Writing conversations: fostering metalinguistic discussion about writing

Metaconversations: Ongoing discussion about teaching research writing

This article is a follow up to an earlier publication that developed the rationale for using conversation as a metaphor to teach research writing. We presented this proposed teaching approach at several conferences, including WILU in May 2005 at Guelph, Canada. The discussions with participants in these presentations validated the tenets of the conversational metaphor for research writing. Here...

Writing the Discussion

Some residents and junior staff members have asked me how to write the 'discussion part' of a scientific paper. In reviewing the manuscripts of original articles and case reports submitted to journals including the Archives of Plastic Surgery, I don't infrequently find or I frequently find that the authors have written summaries of references cited that are not directly related to the topic the...

Writing Web Documents about Films

This paper describes our experiences our experience in building and using a Web-based video library designed for educational use. The CAETI Internet Multimedia Library’s initial audience is K-12 schools; most of the content of our library comes from news and politics-related historical footage. The video library is a good tool not just for content but also for acquiring visual literacy. Politic...

Talking About Writing: What We Can Learn from Conversations between Parents and Their Young Children.

In six analyses using CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000), we explored whether and how parents and their 1.5 to 5-year-old children talk about writing. Parent speech might include information about the similarity between print and speech and about the difference between writing and drawing. Parents could convey similarity between print and speech by using the words say, name, and word to refer to both s...

It’s About the Science: Students Writing and Thinking About Data In a Scientific Writing Course