This article describes a one-session classroom activity that employs an unusual creative nonfiction genre (the hermit crab essay) to initiate first-year writers into the practice of successfully integrating academic research in their work. I share step-by-step instructions for implementation, along with classroom resources and materials necessary to conduct the assignment.

Profile writing enables nursing students to draw a connection between first-year composition and nursing through the genre’s emphasis on descriptive details and understanding the individual.

This article reports on a multimodal podcasting unit conducted during a two-week modified summer bridge program for at-risk incoming first-year students. The examples from student work show how teaching a multimodal genre encourages writers to draw from their prior knowledge of standardized genres learned in high school to effectively transition to college composition.

TETYC’s Instructional Note genre has evolved and begun to contribute to an ongoing scholarly conversation by contributing new knowledge, not merely passing along teaching lore.

Inspired by studies on transfer of learning that have provided helpful insight into metacognition and reflection, this instructional note describes an activity that asks students to reflect on skills learned and simultaneously think forward to future writing situations.

A hybrid assignment, a research-based academic essay paired with a research-based weblog, incorporates elements from both personal and academic writing to challenge students to critically think about how and why they write privately and publically. Students writing into this new model of public discourse can experiment with stance and tone across genres to exercise their abilities as responsible and flexible writers.

Through genre awareness, first-year writing students compose a book review to practice habits of mind.

Reviewed are: Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters by Robert Pinsky; reviewed by Rob Wallace Basic Skills Education in Community Colleges: Inside and Outside of Classrooms by W. Norton Grubb with Robert Gabriner; reviewed by Keith Kroll Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies: Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines by Laura Wilder; reviewed by Abigail Montgomery

In this essay, two poets who have taught language learners in the United States and abroad argue for the use of personal writing, preferably poetry from students’ home cultures, as a bridge to writing in academic genres.

Editor Jeff Sommers announces a new genre for TETYC: Classroom Research Progress Reports.

Classifying the literature survey course as an exit from literary study more often than an “introduction” to advanced courses, this article explores how sophomore-level literature courses can use the genre of published literary blogs to help student writers find relevance in their reading of unfamiliar texts.

After reviewing the past ten years of TETYC’s “What Works for Me,” I claim these pieces offer writing instructors much more than mere teaching tips; rather, they evidence a genre in a fraught relationship to academic discourse, a genre that asks readers to consider how the ways we write the classroom affect composition as a field, our teacherly selves, and the students in our classrooms.

Reviewed are: Genre: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy by Anis S. Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff, Reviewed by Kara Poe Alexander Beyond Post process, edited by Sidney I. Dobrin, J. A. Rice, and Michael Vastola, Reviewed by William Duffy Code-Meshing as World English: Pedagogy, Policy, Performance edited by Vershawn Ashanti Young and Aja Y. Martinez, Reviewed by Gregory Shafer Autism Spectrum Disorders in the College Composition Classroom: Making Writing Instruction More Accessible for All Students edited by Val Gerstle and Lynda Walsh, Reviewed by Gary Vaughn

This article traces the history of the five-paragraph theme and the views about it, along with arguing for its elimination in writing instruction in favor of problem-based, “rich-task” writing experiences for students.

Reviewed are: Academic Cultures: Professional Preparation and the Teaching Life Edited by Sean P. Murphy, Reviewed by Lois Birky Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being by Deborah Dean, Reviewed by Meredith DeCosta Ideas That Work in College Teaching, Edited by Robert L. Badger, Reviewed by Raymond Bergeron Inside the Community College Writing Center: Ten Guiding Principles by Ellen G. Mohr, Reviewed by Deborah Bertsch Essential Literary Terms: A Brief Norton Guide with Exercises by Sharon Hamilton, Reviewed by John Benson

The literary genres of creative nonfiction have tremendous potential to create a new kind of process-centered textbook—and perhaps a rocess-centered pedagogy that has finally reached maturity.

The writing assignment described offers an introduction to the college research paper genre.

This article recounts how a communications and an engineering department developed a collaborative teaching venture—a linked writing course—to provide mentorship for students learning how to write lab reports.

In the first-year composition research class, a disproportionate pedagogical focus is placed on the use of the library, rather than on the more difficult and integral problems of how to read, interpret, and analyze information the library offers, how to translate and synthesize this into knowledge, and how to produce a research product worthy of the genre.

Presents an assignment in which students look through a handful of poetry collections or anthologies, seeking 20 poems they like and thus understand or want to understand to some extent. Describes the benefits of this assignment, including honing students’ interpretive skills, dispelling their misconceptions about the genre, and continuing their "initiation into art."

Describes how a veteran writer and English teacher who only recently began writing poetry encourages others to invigorate their teaching by taking up a new writing genre. Details the lessons he has learned from poetry and passed on to his own students. Outlines six problems he encountered and presents solutions for each.

Presents five activities: (1) transforming—requires that a student put aside a first draft and create a new piece on the same subject in a different genre; (2) meaningless words—encourages deleting unnecessary words; (3) group work; (4) definitions quiz; and (5) audience, synthesis, and the thematic analysis—considering these three when writing on a certain topic.