As writing instructors, the authors spend hours "talking back" to their students through written comments on their drafts. But how do student writers receive their comments, and what do they "do" with this feedback? Teachers invest so much time and energy in their responses to papers. How do they know what gets through, what makes sense to their…

As students increasingly rely on digital media to locate information, composition instructors must incorporate into writing instruction critical evaluation of and reflection on students' use of Web content. A growing problem in the composition class is underdeveloped critical digital literacy skills. To become fully literate, students need more…

Describes the use of anonymous daily journal entries (edited and graded at the end of the semester) in a literature survey course to nurture individual inquiry without sacrificing coverage. Maintains that anonymity encourages students to take risks, raise questions, and evaluate and shape the course. (SR)

Uses a student essay and dialog journal entries to discuss problems raised by context in grading student writing. Encourages teachers to rethink the whole system of grading and to discuss their conclusions openly. (SR)

Describes strategies (including the use of multicultural reading materials) for helping culturally diverse students make personal connections with poetry and the creative process. (SR)

Describes a classroom assignment sequence in which students learn to think metaphorically about a scientific topic. Provides sample reading log questions and a prewriting worksheet. (MM)

Describes how a weekly focused journal writing assessment (in which students note any use of language they find interesting, puzzling, amusing, or annoying as well as their response to it) enhances composition students' awareness of how language is used and where. Offers several different advantages of such journal writing. (SR)

Encourages student writers to read rhetorical examples more critically and to internalize writing options based on a variety of modes and ideas. (CRH)

Suggests ways to help students move beyond rewriting to revising, including situational analysis and peer evaluation. Provides a worksheet on generating ideas, guidelines for evaluation, questions for peer evaluation, and a sample research article assignment. (MM)

Describes a semester-long project for a first-year writing class in which students work collaboratively to research an artist as a person, write an essay as a monologue, and present the monologue as a one-person play to the class. (SR)

Describes the design of a standard first-year composition class in which the author used online discussion forums. Discusses how these design choices helped create a dynamic community of readers, writers, and learners in a writing classroom. Discusses pedagogical goals, and course design. Discusses several reasons why this approach works so well,…

Discusses the results of research that suggest there are two distinct "schools of thought" or predilections that influence teachers' judgments in evaluating compositions. (AEA)

Describes a journal writing activity designed to engage students in the exchange between text and reader. Argues that informal writing in a journal is a means of letting students find out that, if they engage themselves with a text, they will find it interesting. (RS)

Describes how one teacher uses life writing (reading and writing about transformative life experiences) in her basic writing class to engage students and to help them understand the power and purpose of reaching out to a variety of audiences. Discusses grading life writing. (SR)

Describes a student's journal entry which discusses her response to a work of digital fiction. Reads the journal entry as a resistance narrative, an assemblage, a remediation, and an emergence. Reflects upon the changes in instruction and identity that occur in computer classrooms, online course supplements, and Internet classes. (PM)