The Audience Project

The Audience Project: Writing for readers rather than writing for teachers Research Question: Students are used to producing writing that will be evaluated by a teacher or other authority figure. My research design focuses on altering student perspective on writing by focusing on audience and response. Bluntly: Can focusing on audience help students free their […]

Troubling Research

Citation: Jacobs, Gloria E. “Troubling Research: A Field Journey through Methodological Decision Making.” Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsible Research, Hampton Press, 2012, Print. 331-347. Summary: In this research study, Gloria Jacobs offers a first person account of a researcher attempting to carry out an ethically responsible methodology. Jacobs tries to eschew […]

The Big C

This is based on Student C’s short essay: Hello C-Train, I really enjoyed reading your response to Rose’s article. You seem to be finding a way to maintain your unique voice when you’re writing. I especially enjoyed the way you reflected on the difficulties you have had adjusting to a second language. The line “I […]

Wild World

My students, from what I see, don’t have much of a coherent worldview. They’re more instinctively curious than I would expect – when they see or hear something different, like the man in Red Square proclaiming the world to be flat, they wonder why that person thinks that. I assume that person is seeking attention, […]

The Teacher Ethos

Citation: Gregory, Marshall. “Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Teacherly Ethos.” Pedagogy, vol. 1, no. 1, Jan. 2001, pp. 69–90, Web. Summary: In this article from the first issue of Pedagogy, Marshall Gregory lays out his belief that university faculty members must consider pedagogy as equally important to curriculum development. Gregory starts the article by challenging the assumption […]

They Go Together Like a Horse and Carriage

The chapter “Reading and Writing Are Not Connected” by Ellen Carillo argues that reading and writing are “connected practices… and the best way to teach them is together.”  Carillo complains that writing has been separated from reading in unhelpful ways, especially at the college level.  The college writing course, she argues, has become a place […]

In and Out of Time

Some of the following strategies, though moderately time-intensive the first time you try them, produce materials that can be reused for years. (Bean 291) My first thought in response to this prompt centered on the video art installation “The Clock” by Christian Marclay. “The Clock” is a video timepiece. Synchronized to real time, it runs […]