Teaching English in the Two-Year College - Volume 28, Issue 1, 2000

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, and offers some cautionary notes.

Describes how the author uses the poems of Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology” in her developmental writing classes to foster literary discussion, build vocabulary, and teach a broad range of essay writing skills.

Discusses how the author and a colleague made a short videotape of students talking about their writing experiences. Describes first steps, arrangements and questions, the shoot itself, and crafting the video. Discusses uses of this video, noting the impact this infusion of student voices can have in the composition classroom, influencing the way new writing students approach a writing course.

Describes how the author uses reading response journals in her composition classes. Shows how it actively engages students in the reading/writing process, and how students learn careful, active reading and develop confidence generating ideas and formulating opinions via the structure, freedom, enhanced comprehension, critical thinking, and confidence that these reading response journals offer.

Describes an AIDS-centered curriculum for a composition class in a New York City community college. Describes selecting a text, assignments, attending a conference, guest speakers, and the research paper. Notes that the subject of AIDS not only provokes reflective writing and much class discussion but also compels writers to express and sometimes change profound ideas about living and dying.

Describes three reading/writing lessons on the topics of linguistics, environmental science, and anthropology used in a discipline-based college-level English as a second language course to illustrate how to use film to teach academic writing skills. Discusses how students analyze a film to help articulate the content of an essay or a book.

Argues that introducing students to literary criticism while introducing them to literature boosts their confidence and abilities to analyze literature, and increases their interest in discussing it. Describes how the author, in her college-level introductory literature course, used Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree” (a children’s book) to introduce literary criticism, increase enthusiasm for literature, and build confidence in making meaning.

Describes a class discussion in the author’s first-year composition class at a New York City community college, after students read a volume of Sappho’s poetry. Discusses issues of reading comprehension, poetry, gender-preference prejudice, and how they were all set straight by one student from Brooklyn.

Describes how the author, in his sophomore world literature survey, uses the Homeric epics to introduce students to Valmiki’s Indian epic, the “Ramayana.” Describes how students look for likenesses between the two works, and for differences in cultural assumptions, content, and style. Notes students come to recognize and appreciate the delights of this unfamiliar work.

Presents and describes a narrative writing assignment used by the author in a developmental writing course that helps to demonstrate to students how and why sexist language usage can limit thinking, sometimes injuriously, and that concretely illustrates how language and gender stereotyping interact causally. Describes the assignment, how it is used in class, and class discussions resulting.

Discusses several methods the author uses to overcome students’ negative attitudes about working in small groups. Discusses preliminary activities (including a class discussion and direct instruction). Describes the group assignment, including a general overview, specifics of the assignment, and ways to overcome common group work problems.

Reviews four books: Reading Poverty, by Patrick Shannon; Race, Rhetoric, and Composition, ed. by Keith Gilyard; Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention, by Cynthia L. Selfe; Critical Thinking, Thoughtful Writing: A Rhetoric with Readings, by John Chaffee with Christine McMahon and Barbara Stout