from Newkirk

But sadly, writing in secondary schools is colonized by literature instruction and serves as a vehicle for analysis. With the whole world to explain, explore, and argue about, why should literature be the dominant topic of analysis? If we accept (as I do) the claim that extended analytic argumentation is difficult for most students, it stands to reason we don't compound this task by choosing as a topic a difficult and complex novel. To do so violates a basic maxim of teaching: that when teaching any new skill, you don't compound the problem by adding difficulties...In choosing literary analysis as a main form of writing, we are asking students to write in a form they don't read, to enter a conversation they know nothing about, to learn a genre that is virtually nonexistent in the wider culture, and to disregard topics and controversies where they might actually have some stake. This is not to say this form should not have a place in the curriculum, only that it should not dominate, as I believe it does. (Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones, 154)

Bibliography

Boiarsky, Carolyn R., ed. Academic Literacy in the English Classroom: Helping Underprepared and Working Class Students Succeed in College. Portsmouth, NY: Boynton/Cook, 2003.

Finn, Patrick J. Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self Interest. Albany: SUNY, 1999.

See, also, folder called: "Working Class" in RIC folder on my computer

Honesty Conference

Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices

Faculty Teaching Writing Across the Disciplines

While English and language arts teachers have a disciplinary advantage in understanding and applying writing process principles, teachers in other disciplines have more problems. Their impulse is to use the model they remember form their own high school or undergraduate schooling rather than the process(es) they engage in as publishing professionals. Typically, they assign specific topics, providing few if any directions on how to write the paper. They read and comment only on the final draft, using intermediate drafts (if any) to ensure against plagiarism. Revision opportunities are few. Instructors in Writing Across the Curriculum faculty development programs often have to spend considerable time convincing participants of the inadequate pedagogy of this approach; even when teachers are unhappy with the papers written in this traditional manner, they are often reluctant to change--usually on the grounds that responding to drafts is too time consuming. ("The Great Paradigm Shift," Bloom, p. 44).

And so, you ask, what are those "writing process principles" to which Bloom refers in that first sentence? Here they are:

1. Writing is an activity, an act composed of a variety of activities.

2. The activities in writing are typically recursive rather than linear.

3. Writing is, first and foremost, a social activity.

4. The act of writing can be a means of learning and discovery.

5. Experienced writers are often aware of audience, purpose, and context.

6. Experienced writers spend considerable time on invention and revision.

7. Effective writing instruction allows students to practice these activities.

8. Such instruction includes ample opportunities for peer review.

9. Effective instructors grade student work not only on the finished product but on the efforts involved in the writing process.

10. Successful composition instruction entails finding appropriate occasions to intervene in each student's writing process. (Olson, qtd. in Bloom, p 33)

Bibliography (Legal Writing)

All of these are from the book

Matalene, Carolyn B. Worlds of Writing: Teaching and Learning in Discourse Communities of Work. New York: Random House, 1989.

In the Law the Text is King (Teresa Godwin Phelps)

To English Professors: On What to Do with a Lawyer (John Warnock)

Rhetoric and Bricolage: Theory and Its Limits in Legal and other Sorts of Discourse (James C. Raymond)

White, James Boyd, "The Invisible Discourse of the Law: Reflections on Legal
Literacy and General Education." In Literary for Life: The Demand for Read- ing and Writing, ed. RichardW. Bailey and Robin Melanie Fosheim, 137-50. New York: Modern Language Association, 1983.

White, James Boyd, "The Invisible Discourse of the Law: Reflections on Legal
Literacy and General Education." In Literary for Life: The Demand for Reading and Writing, ed. RichardW. Bailey and Robin Melanie Fosheim, 137-50. New York: Modern Language Association, 1983.

Bazerman, C. (1994). Systems of Genres and the Enactment of Social Intentions. In A. Freedman & P. Medway (Eds.), Genre and the New Rhetoric (pp. 79-100). London: Taylor and Francis.

Writing Videos

Peter Elbow -- On Writing

Peter Elbow -- On Spelling and Grammar

50 Years of Research on Writing: What Have We Learned?

What Does Revision Look like? Ask Obama

From Fallows.

The blow-up version.