This article shows how brief psycholinguistic reading experiments can illustrate the effects of various grammatical features, pique students’ interest, and position them to construct their own understanding of English grammar, separate from the teacher’s dictates.

This professional autobiography, covering the time from my first teaching job in Spain upto the present, documents my development as a teacher, teacher educator, and researcher,showing how my thinking about teaching has evolved through my deepeningunderstanding of how learners learn the grammar of a second language.

A research project into the grammar and usage error patterns among students at our university showed that error can be located on a rhetorical map within texts, writers, readers, and their social contexts; this perspective helps students and teachers deal productively with error.

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“When Readers Disagree”, Kip Strasma, Review Editor; “Teaching Writing with Latino/a Students: Lessons Learned at Hispanic-Serving Institutions” by Cristina Kirklighter, Diana Cardenas, and Susan Wolff Murphy, Reviewed by Kip Strasma; “Engaging Grammar: Practical Advice for Real Classrooms” by Amy Benjamin with Tom Oliva, Reviewed by Kimme Nuckles; “Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence” by Fred Genesee, Kathryn Lindholm-Leary, William M. Saunders, and Donna Christian, Reviewed by Mercè Pujol.

In this Cross Talk, Mark Blaauw-Hara, the author of “Mapping the Frontier: A Survey of Twenty Years of Grammar Articles in TETYC,” and one of the manuscript’s reviewers, Andy Anderson, engage in a brief conversation about the essay, its content, and the processes of writing, reviewing, and revising.

The author synthesizes twenty-four articles on grammar from the last twenty years of the journal, tracing two major trends.

Our students need to be able to adhere to standard written English to succeed in their other classes and to get jobs at the end of their schooling, and it’s the responsibility of writing teachers to help them do so. In this article, the author provides a research-based theoretical underpinning for effective grammar instruction as well as several specific strategies—based on experience and research—for addressing grammar productively.

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This article describes two strategies for grounding grammar instruction in students’ lifelong experience as users of language. In both cases, students participate as active decision-makers in the process of analyzing conventions of language use.

In this article, I examine Lynn Truss’s book of punctuation rules and faux pas, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, contemplating the complex relationships among class, academics, and language snobbery. I don’t refute Truss’s lessons on punctuation. Instead, I use her text as a jumping-off point for discussion of the social issues embedded in her guide and others like it.

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Today’s students are arriving on college campuses with little knowledge of grammar and usage, so instructors may need to employ alternate strategies of games and electronic activities to provide the practice such students need.

This paper explains the simplification of a theory of punctuation for college-level instruction.

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Helping one to imagine himself or herself a writer is much more complex than nurturing a more stable grasp of sentence clarity or spelling. Rather, it involves the ability to nurture the personal introspection and cultural scrutiny that makes writing a source for reflection and transformation.

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

Shows how an editing assignment emphasizing punctuation can help students in a first-year writing class discover new ideas and perspectives as part of the revision process. Considers a class that experimented with editing punctuation for a dual purpose--as a revision heuristic as well as for correctness. Reconsiders editing and revision assignments to take better advantage of editing’s generative powers.

Through two personalized instructional tools - usage scans and the "fix-it page" - students become more aware of their own patterns of mechanical errors, learn to locate and correct their errors, and learn to use a handbook.

Outlines detrimental effects of word processing in the composition classroom on planning, reading, organizing, revising, error detection, and spelling and vocabulary skill development. Discusses strategies instructors can use to teach students to use the computer at each stage of the writing process in ways that encourage and develop the higher-order thinking essential to good writing.

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.

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.

Offers strategies for teaching grammar, literature, essay writing, democracy in letters to the editor, and oral presentations of the research paper.

Reviews of 3 professional books: Revising the Rules: Traditional Grammar and Modern Linguistics by Brock Haussamen reviewed by David J. Cranmer; Grammar in Many Voices by Marilyn N. Silva reviewed by David J. Cranmer; Writings from the Workplace: Documents, Models, Cases by Carolyn R. Boiarsky and Margot K. Soven reviewed by Lois Birky.