Claims personal narrative essays, although controversial, touch a unique chord in listeners and in readers. Suggest incorporating critical thinking and modeling by the instructor into personal narrative essay assignments.

Claims lower-division literature courses can engage students by incorporating student text into the anthologized canon. Describes specific classroom situations and effective strategies for connecting literature to students’ lives.

Offers 4 brief descriptions from college writing teachers of activities they use successfully. Describes using a “round robin” process for group writing and revision; addressing stylistic and grammatical issues by using anonymous student writing; “showing” versus “telling” words; and using film to model “larger” meaning in personal narrative.

Suggests that beginning writers can improve skills when they exchange letters with peers, teachers, and others. Offers a brief historical perspective on the use of letters as a pedagogical device. Outlines current applications of letter writing and exchanges in: English as a second language; technical and business writing; composition and literature classes; and portfolio reflection letters.

Describes the author’s 35-year career teaching in the California Community College System. Discusses social, political, intellectual, and emotional changes over that time span and into retirement.

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.

Reviews five books: Grading in the Post-Process Classroom: From Theory to Practice, ed. by Libby Allison, Lizbeth Bryant, and Maureen Hourigan; Alternatives to Grading Student Writing, ed. by Stephen Tchudi; The Theory and Practice of Grading Writing: Problems and Possibilities, ed. by Frances Zak and Christopher C. Weaver; Teaching ESL Composition: Purpose, Process, and Practice, by Dana Ferris and John S. Hedgcock; “M” Word, by Jane Isenberg.

Suggests that despite culturally induced aversions, aromas do have a role to play in writing instruction. Suggest there are many examples in literature of authors’ treatment of the olfactory sense. Argues that emphasizing smell as a writing stimulant and encouraging olfactory analyses of literary works can serve as valid ways of introducing students to alternative and challenging approaches to writing.

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.

Reviews five books: Errors and Expectations: A Guide for the Teacher of Basic Writing, by Mina Shaughnessy; Telling Writing, by Ken Macrorie; Writing without Teachers, by Peter Elbow; Structured Reading, by Lynn Quitman Troyka and Joseph W. Thweatt; Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning, by Stephen D. Krashen.

Reflects on making “Teaching English in the Two-Year College” a viable journal. Discusses formation of the Two-Year College Organization, and its formal recognition by the Conference on College Composition and Communication in 1997.

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Presents a long-time two-year college teacher’s reflections on retirement and the profession. Discusses ways in which to continue writing and working after retirement. Considers the politics of regional, local, and national English organizations in terms of what’s best for the teachers and students. Sums up in seven assertions what he has learned in 47 years of teaching.

Presents comments and reflections by winners of this journal’s Best Article of the Year Award. Includes 15 winners and their discussions about their articles.

Presents an interview with Ira Shor, who reflects on the state of the community college since the 1960s, the open admissions experiment at the City University of New York, and the remediation wars that have recently heated up in New York and elsewhere.

Gives tribute to Bertie Carlyle Edwards Fearing (1943-1995), one of the three senior editors of “Teaching English in the Two-Year College.” Characterizes Bertie as a person with “style,” always focused on the task at hand, and recruiting staff members with Mensa-level intellects and showing them by her example how to work together harmoniously through the editing process.

Offers four brief descriptions from composition/writing teachers of class activities that work well for them, addressing using a grocery list to help students understand why audience awareness is important; using group work to help students analyze literature; having students define and describe good writing; and helping students with specified punctuation and sentence patterns.

Describes how three faculty members created a learning community at a nonresidential campus by creating and teaching a linked block of three core-curriculum courses (Composition 1, Speech Communication, and Cultural Anthropology) for incoming freshman students. Relates first-day class activities, describes the linking of assignments and communal learning, and discusses assessment. Notes excellent student retention, and student and teacher enthusiasm.

Describes an instructional model that develops English-as-a-Second-Language students’ linguistic and academic skills through extended study of discipline-based content presented through multimedia. Illustrates the approach via a sample lesson from a unit on environmental science. Discusses the use of focus-discipline groups that research class topics. Notes positive student achievement and feedback.

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.

Reviews three books: Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry, by Donna Qualley; Gypsy Academics and Mother?Teachers: Gender, Contingent Labor, and Writing Instruction, by Eileen E. Schell; Reflection in the Writing Classroom, by Kathleen Blake Yancey.

Discusses the tremendous barriers to success in college that Navajo students face. Discusses five major forms: financial difficulty, family obligations, prescriptive attitudes toward Standard American English, instructor/faculty ethnocentrism, and ambivalence toward Western education. Discusses ways faculty can work to mitigate these barriers as well as those faced by all minority culture students.

Presents a second discography (of compact disks only) which lists American literature (primarily poetry) set to music. Notes two publications that may be of use to those well–versed in literature but less knowledgeable about music.

Reviews six books: Mina P. Shaughnessy: Her Life and Work, by Jane Maher reviewed by Judith A. (Jay) Wootten; Your Choice: A Basic Writing Guide with Readings, by Kate Mangelsdorf and Evelyn Posey reviewed by Lynn Summer; Constructing Knowledges: The Politics of Theory Building and Pedagogy in Composition, by Sidney I. Dobrin reviewed by Julie Drew; Academic Advancement in Composition Studies: Scholarship, Publication, Promotion, Tenure, ed. by Richard C. Gebhardt and Barbara Genelle Smith Gebhardt; Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition, ed. by Gary A. Olson and Todd Taylor; Writing for Academic Publication, by Frank Parker and Kathryn Riley reviewed by Cynthia Simpson.

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.

Describes how instructors at two different colleges in Montana (a tribal college and a distant community college) collaboratively teach composition courses (using the same reading and assignments, and doing peer revision for each other). Describes how this approach breaks through cultural, ideological, intellectual "containments;" engages in academic discourse; and enters into new discourse communities.

Argues that a process-oriented nonjudgmental instructional approach can help English-as-a-Second-Language community college students become better writers. Discusses the principle of nonjudgmental awareness and its rationale, and describes five pedagogical techniques used in a nonjudgmental writing class.

Finds that the writing of the typical student enrolled in the community college composition class is qualitatively different from the writing of their four-year counterparts but that two-year college transfer students achieve the same level of writing competence as their nontransfer peers. Presents reactions of a two-year college instructor regarding implications of these results.

Discusses Margaret Atwood’s "provocative and funny" short story "Rape Fantasies," and describes how, when teaching this story the author encourages students to sympathize with Estelle (the narrator) before they judge her (instead of rushing to achieve closure and begin interpretation).

Describes an English-as-a-Second-Language class writing and discussion project in which students retold and explained their favorite folk stories, eventually publishing them in a booklet.

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.

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.

Modeling established poetic forms can help students write poetry.

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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This essay demonstrates how the concept of multiple intelligences can be applied to college composition.

A discussion of the effect of writing on ESL students’ reading performance provides data to demonstrate that “formal,” analytical written response to text helps ESL students become more proficient readers of English.

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.

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