Although reading and writing exist only in relation to each other, writing plays little or no role in the usual instructional approaches to reading. Mostly, reading is taught as a sequence of discrete skills, which is ineffective since it accommodates the analytic reading style to the exclusion of global, kinesthetic, and auditory styles. Reading…

This overview of an English course, "Writing for Government, Business, and Industry" (listed as English 339 at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota), emphasizes the essential elements of audience and voice. Composition theorists' assertion that the absence of voice is symptomatic of a profound developmental deficit (suggesting an…

Generally, students in vocational and technical colleges are in writing classes because they must be, not because they want to be. As a rule, students in basic composition classes have been more or less continually exposed to writing classes since middle school where they been asked to keep journals, read articles and short stories, and write…

The business communications teacher helps the student learn to write the proposal that wins a promotion or the sales letter that wins new customers. Students poised to enter the business world need language theories as much as students studying literature, for the corporate language culture is as unpredictable and ambiguous as any literary text.…

At the State University of New York at Albany, a controversy arose over what type of writing assignment is appropriate in introductory literature classes, particularly those taught by graduate students. Undergraduates applying for the honors division were unable to produce even one literary criticism essay despite 9 hours of literature courses…

Noting that every business person needs good communication skills, whether managers and employees, superordinates and subordinates, this paper outlines an exercise to teach students to set objectives, develop criteria, analyze perspectives, and implement successful communication strategies. The total time for the exercise is 2 hours and the number…

Genograms (a "psychological" family tree) can reveal how the family communicates about its past. The drawing of the family tree becomes an exercise in communication. In a classroom assignment, students can do their own genogram or create one by doing interviews with a family to gain insights into various dimensions of the family's…

Within the education environment, writing journals are being used across the curriculum and for a variety of purposes--they are often recognized as a means for prompting students to apply the perspective of a particular discipline to their own lives or to facilitate their gaining perspective on personal transitions. Successful use of journals in…

The struggle in the composition community regarding the place of personal narrative in academic writing became particularly acute for a class of undergraduate Critical Writing students undertaking ethnographic work. By mid-semester, students had read and produced a series of texts about culture and found themselves reading and writing about…

A writing teacher who teachers first-year college writing proposes a "different" approach to the teaching of academic discourse. It is an approach that includes the production of academic discourse and rhetorical analysis yet enables students to examine and often resolve their resistance against academic discourse. Through a critical…

In a pilot study based on a project underwritten by the United States Department of Education to add more study of international issues to writing courses, revisions in content to both a first your and an advanced composition course were tested during 1993-94. The method for the classroom procedures was also changed to enhance the greater…

This paper describes an assignment that is used in a hybrid speech course to test students' knowledge as well as work toward more application of the interpersonal, small group, and conflict aspects of the course. Discussion is scheduled after the lectures that cover those aspects, and a one-day lecture on the topic of persuasion and sources…

Contemporary learning theory supports the use of writing as a cognitive tool to enhance retention and assist students to understand abstract mathematical concepts. Using writing activities in the intermediate grade and secondary classroom enhances the learning of mathematics and is a way of making mathematics more reachable to those students who…

The relevance of homework in today's schools is explored in this bulletin. Following the introduction, chapter 1 examines the effect of homework on academic achievement and concludes that there is a lack of agreement on the benefits of homework and on the amount of time students should spend on it. Chapter 2 describes homework practices in some…

A short story assignment incorporates creative writing into the syllabus of a freshman composition class, while erasing the misconception that creative writing is something a "regular" student cannot do. Students write a rough draft both of a personal experience essay and of a short story. Based on peer-reviews of both, students choose…