Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Vol. 29, No. 1, September 2001

Table of Contents

• The Process of Change in a Community College Writing Program

  Gregory Shafer

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  Abstract: Shafer recalls the process he and his colleagues in a community college writing program experienced in setting out to define their writing program and the theoretical framework upon which it was based. He reviews the literature that led the department to adopt a more process oriented, student centered curriculum.

  Keywords: College

• Unspoken Content: Silent Film in the ESL Classroom

  Loretta F. Kasper and Robert Singer

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  Abstract: Research has shown that contemporary popular films are a valuable resource in the ESL classroom. However, the short, silent film has been overlooked. Using D.W. Griffith's The Painted Lady, Kaspar and Singer demonstrate how to use silent films to facilitate the development of ESL students' critical thinking and writing skills.

  Keywords: College

• Class Workshops: An Alternative to Peer-Group Review

  D.R. Ransdell

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  Abstract: Peer review requires training and reinforcement to be successful, yet, even then, students often lack the experience and perception to offer good advice to one another. Ransdell, advocates instead for more focused guidance through use of whole-class workshops. Here, she explains the logistics of running a class workshop and addresses both the advantages and disadvantages of the technique, noting that the negatives are far outweighed by the positives.

  Keywords: College

• Rhetoric as Commitment: Ethics and Everyday Life

  Robert C. Sutton and Daniel F. Collins

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  Abstract: Sutton and Collins describe their team-taught humanities course that combines "Introduction to Ethics" with "Argument-Based Research." The course asks students to examine ethical situations and seeks to establish a forum for deliberation in hopes that students will learn to express themselves more persuasively and self-critically while gaining empathy to those whose views and practices differ from their own. The ultimate goal is that rhetoric and ethics reach further from the classroom and into every day life.

  Keywords: College

• Our Corner of the Sky: Two-Year College Creative Writing

  Tim Waggoner

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  Abstract: Waggoner interviews for 2-year college creative writing instructors to find out about the present and future state of creative writing education.

  Keywords: College

• INSTRUCTIONAL NOTE: Solutions to Mechanical Errors in Writing: Usage Scans and Fix-It Pages

  Helen Collins Sitler

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  Abstract: Through two personalized instructional tools - usage scans and the "fix-it page" - students become more aware of their own patterns of mechanical errors, learn to locate and correct their errors, and learn to use a handbook.

  Keywords: College

• Official Feasts and Carnivals: Student Writing and Public Ritual

  Paul Heilker

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  Abstract: Using Bakhtin's comparison of the two basic kinds of medieval festivals - official feasts and carnivals - as seen in "Rabelais and His World," Heilker identifies two ways to teach the ritual of writing. First, students are trained to practice only one kind of writing - the official feast of thesis and support writing. But there is also an opposing and complementary public writing ritual - the carnival - that allows for liberation from accepted conventions and the freedom for students to reinvent themselves and their worlds. Students should be prepared not only to practice the official feast, Heilker says, but also to engage in carnivalesque writing as well.

  Keywords: College

• EDITORIAL: Scholarship and Research

  Howard Tinberg

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  Abstract: The editor expresses concerns that not enough instructors at the 2-year college level see themselves as researchers and scholars. He challenges readers to show colleagues how to integrate teaching with scholarship and research.

  Keywords: College

• Nothing for Breakfast; Starleopard

  Tim Barnes

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  Abstract: Abstract for this article is currently not available.

  Keywords: College

• One Day; The Teacher; Teacher English

  Connie Wolfe

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  Abstract: Abstract for this article is currently not available.

  Keywords: College

• REVIEWS

  Maxine M. Long; Eileen O’Hara; Gregory A. Giberson

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  Abstract: A Group of Their Own: College Writing Courses and American Women Writers, 1880–1940, by Katherine H. Adams; Everyone Can Write: Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing, by Peter Elbow; Teaching Composition as a Social Process, by Bruce McComiskey.

  Keywords: College

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