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Contract grading has achieved some prominence in our field as a practice associated with critical pedagogy. In this context we describe a hybrid grading contract where students earn a course grade of B based not on our evaluation of their writing quality but solely on their completion of the specified activities. The contract lists activities we've found most reliable in producing B-quality writing over fourteen weeks. Higher grades are awarded to students who produce exemplary portfolios. Thus we freely give students lots of evaluative feedback on their writing, but students can count on a course grade of B if they do all the required activities--no matter our feedback. Our goal in using contracts is to enable teachers and students to give as much attention as possible to writing and as little as possible to grades. (Contains 17 notes.)

"Voice" is no longer a hot term in composition journals. Yet it continues to deserve scholarly attention, in part because it is still often referred to in classrooms and seems applicable to new forms of electronic communication. At the same time, we should avoid taking an either/or stand on the usefulness of "voice" as a term. This is a case where we should embrace contraries, by advocating concepts of "voice" on certain occasions and resisting the term on others. (Contains 8 notes.)

Written words are laid out in space and exist on the page all at once, but a reader can only read a few words at a time. For readers, written words are trapped in the medium of time. So how can we best organize writing for readers? Traditional techniques of organization tend to stress the arrangement of parts in space and certain metadiscoursal techniques that compensate for the problem of time. In contrast, I'll describe five ways to organize written language that "harness" or bind time. In effect, I'm exploring form as a source of energy. More broadly, I'm implying that our concept itself of "organization" is biased toward a picture of how objects are organized in space and neglects the story of how events are organized in time. (Contains 2 figures and 13 notes.)

This year marks the 15th year of a program called "Professors as Writers" at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The first meeting was a half-day workshop at the end of a spring semester to help faculty launch the writing they wanted to do over the summer. The program has grown over the years and now includes monthly retreats, as well as a day-long session in May. In this article, the authors present their separate thoughts on the program. Mary Deane, an associate provost for faculty development and a writer, reflects on what it takes to create and sustain this writing space and a writing community, while Peter, a teacher of writing and a writer, reflects on how his theories of writing apply to a faculty retreat--and what is useful to say and not to say. They hope this dual perspective will give readers a richer sense of this program.

Inoue [Inoue, A. B. (2005). "Community-based assessment pedagogy." "Assessing Writing: An International Journal, 3", 208-238] sets up a radically experimental writing class as a kind of laboratory of assessment. He seeks to avoid the standard situation where a teacher unilaterally assesses and grades student writing, using only his or her own criteria or standard. His premise is that value in writing is socially constructed, and so he gets students to enact a social, communal process to work out the criteria for effective writing. In this way he gets students to take full responsibility for assessing and even grading each other. But when he requires his students to agree on a "single" model of good writing (a "rubric" with various dimensions), I think he misunderstands how value is actually socially constructed. In fact we live in a world with various models of good or effective writing. Given, however, that he is working in an institutional setting, his approach seems readily understandable. How can feedback be coherent or final grades be fair if they are based on "multiple" and "competing" models of goodness? This sounds like a rhetorical question, but in fact I use this essay to argue that it is not only feasible but desirable to use multiple models of value in an institutional setting.

Two experts are engaged together in an ambitious but important project: to help people understand that skeptical, adversarial and doubting mode of critical thinking should not take over their minds and the culture by equating with good thinking itself. One can get better thinking and discourse if equal importance is given to another dimension i.e. the rhetoric of assent and the believing game.

Writing is an effective way to teach and learn when compared to reading. The combination of reading and writing helps children to learn fast.

Presents the idea that students should develop different writing styles. Encourages writing poetry regularly. Focuses on the need for a student to develop a prose style from his or her culture. Encourages students to develop professional, academic writing. (PM)

Addresses the argument that private writing is not really private. Explores the role of empirical evidence. Offers arguments that acknowledge private writing as different from public or social writing. Discusses methods of researching private writing. (CR)

Argues that oppositional thinking, if handled in the right way, will serve as a way to avoid the very problems that Jonathan Culler and Paul de Mann are troubled by: "purity, order, and hierarchy." Asserts that binary thinking can serve to encourage difference--indeed, encourage nondominance, nontranscendence, instability, and disorder. (PRA)

Considers the problems with ranking students' written work and some of the benefits of evaluating. Argues that teachers should do less ranking and more evaluation. Discusses the limits of evaluation. Asks teachers to foster a "liking" for their students' writing. (HB)

Discusses the problems involved with both student and teacher evaluations. Examines better ways to evaluate teachers and asserts that teachers must find ways to dignify student evaluations of teachers and make the process thoughtful and reflective rather than mechanical. (PRA)

Characterizes academic discourse. Argues for the need for some nonacademic writing in freshman writing courses. Discusses the different styles of academic discourse within the field of composition. Notes stylistic conventions of academic discourse. Discusses implications for the teaching of freshman writing. (RS)

Argues that personal writing, like academic discourse, makes arguments, solves problems, analyzes texts and issues, tries to answer hard questions--and usually refers to and builds on other academic discourse. Offers a larger view, clear thinking, logical organization, and judicious tone as surrogates for objectivity. Argues against deconstructionism. (PRA)