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An instructional note on foregrounding rhetoric across the curriculum to convey the rigor of professional and technical writing and assist instructors in claiming pedagogical ethos in a course that spans many disciplines.

The authors describe their attempt to devise a practical way to integrate critical thinking more overtly into the assessment of college writing across the disciplines.

A brief review of composition theory shows metaphor is often underused and misrepresented in the composition classroom; in response, I suggest metaphor is foundationalto argumentation and provide a method to teach it as such.

This article describes classroom exercises and writing assignments through which students can use Shakespeare’s plays to develop their own thoughts about various social and personal norms, develop an empathetic yet critical understanding of others’ positions, and learn to express their own ideas more fully.

The use of humorous texts in the writing class can help students improve skills in effective writing while encouraging critical thinking and an increased range in expression. In addition, because of the accessible nature of humor and the focus on purpose and audience that is necessary when writing it, students show a natural inclination toward peer review and recursive writing, with an enthusiasm that is often lacking when working with traditional texts in the writing class.

An authentic assessment embedded in a course becomes a teaching tool integral to the aims of the course, not simply a mandated test.

With increasing demands for online courses in all levels of higher education, a community college English instructor implements alternative methods of communication to ensure course rigor and integrity as she meets her objectives of enhanced student learning and success.

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.

Implementing deracination and the D.I.S.—components of a developing critical thinking pedagogy termed decritique—offer a more critically reflective alternative to classroom peer-review activities that mistakenly focus on a “notion of caring"

Working with accounts of famous trials can involve students in thinking through and critiquing important techniques of argumentation.

Argues that students are more motivated and develop more effective skills if challenged with assignments that ask for the depth of thinking required of academic disciplines and careers. Encourages composition teachers to experiment with assignments that challenge assumptions about first-year students’ capabilities.

Research has shown that contemporary popular films are a valuable resource in the ESL classroom. However, the short, silent film has been overlooked. Using D.W. Griffith’s The Painted Lady, Kaspar and Singer demonstrate how to use silent films to facilitate the development of ESL students’ critical thinking and writing skills.

Considers how rhetoric, cognitive awareness, and competing cultures of community college composition students challenge instructors. Discusses issues such as: updating the definition of “student”; historically dynamic biculturalism; collaboration versus negotiated meaning; destabilizing knowledge; inventing the student; and mastering the art of persuasion. Concludes that instructors must be aware that theories, ideologies, and pedagogy influence students and therefore must be current.

Suggests that it is easier to invigorate class discussion and stimulate critical thinking if students discover the constructed nature of the canon by first seeing that their notions about a “typical” Poe story have been shaped by an often invisible process of selection and exclusion.

Notes that teaching composition in a technical college presents a number of challenges. Considers how employers are calling for the hands-on training to be combined with more communication and critical thinking skills so that employees have a broader education that allows them to switch speeds or tasks. Describes activities and course components for technical college writing instruction.

Describes how the author uses reading response journals in her composition classes. Shows how it actively engages students in the reading/writing process, and how students learn careful, active reading and develop confidence generating ideas and formulating opinions via the structure, freedom, enhanced comprehension, critical thinking, and confidence that these reading response journals offer.

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

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.

Describes a course in the first-year college composition sequence (with substantial research and argumentation components) that is organized around a career focus on social services practice. Describes how the students learn about connections between writing, thinking, problem solving, composition class, and their chosen profession.

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.

Reviews three books: August Wilson and the African American Odyssey, by Kim Pereira; When Students Have Power: Negotiating Authority in a Critical Pedagogy, by Ira Shor; A Guide to Argumentative Writing, by Byron L. Stay.

Describes how one teacher adapted the Toulmin argumentation model to improve discussion in introductory literature classes. Describes the method and its application to literary texts. Shows how it enables students with no particular attraction to literature to invent and respond to arguments about a text, ground those arguments in the text, and warrant them to their classmates’ satisfaction.

Makes a case for using advertising as the common subject matter in a composition course, and for analyzing advertisements as a means of teaching argumentation. Discusses seeking a social-epistemic curriculum in the heterogeneous writing class. Shows why the close analysis of print advertisements provides an ideal opportunity to discuss questions of what constitutes a good claim.

With the Toulmin analysis, determining an argument’s warrants can be especially tricky and frustrating for students. Using cartoons is an effective strategy for teaching the importance of warrants in a way that students can easily understand and enjoy.