Technical Reports and Occasional Papers

tech report

Writing Conferences


TR 37. I Want to Talk to Each of You: Collaboration and the Teacher-Student Writing Conference, by Melanie Sperling. Following ethnographic procedures, Sperling examines teacher-student writing conferences in a ninth- grade English class for six case-study students. Through discourse analysis and descriptive narrative, Sperling shows how collaboration between teacher and student encourages students' learning as writers. October, 1989; 56 pages; $4.50.
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TR 48. Dialogues of Deliberation: Conversation in the Teacher-Student Writing Conference, by Melanie Sperling. Sperling focuses on three students in a ninth- grade English class--including a very quiet student and a very talkative one--as they converse with their teacher about their ongoing writing. Suggesting a broadened model of effective writing conference instruction, Sperling examines how such one-to-one conversations contribute to the processes of writing and learning to write for various students. May, 1991; 25 pages; $4.00.
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OP 15. A Whole Language Approach to the Teaching of Bilingual Learners, by Alex Moore. This paper relates the experiences of two London teachers and a fifteen-year- old immigrant Bangladeshi student as they work together on drafts of the student's autobiography, illustrating how a sensitive teaching style can contribute to the development of writing skills in students whose first language is not English. January, 1990; 18 pages; $3.50.
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OP 22. "This Wooden Shack Place": The Logic of an Unconventional Reading, by Glynda Hull and Mike Rose. Hull and Rose analyze an interaction between Rose and a student in a remedial college composition class, where the student's personal history and cultural background shape an unconventional reading of a poem used in a writing assignment. They discuss the logic of the student's interpretation of the poem, showing the value of conversing with students about interpretations that initially strike the teacher as "a little off the mark." December, 1990; 10 pages; $3.50.
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OP 26. High School English and the Teacher-Student Writing Conference: Fine-Tuned Duets in the Ensemble of the Classroom, by Melanie Sperling. Sperling provides a glimpse into an urban ninth-grade English classroom and examines some of the teacher-student conferences that take place there. She shows that even if a secondary school teacher lacks time for lengthy one-to-one interactions, the teacher's brief conversations with individual students can play an important role in writing instruction. May, 1991; 10 pages; $3.50.
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