As they prepare to teach writing, new teachers should respond to writing assignments that we deliberately design to be difficult, exploratory, or critically reflective, so that they may better develop flexibility and engagement as learners, teachers, and theorists in the field of writing instruction.

Responding to cultural concerns about the ownership of writing and the nature of plagiarism, this article examines discourses about plagiarism by ESL students and argues for a plurality of approaches to understanding the ownership of language and textual appropriation. First, it uses speech act theory to explain the dynamics of plagiarism; second, it examines transnational political contexts for writing pedagogy; and third, it offers a Daoist understanding of language.

Recent appeal to the concept of design in composition studies benefits teaching writing in digital media. Yet the concept of design has not been developed enough to fully benefit composition instruction. This article develops an understanding of design as a matter of resolving wicked problems and makes a case for the advantages of this understanding in composition studies.

This article argues that mid-1970s discourses of literacy crisis prompted a problematic shift toward color-blind ideologies of language and literacy within both disciplinary and institutional discussions of writing instruction for “high-risk” minority students. It further argues that this shift has continuing import for contemporary antiracist writing instruction.

Challenging the thesis of Stanley Fish’s recent book Save the World on Your Own Time, the author argues that political awareness was vital to the development of a productive basic writing pedagogy, and that composition teachers can responsibly work from their own political values in the classroom.

This article uses the convergence of our positionings as feminists, pragmatists, and rhetoricians to theorize communicative gaps related to different beliefs about writing instruction as sites of generative dialogue. We offer a WPA/TA discourse model centered on productive resistance and on discursive power to posit feminist pragmatic rhetoric as a communicative art of writing program change.

As faculty are increasingly recruited to participate in retention efforts on their campuses, I argue that composition studies professionals should pay attention to the scholarship on retention, one of the fastest growing areas of research in higher education. Moreover, the questions surrounding which of our students persist until graduation and why should qualify our arguments about access and reframe our conversations about pedagogy.

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Creative writing workshops typically feature a gag rule and emphasize purported flaws. This structure limits students’ meaningful engagement with each other’s work; positions the author as inherently flawed; and positions other participants as authority figures, passing judgment without articulating their aesthetic standards. I propose an alternative structure in which authors lead discussion; the work is treated not as inherently flawed but as “in process”; and discussants articulate their expectations about “good” writing rather than allowing them to function as unspoken norms.

This article explores the dialectic between autonomy and mutuality within postsecondary composition programs. Grounded in a case study of writing instruction at a small, unionized, public university, the article argues that while broad workplace democracy and economic security are clearly desirable for communities of college composition teachers, their efficacy is seriously compromised absent sustained commitments to intellectual restlessness, professional deliberation, and collective action.

The Roanoke College Writing Initiative Grant (WIG) program provides a two-thousand-dollar stipend for non-English Department faculty to teach in the first-year writing program. Faculty is expected to teach three iterations of their proposed course and receive a year of training prior to entering the classroom. Hanstedt's introduction discusses the theoretical justifications for the program, as well as its historical roots and positive outcomes. The faculty development training of Roanoke's WIG program is described, as is how this member of the chemistry department put the lessons learned into action as he taught freshman writing for the first time. Rachelle Ankney taught an introductory writing course as a break from teaching many sections of introductory college math. She enjoyed learning a whole new approach to writing and had fun in the first-year writing course. But she was most surprised to find that teaching writing well makes teaching math better, too. She went from advocating “required writing across the curriculum” to being a firm supporter of “teaching writing across the curriculum.” This paper reflects on an experiment in using a writing course to teach critical thinking skills and vice versa, with special emphasis on helping students to get beyond their aversion to and distrust of argument. The course assigned short argument analyses, an exercise in literary interpretation, and a research paper in for students to gain more familiarity with argument and to appreciate its varied uses. One unforeseen result was the amount of time that had to be devoted to clarification of the terms of argument. Because clarification requires using inference, however, it is recommended that descriptive writing would be a helpful vehicle to start students addresstheir problems involving argument. This paper recounts a music professor's experience designing and teaching his first writing course, Music into Words. Research on the conceptualization of music argues that our ability to communicate musical understanding relies heavily on phenomenological and metaphorical description; the opportunity to teach writing about music to the general student offered the musician a laboratory for testing this hypothesis. However, the instructor discovered that, not surprisingly, narrative (story-telling) functioned as his students' primary mode of communicating meaning and significance in music. In the end, while reading and writing these stories, the students and the music professor learn important lessons about the role of music in human experience.

Composition and/or Literature, edited by Linda S. Bergmann and Edith M. Baker, and Integrating Literature and Writing Instruction by Judith H. Anderson and Christine R. Farris, reviewed by Jason Pickavance; Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition by Patricia Donahue and Gretchen Flesher Moon, reviewed by Keely R. Austin; Take 20: Teaching Writing by Todd Taylor, reviewed by Jeffrey Klausman.

Writing the Successful Thesis and Dissertation: Entering the Conversation by Irene L. Clark; Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts by Joseph Harris; The Work of Writing: Insights and Strategies for Academics and Professionals by Elizabeth Rankin

Fueled by disciplinary disagreements and resource fights, comp/lit conflicts continue. However, productive collaboration is possible and an opportunity remains in developing general education writing courses. A general education course in teaching writing through literature is argued for on the grounds that English studies has been positively transformed by the mainstreaming of composition, pedagogy, and cultural studies.

Student compositions traditionally are written for the teacher. Yet instructors of professional communication genres have discovered that students' motivation may be enhanced when they write assignments for audiences of peers within the classroom or professionals outside the campus. Yet client-based projects require writing students who have never yet written for an external audience to make a leap beyond the classroom. To bridge the gap between writing for classroom peers and writing for professional clients, this article describes a third and intermediate choice of audience, namely, external peers in cross-classroom collaborations that occur via telecommunication. The author places this intermediate-audience strategy within the larger conversation about the impact of audience on student writing outcomes, applies the strategy to professional writing pedagogy, and reports the results of a small pilot study that provide some preliminary support for the strategy.

This article explores the use of scoring rubrics in the context of deteriorating material conditions of writing instruction.

It has become increasingly clear that U.S. faculty cannot afford to remain insular about global issues in teaching and the forces that are shaping them. At the same time, our desire to address or resist those issues, to join in or to find alternatives, needs to be contextualized. The three edited collections reviewed here address globalization of higher education in Australia, writing instruction in higher education in the United Kingdom, and interdisciplinary collaboration in U.S. higher education. The three bring different perspectives to current U.S. discussions of internationalization and interdisciplinary work in higher education and allow us to better understand issues in other cultures and disciplines while critically examining our own through new lenses.

The study uses Foucault's framework of governmentality to understand the impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on teachers' writing instruction and attitudes toward writing in high- and low-income schools. Using interviews and observations of 18 teachers, the study identified four themes: emphasis on testing, curricular effects, awareness of lower-achieving students, and concerns for English language learners. While teachers shared concerns in those areas, there were differences in how teachers from high- and low-income schools experienced the impact of NCLB on their writing instruction. The study suggests that NCLB has affected teacher morale as well as the nature and amount of writing instruction, but that school contexts figure into teachers' instruction. The example of one teacher from a low-income school demonstrates the potential for teachers to resist the coercive aspects of NCLB through their writing instruction.

The responsibility of a writing teacher is, finally, to teach his or her students to pay attention—to their own lives and to the world in which they live.

“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.

Reviewed are "Composition and/or Literature: The End(s) of Education", edited by Linda S. Bergmann and Edith M. Baker, and "Integrating Literature and Writing Instruction: First-Year English, Humanities Core Courses, Seminars", edited by Judith H. Anderson and Christine R. Farris.

This article examines Yale’s “Awkward Squad” of basic writers between 1920 and 1960. Using archival materials that illustrate the socioeconomic conditions of this early, “pre-Shaughnessy” site of remedial writing instruction, I argue for a re-definition of basic in composition studies using local, institutional values rather than generic standards of correctness applied uniformly to all colleges and universities.

This essay analyzes the ways in which subtly but powerfully racist ideologies of language and literacy shaped the institutional development of one writing program for “high-risk” African American college students during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It further theorizes the value of such institutional analysis for counteracting racism within present-day writing programs.

Delivering the Goods: How Writing Instruction Really Works by Howard Tinberg; A review of “Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts” by Joseph Harris and of “Delivering College Composition: The Fifth Canon,” edited by Kathleen Blake Yancey.

This article explores a third-grade teacher’s use of critical writing pedagogy to encourage students’ exploration of issues that were important in their lives from personal as well as social perspectives.

These two recipients of this year’s Alan C. Purves Award reflect on their work (reported in RTE Vol. 41, No. 3, pp. 269–303) on “A Cognitive Strategies Approach to Reading and Writing Instruction for English Language Learners in Secondary School” and the lessons they learned from their original research study as they tried to replicate the project in two additional districts outside their service area, to determine if the implications of their study would hold beyond the local context. The Alan C. Purves Award is given to the RTE article in the previous volume year judged most likely to impact educational practice

This essay explores the potential for wikis in English classrooms and writing pedagogy through discussion of a class project involving Wikitravel. Topics include the influence that wikis have on collaboration, an example of networked writing, and the role of writing with technology in knowledge creation.

To be effective, writers must understand what knowledge they share with the audience and what they do not. Achieving this understanding is made difficult by the knowledge effect—a tendency of individuals to assume that their own knowledge is shared by others. Understanding the knowledge effect and methods for reducing it is potentially useful for understanding and teaching writing. In Study 1, we explored the impact of an individual's knowledge of technical terms on that person's ability to estimate other people's understanding of those terms. We assessed how individuals' familiarity with technical terms influenced their predictions that college freshmen and college graduates would understand those terms. Results indicate that familiarity with the meaning of technical terms leads to substantial overestimation of others' knowledge. In Study 2, we evaluated an online tutor designed to improve writers' predictions of other's word knowledge by providing them with feedback on the accuracy of their judgments.

Toward the end of his life, Donald Murray felt that his approach to writing instruction was no longer appreciated by journals in his field. Nevertheless, his emphasis on encouraging students to surprise themselves through informal writing still has considerable value.

The intersection of the call for civic engagement and the call for student scholars at the center of writing pedagogy, along with the daunting challenge of introducing beginning students to the demands and rewards of academic writing, is an ideal location for a revival of Ken Macrorie’s I-Search paper.

This essay explores the conflict between teaching writing and one’s own writing practice.

In portfolio assessment, WAC helps other disciplines increase programmatic integrity and accountability. This analysis of a portfolio partnership also shows composition faculty how a dynamic culture of assessment helps us protect what we do well, improve what we need to do better, and solve problems as writing instruction keeps pace with programmatic change.

In this article, we offer practical suggestions for teaching writing to diverse groups of students who represent the fields of composition studies, basic writing, and ESL.

Composition teachers can reconcile the conflict between effective writing instruction and educational reform mandates by making timed writing assignments part of the writing process.

This study was conducted by members of a site of the California Writing Project in partnership with a large, urban, low-SES school district where 93% of the students speak English as a second language and 69% are designated Limited English Proficient.

Part I of this essay traces the evolution of my understanding of the exploratory essay as a discursive form and a genre for teaching writing. Part II explores my motivations for advocating a polarized definition of the essay and then concludes with a call to expand the purview of composition beyond first-year courses.

English faculty in community colleges feel pressured to make their composition courses acceptable for transfer to four-year schools. In particular, many of them feel obligated to emphasize academic research and argument at the expense of literature. But community college students will benefit from first-year courses that address a wide range of discourse by integrating literary study with writing instruction.

This study charts the terrain of research on writing during the 6-year period from 1999 to 2004, asking “What are current trends and foci in research on writing?” In examining a cross-section of writing research, the authors focus on four issues: (a) What are the general problems being investigated by contemporary writing researchers? Which of the various problems dominate recent writing research, and which are not as prominent? (b) What population age groups are prominent in recent writing research? (c) What is the relationship between population age groups and problems under investigation? and (d) What methodologies are being used in research on writing? Based on a body of refereed journal articles ( n = 1,502) reporting studies about writing and composition instruction that were located using three databases, the authors characterize various lines of inquiry currently undertaken. Social context and writing practices, bi- or multi-lingualism and writing, and writing instruction are the most actively studied problems during this period, whereas writing and technologies, writing assessment and evaluation, and relationships among literacy modalities are the least studied problems. Undergraduate, adult, and other postsecondary populations are the most prominently studied population age group, whereas preschool-aged children and middle and high school students are least studied. Research on instruction within the preschool through 12th grade (P-12) age group is prominent, whereas research on genre, assessment, and bi- or multilingualism is scarce within this population. The majority of articles employ interpretive methods. This indicator of current writing research should be useful to researchers, policymakers, and funding agencies, as well as to writing teachers and teacher educators.

The Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act of 2002 was developed to update copyright law to accommodate the uses of copyrighted materials in distance-education environments. This article presents an analysis of the TEACH Act and its implications for teaching writing, with an aim toward building awareness among faculty and administrators so that they can become part of the critical conversation about copyright law as it affects teaching and learning with technology.

The introduction of seminars to university teaching marks the onset of a new teaching philosophy and practice in which writing is used to make students independent learners and researchers. Although the beginnings of writing pedagogy at American universities are well documented, little is known about its origins in Germany. The article tracks the history of seminar teaching back to its roots and reviews its historical development from the very beginnings to the point when seminars became the pedagogical flagship of the Humboldtian research university. Twenty seminar regulations from Prussian universities, written between 1812 and 1839, are reviewed with respect to the prescriptions they contain about writing. They reveal that a writing-to-learn pedagogy was elaborated as early as about 1820. The most important claim of the article is that an early concept of writing in the disciplines was central to the development of the Humboldtian research university.

The author suggests that models positioning the multilingual writer as passively conditioned by “interference” from his or her first language, as well as more correlative models of the interrelationships of multiple languages in writing, need to be revised. Analyzing works written to different audiences, in different contexts, and in different languages by a prominent Sri Lankan intellectual, the author instead suggests a way of understanding multilingual writing as a process engaged in multiple contexts of communication, and multilingual writers as agentive rather than passive, shuttling creatively among languages, discourses, and identities to achieve their communicative and rhetorical objectives.

The author uses the example of a text a student was not allowed to display on his course website to explore how and why institutional ideologies particular to the historical development of composition and creative writing—especially when viewed in conjunction with current copyright law—render students’ multimedia compositions illegitimate. He suggests that the ideological apparatuses of writing instruction and the legal statutes of U.S. culture at large combine to radically restrict the production and circulation of students’ multimedia texts and inhibit students’ power as writers.

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Using a method of topical rhetorical analysis, inspired by K. Burke, to discuss the Ebonics debate, this article demonstrates that conversations about education, particularly writing instruction, have adopted a market rhetoric that limits teachers’ agency. However, reappropriation of this market rhetoric can help writing teachers to imagine and actuate a more empowered and long-sighted agency for themselves. Rhetorical analysis can therefore help educators to understand how local language practices shape their interaction with the rapidly changing material environment of fast capitalism.