Many teachers have had a favorable response to their experimentation with digital feedback on students' writing. Students much preferred a simpler system of highlighting and commenting in color. After experimentation the author found that this color-coded system was more effective for them and less time-consuming for her. Of course, any system…

This article shares the story of one student writer that shows how the challenges of writing from sources are tied to issues of voice and authority. Keith was a student in the author's first college writing class in the fall of 2002. As he undertook a transition from high school to college writer, the author was transitioning from high school to…

Whenever the author teaches English 102, a research-focused, second-semester composition course, at least one student asks her whether or not she "allows" Wikipedia. She then redesigned her course to leverage Wikipedia as a source of inquiry. In other words, she "allows" Wikipedia, but through the Wikipedia project, which is designed to address…

Portfolio assessment has become the predominant best practice in writing assessment at the college level. Despite its clear superiority to previous methods of assessment, portfolio assessment has brought its own collection of challenges. Although the stated goal of much portfolio grading is to create an overall, or holistic, judgment of a…

Much has been written by academics lamenting the lack of preparedness of students for entrance to the university (and, by employers, lamenting the additional training that students need after college to enter the workforce). Although such lamentations may be merited, students pick up the binary rhetoric of real world versus academic world that…

In this study, we compared self-revised essays to timed writing exams written by students in a developmental English course in a community college. Using a multiple-trait rubric, we found that self-revised essays showed greater elaboration than timed writing exams, and that elaboration and focus correlated only for self-revised essays. We argue,…

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. This article is presented in three sections:…

As a professor of English at Diablo Valley College in northern California where she teaches a variety of writing and literature courses, the author finds her students' essays so often lack not only shape and drama, but the ring of emotional truth as well. Their "life" stories are lifeless and their "true" stories sound somehow…

Suggests an approach to writing introductory paragraphs that is really a tool for revision. Describes how students can discover their own truths concerning why they are writing a particular essay. Notes that, once these truths are found, meaningful revision (and introductory paragraph writing) can occur. (RS)

Argues that college writing instructors have an ethical obligation to help students to critically examine the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of writing in school so that the students understand how they have come to view writing and revision as punishment. (TB)

Describes a procedure that encourages both earnest participation in the reviewing process (the production of detailed responses) and revision that actually takes student responses into consideration. Concludes that by requiring students to tell the teacher what they chose to leave alone and what they chose to change, the teacher is able to get…

Indicates that using highlighters to mark errors produced a 76% class improvement in removing comma errors and a 95.5% improvement in removing apostrophe errors. Outlines two teaching procedures, to be followed before introducing this tool to the class, that enable students to remove errors at this effective rate. (JD)

Makes observations about how professional poets compose. Argues for the use of primary trait scoring and an interactive teaching method to guide students through revision while treating each poem as a unique piece of writing. Demonstrates how primary trait scoring and individual conferences assisted a student in revising his poems. (RS)

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…

Considers how the revising skills of basic writing students improve when they receive both inductive and deductive teacher feedback. Finds that students who received inductive feedback changed their largest percent of errors when given oral conferences and students who received deductive feedback changed their smallest number of errors when given…