Teaching English in the Two-Year College - Volume 29, Issue 4, 2002

Discusses how social identity plays a significant role in defining the nature of classroom interaction. Describes how unresolved conflict emerged when the development of authentic student voice in narrative autobiography was the primary and perhaps only objective. Presents an example of the ways in which asymmetrical power relations influence how discourse works in the expressionist composition classroom.

Discusses how an online environment enhances the effectiveness of peer critique. Describes experiences with peer critiquing by computer. Notes that students responded favorably to online critiquing. Concludes that the results were critiques that were lively and personable—not matter-of-fact and dull like many handwritten ones.

Discusses how a networked classroom environment—either to supplement or to replace traditional face-to-face class discussion—offers English teachers opportunities that can help make class discussion more engaging, more worthwhile, and significantly more effective as a teaching tool. Considers how to use new technology in the classroom to enhance class discussion.

Addresses past and current issues concerning teacher response to first-year student writing and suggests that teacher intervention should be viewed as a writing process itself. Describes the author’s own process of responding to student writing, which he hasfound to be very effective. Concludes that individual teachers must decide for themselves what ways of responding best suit their teaching styles.

Presents an assignment in which students look through a handful of poetry collections or anthologies, seeking 20 poems they like and thus understand or want to understand to some extent. Describes the benefits of this assignment, including honing students’ interpretive skills, dispelling their misconceptions about the genre, and continuing their "initiation into art."

English Teachers’ the Unofficial Guide: Researching the Philosophies of English Teachers; B. Marshall. Attending to the Margins: Writing, Researching, and Teaching on the Front Lines; M. H. Kells & V. Balester. Mutuality in the Rhetoric and Composition Classroom; D. L. Wallace & H. R. Ewald. Talkin’ That Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America; G. Smitherman. Writing Simple Poems: Pattern Poetry for Language Acquisition; V. L. Holmes & M. R. Moulton.