Offers a brief look at a graduate student's on-line correspondence with three sixth-grade pen pals. Offers advice about adult-student pen pal relationships. (SR)

Describes how one English teacher celebrated the power of students' personal writing to clarify and validate their own personal life experiences. Argues for the use of personal narrative in teaching students to develop as writers and thinkers. (HB)

Demonstrates several different ways to visually display patterns of data. Discusses how the different graphics highlight different information in the data. (SR)

Considers the "marginality" of the situation of writing centers and their directors. Explores a possible reinvention for writing centers' history and mentality, with the help of concepts from anthropology. Finds that the writing center is not a space, a pedagogy, or an academic department; it crosses all disciplines. Surveys cultural…

Reports on a study that explored, first, how metadiscourse can enhance college students' awareness of readers' needs and, second, how the use of metadiscourse is related to the quality of the texts that students produced. Suggests that metadiscourse produces better student writing. (TB)

Instructional rubrics can help students to improve their writing skills and become self-regulated writers. Clear, accessible instructional rubrics give students repeated practice with planning, revising, and editing. It is also noted that using rubrics for self-assessment and peer assessment will help the students navigate the writing process in…

Effective writing teachers act as models, coaches, assessors, planners and consultants when they establish common objectives and activities, build social bonds, and support students as they grow in their abilities. Managing five roles is very challenging for the writing teachers, but with patience and perseverance, they can help students to become…

The punctuation system presented in this paper has explanatory power insofar as it explains how good writers punctuate. The paper notes that good writers have learned, through reading, the differences among a hierarchy of marks and acquired a sense of independent clauses that allows them to use the hierarchy, along with a reader-sensitive notion…

There are several distinct reasons for writing as a participant-observer. In general, the choice lies among four broad kinds of writing that differ according to role, purpose, and audience. Diary writing can record and clarify for the student what went on, possibly with a privileged reader in mind who will have a sympathetic understanding. The log…

Writing is an act of self construction. Considering how students process information can improve the quality of instruction in composing courses, but only if quantifiable, verified models of cognitive functions are taken to heart and applied to teaching methods in the classroom. C. G. Jung's model of the four functions (thinking, sensation,…

To force students--at the very beginning of the writing process--to be aware of audience and to gain insight into their own writing, in-class writing and sharing exercises can be invaluable. For example, students can present to the class their subject for an upcoming paper, with the class responding on paper to such questions as: (1) What do you…

Discusses the dangers of writing instruction that encourages "voice" (expressiveness of style) by capitalizing on the same kinds of fears that power evangelism. Claims this approach is not appropriate for all students, may cause problems when a piece is to be written by a committee, and may not be essential at all in factual, informative…

Based on the idea that the best way to help students write better is to have them write more, this article describes an instructional process called journal freewriting. Shows how freewriting, or writing without planning and without stopping, may be used cooperatively by social studies and English departments to enhance efforts to improve…

Advocates demonstrating writing as a teaching method and compares it to teaching skiing and pottery. (EL)

Proposes that universities should offer courses in developmental reading and writing to make this generation of students more effective and efficient processors of information. (EL)