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Developmental reading and writing students study linguistics and by doing so become aware of how their use of language intersects with their own evolving identities.

This study follows the progress of 238,032 students who enrolled in either an ESL composition, a developmental composition, or a college composition course at one of nine community colleges for a minimum of three and a maximum of eleven years.

Interclass collaboration in the context of an in-depth interdisciplinary discussion and analysis of global problems yields significant benefits in the development of ESL students’ sense of efficacy, their literacy, and their critical thinking skills.

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This article describes how the author became critically aware of the dynamics of literacy and race in a composition classroom.

Recently I asked students in a tutoring course that I teach to write a literacy narrative which, while beginning to tell the story of their own emerging literacy, had to conclude with the ways that their literacy has had or will have public consequences. As they shared each other’s drafts in class, it became clear that all the students had powerful stories to tell regarding their own struggles to become literate: stories of their coping with learning disabilities and personal loss, and stories of classroom failures that constrained their natural desire to play with language. For these students, the consequence of literacy couldn’t have been more obvious, as they recounted the shift from private powerlessness to personal empowerment.

Reviews four books: Weaving a Virtual Web: Practical Approaches to New Information Technologies, ed. Sibylle Gruber; Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher; Readings Online: A Virtual Common Place, ed. Paul Amore; Reading and Writing in an Online World, by Dawn Rodrigues.

A curriculum of technology-enhanced and sustained content study helps ESL students develop literacy skills necessary for college work.

Oral interpretation courses, designed to be about communication, can serve as a site for thinking about what meanings writers communicate, as well as how interpreters become communicators in larger social discourses through interactions with written texts.

Considers how the introductory business writing course is appropriate for the development of critical literacy, especially for students at second-tier, working-class colleges. Notes that the opposition between labor and management offers rich opportunities for the critical examination of corporate rhetoric, opportunities that are as relevant in business writing class as they are in other courses.

Suggests that educators need to let students know that sometimes messages are sent in the hopes of confusing or misleading readers or listeners. Notes that people sending such messages include politicians, marketers, educators, parents, entertainers, medical personnel, and in fact, anybody and everybody. Considers how modern media makes it easier for people to manipulate others.

Reviews four books: Reading Poverty, by Patrick Shannon; Race, Rhetoric, and Composition, ed. by Keith Gilyard; Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, by Cynthia L. Selfe; Critical Thinking, Thoughtful Writing: A Rhetoric with Readings, by John Chaffee with Christine McMahon and Barbara Stout

Notes that students today do not seem less prepared and less literate than students 30 years ago, but they do seem less loved and cared for. Uses examples of Morrie Schwartz, John Stanford, and one particular classroom community to argue that teachers must create classrooms in which empathy and reciprocity open the hearts and heads of students and teachers.

Describes a study unit for ESL (English Second Language) students on language and identity. Explores the dichotomy of attitudes and behavior occurring when a nonnative speaker tries to embrace a new language and culture. Concludes that reading and writing about multicultural literature in the ESL classroom helps students gain language skills and better perspectives on the diversity of American culture.

Presents Part II of an interview with Ira Shor reflecting on the state of community colleges since the 1960s. Discusses how the most important thing to teach is critical inquiry and critical literacy, to study something in a methodical way and to communicate knowledge gained with articulate depth to a real audience. Outlines 13 goals for schooling and society.

Offers future researchers many opportunities for research in two-year college English. Considers input about issues, problems, and questions which the research community still needs to engage. Assumes that research clusters around several “fault lines” shared by other groups and institutions not directly tied to education; the fault lines selected are identity, technology, diversity, pedagogy, literacy, and methodology.

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 how one teacher uses life writing (reading and writing about transformative life experiences) in her basic writing class to engage students and to help them understand the power and purpose of reaching out to a variety of audiences. Discusses grading life writing.

Sees a tendency, in the field of composition, to privilege either theory or classroom practice. Discusses theory as liberatory narrative. Draws on Michael Dorris, bell hooks, and Paulo Freire to show how the act of theorizing becomes an act of compassion and of healing. Describes how literacy narratives from the two-year college classroom demonstrate this point.

J. Blake Scott describes a method and outlines the procedures, including a heuristic, for having students write literacy narratives about their history as writers. Scott argues that writing and sharing these narratives brings the students closer into community with one another and helps them produce better writing.

Reviews six books: City on a Hill: Testing the American Dream at City College, by James Traub; The Writer’s Presence, ed. by Donald McQuade and Robert Atwan; The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, by Neil Postman; From Community to College: Reading and Writing across Diverse Contexts, by Jeff Sommers and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson; Writing Permitted in Designated Areas Only, by Linda Brodkey; Juxtapositions, by William Vesterman.

Reviews of 6 books: Writing With: New Directions in the Collaborative Teaching, Learning, and Research, ed. by Sally Barr Reagan, Thomas Fox, and David Bleich reviewed by Howard Tinberg; Opening Arguments: A Brief Rhetoric with Readings, by Erik Muller reviewed by June Hadden Hobbs; Ideology, by Mike Cormack reviewed by Libby Allison; Images in Language, Media, and Mind, ed. by Roy F. Fox reviewed by David J. Cranmer; Understanding Ourselves: Readings for Developing Writers, by Ellen Andrews Knodt reviewed by Audrey Roth; Changing Our Minds: Negotiating English and Literacy, by Miles Myers reviewed by Smokey Wilson.

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Reviews of 4 professional books: The Language of Interpretation: Patterns of Discourse in Discussions of Literature by James D. Marshall, Peter Smagorinsky, and Michael W. Smith reviewed by Mary C. Daane; Pedagogy in the Age of Politics: Writing and Reading (in) the Academy ed. by Donna J. Qualley and Patricia A. Sullivan reviewed by Alison Tracy; Philosophy, Rhetoric, Literary Criticism: Inter(views), ed. by Gary Olson reviewed by William Dolphin; Teachers Thinking, Teachers Knowing: Reflections on Literacy and Language Education ed. by Timothy Shanahan reviewed by Rodney D. Keller.