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ACADEMIC EXCHANGE EXTRA

"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 refer to our Call for Papers 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 5-6 sentence abstract 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.

MULTI-MODAL LEARNING:

• What is your success rate with multi-modal learning and how do you incorporate it into the classroom?
• Provide some examples and analyses of your multi-modal activities.

COMPOSITION/PEDAGOGY:

• What do you think of the current trend in Writing Programs to separate themselves from the broader umbrella of the English Department?
• What are your thoughts on the role rhetoric/composition plays in the broader theoretical framework of English studies?
• Is using readers in the composition classroom focusing too much on the new critical approach to literary analysis?

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?
• Is collaboration a form of group cheating?

TECHNIQUE:

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

LITERATURE:

• How can we use literature in the classroom as a basis for a discussion on literacy?
• 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?

You are invited to join AE Extra staff!
Send your ideas and/or writing sample to the Editor-in-chief:
Elizabeth Haller
Kent State University (e-mail: editoraee@hotmail.com)

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