If workshop time permits, presenting faculty with the theory behind the pedagogical suggestions is helpful in convincing them to adopt these techniques. One might briefly introduce the major studies of women's moral, psychological and intellectual development, as well as recent feminist epistemological theories which have begun to influence feminist compositionists. In The Reproduction of Mothering Nancy Chodorow argues that women's continuing identification with the mother makes connected, interpersonal relationships central to their sense of self and representations of their lives. Men, on the other hand, spend a great amount of psychic energy separating themselves from the mother, and a process of isolated individuation is central to their development. Similarly, Carol Gilligan maintains, in In a Different Voice, that women's morality is based on relationships and their contexts rather than adherence to abstract principles of right. In Women's Ways ofKnowing, Mary Field Belenky and her co-authors have

In classes ranging from Advanced Expository and Women and at the undergraduate level to Gender, Language, and Writing Pedagogy and Classical and Contemporary Rhetoric at the graduate level, I have invited students to imagine the possibilities for new forms of discourse, new kinds of academic essays. I do because I believe that writing classes (and the whole field of composition studies) must employ richer visions of texts and composing processes. If are to invent a truly pluralistic society, must envision a socially and politically situated view of language and the creation of texts-one that takes into account gender, race, class, sexual preference, and a host of issues that are implied by these and other cultural differences. Our language and our written texts represent our visions of our culture, and need new processes and forms if are to express ways of thinking that have been outside the dominant culture. Finally, I believe that teaching students to write involves teaching them ways to critique not only their material and their potential readers' needs, but also the rhetorical conventions that they are expected to employ within the academy. Work in composition has been expanded enormously by theories of cognitive processes, social construction, and by the uses of computers and other forms of technology, yet, as Adrienne Rich writes, we might hypothetically possess ourselves of every recognized technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary,' but not transformative (Rich 247-48). David Kaufer and Cheryl Geisler argue that freshmen composition and writing across the curriculum have remained silent about newness as a rhetorical standard, as a hallmark of literacy in a post-industrial, professional age. They do not believe that this silence can be justified on either intellectual or pragmatic grounds . (309).

When we design a course in writing, we join that debate over whether we should see individual cognition or social and cultural context as motive force in literate (Flower 282). To remind us of this debate, Linda Flower recently asked, Can we... reconcile a commitment to nurturing a personal voice, individual purpose, or an inner, self-directed process of making meaning, with rhetoric's traditional assumption that both inquiry and purpose are responses to rhetorical situations, or with more recent assertions that inquiry in writing must start with social, cultural, or political awareness? (282). Those three commitments are not really incongruous. All three can be found reconciled in advanced composition course described below. As a course built by students around individualized projects, it encourages students to apply general principles to specialized tasks. Good writers, according to Richard M. Coe, know how to apply general principles of composition to particular writing tasks and contexts (412). With so many different projects resulting from this approach, students' divergent interests must be shared in an atmosphere of collaboration. John Trimbur has stated that one of goals of collaborative learning is to replace traditional hierarchical relations of teaching and learning with practices of participatory democracy (6.11). Yet even collaborative models need to leave instructor with a certain authority. For example, James A. Reither and Douglas Vipond, whose teaching model is based on collaboration, suggest that the most powerful way to arrange this kind of situation is to organize a course so students collaboratively investigate a more or less original scholarly question or field. The teacher sets a research project or question for class, casting students as members of a research group (863). The final exam in my course acts as that long-range research project. This assignment, which is submitted to students on first day of class, summarizes

When I talk to graduate students and colleagues about their use of collaborative learning, I often hear stories about when it doesn't work. No one's version of collaborative pedagogy is universally rewarding, of course, but I have found some approaches consistently more successful than others. Often, peer criticism consists of oral or hastily written comments by students in a classroom group; sometimes students fill out a checklist or a form that resembles a short-answer test (for example Huff and Kline 122-23). In these cases, neither teacher nor student is taking peer criticism seriously as a writing exercise. Furthermore, much oral or checklist peer criticism is limited to students' evaluations of their peers' writing techniques, thus neglecting discussion of the substantive issues in the paper. Finally, much peer criticism focuses either on the subjective experience of the critic, such as Peter Elbow's movies of people's minds while they read your words (Writing without Teachers 77), or objectified standard criteria, such as his criterion-based feedback (Writing with Power 240-45). I would like to propose a melding of exercises from Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff's book Sharing and Responding with the series of written peer critiques Kenneth Bruffee describes in his text A Short Course in Writing. These two kinds of peer criticism work best in tandem in the collaborative classroom because together they capture the struggle between individual expression and social constraint that most of us experience as writers. Sharing and Responding can function on its own or as a companion piece to Elbow and Belanoff's A Community of Writers (second edition forthcoming), with which it was published. The exercises continue the tradition of readerbased responding that Elbow began in Writing without Teachers and Writing with Power, but with a twist. The exercises in Sharing and Responding have a more developed social framework than their earlier manifestations. Although the emphasis is still on the writer's making individual choices, the structure of group interaction is more clearly developed than in Elbow's earlier work. For instance, each exercise has sample reader responses followed by a section called What a Writer Might Think about This Feedback. These exercises (as well as other subjective or comment-based-rather than essay-length-peer criticism)

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Academic Literacies suggests that the narrow focus on academic ways of reading, writing and thinking is limited and limiting for both students and teachers at the college level. Chiseri-Strater uses ethnographic field methods to uncover the multiple literacies that two college students bring to different disciplines and shows how factors such as gender, human development, and private talents are ignored in the college curriculum. She works against Hirsch's restricted view of literacy and offers many suggestions for expanding our notion of what it means to be literate in an academic setting. This book joins the continuing debate over cultural literacy, but unlike Hirsch's and Bloom's works, it offers a new point of view - the students'. Those who plan curricula and set goals for higher education too often ignore these individuals who are the patrons of the system. In addition, composition scholars who are involved in the emerging field of academic discourse communities will find Chiseri-Strater's position of interest. Finally, since the book offers a critique of the dominant mastery mode of teaching in colleges, it should appeal to those woman's studies scholars who are developing a feminist pedagogy that brings women students into the conversation about womens's ways of knowing, perceiving and learning.

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Beyond Communication is a collection of essays by well-known scholars and teachers in reading comprehension theory and literary criticism, particularly reader-response approaches. These two fields have traditionally been divided by their respective appeals to elementary and secondary education people. In creating this book the editors have sought to repair this unwarranted split. The book presents a rationale for teaching reading comprehension with literary texts that integrates the two pedagogical approaches. It encourages teachers to include literature and reader-response approaches in daily sessions with students regardless of grade level. It provides teachers with alternatives for meeting new language arts curriculum requirements. And it gives an overview of this field from both Canadian and American perspectives.

Richards on Rhetoric, Ann E. Berthoff W. Ross Winterowd Balancing Acts: Essays on the Teaching of Writing in Honor of William F. Irmscher , Virginia A. Chappell, Mary Louise Buley-Meissner, and Chris Anderson Sam Watson A Sense of Audience in Written Communication, Gesa Kirsch and Duane H. Roen Chris M. Anson Beyond Communication: Reading Comprehension and Criticism, Deanne Bogdan and Stanley B. Straw Sandra Stotsky The Writing Center: New Directions, Ray Wallace and Jeanne Simpson Muriel Harris Writer’s Craft, Teacher’s Art: Teaching What We Know, Mimi Schwartz Wendy Bishop Teaching Advanced Composition: Why and How, Katherine H. Adams and John L. Adams Richard Jenseth Textbooks in Focus: Creative Writing: Creative Writing in America: Theory and Pedagogy, Joseph M. Moxley Released into Language,Wendy Bishop Writing Poems, Robert Wallace What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter The College Handbook of Creative Writing, Robert DeMaria Chuck Guilford Textbooks in Focus: Technical WritingTechnical Writing: A Reader-Centered Approach, Paul V. Anderson Designing Technical Reports: Writing for Audiencesin Organizations, J. C. Mathes and Dwight W. StevensonTechnical Writing and Professional Communication, Leslie A. Olsen and Thomas N. Huckin Technical Writing: A Practical Approach, William S. Pfeiffer Technical Writing: Principles,Strategies, and Readings, Diana C.Reep Design of Business Communications: The Process and the Product, Elizabeth Tebeaux Carolyn R. Miller

At a time when the study of composition seems especially prone to excess and imbalanceheading toward what could be a tyrannizing theoretical orderhere is a call back to the center, to the concreteness of the teaching moment itself.In a festschrift to honor William F. Irmscher, director for twenty-three years of the University of Washington composition program, the editors outline the need for a among theories and between theory and teaching. This balancing act is a tribute to Irmscher, who counseled compromise and the resolution of conflicting viewpoints. Irmscher could reconcile new ideas with the practical struggles of student writers and composition teachers. As a theorist, Irmscher was one of the first to bring theoretical rigor to composition studies, yet he always strove to express the issueshowever complexin clear and fluid language.The two parts of the text invoke the balancing act between the concerns of the students and the concerns of the teachers. The first part, Identity and Community, presents six essays about helping students explore their identities as writers and the effectiveness of those identities within communities of writers. The second part, Intuition and Institution, includes five essays focusing on the dynamics of teachers decision making about theory and pedagogy within their own institutional communities. The last chapter examines Irmscher s life and writings.This celebration of William F. Irmscher is a celebration of the complexity and the humanness of the act of composing and of the student writers themselves, who are at the heart of this whole enterprise.

One of the major figures in this book, the Roman educator Quintilian, points out that writing -- unlike speaking -- must always be learned from a teacher since it cannot be learned by natural imitation as oral language is. He uses the example of a two-year-old who can understand and speak even though the child is years away from being able to be taught even the rudiments of the written alphabet. Writing instruction therefore plays an important role in any literate culture. This book offers a survey of the ways in which writing has been taught in Western culture, from ancient Greece to present-day America. Although there have been many studies of individual periods or specific educators, this volume provides the first systematic coverage of teaching writing over the 25 centuries from the ancient Sophists to today. It is hoped that the modern reader will find useful ideas in this account of the ebb and flow of teaching methods and philosophies over the years.

This essay is about resistance, mine and my students', and about the angered and impassioned writing that arises when texts challenge the ideologies of readers. It's been two years now since I taught the particular section of freshman English that gives rise to my story and my writing. course was the second semester of Northern Illinois University's two semester freshman sequence, a course that emphasizes documented writing, the sort that baptizes students into academic discourse. My course was thematically organized and designed to sensitize students to some of the larger problems in our culture; in fact, we were looking at institutions of all sorts-education, religion, politics, and so on. I should say that this sort of ideological consciousness-raising is very much part of our faculty's concern; ours is a largely blue-collar student body where white suburban students meet inner-urban ethnic diversity, sometimes for the first time. And so I felt that having a thematic section on The Status of Women was a good and strong part of my syllabus. class had read three essays in this unit, and after minimal discussion and minimal direction, they adjourned to the computer lab to write their readings of one of the essays. I asked them to react in writing for several pedagogical reasons, the first of which is purely pragmatic-I wanted the class to begin to compose at the computer terminal rather than to transfer handwritten text to disk. Second, I wanted them to interact with the text, to cite it, to struggle with it, to read in another way than they may have been accustomed to reading. Third, I wanted their writing to produce reading that would subvert their assumptions about gender roles, that would allow them to sort out what is biological from what is gendered.

Global multi-cultural reader. Perspectives - short quotes at beginning of each chapter. Myths/folktales at beginning of each chapter. Includes some student essays. New: chapters on gender and pop culture; 2 essays in each chapter with potentially polarizing situations so students can practice argumentative writing; pedagogy offers increased attention to rhetorical strategies.

Delores K. Schriner, William C. Rice, Response to Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe, "The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Dec., 1991), pp. 501-502

What Is English?, Peter Elbow Sheryl Finkle and Charles B. Harris The Right to Literacy, Andrea A. Lunsford, Helene Moglen, and James Slevin Marilyn M. Cooper Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition, Susan Miller David Bartholomae Rhetoric and Philosophy, Richard A. Cherwitz James Comas Rhetoric in American Colleges, 1850–1900, Albert R. Kitzhaber Sharon Crowle A Short History of Writing Instruction: From Ancient Greece to Twentieth-Century America, James J. Murphy Sue Carter Simmons Politics of Education: Essays from Radical Teacher, Susan Gushee O’Malley, Robert C. Rosen, and Leonard Vogt Myron C. Tuman Not Only English: Affirming America’s Multilingual Heritage, Harvey A. Daniels Perspectives on Official English, Karen L. Adams and Daniel T. Brink Alice M. Roy Textbooks in Focus: Cross-Cultural Readers Across Cultures: A Reader for Writers, Sheena Gillespie and Robert Singleton American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings in Context, Barbara Roche Rico and Sandra Mano Emerging Voices: A Cross-Cultural Reader, Janet Madden-Simpson and Sara M. Blake Intercultural Journeys Through Reading and Writing, Marilyn Smith Layton Writing About the World, Susan McLeod, Stacia Bates, Alan Hunt, John Jarvis, and Shelley Spear Nancy Shapiro Textbooks in Focus: Great Ideas Readers Current Issues and Enduring Questions: Methods and Models of Argument, Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau Theme and Variations: The Impact of Great Ideas, Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen The Course of Ideas, Jeanne Gunner and Ed FrankelA World of Ideas: Essential Readings for College Writers, Leo A. Jacobus Great Ideas: Conversations Between Past and Present, Thomas Klein, Bruce Edwards, and Thomas Wymer Casts of Thought: Writing In and Against Tradition, George Otte and Linda J. Palumbo Eleanor M. Hoffman Teaching Writing that Works: A Group Approach to Practical English, Eric S. Rabkin and Macklin Smith Janis Forman Released into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing, Wendy Bishop Will Wells

The Social Uses of Writing: Politics and Pedagogy, Thomas Fox Art Young The Violence of Literacy, J. Elspeth Stuckey Michael Holzman The Scribal Society: An Essay on Literacy and Schooling in the Information Age, Alan C. Purves Joyce Irene Middleton On Literacy and Its Teaching: Issues in English Education, Gail E. Hawisher and Anna 0. Soter Dan Madigan Computers and Writing: Theory, Research, Practice, Deborah H. Holdstein and Cynthia L. Selfe Computers, Cognition, and Writing Instruction, Marjorie Montague Writing Lands: Composing with Old and New Writing Tools, Jane Zeni Dawn Rodrigues The Presence of Thought: Introspective Accounts of Reading and Writing, Marilyn S. Sternglass Marilyn M. Cooper Developing Discourse Practices in Adolescence and Adulthood, Richard Beach and Susan Hynds Richard L. Larson

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“CCCC Bibliography of Composition and Rhetoric, 1988”, Erika Lindemann and Mary Beth Harding Lynn Z. Bloom “Research in Basic Writing: A Bibliographic Sourcebook”, Michael G. Moran and Martin J. Jacobi LisaJ. McClure “The Writing Teacher as Researcher: Essays in the Theory and Practice of Class-Based Research”, Donald A. Daiker and Max Morenberg Shirley K Rose “Personality and the Teaching of Composition”, George H. Jensen and John K. DiTiberio Lynn Quitman Troyka “Farther Along: Transforming Dichotomieisn Rhetoric and Composition”, Kate Ronald and Hephzibah Roskelly Catherine E. Lamb “Writing Better Computer User Documentation: From Paper to Hypertext”, R. John Brockmann Designing and “Writing Online Documentation: Help Files to Hypertext”, William K. Horton Stephen A. Bernhardt “Modern Rhetorical Criticism”, Roderick P. Hart Timothy W. Crusius “Oral and Written Communication: Historical Approaches”, Richard Leo Enos Thomas J. Farrell The Older Sophists, Rosamond Kent Sprague Richard Leo Enos The Student’s Guide to Good Writing: Building Writing Skills for Success in College, Rick Dalton and Marianne Dalton Charles W. Bridges

Introduction Social Science Perspectives Who are Basic Writers? by Andrea Lunsford and Patricia A. Sullivan Development Psychology and Basic Writers by Donna Haisty Winchell Literacy Theory and Basic Writing by Mariolina Salvatori and Glynda Hull Linguistic Perspectives Modern Grammar and Basic Writers by Ronald F. Lunsford Dialects and Basic Writers by Michael Montgomery TESL Research and Basic Writing by Sue Render Pedalogical Perspectives Basic Writing Courses and Programs by Michael D. Hood Computers and Writing Instruction by Stephen A. Bernhardt and Patricia G. Wojahn Writing Laboratories and Basic Writing by Donna Beth Nelson Preparing Teachers of Basic Writing by Richard Filloy Appendix: Selective Bibliography of Basic Writing Textbooks by Mary Sue Ply Name Index Subject Index

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Oh, I said, glancing around the four-person office. Why had he needed to use the couch when there were chairs for the students right in front of each desk? Silently, I resolved to rid myself of it as soon as my successor departed. As it turned out, getting rid of the couch wasn't easy, so I simply disassociated myself from it. I shoved it further along the wall toward an officemate's work area and set up shop. When the semester began, I found I was perfectly comfortable conferring with students from behind my desk. The couch went unused for two years until our department's move across campus finally gave me the opportunity to get rid of it altogether. Unwanted furniture, we professors were told, could be abandoned in our old offices. Happily, I left the ugly thing where I had shoved it and looked forward to a couchless office in our new building. But strange to say, I installed a couch in my new office only months after I moved into it. My reason for doing so had something to do with a change in my attitude toward teaching writing-a change prompted in part by a writing surgeon named Richard Selzer. The connection between surgery and writing is one that Selzer makes often. In a lecture presented recently at our campus, he spoke of the similarity of the tools used in the two arts: the scalpel and the pen. Both mark their passage across a surface with a thin line of color. Both are used with the intention of exposing something to view. Here the parallel ends, for the surgeon uses the

As a community-college English instructor immersed in teaching four sections a semester, at least two of which are writing courses, I have very little time to study theories of composition and pedagogy. And yet, out of a desire to improve as a teacher, I read theory in what little time I have. I look outside my classroom to learn what theoreticians have to say about what happens in my classroom. I have, over the years, internalized a view that if I am to find theory I am to do so outside my classroom-in the major journals and at conferences. I have also come to expect that the theoreticians, those writing the journal articles and presenting papers, are most likely to be from universities, and a relatively small number of them. Needless to say, I do not expect the theoreticians to come from the community colleges or from other institutions whose faculty devote most of their time to teaching. In recent years, however, the line between theory and classroom practice has begun to be breached, the dichotomy between the two questioned. When Robert Coles, whose words begin this essay, encourages me to consider theory as rooted in observation, in things observed and people observing, I wonder whether, maybe, even a beleaguered community-college writing teacher can theorize, and I begin to think it is possible. I am further encouraged by events happening in the profession. In this regard, an extraordinary thing happened at the 1990 CCCC Convention, which took place in Chicago. Jane Peterson, while giving the Chair's Address on Valuing Teaching: Assumptions, Problems, and Possibilities, identified herself unequivocally as a teacher who had in the past taught five sections in one semester and would continue to do so. At one point, she turned to the

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The English Coalition Conference: Democracy through Language, Richard Lloyd-Jones and Andrea A. Lunsford S. Michael Halloran and John Hollow Developing Successful College  Writing Programs, Edward M. White Louise Wetherbee Phelps Advanced Placement English.: Theory, Politics, and Pedagogy, Gary A. Olson, Elizabeth Metzger, and Evelyn Ashton-Jones David W. Chapman Creating Writers: Linking Assessment and Writing Instruction, Vicki Spandel and Richard J. Stiggins Karen L. Greenberg A Program Development Handbook for the Holistic Assessment of Writing, Norbert Elliot, Maximino Plata,and Paul Zelhart Edward M. White Programs That Work: Models and Methods for Writing Across the Curriculum, Toby Fulwiler and Art Young Disciplinary Perspectives on Thinking and Writing, Barbara S. Morris Joseph F. Trimmer Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification, Bruce Lincoln Joseph Harris

Besides the editors, the essayists are Lori Chamberlain, Michael Clark, Dennis A. Foster, Jon Klancher, Randall Knoper, Elaine O. Lees, Mariolina Salvatori, and Nina Schwartz. Donahue and Quandahl present accessible and exciting efforts to explore composition teaching in a new mode perhaps, a pristine paradigm of cultural criticism. Approximately half of the essays investigate the pedagogical agenda implied in the theories of a particular writer Barthes, Lacan, or Burke, for exampleand place such theories in the The remaining essays examine pedagogy as a critical practice. The book does not advocate a single method of instruction but instead reminds us that theory is itself continually modified by the classroom.

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Creating a Computer-Supported Writing Facility: A Blueprint for Action, Cynthia L. Selfe Computer Writing Environments: Theory, Research, and Design, Bruce Britton and Shawn M. Glynn Fred Kemp Critical Perspectiveosn Computers and Composition Instruction, Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe Bruce L. Edwards Reclaiming Pedagogy: The Rhetoric of the Classroom, Patricia Donahue and Ellen Quandahl Sharon Crowley Audience Expectations and Teacher Demands, Robert Brooke and John Hendricks Alice M. Gillam The Psychology of Writing: The Affective Experience, Alice Glarden Brand Robert Brooke Coping with Failure.: The Therapeutic Uses of Rhetoric, David Payne Paul W. Ranieri Critical Thinking: A Semiotic Perspective, Marjorie Siegel and Robert Carey Alice Heim Calderonello Effective Documentation: What We Have Learned from Research,Stephen Doheny-Farina Jack Selzer

When it was first published in 1989, Susan Miller s Rescuing the Subject: A Critical Introduction to Rhetoric the Writer established a landmark pedagogical approach to composition based the importance of the writer the act of writing in the history of rhetoric. Widely used as an introduction to rhetoric composition theory for graduate students, the volume was the first winner of the W. Ross Winterowd Award from JAC and is still one of the most frequently cited books in the field.This first paperback edition includes a new introductory chapter in which Miller addresses changes in the field since the first edition, outlines new research, surveys positions she no longer supports. A new foreword by Thomas P. Miller assesses the proven impact of Rescuing the Subject on the field of rhetoric composition.Situating modern composition theory in the historical context of rhetoric, Miller notes that throughout the eighteenth century, rhetoric referred to oral, not written, discourse. By contrast, her history of rhetoric contends oral written discourse were related from the beginning. Taking a thematic rather than chronological approach, she shows how actual acts of writing comment both rhetoric composition. Miller also asserts that contemporary composition study is the necessary cultural outcome of changing conditions for producing discourse, describing the history of rhetoric as the gradual unstable relocation of discourse in conventions that only written language can create. She maintains teachers historians of rhetoric must recognize that the contemporary writing they analyze teach demands their attention to a textual rhetoric that allows theorizing the writer as always symbolically a student of situated meanings.

The American Community College, Arthur M. Cohen and Florence B. Brawer Nell Ann Pickett Rescuing the Subject.: A Critical Introduction to Rhetoric and the Writer, Susan Miller The Written World: Reading and Writing in Social Contexts, Susan Miller Joseph Harris Writing as Social Action, Marilyn M. Cooper and Michael Holzman Deborah Brandt The Double Perspective: Language, Literacy, and Social Relations, David Bleich Joyce Irene Middleton Writing and Response: Theory, Practice, and Research, Chris M. Anson Anne Ruggles Gere Technical and Business Communication: Bibliographic Essays for Teachers and Corporate Trainers, Charles H. Sides Alice Philbin Writing and Technique, David Dobrin Deborah H. Holdstein Worlds of Writing. Teaching and Learning in Discourse Communitieast Work, Carolyn B. Matelene Stephen A. Bernhardt Creative Writing in America. Theory and Pedagogy, Joseph M. Moxley D. W. Fenza

I recently attended a conference previously unknown to me and to most college English faculty: The Assessment Forum of American Association for Higher Education (AAHE). (I was there to give a paper on measurement of writing ability and on evaluation of writing programs.) The experience of that conference ought to have been routine; after all, I have directed a variety of large-scale writing programs and I have been speaking and publishing on writing assessment for over fifteen years; I have also spent many years as chair of an English department and as a writing program administrator. But experience of hearing papers and discussions at that conference was not at all routine; it was both troubling and enlightening, as well as quite new in unexpected ways. My first reaction to sessions on writing measurement at AAHE was that I had entered a new world. The papers not only made different assumptions about writing than I, as a writing teacher, writer, and researcher, normally make, but came out of a wholly different scholarly community of discourse, one that calls itself the assessment movement. The references were entirely unfamiliar, procedures were different, and approach to subject struck me as insensitive to what writing is all about. But all of these differences seemed to center on way people spoke (and hence thought) about measurement: I was in a foreign country, language was different, and that difference changed everything. I had entered a new discourse community in a field in which I was a well-published specialist, and none of my knowledge or experience seemed to matter. And yet discourse was about measuring writing ability and evaluating writing programs, that is, about what has (however accidentally) become my specialty. I felt disoriented. When I returned home from AAHE I found a flier from Jossey-Bass, publisher of my 1985 book, Teaching and Assessing Writing. I don't expect book to appear on every flier marketing division puts out, but this little

Drawing on scholarship in a variety of disciplines - philosophy, political theory, sociology, sociolinguistics, anthropology, literary theory, rhetoric - the authors outline an approach to the study of literacy that does not neglect the cognitive or individual aspects of literacy but rather sees them as largely shaped by the social forces of our political, economic, and educational systems. Ranging from the first-year writing class to adult literacy programs, the essays point the way to effective teaching strategies, program design, and research opportunities.Seven new chapters - on such topics as collaborative writing, discourse communities, women's literacy, and functional literacy - and eight previously published ones make up the book, providing a comprehensive theory of writing as social action.

In her opening address, Composing Ourselves: Politics, Commitment, and the Teaching of Writing, Andrea Lunsford challenged the participants at the 1989 CCCC to tell the story of the teaching of writing in multiple voices which encourage differences and diversity. Cautioning against definition by others, particularly by those who would describe writing instruction in reductive terms or define writing instructors in limiting ways, Lunsford warned those present that we could be composed in the discourses . . . of others (75). For those of us teaching in two-year colleges, Lunsford's descriptions of historical precedents of marginalized voices writing themselves into being were particularly evocative. Her imperative for composition studies to remain inclusive, interdisciplinary, collaborative, nonhierarchical, and dialogic was a further articulation of the CCCC 1989 theme of empowerment and of interdependence. Furthermore, the 1990 CCCC theme, community through diversity, includes a strand on English in the two-year college. This focus recognizes the significance of teaching writing in two-year colleges and should provide the opportunity for participants to explore and articulate the strength in diversity among two-year institutions of higher education. Indeed, two-year schools are the largest single sector of higher education in the United States, with approximately one half of all students taking composition in two-year colleges (Facts 3). These 1,224 accredited schools serve more than five-million credit students, and many of those students transfer to four-year schools (AACJC Commission vii). The numbers of students taking composition in community colleges alone indicate the significance of community-college English departments (Raines 29). Yet no major study has been published since the 1965 NCTE and CCCC report, English in the TwoYear College. A follow-up to this report could be a critical contribution to an evolving text on the teaching of writing. In fact, the Association of Depart-

This monograph is designed to help English teachers see what it is that the literary theory of deconstruction has to offer them as they pursue their work. The monograph focuses on the implications of deconstruction for the English classroom in American schools. It includes a discussion of Jacques Derrida's philosophy of reading and writing a review of some American critics' reactions to deconstruction and responses made by English teachers to the theory; and an examination of a deconstructive reading of writing pedagogy as it underscores the appropriateness of much of the lore connected with process pedagogy. The monograph also contains an appendix on How to Read Derrida, three pages of endnotes, a brief glossary of deconstructionist terminology, a 70-item list of references, an 11-item list of Derrida works not cited in the text, a 38-item bibliography of works on Derrida and deconstruction, and a 9-item list of exemplary readings on deconstruction. (RAE) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******,,,,,..********************************************************,,,,,,,,,,,,

Research on the writing process suggests that planning is a significant component of the writing process. According to this body of research, the planning process results in writing plans of various kinds. Often these writing plans seem to be decisions or judgments-that is, mental constructs only. However, they are not consistently mental constructs in this body of research. Sometimes writing plans are written constructs, sometimes both mental and written constructs. And when they do appear as written constructs, they are sometimes viewed favorably, sometimes unfavorably. In addition, they do not seem to be distinguishable from goals, another key concept in this body of research. Unfortunately, and without explanation, the nature of a writing plan seems to change from study to study in this body of research, with no apparent progress over the years in conceptual clarity or consistency. This conceptual ambiguity poses serious problems for writing research. It also poses problems for writing instruction, too, even though this body of research seems to have some beneficial implications for instruction as well. The question this essay addresses is why this conceptual ambiguity exists. I begin by pointing out the inconsistency and lack of clarity in the way in which planning and writing plans are defined or illustrated in this body of research. I then indicate why definitions for key concepts matter for researchand for teachers who look to research for insights or guidance on instructional questions. The essay has two major purposes. First, it shows how theoretical assumptions underlying this body of research may be responsible for the conceptual ambiguity of its key terms. It then suggests why theoretical constructs developed in other domains of inquiry may pose unresolvable problems when applied to the act of writing and serve as unintended conceptual barriers to important new research in the field.

learning, one that will bring about changes in teaching as well as in student writing. We also need to establish quite clearly that WAC programs certainly do not exclude examinations and more coursework in writing as a means of establishing proficiency, but that WAC is not to be identified solely with writing proficiency. Finally, there is an issue not dealt with directly by my survey, but which has come up in anecdotal comments at the meetings of the National Network of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs and which deserves further study-the matter of change and faculty resistance to it. The idea and the practice of writing to learn goes against the predominant paradigm of education in the university, which valorizes the teacher-centered lecture class. In this paradigm, students are passive rather than active learners; they learn from the expert, not from each other. WAC programs challenge this notion of education, and those of us involved in such programs like to point to the successes we have had in changing faculty attitudes towards writing and learning (See Robert Weiss and Michael Peich, Attitude Change in a Cross-Disciplinary Writing Program, CCC 31 [Feb. 1980): 33-41). But changing attitudes and changing actual classroom practice may be two different things. Faculty resistance to change can be profound, as Deborah Swanson-Owens found in Identifying Natural Sources of Resistance (Research in the Teaching of English 20 [Feb. 1986): 69-97). Such resistance could, over a number of years, gradually wear away even the most firmly established institutional program. But I do not want to end on a negative note. While we need to be aware of the dangers that face the WAC movement in general and second-stage programs in particular, the survey results indicate cause for some cautious celebration. WAC as a movement is strong and is continuing to grow. It is up to all of us involved in such programs to be alert to the dangers, but also to be pleased that we have come this far.