Gives seven responses from practicing English teachers concerning ways that they have implemented the writing of various kinds of letters by students into the English curriculum. Demonstrates the efficacy and success of such methods. (HB)

Describes an assignment in writing documentation that turns the classroom into a laboratory for usability testing, giving students a clear sense of the reader responding to their text. (SR)

Presents a transcript of an interview with successful young adult author Jerry Spinelli. Describes the techniques and writing strategies used by Spinelli. Discusses ways of generating stories, and the author's concept of his audience. (HB)

Describes a writing assignment in which students from two different first-year composition classes evaluated and graded each other's papers. Discusses how this established a genuine audience, empowered students, and generated enthusiasm. (SR)

Considers claims regarding GTE (Generic Tutoring Environment) and describes how instructional strategies are represented in Eon, an authoring tool for intelligent tutoring systems. Highlights include comparisons of GTE with other formalisms; intended audiences; representing instructional expertise; tradeoffs between generality and inferencing…

Describes a small-scale experiment in which five professional writers were asked to revise brochure fragments based on the feedback from readers. Discusses the type of feedback collected from readers and how the experiment focused on the revision phase following formative text evaluation. (SG)

The ability to communicate persuasively is an important managerial tool. Surveys of both students and employers underscore the importance of oral and written communication skills and persuasion to successful careers in business. Writing persuasive documents to customers, subordinates, superiors, or stakeholders requires the ability to analyze the…

The use of first and second person pronouns is an important indicator of how audiences are conceptualized by speakers and writers in academic discourse. Several grammarians and linguists have studied more or less specifically this part of the English language. Two of the most widely discussed aspects of pronouns are their reference and their…

A writing workshop held during a school holiday in an urban center in Southern Africa illustrated the premise that writing experiences with literary patrons can result in benefits for young authors. The workshop was planned with the purpose of encouraging children to write in a setting that emphasized the establishment of a children's library, a…

In addition to the variety of programs, activities, scholarships, and brochures included in Memphis State University's (MSU) minority recruiting program, the institution uses two approaches to the use of media not normally used in recruiting African-American students. The first is a newsletter aimed at historically African-American churches and…

A study examined how student-writers accommodated a real audience--that is how they adapted their writing to communicate clearly and forcefully with an audience other than the teacher. Subjects, 18 students in a pre-composition, remedial English course at Indiana University East, were asked to revise the formal drafts into a…

"Marketing" and "branding" were once considered dirty words on campus but faculty, staff, and board members now appreciate the value of getting their message out and managing their reputation. The question is not so much whether to invest, but when, how, and most important, what's the return on investment? A roundtable of accomplished marketing…

Two writing teachers designed a graduate-level seminar where other writing teachers could share writing with the global electronic community. They expected these seminar students to embrace this new technology because the benefits of Internet writing seemed to provide a practical way to promote audience, voice, and collaboration, three of the…

Presents basic design tenets for electronic library guides and the concerns these guides present for internal policymaking. The goal is to help library staffs produce electronic guides that will be effectively utilized by a variety of patrons without creating an added burden for the library. (Author/LRW)

Discusses the importance of using good instructional design principles when using new technologies for education. Highlights include identifying instructional objectives; understanding the target audience, and augmenting a presentation with technology instead of letting technology dominate it; organizing the content; and preparing for…