Suggests an activity that helps students see the relationship of suffixes to particular parts of speech. (TJ)

Offers definitions of some jargon terms frequently used in the composition research and teaching field. (HTH)

Describes an activity (based on a "Calvin and Hobbs" cartoon) for a college-level introductory grammar course, which asks students to work in groups to create deliberately arbitrary "grammar" rules, and then consider as a group the validity of such rules. Argues that in this way students learn the practice of bringing natural language evidence to…

Describes the 50-minute lecture the author gave to a twelfth-grade college prep high school class on the first 18 lines of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." Discusses how the author learned that her frustration with her college students' perceived lack of knowledge was based on her own lack of understanding of how high school students…

Outlines a course designed to help students become more effective critics by teaching them a variety of ways to read and analyze literature. (RB)

Describes a course in which students are allowed to select their own reading materials and read according to individual tastes. (RB)

Offers exercises designed to teach college freshmen the characteristics of the participial modifier. The exercises are based on a form of programed teaching that involves a high degree of student involvement, repeatedly presenting students with a stimulus, and asking for a quick, patterned response. (FL)

Provides a guide for teaching Edwin Morgan's poem, "O Pioneers!" (TJ)

Describes a class activity which gives students practice in character analysis based on characters' dialog in plays. Offers a version of this activity as applied to Caryl Churchill's play "Top Girls." (SR)

Careful use of analogy can create interesting and sharp writing. Some of the problems are that an analogy imposes an attitude, there must be a counterpart, details may or may not correspond point-for-point, and an analogy starts in difference and is then brought into the realm of likeness. (TJ)

Presents an eight-point plan, with illustrations, for assigning student grades. (JM)

Suggests teaching Bernard Malamud's novel, "The Natural," because it is a work of a powerful imagination; can be used to stimulate searches into history, literature, and myth; and can be a catalyst for student writing. Describes several approaches to studying the book. (TJ)

Suggests the use of parody to deepen students' understanding of how and why poems work. (TJ)

Relates a two-part writing assignment for the study of poetry, in which students are assigned to write a critique in response to a particular question and are then asked to give a personal response. (TJ)