It is proposed that "method" is not a relevant construct for fostering change in the second language classroom, and that concern with specific methods can divert educators' attention from important instructional issues. Teachers usually organize instruction around tasks rather than methods, and therefore it would be more useful to analyze,…

Students at Hume-Fogg Academic High School in Nashville, Tennessee do every kind of writing, have won numerous writing awards, and have published everything from chapbooks to articles in national literary magazines. According to the creative writing teacher, students are first taught to write about things they know--to go back to their own…

After several years in academic public relations, a professional writer returned to teaching composition. After her first attendance at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, she experienced a turning point in her view of "the essay." Following the conference, she changed her assignments from…

For some instructors, the use of students' own experiences has proven to be an extremely useful starting point in the college composition classroom. In a first semester freshman composition course, students wrote autobiographies in which they examined different perspectives of the many communities in which they lived. Students then used the…

This paper presents four introductory activities designed to help students with their reading problems, motivate them to read, and help them turn their interpretations of literature into effective compositions. The paper presents samples for each of the four activities ("Opinionnaires," Scenarios, Simulations, and Role Playing),…

Observing that basal readers and standardized testing lead teachers to focus on facts when dealing with novels or poetry in class, this monograph discusses research on response to literature. The monograph also presents classroom activities designed to allow students to explore the forms, the language, and the imagery of fiction, poetry, and…

These instructional materials were designed for students enrolled in Communication 1313 (COMM 1313), "Fundamentals of Communication," a course required for most curricula at the University of Arkansas. They include a library guidebook ("Guide to Mullins Library" by John M. Maxstadt and others) and computer-generated assignment…

Arguing that today's nursing students will be better prepared to face future challenges if they possess information literacy skills, this paper describes an information literacy program which has been integrated into the University of Northern Colorado's School of Nursing curriculum. Information literacy is described and defined, and the four…

MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) is a web-based open resource designed primarily for faculty and students in higher education. The resources in MERLOT include over 8,000 learning materials and support materials from a wide variety of disciplines that can be integrated within the context of a larger course.…

The ever-increasing global demand for energy has sparked renewed interest within the engineering community in the study of sustainable alternative energy sources. This paper discusses a power generation system which uses biomass as "fuel" to illustrate the concepts taught to students taking a graduate level chemical engineering process…

Basic course information and worksheets are presented in this textbook/workbook for "Information Resources in the Humanities," a course offered by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin. The guide is divided into eight sections. The first presents the syllabus, lists assignments (e.g.,…

Combining freshman composition and introduction to literature courses can make students active participants in what they read. In one course, students were instructed to read a literary work for a class. When the class met, the students were to write the name of the assigned story, the author, and anything they wanted to write about the story.…

A study investigated the impact of task definition on students' revising strategies to determine whether college freshman writers could revise globally if instructed to do so and if those global revisions would result in improved texts. Data were elicited from 38 students enrolled in two entry-level college writing courses. Participants, randomly…

This booklet was prepared for use as a staff development presentation in response to an official statement by International Reading Association's "Executive Board that literature (and the reading and writing that goes with it) must be the foundation of the language arts curriculum. The purpose of the booklet is to provide alternatives to…

An argument can be made for an expansion in the creative writing curriculum to cover all genres. The essential principles of writing in all genres, poetry, fiction, drama, TV, and film can be taught, with the positive effect of saving a serious writing student years of stumbling in the dark. A responsible creative writing course of the present and…