Although service learning has gone a long way since the time when, until the mid-1980, it was practically unknown as a pedagogical practice beyond a closed circle of practitioners, in many higher education institutions it still remains a domain of few faculty interested in integrating service learning in their disciplines. While experimenting with…

Despite high levels of disengagement in urban literacy classrooms, few teachers have seen fit to explore spoken word--the performance of poetry--as a tool to engage students in literacy. Spoken word poetry serves as a powerful means of self-representation for youth that are traditionally portrayed as threatening, menaces to society that do not…

This article presents an exchange between Kip Strasma and Elizabeth Tomlinson. Strasma responds to "Gender and Peer Response" by Tomlinson, and Tomlinson responds to Strasma's ""Spotlighting": Peer-Response in Digitally Supported First-Year Writing Courses." Both of them respond to each other's cross talk.

As online research has become an increasingly standard activity for middle school and high school students, Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) has simultaneously emerged as the bane of many teachers who include research-focused assignments in their courses. An online encyclopedia that allows anyone to edit its entries, Wikipedia has educators…

This textbook presents a third-grade composition course stressing the different forms of language exercises--letters, narratives, descriptions, and expositions. This series of books aims to help the teacher by providing a systematic arrangement of subject-matter, thus saving the labor of searching for suitable material and, at the same time,…

Offers four reviews of readable and user-friendly handbooks or dictionaries of English usage, and ideas for their use in teaching. Includes handmade as well as published handbooks. (PRA)

This paper examines the processes of creative writing, exploring in particular how intuition and analysis, unconscious and conscious, work together, and how the social and the personal are involved in these processes. The author discusses her experience of writing a sustained narrative poem with lyrical elements, and then as a teacher-educator…

This textbook presents lessons in reading and English pronunciation. The alphabetical letters or signs employed in the English language being very complicated figures, it is necessary that children, for a considerable space of time, should be practised in drawing simple geometrical figures before they are taught writing. By this geometrical…

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

Argues that technical writing instruction is the responsibility of content area instructors. Discusses seven benefits English teachers would derive if the responsibility for technical writing instruction were removed from them. (HTH)

Concludes that both sides of the "great debate" on teaching grammar are wrong--the problem will be resolved only when the majority of the profession becomes active and reformulates the question. Suggests that grammar and grammatical terms should be use as a tool to teach students how sentences work, including such things as how the human brain…

Offers an account of the second International Conference on Language and Literacy, held August 11-14, 1996. Discusses presentations by Tom Romano, Linda Reif, and Nancie Atwell. (RS)

Argues that there should be a place in English classrooms for the teaching of style in writing. (SR)

Mary Rooney, an eighth-grade English and language arts teacher at the K-8 John Welsh School in Philadelphia, spotted a problem. On one of the recent "mini" tests the school administers every six weeks to help students prepare for the state assessments, her classes averaged scores in the 80s, but in evaluating the results, Rooney noticed there were…

Effective mentoring in English is considered paramount to a preservice teacher's development. What are mentors' views about developing effective English teaching practices in their mentees? This study used quantitative data (survey) and qualitative data (questionnaire) on 24 mentors' perceptions of mentoring second-year preservice teachers for…