The present volume collects papers from InnoConf19, which took place at the University of Southampton on the 28th of June 2019. The theme of the conference was 'Treasuring languages: innovative and creative approaches in HE'. The contributions collected in this peer-reviewed volume aim to reflect on best practice in higher education. They showcase…

Points out errors in instructor's written feedback, suggests alternatives, and illustrates how effective commentary results in improved student writing. (PD)

Argues that the possibility for surprise is the starting point for both effective writers and teachers and describes six elements that help create surprise: expectation, habit, ease, recognition, "pounceability," and acceptance. (MM)

Describes a dialogue-journal writing technique that requires a nonevaluative response from the teacher and is based on students' firsthand experiences. Several examples are provided. (RH)

Describes a teaching technique that capitalizes on the individual meanings a piece of literature can have for different students. Explains how it encourages students to concentrate first on facts that they notice in a text and in the inferences they make based on those facts. (FL)

Although reading and writing exist only in relation to each other, writing plays little or no role in the usual instructional approaches to reading. Mostly, reading is taught as a sequence of discrete skills, which is ineffective since it accommodates the analytic reading style to the exclusion of global, kinesthetic, and auditory styles. Reading…

After students' interest in literature has been stirred by journal writing, it is time for them to turn their private journal writing into writing for an audience. Instead of having students write the usual responses to literature, vary their assignments by offering them creative responses, either occasionally or as an individual alternative to…

Noting that too many children leave elementary school without developing the ability to use words imaginatively, this paper presents a teaching approach that uses literature to foster invention in children's writing. The approach described is part of a total composition program that structures writing experiences in which children observe…

The paper presents and demonstrates a heuristic for helping students learn how to read and understand figuration in literature. The heuristic contains elements from linguistics, New Criticism, and rhetorical analysis in a recursive process which enables students to see how features of words combine into figurative patterns. Beginning at the level…

Proposes ways of blending the study of literature and the teaching of writing. Suggests assignments that involve writing or rewriting literature, writing about literature, and writing in response to literature. (MM)

The lead of a story is the beginning, and yet it can be the end if the reader is not entranced immediately. This lesson examines types of leads in prominent children's literature and asks grade 3 to 5 students to try their own hand at writing leads. During the two 40-minute lessons, students will: discuss their reactions to the leads from the…

Points out the value of responding to students' first drafts of papers, outlines a three-step approach for doing so, and gives five examples of such an approach. (JL)

Recounts a teacher's involvement with students in the spontaneous process of learning to write. Presents the benefits of such an approach as preferable to conventional structured methods of writing instruction. (HTH)

Describes how "Gulliver's Travels" was used with 11- and 12-year-olds to stimulate writing activities. (SRT)

Argues that paragraph form congruent with the patterns and habits of thinking develops from the writer's sensitivity to the impact of visual images on the reader's mind. (MM)