The traditional research paper seems to have been part of the English curriculum forever. Where did it come from? Why? How did its "generic" form become so entrenched? The answer to these questions, as well as a glimpse at what teachers in the past have done to alter its teaching and final format, provide a background against which English teachers may want to reevaluate and reinspire their own teaching of the research paper.

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When two-year college students take time to write at length, paying more attention to their own feelings and those of their readers through regular response and revision, they write better, according to the results of a three-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

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Considers how although students’ frustration level may rise with the inclusion of computer technology in writing classes, so too do the number of "wow moments" – those times when students finally achieve something for which they have long struggled. Examines the efficacy of including technology in first–year writing courses. Finds that a sizable majority of students indicated that the use of computers had some positive effect on their writing.

Notes that asynchronous online discussion forums can enhance community college students’ education. Focuses on how online discussion forums uniquely contribute to the teaching and learning of community college students. Discusses benefits of the online discussion forum. Concludes that educators must continue identifying who students are, how they learn, and how they want and need to be educated, and then look for ways that technology can help.

Considers how the ability for self–direction is one principle of lifelong learning, but the reality that students are at various stages of dependence means that online teachers need to recognize the variety of learners present in their online classrooms and implement strategies to guide them toward such independent learning. Outlines a sequence of linear stages involved in the transition from dependent to independent learning.

Describes the Fulbright–Hays seminar and the author’s experience with it. Discusses the application process and experiences with Fulbright seminars in Poland, Hungary, Peru, and Ecuador. Notes how she and her colleagues use Fulbright information in their classrooms.

Reviews four books: Writing with Elbow, by Pat Belanoff, Marcia Dickson, Sheryl I. Fontaine, and Charles Moran; Opening Spaces: Critical Pedagogy and Resistance Theory in Composition, by Joe Marshall Hardin; Standing in the Shadow of Giants: Plagiarists, Authors, Collaborators, by Rebecca Moore Howard; The Politics of Writing in the Two–Year College, edited by Barry Alford and Keith Kroll.

Reviews briefly the literature associated with the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s "Students’ Right to Their Own Language" statement. Explores the status of standard English at community colleges in Michigan, as expressed in first–year composition course objectives and descriptions. Considers the history of the standard written English objective at Delta College, a community college in mid–Michigan.

Considers how a community-college professor’s long–awaited sabbatical not only stimulates new thinking about projects and goals but also offers a foray into that forest of self that lies behind the trees. Discusses the author’s experience with the time shespent on her sabbatical.

Describes the experience of a returning, nontraditional, first–generation college student as seen through the eyes of an English instructor who is substantially younger. Discusses the author’s anxiety about teaching and relates it to her students’ learning processes.

Examines six shifting boundaries: time and space, authorship, writing skills, medium, availability, and the senses.Addresses what the new perimeters might mean for teaching writing at the college level, for student writing, and for instructional management. Considers the challenges of plagiarism.

Discusses implications of "readarounds" with the author’s first–year English composition students. Notes that readarounds consist of student drafts circulated around an entire class, evaluated according to three or four criteria, and praised viathe lavish use of highlighters. Concludes readarounds teach students to make valid suggestions on peer drafts and to evaluate the supportive feedback of a live audience.

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Describes a successful practice for incorporating more novels into community college literature courses and for sparking student interest in reading. Presents a book club assignment that includes both collaborative activities and a group presentation. Considers how a book club assignment offers an effective way to include more writers into the course while maintaining a reasonable reading load.

E-mail peer response teaches students about audience and text more effectively than synchronous peer response.

To overcome initial fears of technology, it is important to survey teachers, determine their concerns, and then provide training opportunities, including online courses, that illuminate the benefits and outcomes of online learning.

This article explores the possibilities of the paperless classroom achieved through e-mail strategies and the use of Blackboard, an e-learning software platform.

Unexpected and most welcome is the discovery that technology-mediated teacher evaluation can increase our access to our students’ world and help us be more responsive to their needs.

With the help of recent research on teaching with digital technologies, this article critically reflects upon the changes in instruction and identity that occur in computer classrooms, online course supplements, and Internet classes.

Discussion forum technology connects online students in interactive, real-life writing groups.

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.

This article describes three approaches with which grammar may be welcomed back into the composition classroom.

Reviews four books: Listening Up: Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers and Students, by Rachel Martin; Disturbing the Peace, by Nancy Newman; Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect Education, Cultural Diversity, and the Prospects of Ecological Sustainability, by C. A. Bowers; Assessing the Portfolio: Principles for Practice, Theory, and Research, by Liz Hamp-Lyons and William Condon.

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.

While active learning strategies enable students to grasp important concepts, they also help students become enthusiastic and confident writers and interpreters of literature.

Journals can be effective in cultivating formal discourse while respecting cultural differences.

In her 1981 novel Obasan, the Japanese Canadian writer Joy Kogawa recounts the saga of the internment and relocation of Japanese Canadians during and after the Second World War by juxtaposing the "factual" historic telling against the personal, "fictional" telling. This experimental approach opens multiple and diverse pathways to us as instructors of literature.

Pedagogical triangulation is a threefold method for teaching that involves a holistic approach to classroom collaboration. The specific elements of pedagogical triangulation are described, along with the results of applying this approach in a first-semester college English class.

Should instructors in two-year colleges be involved in research? If so, how important is such research in advancing the work of community colleges in a new century?

Composition teachers can obtain a better understanding of the challenges facing ESL students by writing in their own second language and reflecting on the experience.

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Suggests that students need to learn to "read" the cultural texts surrounding them. Argues that there is great need for including analyses of popular culture in the college curriculum. Presents a unit to help students gain a greater appreciation for the influence that advertising has upon them and the subtlety with which it manipulates people, mainly to their detriment.