This book is carefully designed to inform and train readers in the techniques of content-based ESL instruction and to assist them in developing and implementing content-based materials and programs appropriate to their educational institutions and situations. Every chapter presents a balance of theory and practice, focusing on a detailed description, with clear examples of classroom practices including information, suggestions, and instructional tools. Each chapter addresses assessment issues as they apply to the particular methodology described.

Asking students to write journals that reflect on their learning has become a widespread pedagogical practice in recent years. However, the scholarly literature does not address certain key questions about how journal writing aids learning:
* Is there something inherent in journal writing that encourages students to write reflectively?
* What psycholinguistic or cognitive factors help to explain the power of journal writing?
* Why do some students use journals to write prolifically and creatively while others limit their responses to summarizing the assigned course reading?
* Why do teachers find some journal entries so much more engaging than others?
* How do teachers' ways of responding to journals affect their students' development as writers and thinkers?
This book addresses such questions through a careful analysis of the journal writing of the students in the author's ESL classes at a large urban college. It contains detailed case studies of five culturally- and linguistically-diverse students with widely differing responses to journal writing.
To teachers of composition for both first- and second-language students and to teachers of graduate courses in education and qualitative research, this book offers a contextualized description of journal writings as a complex social activity. By emphasizing the need for educators to reexamine their pedagogy and to learn from their students, "Conversations of the Mind" is an indispensable contribution to the emerging literature of teacher research and reflective practice.

This book is carefully designed to inform and train readers in the techniques of content-based ESL instruction and to assist them in developing and implementing content-based materials and programs appropriate to their educational institutions and situations. Every chapter presents a balance of theory and practice, focusing on a detailed description, with clear examples of classroom practices including information, suggestions, and instructional tools. Each chapter addresses assessment issues as they apply to the particular methodology described.

Framed by historic developments-from the Open Admissions movement of the 1960s and 1970s to the attacks on remediation that intensified in the 1990s and beyond-BASIC WRITING traces the arc of these large social and cultural forces as they have shaped and reshaped the field. GEORGE OTTE and REBECCA WILLIAMS MLYNARCZYK balance fidelity to the past with present relevance, local concerns with (presumptively) global knowledge, personal judgment with (apparent) objectivity. BASIC WRITING circles back on the same general story, looking for different themes or seeing the same themes from different perspectives. What emerges is a gestalt of Basic Writing that will give readers interested in its history, self-definition, pedagogy, or research a sense of the important trends and patterns. Otte and Mlynarczyk make research trajectories clear without oversimplifying them or denying the undeniable blurring, dissensus, and differential development that characterizes the field. GEORGE OTTE is a member of the doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center in the PhD Programs in English, Urban Education, and Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. He served as coeditor of the JOURNAL OF BASIC WRITING from 1996 to 2002. He is the coauthor with Nondita Mason of WRITERS' ROLES: ENACTMENTS OF THE PROCESS (Harcourt, 1994) and, with Linda Palumbo, of CASTS OF THOUGHT: WRITING IN AND AGAINST TRADITION (Macmillan, 1990). REBECCA WILLIAMS MLYNARCZYK has taught basic writing at the City University of New York since 1974. She is currently professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center and Kingsborough Community College, where she codirects the ESL program. She is the author of CONVERSATIONS OF THE MIND: THE USES OF JOURNAL WRITING FOR SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNERS (Erlbaum) and the coauthor, with Steven Haber, of IN OUR OWN WORDS: STUDENT WRITERS AT WORK (Cambridge). She has served as coeditor of the JOURNAL OF BASIC WRITING since 2003.

Asking students to write journals that reflect on their learning has become a widespread pedagogical practice in recent years. However, the scholarly literature does not address certain key questions about how journal writing aids learning:
* Is there something inherent in journal writing that encourages students to write reflectively?
* What psycholinguistic or cognitive factors help to explain the power of journal writing?
* Why do some students use journals to write prolifically and creatively while others limit their responses to summarizing the assigned course reading?
* Why do teachers find some journal entries so much more engaging than others?
* How do teachers' ways of responding to journals affect their students' development as writers and thinkers?
This book addresses such questions through a careful analysis of the journal writing of the students in the author's ESL classes at a large urban college. It contains detailed case studies of five culturally- and linguistically-diverse students with widely differing responses to journal writing.
To teachers of composition for both first- and second-language students and to teachers of graduate courses in education and qualitative research, this book offers a contextualized description of journal writings as a complex social activity. By emphasizing the need for educators to reexamine their pedagogy and to learn from their students, "Conversations of the Mind" is an indispensable contribution to the emerging literature of teacher research and reflective practice.