Teaching writing by the sentence
I like the model of writing instruction described in this Times article.
“The deepest motive for writing”
Richard Lanham: “Motive has always been the question of questions for Freshman Composition. Perhaps more success might flow from assuming, paradoxically, that the deepest motive for writing is not communication at all but the pleasures of writing for its own sake.”
Writing and speech
Richard Lanham: “Writing’s advantage, as a presentation of self, is not that it allows us to adopt the mannerisms of speech but that it allows us to adopt the tempo of speech without its hesitant waste.”
“Slow Reading”
Richard Lanham: “Every course in composition ought to be a course in Slow Reading.”
Grammar in the writing center
To dismiss or defer a student’s questions about grammar is to do that student a disservice.
Writing instruction
What does it mean to go through twelve or more years of schooling and not be able to recognize a sentence in your language — or a noun, or a verb? More than a little crazy.
W(h)ither grammar
How many problems in reading stem from an ignorance of basic grammar? And how many problems in writing stem from an ignorance of basic grammar?
“Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong?”
Provocative reading in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Undergrads and creative writing
Pyramid (as in scheme ) is a metaphor often applied to creative-writing programs.
One more from Sheridan Baker
Writing is devilish. It hypnotizes us into believing we have said what we meant, when our words actually say something else: ”Every seat in the house was filled to capacity.”
The Practical Stylist
“The voice that speaks in The Practical Stylist is not that of a textbook: it’s that of an older writer addressing a younger writer, without condescension, offering insight and advice from long experience.”
Word processing, c. 1987
“It amuses me to realize that while many an English Department still houses a ‘computer lab’ (a classroom filled with the hum of machines), the prospect of writing in a word processor has come to feel faintly quaint.”
The end-of-paragraph transition
A strange problem. I’ve never found an authoritative source that addresses it clearly. Until now.
Mina Shaughnessy on error
Anyone who has read, say, a comma-free student essay (comma-free for fear that using commas might mean making mistakes), will see the wisdom in Mina P. Shaughnessy’s observations about error.
Philip Gove on student writing
“There’s an almost invariable rule that writing prepared under assignment and therefore artificially under pressure has certain forced awkwardnesses that make it quite different from genuine human utterances.”
“Death to high school English”
What are they doing in high-school English?
A voice from a term-paper mill
Writing other people's papers
PUSH
An old metal sign, good advice for reading, writing, and teaching.
Ellen Lupton on writing
"Some of my students seem to believe that just because they can't spell, their employers won't be able to, either."
Reliving our learning
Passage from Allen Shaw and a thought on student writing
Writing by hand
I was excited to read Shari Wilson's essay "The Surprising Process of Writing" in Inside Higher Ed. Wilson (a pseudonym) finds that for many...
How to e-mail a professor
[By a professor, for students. As of July 2023, this post has been visited by more than 800,000 readers from at least 145 countries and terr...
Old and improved
”How to e-mail a professor,” improved.