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ACADEMIC EXCHANGE EXTRA'S

"Grist for the Mill"

Thoughts and Questions for You, Our Readers

On this page, we hope to stir your thinking about issues and ideas as they intersect with the theoretical and the tangible: in short, to make education more practical and relevant for everyone. We invite responses to these topics (and many others) in the form of papers, essays, well-grounded opinion pieces, fiction, and poetry. All college and university students and instructors, K-12 teachers, and education administrators are encouraged to reply. (Please see our CFP at: http://asstudents.unco.edu/students/AE-Extra/Call.htm before submitting.)

Send submissions as Word attachments to the e-mail address below.  Please include a 3-4 sentence summary of your submission as well as a current short bio that identifies your contact information (e-mail and telephone), school/ departmental affiliation(s), and position(s) (e.g., student level, instructor, professor and/or administrator), and areas of academic interest.  For bio examples, please refer to this issues contributor's page.

FEATURE QUESTIONS:

What do you have to say about any of the following "hot" topics:

  • No Child Left Behind Act
  • For-profit education
  • Affirmative-action
  • Remedial education
  • Issues of gender and/or race on campus

COMPOSITION/PEDAGOGY:

  • What are your thoughts on the role and theories of composition in the broader theoretical framework of English studies?
  • Process versus product: what side are you on? Does it matter?
  • Is using readers in the composition classroom focusing too much on the new critical approach to literary analysis?

TECHNIQUE:

  • What are some of your unique teaching techniques? Why do you find them effective, and what initiated them?

COLLABORATION:

  • How does collaboration work in your classroom?
  • Are their beneficial alternatives to collaboration?
  • Do you prefer group conferencing to individual conferencing? Why or why not? What has been your experience?

LITERATURE:

  • What works/authors would you find the most beneficial for instructional use in the composition classroom? Why? In the introduction to literature classroom? Why?
  • What is the level of importance of literature in the composition classroom, given the theories of critical reading and its direct implication on effective writing?
  • What are your thoughts on the qualifications of a "classic"?
  • What qualifies a literary work into the Canon?
  • Which books should be added/dismissed at your own institution's list, and why?
  • If you could make your own 25-book Canon, what would it look like? Provide a short justification for each work.

GRAMMAR:

  • Should grammar play a larger role in the curriculum than it currently does? Why or why not?
  • What is the focus on grammar in your classroom?
  • What are your memories of grammar instruction? Was it helpful, and if so, should those methods be implemented now, or might they be too outdated?

E-mail responses to Elizabeth Haller, Editor-in-Chief, at: editoraee@hotmail.com

Please be sure the words AEE SUBMISSION appear somewhere in the subject line.

Academic Exchange Extra invites reader responses to any writings in this issue--especially articles advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised.

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