Over the last 15 years or so, a variety of culture-based composition pedagogies have claimed to prepare students to take their places as citizens in a postmodern world. Cultural studies pedagogies in particular, because they tend to be grounded in neo-Marxist critical theory traditions, claim to enact democratic principles by preparing students to…

In presenting courses to students, teachers should acknowledge opposition to their educational choices. Discussions of the bases and possible consequences of choices may--and should--lead students to ask for more freedom and more options. Students understand that teachers must evaluate them, so if teachers offer as much leeway as they can,…

Discusses the paradox surrounding freshman English--the recurring tension between, on the one hand, English teachers' desire to make the course teachable and respectable by grounding it in some discipline, and, on the other hand, their attempts to fulfill their supposed responsibility to the culture at large by improving the level of students'…

Creative writing and technical communication are distinct yet similar forms of writing that require time, patience, and disciplined creativity to be effective. Other qualities shared by these two writing forms that should be emphasized in technical writing courses are: (1) effective information sharing, a process that depends on audience analysis,…

Cautions against overemphasizing poor mechanics and overlooking content in writing classes as an overreaction to the problem of deteriorating writing skills. (MKM)

One intention that an instructor had for her new course called "Writing and Healing: Women's Journal Writing" was to make apparent the power of self-written text to transform the writer. She asked her students--women studying women writing their lives and women writing their own lives--to write three pages a day and to focus on change.…

Examines the relationships among instructors' course goals, instructional activities, and students' assessment of their learning of content and writing in writing-intensive undergraduate natural and applied science courses. Finds that instructors are described along a continuum anchored by instructor-as-corrector on one end and…

This paper focuses first on the educator, Ralph W. Tyler, who serves as a model and ideal for curriculum development and implementation. The paper states that in 1949, Tyler, in creating a syllabus, created a small book of 128 pages, and in so doing, he set a benchmark in the field of education. The paper then provides an extended syllabus for a…

This paper focuses on a course taught by the author/educator in summer 2001, after a challenge from her department head to come up with a strategy to attract graduate students to a Master of Education course in Teaching Writing, a course that had failed to run for the previous five years because of low enrollments. The paper explains that a…

Beginning with the premise that writing cannot be separated from the subject written about, composition teachers should address themselves to what their students are learning in the process of writing. Some writing courses introduce students to great books but those books are usually written only by white men. Others open students to multicultural…

In an effort to identify characteristics of effective college composition programs, an examination was made of 19 campuses of the California State University. Each English department chair was sent a "fact sheet" requesting program information on such matters as the use of placement test scores, sequence of and prerequisites for lower…

Discusses design issues raised during an in-house review of undergraduate English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing courses at the University of Nebraska. Issues covered include the purpose of teaching ESL in a university environment, the autonomy of instructors, focus of the writing curriculum, and the value of student effort versus student…

At Massachusetts Bay Community College a course was designed to create a transition from the process-based basic writing course to the traditional required freshman English course. WTG 100 was designed as an inquiry into academic writing, where students would learn about the various discourse conventions and expectations they would encounter as…

Outlines an introductory public relations writing course. Presents course topics and objectives, and assignments designed to meet them. Provides a sample grading rubric and evaluates major public relations writing textbooks. Discusses learning and assessment strategies. (SR)

A study examined the efffect of a restructured preservice literacy methods course on the attitudes and beliefs of three preservice teachers. The major goals of the restructured course were to develop substantive and lasting changes in the preservice teachers' conceptual understandings and theoretical perspectives about literacy teaching, and to…