According to a recent article by Richard Fulkerson, there is some consensus among those who teach writing about what makes writing good. Apparently, a growing number of writing instructors' aims constitute what Fulkerson calls "rhetorical axiology." Rhetorical axiology is a belief system in which teachers value highly "overall…

Inspired by a writing group that met regularly in North Carolina, Alice Kaplan of Duke University decided to write a memoir at the age of 38. Practiced in the third-person perspective and schooled in a scholarly writing style, Kaplan found it difficult to write first-person narrative. The transition challenged her: she had not realized what an…

Despite accompanying drawbacks, the Internet information system known as Gopher presents a rich variety of potential benefits to writing pedagogies and to educational administrators. Writing teachers need to overcome tendencies to think of exploration of the Internet information resources as something to be uncritically adopted and as something to…

A recent article in the "Assemby for Computers in English (ACE) Newsletter" explains what most instructors of English already know--that students in most writing classes produce papers for which the primary purpose is the teacher. As the Internet becomes more widely available, students will have more access to what Howard Rheingold calls…

Writing is at the heart of education. The business of English teachers is to make people more comfortable in using language, particularly written language. Language serves two broad functions: (1) representing elements of external reality; and (2) defining relationships among the people who use the language. The writer's first need is to use the…

A study examined whether the "most frequently published academic researchers" in mass communications, who collectively wrote 292 refereed articles, informed the public of their research findings by writing articles for consumer and trade publications. An examination of the "Reader's Guide to Periodicals" showed that the 53…

This paper uses two case studies to explore the risk and opportunities of writing from students' personal experiences. Anthony, a high-achieving, Hispanic fifth-grader, and Anita, a low-achieving, African-American sixth-grader, participated in a writing workshop in which students kept notebooks of their personal experiences and reflections. The…

Departmental lines can interfere with collaboration among academic colleagues. Working together within the same department, a speech teacher and a writing teacher realized that both speech and writing have preparatory (planning and development), performance, and evaluation stages, and that within the various stages students use the same or similar…

In this first issue of a children's literature annual, 10 articles on poetry for young people are presented. The articles and their authors are as follows: "There Is No Net To Catch A Poem" (Jane Yolen); "Poetry and the Self" (Myra Cohn Livingston); "The World Outside My Skin" (Eve Merriam); "American Poetry for…

While few business people dispute the importance of carefully crafting persuasive, demanding, conciliatory, and bad-news letters, the regular flow of routine communications receives very little meaningful consideration or scrutiny. These routine communications (letters, inquiries, requests, collection letters, complaints, confirmations,…

An informal study explored the dynamics of the task of writing college application essays, which urge self-revelation but are judged by omnipotent admissions committees. Four students in the top 17% of their class of 194 in a predominantly white suburban school completed think-aloud protocols as they drafted a response to an application question…

Pointing out that television sets are virtually a universal household fixture in most industrially developed nations, this book presents many categories and specific examples of television's (and sometimes radio's) coverage of ethnic minorities and conflict. Chapters in the book are: (1) Introduction; (2) Background Notes; (3) Mainstream vs.…

In order to become empowered and autonomous writers, students need to learn self-evaluation techniques to help them revise their writing instead of simply editing it. Basic writers and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writers especially need concrete aids that can guide them, at least in the initial stages of learning, to write in a mode in…

A study examined the instructional benefits of a semester-long letter exchange between first graders and preservice teachers in a language arts methods class. When first graders exchange letters with preservice teachers, all are involved in literacy events. Pen pals at both levels benefit from this correspondence. Often the focus is on the…

Advancement of students' abilities to cope with the demands of exposition and argument is noted when they are encouraged to accept mixed diction within a framework of activities that interrelate thinking, speaking, reading, writing, and listening, in the context of the immediate audience of class and teacher. Research indicates that when a weak…