Epideictic rhetoric, expression of praise or blame, animates much communication, from gossip to sermons, from commercial ads to love letters. Even when writing for purposes other than to judge, writers often frame their talk with implicit or explicit expressions of praise for individuals or groups or ideas considered "good." Epideictic…

Based on extensive interviews, this book investigates how women in different academic disciplines perceive and describe their experiences as writers in the university. The book focuses on: (1) the writing strategies of 35 women from 5 different disciplines (anthropology, education, history, nursing, and psychology) and 4 academic ranks (seniors,…

The Girls' Books in Series collection at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Jackson Library contains over 1850 volumes, with publication dates ranging from the mid-1800s to the 1980s. The library's list currently contains approximately 511 different series. The library owns all the titles for 85 of the series. For 167 of the series,…

In his book, "Illiberal Education," Dinesh D'Souza dramatizes the transformation of American campuses and the academic revolution that is allegedly toppling traditional notions of Western civilization. However, many scholars are concerned that D'Souza'a collection of examples might leave readers with a false impression of the severity of…

Two studies compared the impact of black and white audiences on black students' writing style. In the first study, eight students in an all-black intermediate composition class completed one argumentative draft addressed to black opponents and one addressed to white opponents on two different topics. The essays were examined for stylistic features…

Linguistically inclined scholars such as Ragnar Rommetveit and Michael Halliday offer a sociocognitive understanding of writing that challenges current writing theories, which focus attention on processes to the virtual exclusion of the writing product. These linguistic scholars provide ways of understanding context, not as fixed or concrete, but…

A set of much examined scientific papers which specifically portray a controversial topic and also manifest ally-peer and competitor-peer enscripted audiences are those written by James Watson and Francis Crick concerning their discovery of the structure of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA). The theoretical perspective of an ally-peer and…

Teachers at both college and pre-college levels have long realized that collaborative writing is an effective learning tool for beginning writers. Many have pointed out that collaboration in writing groups properly shifts the focus from the teacher to the student, and allows writers to take more responsibility for their own composing processes.…

Computer technology such as telecommunications software and electronic mail allowed students in advanced writing courses at Incarnate Word College and St. Mary's University in Texas to exchange comments about their papers. The intention of the writing teachers was to emphasize the role that invention and planning play in writing, to highlight the…

Debate educators have been concerned about the disadvantages of tournament debating. While student debaters have learned critical thinking, research, writing, public speaking, and other skills, some former participants feel the experience left them too argumentative generally. Some scholars favor moving away from formal debating contests. A…

A study examined the assumption that writing is a way to learn by examining the relative effects of writing and studying as learning aids. The study also explored the role of individual differences in an effort to identify features of the writing process that may influence what students learn through writing. The experiment used think-aloud…

Some preliminary ideas on narrative inquiry in educational studies and educational reform are presented. Illustrations from Bay Street School (drawn from a 9-year research project on personal knowledge and narrative) are included. Since whatever may be said about narrative as method follows from its character as phenomenon, the aspects of…

This paper explores a writing-classroom pedagogy that uses dramatic literature and racially reversed roles as a springboard for discussion of diversity issues. According to the paper, the belief is that providing students with a drama that features ethnically reversed casts, performed sequentially, would allow them to recognize how powerfully skin…

A writing instructor's quest in a screenwriting course was to convince her students to get in touch with their inner voices. Her male students are mostly Tarantino clones who write scripts that could star Robert DeNiro or Harvey Keitel. The instructor wanted them to create characters that are believable and that the audience can attach to in a…

This paper reports on the analysis of an instructional text on the basis of M. Bakhtin's (1986) notion of speech genres, which is used to theorize the different influences on the writing of an instructional text. Speech genres are used to reveal the multiple voices inherent in any text: the writer's, the reader's, and the text's. The…