No matter the medium--magazines, newspapers, or TV--institutional leaders need to hit the right tone and convey specific talking points to their audience. A media-savvy leader doesn't just provide accurate information; he or she can help change the tenor of a discussion and build support for crucial institutional initiatives. No university is an…

This article reports findings from a qualitative study of Spanish-English code-switching--or "Spanglish"--among bilingual Latina/Latino sixth graders at a middle school in East Los Angeles. Analysis of the data revealed significant parallels between the skills embedded in students' everyday use of "Spanglish" and the skills…

This article seeks answers to questions, such as how children's writing develops and how young students express themselves in writing at various stages of their development. This article reviews the literature through a wide lens as it examines elementary students' writing and is intended to lead to a more comprehensive understanding of…

This paper explains how first-year composition students wrote business sales letters about short fiction and then revised those letters into full-fledged literary essays that analyzed the stories. By completing these two writings back-to-back (that is, experiencing the metagenres between business writing and literary analysis), students not only…

Communication is an important input in development. The role of communication is socio-economic and cultural development at national and international levels. Development is considered an important component of progress. The progressive change is described as alterations in awareness, motivation and participation of the individuals. With the…

With her recent book, "Paint the Wind" (2007), hitting the shelves this fall, author Pam Munoz Ryan delivers a welcome addition to the 25 plus books she has written for young people, including her award-winning novels "Esperanza Rising" (2000) and "Riding Freedom" (1998) and picture books "Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride" (1999) and "When Marian…

A great deal of research has now established that written texts embody interactions between writers and readers, but few studies have examined the ways that small acts of reformulation and exemplification help contribute to this. Abstraction, theorisation and interpretation need to be woven into a text which makes sense to a particular community…

Despite his considerable influence on the development of ESP and all our professional lives, almost nothing has been written about John Swales' distinctive prose style. Based on a 340,000 word corpus comprising 14 single-authored papers and most chapters from his three main books, this paper sets out to identify the main features of this style.…

Effective uses of technology in social studies methods courses is an under-researched field. This study focused on the development of WebQuests to engage teacher candidate's exploration of the Internet as an authentic medium for inquiry in social studies education. Analysis of appropriateness of tasks in the WebQuests, depth of ideas and audience…

English 302: Writing about the Arts is a practicum course offered at the University of Windsor for upper-level English undergraduate students. The course asks students to write about a variety of art forms and requires engagement with multiple genres of writing as a way for students to effectively order their experiences, reconstruct meaning in…

This article offers a case study of a graduate class in communication research methods with a service-learning approach. Students were engaged in evaluating the public information campaign of a nonprofit organization exposing human rights abuses in US prisons. They gained hands-on experience in the use of a variety of basic research methods and…

Despite considerable research on teaching and learning in higher education, the relationship between university teachers' and students' understandings of the same teaching-learning events has not been a focus. This exploratory qualitative study used individual interviews to investigate the role of conceptions of teaching, learning and knowledge in…

This article presents a public speaking assignment that takes the study of rhetoric seriously. First, it shifts the approach from the common typology of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speeches toward forensic, deliberative, and epideictic rhetoric. Second, this assignment takes rhetoric seriously by generating the understanding that all…

Suggests five alternatives for plays to be run during the Christmas season, rather than the usual "A Christmas Carol" or "The Nutcracker." (PA)

In this article, the authors comment on two key issues that emanate from Anders Ericcson and his colleagues' manuscript: (1) the audiences that the authors address; and (2) the implications of their work for policy. The authors argue that in the imperfect world of limited resources, domain-specific abilities in combination with psychosocial…