In this article, the author shares his notes toward a shared future for National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). He discusses how activism has been at the heart of both organizations, how language activism in particular has separated NCTE and CCCC--and brought them together, and…

For students, writing is too frequently a matter of going through the motions, perhaps no truer than with the traditional academic essay. Although there are many culprits for this disengagement, one is surely an over-emphasis on form--and particularly set form--to the detriment of content. When form becomes formula, planning is stultified, losing…

Across the United States, community colleges offer millions of students an open-access, low-cost postsecondary education. However, of the students who enroll in community college hoping to earn a credential or transfer to a four-year institution, only about half achieve their goal within six years. For students who enter college needing…

When being a student in grade school as well as in high school (1934-1946), grammar was heavily emphasized in English/language arts classes, particularly in grades four through the senior year in high school. Evidently, teachers and school administrators then saw a theoretical way to assist pupils in writing achievement. Grammar and writing were…

Modern secondary courses in English differ from classical tradition in their tendency to avoid direct instruction in the content and style of writing. Such avoidance is partly a function of anxieties about the role of English in students' personal development and a fear of limiting their self expression. Neither of the dominant writing pedagogies…

I draw upon Eileen Schell's notions of "maternal pedagogy" and an "ethic of care" to analyze archival material from the National Education Association and Educational Testing Service pilot "lay reader" programs of the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that there are striking similarities between the material and social circumstances of these postwar lay…

The following article maps the questions, methods, contexts, and theories presented in published scholarship on writing-related transfer. While not exhaustive, this review attempts to capture representative samples with a focus on recent publications. The article then highlights a multi-institutional research initiative that aims to flesh out the…

"English Teaching and New Literacies Pedagogy: Interpreting and Authoring Digital Multimedia Narratives" is about the fusion of media and narrative, and explores theoretical and practical dimensions of young people's engagement with contemporary forms of text. It showcases a range of critical interpretative approaches for integrating…

As districts continue to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), English language arts (ELA) teachers and content-area teachers may find themselves collaborating in surprising and welcome new ways. The CCSS's emphasis on reading and writing across all content areas provides an opportunity for ELA teachers to emerge as literacy experts in…

A subcommittee of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Executive Committee wrote the "NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing" in 2004. In over a decade since, the everyday experience of writing in people's lives has expanded dramatically. Increasingly, handheld devices are important instruments for people's writing,…

I begin with an account of my own observation of an English lesson taught by one of my student teachers using a teaching resource, "The Island," that I used myself as a new teacher more than 20 years ago and of my own responses on finding it transformed by two decades of change in educational policy and practice. It has become almost a…

This study, situated within the fields of English education and writing teacher education, illustrates not only "what" is happening in writing methods courses but why in its examination of writing methods courses and instructor influences. The writing methods course is identified by English educators and writing teacher educators as…

Writing program administrators need to be as concerned about sustaining the cultural ecologies of our communities as we are about the material economies of our institutions--we need to attend to the diverse linguistic and rhetorical ecologies within which twenty-first century student writers are exercising agency. In order to respond productively,…

Writing center tutors know that improving writing skills requires sustained effort over a long period of time. They also know that motivation--the drive to actively invest in sustained effort toward a goal--is essential for writing improvement. Because motivation can direct attention toward particular tasks and increase both effort and…

This study investigates the use of face-to-face and computer-mediated peer review in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing course to examine how different interaction modes affect comment categories, students' revisions, and their perceptions of peer feedback. The participants were an intact class of 13 students at a Taiwanese university.…