Suggests a course unit created in response to General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) guidelines which attempts to avoid the guidelines' inherent division between skills and creative response. (JAD)

Notes the benefits of homework and discusses aspects of homework including individual student involvement, different kinds of homework, meaningful work, the attraction of creativity, advantages of feedback, grade level and time concerns, schools-home linkage, a homework mission statement, and purposeful homework versus busy work. (SR)

Urges college educators to define their institutions' academic literacy tasks by assessing the written and oral texts students will encounter, by identifying tasks assigned by professors, by determining how professors perceive their academic domain, and by defining students' perceptions of the tasks they encounter. Suggests ways and benefits of…

There are not many English words for "anger." There's "wrath" and "ire," although no one uses "ire" anymore and hardly anyone "wrath." There's "frustration," "resentment," and "indignation," but they don't have the emotional intensity of "anger," a word that…

Fifteen writing instructors report their favorite ways of getting students to write. (RL)

This is the fourth in a series of articles on using children's literature to foster the principles of the Circle of Courage. In this issue, the author provides selections that foster generosity and altruism. (Author)

In the last issue, this journal asked a question on many librarians' minds, and it was pleased with the depth and variety of responses. As suggested by this journal editorial board member Oliver Pesch, readers were asked, "Many libraries have gone to federated searching to win users back from Google. Is it working?" Respondents approached the…

This digest considers the one thing that all English teachers do--make reading and writing assignments. It addresses 4 questions whose answers should determine the nature of the reading and writing assignments given by teachers: (1) who are the students? (2) why are the students in college? (3) what is the nature of the course in which the…

Academic Development Program students face a special challenge. Within a few short weeks, they must hone their reading, writing, and speaking skills while scrambling to adjust to life in college. Usually, pre-freshmen enrolled in the Academic Development Program are not familiar with the demands of academic reading, writing, and oral response. For…

Answers basic questions that teachers in various departments have found useful while thinking about their writing assignments: (1) the role writing assignments play; (2) whether to abolish them; (3) what students should be able to do in their writing; (4) intellectual skills students should learn; and (5) how students can be helped in…

Mr. Johnson has discovered that the higher the level of student engagement and creativity, the lower the probability of plagiarism. For teachers who would like to see such desirable results, he describes the characteristics of assignments that are most likely to produce them. Two scenarios of types of assignments that avoid plagiarism are…

This paper reflects on the use of digital photography in urban-based human geography fieldwork. It draws on the authors' experience of introducing digital photography into the teaching and assessment of a level 3 undergraduate field course in Berlin. To begin they outline how they sought to use simple digital technologies in order to facilitate…

Argues that the perennial problem of boring student writing is solved when assignments provide writers with target readers, enabling students to find their appropriate voice. Discusses a sample assignment in which students explain how to do something they do well to readers who don't know how to do it. (JG)

The stories of how educators become readers can lead to insights in the teaching process as well as providing enlightenment as to individual identity. One educator has found that writing his autobiography as a reader leads to valuable insights concerning the reading process. The insights gained through writing an autobiography, titled "My…

Circa 1984 early practitioners in the composition field imagined a potential blossoming of early efforts in computers and writing that subsequent developments in the field have lost sight of. The expense of developing personal programs, the emergence of word processing software that incorporated many of the mechanical aspects of spelling and style…