intervened with…

Identifies a number of the major aspects of social class that freshman composition addresses in its aims of enabling students to think and write in ways that will make them good citizens of the academic (and larger middle class) community and viable candidates for good middle class jobs upon graduation. (TB)

Offers a description of three prominent pedagogical approaches observed in freshman English teaching assistants (TAs): expressivism, formalism/mimeticism, and rhetoricism. Finds that, although a teacher may teach from all perspectives, usually one is emphasized. Studies and presents examples of each type. States that the rhetorical type is…

Compares Sophocles'"Antigone" with the shootings of antiwar protestors on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University to help ancient tragedy come alive for students as modern tragedy. (MG)