Describes a method utilizing student-teacher memos that helps students to be more aware of their purposes and audiences for their writing. Delineates the procedures by which one teacher instituted communication with students through the use of such memos, thereby improving student writing. (HB)

Comments on the interview of bell hooks in the preceding issue of the "Journal of Advanced Composition." Critiques hooks's concepts regarding audience and multicultural pedagogy. (HB)

Defines technical writing, the importance of audience awareness, and the fog index. Analyzes examples of technical writing and tips on developing skills such as writing instructions and assembling a model. Offers assignments and projects as well as class activities. (PRA)

Asserts that Great Britain's National Curriculum is based on the flawed assumption that by attending to purpose and audience, the student will write in a preferred manner. Argues that form needs conscious formulation, using a language that needs to be taught and that is not self-evident from an attention to either "purpose" or…

Discusses the problem of asking students to write for the teacher, an authoritative, superior reader. Asserts that a better approach is to ask the students to first address their papers to a small group, and second to choose a specific value system to characterize the attitudes and beliefs of the group selected. (PRA)

Relates a student's experience writing a college application essay. Argues that switching topics should be redefined as global revision, a "pregnant pause" providing evidence of recursivity, and that adolescent writers who talk about their emerging texts are more likely to reconceptualize their written documents. (SR)

Examines relationships between writing instruction and functional composition performance of third-year secondary education Dutch students. Finds that, of 36 instructional characteristics, effective ones included instruction and exercises in writing functional texts, writing for a specific purpose, tailoring to a particular audience, global rating…

Argues that womanist theology (which employs a socioreligious hermeneutic that examines and critiques racism, oppression, and classism) and the texts it gathers can serve as efficacious course content for other-literate students. Notes that womanist theology offers students a scholarly discipline that expresses inter- and intracultural rhetorical…

Argues that writing teachers ultimately need to view their prompts rhetorically. Argues that writing teachers should consider carefully the role that students have as audiences, writing audience responses to teachers' texts through their essays. Argues that a rhetorical analysis of the prompt will help students criticize the cues of a real-world…

Presents Part II of an interview with Ira Shor reflecting on the state of community colleges since the 1960s. Discusses how the most important thing to teach is critical inquiry and critical literacy, to study something in a methodical way and to communicate knowledge gained with articulate depth to a real audience. Outlines 13 goals for schooling…

An exploration was made of the discursive conventions for inscribing a reciprocal relationship between research activities and teaching practices typical of articles published in "College Composition and Communication." The study looked at 31 essays published in the 1993 volume. Ten recurring features of the articles were identified;…

The concept of audience has emerged as a central theme in many scholarly discussions. Walter Ong focuses on fiction and believes that what has been said about fictional narrative applies to all writing. Lev Vygotsky offers the view that students work in the zone of proximal development and observes that thought itself develops as a result of our…

Ken Macrorie coined the term "I Search," which puts the writer at the center of the paper and seeks to put a human face on the data collected. Looking for a way to use the research writing assignment to help students learn to adjust their ideas to different formats by becoming more aware of how different structures can be shaped around…

At Syracuse University (New York), Writing 205 offers students an introduction to the principles of rhetoric and the concept of disciplinary discourse. The study of landscape and place serves as a conduit for students to explore design, intention, and audience--a rhetoric of place--in order to develop a comprehension which is then easily…

This paper presents a discussion examining personal revelations discovered through peer critique and teacher response. It begins by discussing the issue of dealing with alien terms and specialized jargon in academic papers, through the example of one instructor's different treatment of two student papers based on the instructor's familiarity with…