Nuts and Bolts: A Practical Guide to Teaching College Composition

Front Cover
Thomas Newkirk
Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1993 - Education - 208 pages
In Nuts & Bolts, editor Thomas Newkirk details the evolution of the University of New Hampshire's writing program, drawing heavily from the oral culture -- or "lore" -- of the program. Then seven experienced practitioners contribute chapters dealing with the issues that beginning writing teachers often struggle with:

  • How can I sequence a writing course?
  • How can in-class writing exercises develop writing
  • What is the place of reading in a writing course?
  • What is my role in writing conferences?
  • How can I help students self-evaluate?
  • How do I teach editing?
  • How should I grade?

Nuts & Bolts deals with these questions in a lucid, jargon-free, and specific way. While filled with examples of student work and classroom exercises, it is more than a sampler of things that "work." Each contributor is careful to show how classroom work comes out of careful thinking about course objectives; readers are invited to eavesdrop on this decision making process.

An unabashedly practical book, Nuts & Bolts will be the single most useful book a college writing teacher could own.

From inside the book

Contents

Locating Freshman English
1
Charting a Course in FirstYear English
17
3
50
Copyright

8 other sections not shown

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About the author (1993)

Thomas Newkirk is the bestselling author of Minds Made for Stories along with numerous other Heinemann titles, including Writing Unbound, Embarrassment, The Art of Slow Reading, The Performance of Self in Student Writing (winner of the NCTE's David H. Russell Award), and Misreading Masculinity. He taught writing at the University of New Hampshire for thirty-nine years, and founded the New Hampshire Literacy Institutes, a summer program for teachers. In addition to working as a teacher, writer, and editor, he has served as the chair of his local school board for seven years.

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