This publication contains journal essays and book chapters from publications of the National Council of Teachers of English. The publication's first section, "Multimedia in the Classroom," contains the following articles: (1) "Media 'Target Assignments' Invite Students To Tune In, Turn On, and Write" (Meta G. Carstarphen); (2)…

Finds that Agatha Christie's mysteries can be used to encourage discussion of characterization and human values, to promote reading and literary analysis skills, and to develop both writing and problem-solving skills. Suggests several language arts activities. (MM)

Describes high school English courses which use a seminar approach, emphasizing discussion and writing, to promote a cooperative, student-centered critical and analytical method of teaching literature. (CM)

Shares the experiences of one teacher who changed her way of teaching high school at-risk students by creating an environment that encouraged students to explore writing and reading topics of their choice. Finds that students changed and learned using the writing-reading workshop approach. (MG)

Argues for a series of classroom strategies designed to help inner-city students distinguish between violence in their lives for which they are responsible and violence in their lives cause by larger societal structures. Describes possible readings, films, and corresponding writing exercises. Describes contact with community nonviolence groups and…

Implementation of a new program is a complex process of putting ideas into action. Program implementation can be characterized through the identification of interrelated factors which determine the success or failure of implementation of an innovation. Writing as a process has been perceived as a successful teaching methodology for many years, but…

After a brief review of the history of college writing instruction, this book examines the undergraduate creative writing workshop. The book attempts to reweave the currently separate strands of college-level creative writing instruction and composition instruction in the belief that developments in these perhaps artificially separated areas can…

Intended to help teachers integrate writing instruction with the study of literature, this teaching guide offers a philosophy of writing instruction, describes a procedure for teaching reading and writing lessons, and provides a sequence of writing skills. For various literature selections, the guide defines vocabulary, provides topic discussion…

"Practical rhetoric" is a narrowing of classical rhetoric because it no longer shapes public opinion but is increasingly shaped by it, specifically by special interest groups formed around and geared to what a selected audience wants to hear. In the teaching of composition, this pluralism of rhetoric leads to fragmentation and specialization, and…

Intended to serve as an introduction to a useful method of composition evaluation, this handbook provides a comprehensive checklist of many relevant topics and issues. The handbook begins with a discussion of the basic concepts of evaluation. The next chapter provides an overview of the components of a writing program as a background and context…

Designed to demonstrate a variety of ways in which listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities can be built around the study of biographies, this collection of materials, lessons, and activities deals with some of the most frequently taught biographical works in New York City ninth-grade classrooms. The document begins with a general…

PLATO differs from other computer assisted instruction in that it is truly a system, employing a powerful mainframe computer and connecting its users to each other and to the people running it. The earliest PLATO materials in English were drill and practice programs, an improvement over written texts, but a small one. Unfortunately, game lessons,…

The honors program described in this language arts curriculum guide has three components: language study, literature, and composition. The first section of the guide describes the language study component, which deals with content areas, general objectives, and performance strategies. The second section discusses the combination of literature and…

The success of a writing across the curriculum project is described in this paper. The paper notes that the first two years of the project, sponsored by internal university grants and state funding, consisted of (1) workshops and training sessions of small numbers of non-English faculty in designing and evaluating writing assignments and in…

Presented at a writing center conference by English department faculty members from around the United States--all involved with writing centers--the papers in this collection relate personal experiences and discuss many of the problems faced by writing centers. The ten papers deal with the following topics: (1) the progress and future of writing…