Combining instruction in critical thinking and expository writing with the study of classic texts, this textbook was developed at Baker University (Kansas) and is designed for use in a two-semester college course that fosters careful thinking and good reasoning in students. The textbook emphasizes the pedagogical principle that critical thinking…

Two critical thinking activities (information transfer and problem solving) have been used effectively in the writing classroom with level 4 students in a four-level intensive English program. In the information transfer activity, students move from graphic stimuli to written texts. Student writers practice critical thinking by discussing data,…

A search of women's magazines yields countless missives on the virtues of female vigilance not only in protecting personal health but also in protecting spouse and family health. Indeed, the face and content of women's magazines has changed remarkably little from their 18th- and 19th-century predecessors, which circumscribed the ideology of…

In her literature and composition classes, an educator encourages students to correlate their memory and imagination to the rhetorical elements of logos, pathos, and ethos and construct regenerative structures of knowledge through a comprehensive and objective understanding of a contextualized problem. She employs Bakhtin's dialogic method of…

Two papers presented at two different conferences and both discussing issues related to writing across the curriculum, are presented in this document. The first paper, "Wanted: Guidelines for Teaching Writing in Non-Writing Courses," (Jan Keessen), presented at the 1992 "four C's" conference, discusses the need to gather data…

Designed for elementary and secondary English and language arts teachers, this book provides 74 lists for developing instructional materials and planning lessons. The book also includes 89 practical activities and reproducible line master worksheets that motivate students to simultaneously improve writing skills, word usage, and vocabulary. For…

Presenting lesson plans for secondary teachers of language arts, this booklet is intended to help students develop healthy attitudes toward their own aging, realize the lifelong importance of decisions they make as adults, and understand the interdependence of all age groups. The activities suggested in the booklet are designed to address existing…

The common thread that runs through the activities in a literacy course for undergraduate preservice teachers is text. One such activity is a literacy autobiography in which students focus on themselves as learners and teachers. Students are treated as professionals and make their own decisions about how they want to present themselves to their…

Satirical writing offers a means of encouraging students to criticize those forms of victimization and inequality that trouble them most without that overt, dogmatic indoctrination of a political agenda that many would consider an anathema to democratic teaching. The indirect, satirical jab provides students with an intellectually challenging and…

A study examined the impact of students' researching their own literacy histories upon their views of literacy and literacy learning but shifted to investigate sources of students resistance to the assignment. In the seven sections of a senior-level reading course, taught between 1988 and 1991, data were collected and analyzed to address the…

A study examined how student-writers accommodated a real audience--that is how they adapted their writing to communicate clearly and forcefully with an audience other than the teacher. Subjects, 18 students in a pre-composition, remedial English course at Indiana University East, were asked to revise the formal drafts into a…

Breaking down gender barriers in composition and literature classrooms suggests that teachers rethink the forms of writing they demand of their students (e.g., argumentation and exposition) and that they encourage a wide range of approaches which account for gender-specific modes of writing and interpreting texts. Various writing assignments such…

At the end of the fifth year of a successful, ever expanding freshman seminar program, students in selected sections of the course, who were also enrolled in developmental reading/writing, were asked to evaluate the worthiness of the goals in terms of their own freshman year experience. The fifth year was a new pilot year for the program. Some…

A first-year composition instructor designed a 3-week unit on folklore that fulfilled a requirement that students produce writing based on field research at some time during the semester. The unit begins with a discussion of the concepts of folklore, folklore genres, and the role that folklore serves in folk and ethnic groups and cultures,…

Given the affective dimension of writing in the workplace, assignments based on casebook scenarios have definite advantages in a technical or professional writing course. An English professor surveyed faculty in the Schools of Business and Education at Rider College prior to revising a course in technical writing. A majority of faculty, when asked…