Investigates English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students’ native literacy-learning experiences, via written learning autobiographies of 26 students from at least eight different countries. Discusses writing instruction in students’ native languages; most satisfying writing assessment in their native languages; and differences between writing in their native language and English. Draws five conclusions for ESL instruction.

Describes a project for composition classes in which groups of five to six students conceive, write, design, print, and bind a book of their writings. Discusses methodology, defining form and content of the books, offering guidance, use of in-class time, evaluation, grading, and the results. Notes that the quality of student writing dramatically improved.

Presents eight separate short descriptions of teaching tips or classroom activities for composition classes submitted by teachers, including tips on writing exchanges, grammar problems, peer evaluation, revision, mock quizzes, critical thinking regarding television news, computer–assisted commenting, and an educational and entertaining end–of–term review activity period.

Argues that student self–assessment and reflection need to be central components of writing instruction and that the response sequence between teacher and student should routinely include them. Offers examples of this sequence with two students, and presents nine specific classroom strategies that put self-assessment and reflection at the center of the writing process.

Describes how a weekly focused journal writing assessment (in which students note any use of language they find interesting, puzzling, amusing, or annoying as well as their response to it) enhances composition students’ awareness of how language is used and where. Offers several different advantages of such journal writing.

Details a first-year college composition course that blends journalism instruction with first-year composition. Describes how students learn about news gathering and news writing techniques common to feature writing and complete a profile writing project which encourages a level of discourse that bears closer kinship to everyday workplace writing. Discusses course design, implementation, and evaluation.

The Research Paper and the World Wide Web, by Dawn Rodrigues; Assessment of Writing: Politics, Policies, Practices, ed. by Edward M. White, William D. Lutz, and Sandra Kamusikiri; Teaching the Argument in Writing, by Richard Fulkerson; Poets’ Fall, by Jon Conlon.

Describes how a reader-response approach can help students construct a portfolio of readings that reflects their development as poetry readers. Describes using a reader-response journal, communal learning activities, and a portfolio to create a recursive process through which students develop a better understanding of how poetry works. Discusses evaluation of the portfolio.

Explores issues, problems, and procedures involved in large English departments which use portfolio assessment and where part-timers and full-timers need to collaborate in this process. Offers recommendations involving the relationship of part-time and full-time teachers in such programs.

Describes a team-taught course called Mythic America which integrated literature and history and which deepened students’ understanding of each. Describes developing the course, its schedule, and its evaluation. Discusses the six major myths which were examined through readings in literature and history, and how they prompted students to think seriously about their own values and myth-making processes.

Asks if there is a place for portfolio assessment in the literature classroom. Finds that portfolios help students use writing to engage literary texts in multiple and productive ways, and offer opportunities to examine effects of the reading process over the course of the writing pieces. Argues for a particular kind of portfolio focusing on a single literary work.

Describes how a cooperative program between a community college (Spokane Falls) and a university (Eastern Washington) produced a successful teaching internship. Finds that, besides the ways in which interns learn from the experience, working with interns can benefit community college educators and offer them an opportunity for self-assessment and for introspection concerning their own planning and teaching.

A review of one two-year college English department’s procedures reveals the complexities of dealing with part-time faculty.

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