These two recipients of this year's Alan C. Purves Award reflect on their work (reported in "RTE" Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 269-303) on "A Cognitive Strategies Approach to Reading and Writing Instruction for English Language Learners in Secondary School" and the lessons they learned from their original research study as they tried to…

In a reflection on her teaching practices, Wendy Bishop in "Teaching Lives" suggests that over time she became a "social expressivist," in that by writing about her own teaching she learned "to develop a personal voice within the public matrix of professional communities" (ix). For the compositionist committed to the…

This report responds to the need for information on how to improve adolescent writing skills. The study builds upon previously published "Reading Next" results and highlights key elements essential to improving writing. The study used meta-analysis, allowing researchers to determine the strength and consistency of the effects of different…

The communication skills of reading and writing go hand in hand with science as natural partners for fostering students' understandings of the world. The similarities that exist between reading and writing strategies and science-process skills add depth to instruction when these subject areas are brought together. In the following unit of study,…

In this article, the authors explain how one of them helped a struggling reader develop reading, writing, and self-regulatory strategies. The article is based on two foundations: Marie Clay's, the developer of Reading Recovery, ideas on the self-extending system of reading and Schunk and Zimmerman's four developmental levels of self-regulation…

Mastery of content area reading in science and social studies is demonstrated through writing as well as reading. Integrating writing with reading enhances comprehension because the two are reciprocal processes. Therefore, teachers who implement a variety of writing strategies help students better understand content area texts. This article offers…

A writing workshop is a pedagogical tool that can create a more productive experience for teachers and students alike. Business students who have used this technique with experienced instructors agree that a well-planned writing workshop can be useful for dispelling writing fears, furthering understanding of business communication skills,…

Annotating is a writing-to-learn strategy used for reading and rereading. Annotation skills makes comprehension of difficult text much easy and it encourages active reading.

This essay presents a task-based multimodal framework for composing grounded in theories of multiple media and goal formation. By examining the way two students negotiated the complex communicative tasks presented them in class, the essay underscores the benefits associated with asking students to attend to the various motives, activities, tools,…

In many classrooms, poetry is shoved to the neglected edge of language arts, out of the bright core of content that may (should) include grammar, vocabulary, and strong literature. If time permits, a class may read a few poems and discuss them from a so-called "interpretive" point of view. All of this takes place in the context of an apparent…

The author, a high school teacher and forensics coach, describes ways to teach writing--including on-demand essays--that draw on successful practices she developed in coaching. Students learn the importance of using personal conviction and qualified thesis statements to build arguments, as well as learning "The Debater Four-Step," an effective…

A case study on the teaching of writing, this paper discusses what motivates students in a freshman writing course to complete increasingly difficult writing assignments. The study provides a glimpse into how one class of freshman students developed positive expectations for writing a paper about a difficult poem by helping each other map…

This article presents two interview strategies used to assess college students' developmental growth toward self-authorship. We illustrate that self-authorship is a foundation for achieving many college learning outcomes and argue that designing practice to promote self-authorship requires understanding how to assess it. We offer a brief overview…

Blogging has emerged as one of the most popular forms of online discourse. The ease and lack of expense in setting up blogs has raised intriguing possibilities for language learning classrooms. The unique nature of their architecture and their low cost have not only affected how students can publish and distribute their work to a wider audience…

Over the years of teaching, the author has been more and more interested in making course content and goals relevant to the real, lived experiences of students. Based on this interest and spurred by an article on community-based research in "Teaching English in the Two-Year College" (TETYC) in September of 2005 as well as a move in composition to…