Episodes in this Series
- 101. School Writing/Real World
- Introduces the key concepts to be covered in the course and the people who will appear throughout the programs: authors, educators, and professionals in all fields who use writing on the job, as well as first-year writing students from colleges and universities across the country. 29 minutes.
- 102. Finding Something To Say
- Introduces the topics covered in the Writing Process sequence—invention, drafting, and revision—with the most basic English composition problem: How does a writer start "inventing" ideas? Discussion focuses on the intimidating process of selecting a topic to write about as well as the challenge of finding a unique angle when an instructor or boss selects the topic. 29 minutes.
- 103. Description
- Students, teachers, and writers share their observations on what makes good description and offer tips on developing strong and accurate descriptive skills. Featured writing examples include a police officer's arrest report; a music critic's magazine story; and scene setting and character development in the work of novelists Sue Grafton, Tom Robbins, and Joseph Wambaugh. 29 minutes.
- 104. Reading as a Writer
- English instructors, including CCC Journal editor Joe Harris, explain how reading is part of the writing process. Students and writers, including novelist Ernest J. Gaines and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson, describe how they translate their joy of reading into better writing and talk about how to move from reading for pleasure to deciphering academic texts. 29 minutes.
- 105. Narrative Writing
- Shows the relationships among narrative writing, personal writing, and academic writing. Science fiction author William Gibson, mystery writer John Morgan Wilson, and novelist Charles Johnson present tips for telling a good story. 29 minutes.
- 106. Voice
- Students, teachers, and writers, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Aregood and novelist David Guterson, dissect both the esoteric and mechanical aspects of creating a writer's voice and explain how the intended audience influences choice of language and tone. 29 minutes.
- 107. Process Analysis
- Provides examples of "process analysis/how-to" writing in action: A marine biology student describes how to reproduce a scientific experiment, football coach Bill Walsh explains a lineman's technique, and Popular Woodworking magazine editor Steve Shanesy outlines how to stain a walnut table. 29 minutes.
- 108. Revision
- Explores the process of macro-revision and offers a variety of strategies to help the student writer revise. Emmy Award-winning scriptwriter David Mills (NYPD Blue and ER) and humorist/grammar expert Dave Barry share their views about and techniques for revision. 29 minutes.
- 109. Writing Under Pressure
- Explores how the skills learned in an English composition course can be applied in timed-writing assignments for other courses or in writing documents under deadline on the job. 29 minutes.
- 110. Freewriting and Generating
- English composition expert Dr. Peter Elbow (University of Massachusetts), Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt, keyboardist/lyricist Thomas Dolby, and comic actor Kevin Dorff of the Second City comedy troupe offer advice on how to generate ideas and overcome writer's block. 29 minutes.
- 111. Computers in Composition
- Writers and teachers, ranging from Chip Bayers of HotWired magazine to Cynthia Selfe of Michigan Technical University, discuss how computers are changing the way we read, research, organize, draft, and revise our written documents. The program also looks at how students in a distance-learning environment carry out collaborative writing. 29 minutes.
- 112. Organizing Devices
- Explores various prewriting strategies, including outlining, clustering, and listing, and organization at the thesis, topic sentence, and paragraph levels. Humorist Tom Bodett, composition instructor John Lovas, and screenwriter Peter Farrelly (co-creator of the film There's Something About Mary) discuss methods for organizing text. 29 minutes.
- 113. Comparison and Contrast
- A musicologist, a marine biologist, and a police officer show how the strategies of comparison and contrast—combined with critical thinking, persuasive writing, and narrative writing—work well in a variety of contexts. 29 minutes.
- 114. Peer Feedback
- Students, teachers, and professional writers demonstrate how the revision process often starts out—and sometimes works best—in a group setting. A federal judge and her clerks, a group of students, and a team of journalists illustrate how the whole can be greater than the sum of its writers. 29 minutes.
- 115. Definition
- Examines definition—from "defining yourself in the world" to technical definitions used in engineering or science courses—as an aspect of all other writing tasks: in argument, process analysis, and narrative writing and in invention, drafting, and revision. Film producer Michael Moore and radio host Rush Limbaugh spar about the definition of "welfare." 29 minutes.
- 116. Collaborative Writing
- Shows how people whose work involves writing can learn, research, draft, and revise as a team. Instructors, students, and professionals, including writers and actors from the television series MAD TV and a pair of science fiction novelists, share strategies for successful collaboration. 29 minutes.
- 117. Persuasion
- Explores the art of persuasion and how it is similar to and different from formal academic argument. Political activists, journalists, and advertising executives discuss techniques for persuading and influencing people to change their actions or views. Guest experts include author and "culture jammer" Kalle Lasn of Adbusters magazine and Jeff Goodby, originator of the "Got Milk?" ad campaign. 29 minutes.
- 118. Reading as a Thinker
- Outlines ways to read critically, including how to read and understand challenging college textbooks, no matter what the subject; to "own" the words in a dense text by challenging some of the author's ideas and agreeing with others; and to summarize and paraphrase an author's words, then restate new ideas synthesized from those words. 29 minutes.
- 119. Argument
- Demonstrates the process of formal argument—writing a simple statement (a main claim, thesis, hypothesis, or focus sentence) and supporting it with evidence. Featured writers and academics include political science instructor George Wright (California State University) and composition instructor Betsy Klimasmith (University of Washington). 29 minutes.
- 120. Quotes and Citations
- Presents skills for properly paraphrasing, quoting, and using MLA or APA citations in academic work and other writing. Federal judge Helen Gillmor, writer/musician David Ellefson (Megadeth), and English composition instructor Thomas Fox (California State University, Chico) examine ways to find the balance between unethically "borrowing" another person's words and artfully incorporating another writer's words into your own work. 29 minutes.
- 121. Research
- Librarians and instructors offer advice on how to evaluate the validity of evidence gained from the popular press, peer-reviewed academic journals, or the Internet. Filmmaker Michael Moore and novelist Tom Robbins note the value of research beyond school. 29 minutes.
- 122. Editing: Sentences
- Shows how to correct writing weaknesses, with a special emphasis on sentence structure problems. Topics include misplaced modifiers, comma splices, sentence fragments, nonparallel constructions, and other errors that can make otherwise coherent writing confusing. Commentators include author Frank McCourt, Geoffrey Philp (Miami Dade College), and Teresa Redd (Howard University). 29 minutes.
- 123. Critical Thinking
- Students and instructors contemplate the concept of critical thinking, examining how it affects the relationship among students, their textbooks, and their teachers as well as its importance in good reading and writing. Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh, and others demonstrate how to recognize logical fallacies, "read" a variety of situations critically, and apply the process to writing. 29 minutes.
- 124. Editing: Word Usage
- How to recognize and correct errors in word choice, such as pronoun-antecedent disagreement, subject-verb disagreement, and homonym confusions. Featured teachers and writers include Sue Grafton, Betsy Klimasmith, Santi Buscemi, and humorist/grammar expert Dave Barry. 29 minutes.
- 125. Writing Across the Disciplines
- Highlights a variety of ways students can apply the writing processes and rhetorical strategies learned in an English composition course to situations across the curriculum. 29 minutes.
- 126. Editing: Mechanics
- Demonstrates how to proofread for problems with language mechanics, identify punctuation errors, and correct mistakes that could ruin the credibility of a piece of writing. 29 minutes.
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