Never before have parents, teachers, and other advocates for young people been more concerned about the declining quality of higher education. One skill that many students lack when they arrive at college is the ability to write well. The contributors to "Teacher Commentary on Student Papers" analyze some of the cultural, social, and moral changes that have altered the way in which education is given and received, and they offer approaches that have assisted them as teachers both in evaluating the quality of student writing and guiding students to improve their writing.

Areas of expertise of the contributors include composition, cultural studies, English education, literature, writing, and rhetoric. The collection will appeal to both graduate and undergraduate students as well as to experienced and beginning teachers.

He reviled the rich for their cupidity and they found his rhetoric repulsive. Plebians believed him their champion and patricians knew he was their bete noire, remarks Halford Ryan in his eloquent foreword to this definitive survey of Clarence DarroW's development as orator and unique American myth. As a writer, lecturer, debater, and trial lawyer Darrow spoke for the have-nots and cultivated an image of mythic proportions as the underdog's advocate. Many of the more than 2,000 trials in which he was active reflected the major social and philosophical issues of the last quarter of the nineteenth and first third of the twentieth centuries in America. Read today, DarroW's speeches still ring true both as political statements and as models of persuasive pleading and pathos--reason enough to study the work of this uncommon advocate who stood perpetually opposed to the great and powerful of the earth. Richard J. Jensen has written a clearsighted volume that documents how Darrow created and then enlarged his personal myth through speeches, writings, and actions. Each chapter focuses on particular segments of that creation. Half of the book consists of authoritative texts of several of DarroW's most influential and rhetorically brilliant speeches, and a speech chronology simplifies the work of researchers.

The study opens with a brief biography, an overview of DarroW's rhetoric, along with the forces that affected it, and some initial comments on the elements that make up the myth. The next chapter, Schoolmaster of the Courtroom, chronicles the origins of DarroW's image as a defender of the downtrodden and his early trials in defense of labor unions and their leaders. What is considered to be one of the most famous speeches in American legal history, that given by Darrow at the conclusion of the 1924 Leopold and Loeb trial, is the focus of Chapter Three. Chapter Four centers on the Scopes Trial, perhaps the most famous trial in recent American history, during which the dramatic confrontation with William Jennings Bryan occurred. The penultimate chapter explains the arguments Darrow used to defend the poor, radicals, Blacks, and other less fortunate members of society. Finally, DarroW's rhetoric as a writer and as an active speaker and debater on the lecture circuit is examined. Part II contains the authoritative texts of seven speeches including those given during the Leopold and Loeb Trial and the Scopes Trial, among others. The Chronology of Speeches, Bibliography, and Index close the volume. The speeches along with Jensen's intelligent, readable analysis and criticism will be an important resource for those teaching and studying Legal Rhetoric and the History of Public Address.

The first volume of the serial is dedicated to writing, merely for the reason that writing can still be considered in language education to be a skill to which little attention is paid, where as discourses on listening, reading, and especially speaking experienced major advances over the last two decades. With the intention to question this rather international tendency from as many as possible different perspectives, this book unifies articles from Switzerland and Italy, Denmark, Germany, and the US, dealing with French, Italian, German, and English as foreign or second languages in all levels of instruction. The aim of this first volume is mainly to encourage the understanding of an expanded function of writing in the field of language education, in theoretical terms and within the framework of classroom practice. Writing is understood here not only as a tool for recording knowledge but also as a means of developing it. Writing seen as such reaches beyond the realm of a foreign language, connecting the learners expertise of his/her native language and culture with the ones to be studied. When we acknowledge language as a social phenomenon, the potential uses of writing for learning across the curriculum are revealed.

The Writer's Passage is a journey through time in which writers engage with all the vital stages in the history of world literature. In this course of thirty-five lessons, millennia of human experience is turned by way of the alchemy of story into fuel for new creative writing. The journey begins in the childhood of language - in nursery rhyme, fable and fairy tale and then turns to the powerful myths of creation. Myths bestow a powerful charge - simply to hear them can be salutary. To engage with them through creative writing intensifies the experience exponentially, bringing them fully alive with opportunities for creative growth. After that, the course travels through historic time, following the trade routes of culture from ancient India to the twenty-first century. Through depth encounters with the work of Sappho and Socrates, Shakespeare and Ginsberg, students enter the lives of the poets and join in their projects. The shift of perspective demanded by the exercises in this book is in itself deeply liberating. The scope of the soul is enlarged merely by trying on the soul-skin of a different time, culture and personality - to serenely reformulate the eightfold path of the Buddha or passionately hurl oneself into the battle fury of the Viking; to tangle with the verbal eroticism of Sappho or the righteous passion of the prophets. To become the pure Parzival of the medieval epics and then the devil in Goethe's Faust is an unmatched gymnastic for the creative soul. In this approach, rarely does the student of creative writing have difficulty producing work. On the contrary, many find that any existing blocks dissolve. To engage with this journey is an act of integration, an artistic initiation into the vitality of literature and the manifold ways of being human. In this way the work also serves as a course in personal development, undertaken through the medium of writing.

"No book in shorter space, with fewer words, will help any writer more than this persistent little volume." - The Boston Globe You know the author's name. You recognize the title. The advice of Strunk is as valuable today as when it was first offered. This book has conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. Use "the little book" to make a big impact with writing.

This book examines a writing activity that has recently fallen into disrepute. Outlining has a bad reputation among students, even though many teachers and textbooks still recommend the process. In part, the author argues, the medium is to blame. Paper and ink make the revision difficult. But if one uses an electronic outliner, the activity can be very helpful in developing a thoughtful and effective document, particularly one that spans many pages and deals with a complicated subject. Outlining Goes Electronic takes an historical approach, examining the way people developed the idea of outlining, from the classical period to the present. We see that the medium in which people worked strongly shaped their assumptions, ideas, and use of outlines. In developing a theoretical model of outlining as an activity, the author argues that a relatively new electronic tool-software that accelerates and performs the process of outlining-can give us a new perspective from which to engage previous classroom models of writing, recent writing theory, and current practice in the technical writing field.

Collaborative writing has attracted much attention in the last 25 years, though it eludes clear definition. In its simplest sense, it is writing done by more than one person. But in a broader sense, even a work by one author involves collaboration. The author typically builds on the work of others and revises the writing in response to feedback. This feedback can come from a student's peers or teacher in a classroom setting, it can come from experts and editors who assess a scholar's writing, or it can come from colleagues and clients in the world of business. This bibliography is a guide to research on collaborative writing published from the early 1970s to 1997.

Included are nearly 1000 annotated entries for books, articles, reports, bibliographies, and other materials. These entries are clustered in two broad parts, each of which contains numerous topical sections. The first part of the book is devoted to collaborative writing in academic settings and covers such topics as classroom issues, peer review and tutoring, the role of computers and technology, particular types of classes, and ethical and gender concerns. The second looks at collaborative writing in nonacademic settings. Included are works on corporate acculturation, group dynamics, policies and procedures, industry-university collaboration, and technical reports. Entries are arranged alphabetically in each section, and detailed author and subject indexes provide easy access to the material.

There is increasing pressure on academics and graduate students to publish in peer reviewed journals, but many students and researchers who are new to quantitative methods struggle to write up statistics in reports, theses and journal articles. This book is an accessible reference text aimed at helping people write about quantitative research in applied linguistics, focusing mainly on writing for journals. Different types of statistical analysis are explained in detail along with annotated examples drawn from published and unpublished sources. The book offers advice on academic writing, how and where to get research published, and recommends additional resources helpful for both students and seasoned researchers.

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Here's a no-nonsense approach to the proposal process by an engineer who has worked in the trenches and knows the practical solutions to getting the job done. This book brings order out of the often chaotic frenzy that characterizes most proposal efforts. From marketing effort to BAFO, this book takes you step by step trough each phase -- the substance of what makes a winner.

For English instructors at every level, the task of producing a worthwhile, workable plan for each class period can prove a perennially nerve-wracking experience. To ease this challenge, this invaluable work offers a vast compilation of writing exercises and in-class activities collected from professors, graduate students and lecturers from colleges and universities across the U.S. Step-by-step instructions guide teachers through class discussions and exercises on topics ranging from invention, argumentation, formatting, thesis development and organization to rhetorical situation, visual rhetoric, peer review and revision. Most entries are designed as stand-alone exercises to fill a standard fifty minute class, but some are expandable to cover multiple class periods and even provide homework assignments. From high school teachers and first-time teaching assistants to experienced writing professors looking to enhance their courses, anyone who teaches English will appreciate the fresh ideas found in this indispensable volume.