A limited mixed-method study revealed that students could alter written style after direct style instruction, but the effect faded quickly. Instead, students reverted to culturally structured intuition to make conscious, contrary choices. Thus, direct instruction in precise forms of style should probably yield to methods that build culturally…

Motivated by a fear that she may have plagiarized, the author considers the possibility that plagiarism might be understood as a transgression against reading as well as against writing. Drawing on Philip Eubanks's work in "Metaphor and Writing," the article proposes that one reason for composition studies' ambivalent relationship to…

Describes the use in the classroom of students' phone messages and casual notes to illustrate the relationship between composition class and writing in students' daily lives, that writing defines itself according to the purpose and audience of each task, and that they already know a great deal about writing. (SR)

Common approaches to composition teaching are satirized. (JH)

This essay attempts to demonstrate how transgender theories can inspire pedagogical methods that complement feminist compositionist pedagogical approaches to understanding the narration of gender as a social construct. By examining sample student writing generated by a prompt inspired by transgender theories, the author's analysis suggests how…

Starting a course by asking students to write the worst papers possible alerts them to common faults and weaknesses.