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This paper addresses the significant role that writing plays in research. It argues (using the form of 10 email conversations between the authors) that too often writing is oversimplified, consigned to the final "stage" of a research process and designated as "writing up." Research methodology texts and websites rarely discuss writing as integral to research practice. The advice postgraduate students receive not only glosses over the difficulties of constructing an extended argument but also of working within the genres and power relations of the academy. This paper interrogates the notion of "writing up" and its effects. It offers an alternative view of writing as research and research as writing. Contains 31 references. (Author/RS)

Presented as a conversation rather than as a single-voiced academic paper, this paper describes the three people's experiences with experimental academic writing as students and as teachers. It describes such writing (or autobiographical scholarship) as a hybrid blend of autobiographical bits and scholarship, writing and reading, public and private, accessibility and specificity which is inspired by or collaborates with feminist, anti-elitist, multi-ethnic, reader-response, ecocritical, and postmodern theories. The paper then describes teaching experimental kinds of writing alongside more traditional forms, and notes that experimental writing helps students who have felt less engaged with standard academic writing to discover voices they had closeted and enables them to enter the conversation where conformity to standard approaches had left them mute. According to the paper, the writing teachers have also noted that experimental writing draws students into what they are writing about in interesting ways. It is then noted that experimental writing raises new questions about evaluating writing--evaluating experimental writing requires more dialogue with the writer to understand the experiment. The paper concludes that although experimental writing requires more dialogue with students, teachers think of their students more as writers and the students respond more as writers--with skills, knowledge, intention, and an ability and desire to learn and to use writers' tools. (RS)

The discussion looks at techniques for communicating effectively with students of English for academic purposes during classroom revision of written compositions. The approach highlighted is to use a word processor projected in the classroom that "sideshadows" comments to the original text. The original text is left untouched while projected in front of the class, and a new text is typed alongside the original during classroom discussion while the original is probed for ideas, structures, and meanings that can be enhanced or expanded upon. A sample text is used for illustration of the classroom process. (Contains 6 references.) (MSE)

This paper advocates a pragmatist approach to teaching the composition of academic discourse. It discusses teaching directly the conflicting positions of academic discourse as elitist jargon or as key to advanced conceptualization. The suggested pedagogical method involves the examination of academic discourse in general, and the procedure of having each student investigate the discursive practices of his or her particular major. It concludes that: (1) the primary concern of students was what they perceived as the implied submissiveness of the audience to academic discourse; (2) engaging students in the conflict encouraged them to confront and understand the difficulties they felt; and (3) through their engagement in and representation of this conflict, students were taught to utilize and participate in academic discourse. Contains 20 references. (EF)

Developed by classroom teachers during the development phase of Minnesota's Graduation Standards, this performance package is made up of locally designed assignments that, taken together, show whether a student has learned and can apply the knowledge and skills related to writing in the English language for a variety of academic purposes and situations. It begins with reference to the particular content standard addressed in the package, the educational level of the package (high school), and a summary statement of the content standard. It then describes the tasks associated with the student performances: (1) write a personal narrative; (2) write a literary analysis paper or a field study report; (3) write a persuasive paper; (4) write a film review; and (5) collaboratively produce an academic journal or magazine. It then offers specific statements from the standard regarding what students should know and should do, the products, task description, special notes, and feedback checklists for each task enumerated in the package. (RS)

One instructor's "dead zone" (her windowless classroom in the depths of the Humanities building) was the place where little exchange between teacher and students took place. When one day she overheard the students talking about how little money they had left on their meal cards, she took a few dozen bagels to that afternoon's writing lab. The experience made her realize that some changes were necessary to begin recognizing and acknowledging the reality of students' lives inside and outside the classroom. Since that "dead zone" semester, the instructor has tried to rethink, reposture, and reposition herself and her attitude toward the classroom environment, the students, their writing, and what they have to offer. These urban students do not come from anything remotely resembling a traditional family--they come from unstable environments where drugs, crime, and violence are daily occurrences. They cannot buy textbooks because their financial aid has not come through; they have learning disabilities that they desperately try to conceal from their peers. Writing teachers need to examine how the discourse of the discipline constructs students as others; they need to question how to understand the students' reality; and, they should apply a humanistic attitude to their pedagogy. Such a reevaluation would allow instructors to see that there is no "ideal" assignment, ideal setting, or ideal student. Existing practices and theories must be questioned for literacy to have any meaning in students' education and in their futures. (NKA)

An advanced writing course required of English education majors may also be taken by students in the humanities. The course helps students gain experience with longer and more complex essays, develop a more mature writing style, and learn how to make metacognitive evaluations of their own and others' writing. It also extends the contexts and purposes of traditional academic writing by showing the students how their own perspectives can contribute productively to the discourse of certain disciplines and how academic discourse can provide methods for exploring personal discourse. One assignment requires students to tell their own autobiographies along with the telling of a group's collective history as represented by the Civil Rights movement and the Holocaust. Such a method would work just as well with the Great Depression or Vietnam or the feminist movement. The historical topic should be selected to meet students' needs. Reading various autobiographies, watching films on the topic, keeping a journal, constructing rhetorical analyses of various historical documents, and writing personal essays about how large national and regional trends have affected the students' own families prepares students for the course's final assignment. This involves writing a retrospective essay that draws on the students' experiences in the course and compares their conceptions of their capabilities as writers with those of two authors the class has studied: Art Spiegelman, Claude Lanzmann, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Mary Clearman Blew. (Appendixes include six writing assignments and excerpts from student journal papers.) (SAM)

This paper describes a simple instructional approach which social science professors can use to teach the fundamentals of academic essay writing to their students. The paper discusses the evolution of this alternative writing approach--the instructional problems leading to its development as well as the process by which a solution was identified. To clearly delineate the steps through which an expert essay writer passes, the "task analysis," a tool frequently used by instructional technologists, was called upon. From this analysis evolved a six-step writing model which functions to guide students through each phase of the writing process. A lesson outline is provided for social science professors who wish to teach this skill to their students. Includes a diagram of the task analysis and a diagram of the essay writing model. Contains 10 appendixes, including a focused vocabulary, a systematic approach to essay writing, sample outlines, a sample written draft and revised draft, a sample student paper before using this approach, and 15 notes. (Author/NKA)

An investigation of the various ways the term "topos" is used in classical rhetoric reveals the limited range of invention strategies offered by academic discourse pedagogy. Donald Bartholmae's work on basic writing addresses the relationship of the commonplace to topical invention within academic discourse. Investigation of the history of rhetoric reveals five categories of topoi: (1) dialectical; (2) particular; (3) propositional; (4) common; and (5) predicable. The belief that composition students should have access to a wide range of invention strategies justifies investigation of any academic discourse pedagogy that focuses on the particular and the propositional topoi of a specific discipline at the expense of the variety of common and predicable topoi shared by all disciplines. Composition courses should offer students an introduction to the general means of persuasion under the genus "topoi." Instructors should also introduce students to the two species of general and specific topoi; and to their further sub-species, the dialectical, the common, the predicable, the particular, and the propositional. Students should move from the general to the specific, from a wide range of general strategies for analyzing whatever knowledge they discover and produce in any rhetorical situation in and outside academia to an understanding that specific discourse communities in and outside academia expect particular means of persuasion. (SAM)

At the intersection of teaching and learning, this guide is intended to introduce and update disciplinary faculty on contemporary writing principles and pedagogy. In addition, it is designed to: alert faculty to the ways in which effective writing helps students not only show what they have learned but also to learn, generate, and communicate knowledge; recognize the form the literature of their discipline takes; identify what constitutes competent writing in a particular field; promote writing as a natural and regular part of content area instruction; help students begin to live the mental lives of their professional counterparts; produce student writing that is readable, lucid, and logical and seeks applicability within and beyond the academic discipline; help faculty respond insightfully to writing; know when students need help in writing/thinking that disciplinary faculty can no linger give; and create in departments and/or the college community a philosophical coherence on writing instruction. Chapters in the guide are (1) "Introduction"; (2) "Prewriting and Invention"; (3) "Drafting and Revising"; (4) "Editing and Proofreading"; (5) "Processes of Inquiry"; (6) "Using Sources"; (7) "Research Project or Critical/Analytical Paper"; (8) "Academic Forms of Writing"; (9) "Designing Writing Assignments"; (10) "Sequencing Writing Assignments"; (11) "Responding to and Evaluating Writing"; and (12) "Collaboration, Conferences, and Computers." A three-part appendix contains evaluation forms; checklists; exercises; articles on topics such as stress, plagiarism, and the scientific method; course descriptions, course proposal guidelines, and ways to evaluate textbooks. (RS)

Discusses considerations faced by practitioner researchers as they write for publication, particularly as they encounter the template of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA). Argues that some APA conventions--such as beginning an article with theory rather than the story of the research--do not suite the purposes of practitioner researchers well and likely discourage practitioners from publishing their work in research journals. (SG)

Proposes that the multigenre assignment is a type of writing that requires more academic skills than the minimal requisites of the traditional research paper. Notes that fostering writing as both an art and a skill demonstrates how multigenre writing can be used to teach critical analysis, documentation of sources, and aesthetic unity. Details the author's experience of using a multigenre project with language arts majors. (PM)

Shows how academic discourse can be taught as a site of conflict to be examined by first-year writing students. Shows that the articulation of personal experiences and beliefs by students can be the starting point for significant learning. Concludes that educators should consider their audience of first-year students and engage them in the conflict over academic discourse. (SC)

Recent research indicates that typical writing assignments given to advanced students of English as a second language do not prepare them for university level writing. However, the technique of information transfer, which involves presentation of a visual stimulus to prompt writing, can be used effectively to practice the skills most university-level writing requires--restatement and reorganization of a given body of material. Information transfer may be used to teach the various types of academic discourse commonly encountered by college students: process descriptions, narration, physical description, comparison and contrast, categorizing and listing, cause and effect, and generalizing from numerical data. When using this technique, teachers should always present the visual stimulus to the class in a series of instructional moves paralleling those leading up to a writing assignment in a content course. Six sample visuals are included. (ARH)

Wrestles with the question of what kind of assignment to give to composition students at the University of Pittsburgh. Tries to strike a balance between critical reading and creativity, between work and play. Finds that "experimental writing" helps resolve the conflicts. Works to bring such writing into the classroom. (PA)

Describes the problems some basic writing students have had generating ideas for writing in response to timed essay tests. Proposes a technique based on the classical notion of the "topoi," which enables students to generate ideas and equips them for participation in the social and political dialogs they encounter in higher education. (PA)

Contends that evaluations of student writing come not from some transcendent realm but from the discursive practices by which teachers authorize themselves within a given community. Argues that basic writers need explicit knowledge of such practices, and proposes a language-centered curriculum to teach it. (HB)