Personal letter writing, a major literacy event in Tuvalu, an independent island nation near Fiji, is strongly influenced by culture-specific discourse conventions such as religion. The influence is evident in the vernacular, but also in English letters of Tuvaluan biliterates, whose native patterns of discourse are transferred across literacies.…

The use of creativity in second-language writing classes is described in which students are asked to pick five unrelated sentences from the textbook and then weave them into a one-page story. Six sample stories are provided. (LB)

Asserts that more revisionist work is going on in rhetoric in the 1990s than before and that it is easier to see how the traditional, white-male-elite version of rhetoric might be reconstituted in less exclusionary forms. Focuses on needed research on women and rhetoric. Outlines some ways in which feminist research in rhetoric might proceed. (PRA)

Describes how all of a teacher's students diagnosed with autism (ages 5 to 21 and thought to be severely retarded in their ability to learn or communicate) not only learned to read without formal instruction but could--and did--communicate their very normal thoughts while using a computer or pencil and paper. (SR)

Shares the educational change and renewal stories of 13 secondary and college teachers who are doctoral students (reentry, rhetoric graduate program writing teachers) enrolled in summer classes at a midsize northeastern university. (SR)

Discusses the "feminization" of the field of composition, analyzing the way women composition teachers are constructed materially and metaphorically. Maintains that feminist compositionists need to ask themselves to what extent they are being absenced by "mythologized mother/teachers" metaphors. (SR)

Reviews the 1990 conference on children's classics that was sponsored by Drexel University and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Highlights include summaries of and excerpts from papers by author and illustrator Wendy Watson and Anita Lobel, and information on the recipient of the 1990 Drexel Citation, author and illustrator Carolyn Croll. (LRW)

Offers a teaching tip from each of five college English teachers, discussing "sticky note" critiques, discovering personal style, writing before speaking, audience and thesis feedback, and breaking the ice at the beginning of the semester. (SR)

Students (grades 7-8) with and without learning disabilities (LD) wrote stories for which a beginning, middle, end, or no prompt was given. Results indicated differences between groups in quantity and quality of story production. LD subjects scored significantly lower when offered the middle prompt than other prompts, perhaps because of their…

Considers the relationship of rhetoric to hermeneutics. Describes a practical understanding of interpretation which presents hermeneutics as a specialized application of topical invention. Reviews the historical origins of the dominance of hermeneutics over rhetoric and the split between theory and practice. (HB)

Articulates the perspective that regards science as a form of manufactured knowledge that is not objective but, like other forms of knowledge, culture-bound and historically specific. Suggests how some communicative difficulties suffered by the scientist Barbara McClintock can be traced to her unconventional practice. (HB)

Writing programs for students with deafness should include teacher-demonstration ("writing aloud"), shared writing, and independent and guided writing done by students. Activities at each developmental level should focus on emerging writers--getting acquainted with print; beginning writers--using written language; developing writers--learning the…

Argues that fostering thinking across the curriculum can be affected by engaging students in complex, meaningful, long-term tasks such as decision making, naturalistic inquiry, scientific inquiry, problem solving, and composing. Notes that these tasks require an instructional format (workshops) that provides a new role for teachers and students.…

Discusses one attempt to find innovative answers for questions regarding advanced English-as-a-Second-Language writing-placement testing. (MG)

Demonstrates how text editing programs can become the platform for a higher volume of student foreign language production, provide a greater variety of writing assignments in the second language, and make grading and writing management easier for language teachers. (21 references) (Author/CB)