Discusses how teachers have erred on one side to teach the basics of sentence structure, usage, grammar, and spelling and have neglected the other primary basic, creativity. (MB)

Uses results from a survey of students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin to criticize emphases within the English department and the university as a whole, particularly the heavy use of teaching assistants in undergraduate instruction. (AA)

Lists several research resources and discusses some implications of research for the teaching of writing. (TO)

This is a historical review of educational theories that affected composition instruction from 1885-1925. Discussed are the ideas of "Herbartianism," which promoted composition as a tool for character building, and "Experimentalism," advocating composition to produce "freedom of expression. The author finds both theories still worthwhile. (JA)

Rock music's lyrics have excited high school students' interest in poetry. Several poems written by the author's students show that writing poetry can be a means of developing students' awareness of language and of teaching them to express themselves in writing. (JB)

Suggests that the metaphor of the writer as potter is more revealing of the actual act of composing than is that of the writer as map-maker. (RD)

Students' use of "I think" and its variants when writing about literature reflects an avoidance of close observation of the literary text. (DD)

In our summer 2006 issue, we ran a comprehensive overview of how postmodernism has degraded composition on our campuses. Steve Kogan enlarges that indictment and charges that the movement has deliberately corrupted every area of English instruction--from the acquisition of skills and knowledge to the more fundamental mission of developing in…

In "The Mis-Education of the Negro," Carter Woodson issues a mandate for a different and original program of education for African-Americans, specific to their own conditions. If educators, the author opines, are to take this mandate into consideration when designing and implementing appropriate curricula and pedagogy, then they must start paying…

Points out that teaching technical writing to students whose specialties differ can be more interesting than teaching the conventional composition courses. (RB)

Discusses "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" by John Locke, and Charles William Eliot's Inaugural Address to the First Papish Church in an attempt to arrive at a coherent ideology on teaching composition. (RB)

Suggests that the act of writing is a process of discovery in which students become aware of their thoughts and acquire knowledge by making their ideas take shape on paper. (RB)

Suggests that a separation of the grammar (form) and ideas (content) in teachers' evaluations of their students' writings on literature must be maintained. (RB)

Examines two of the consequences of the emphasis on creative writing in recent years and argues the need for impersonal or expository writing in English, especially at the secondary level. (RB)