The English Council of California Two Year Colleges

Framing the Shrew: Tips for Teaching Shakespeare’s Controversial Comedy by Rachel Jennings As a long-time teacher of Shakespeare, I do not subscribe to dumbing down his language to make his works accessible to students. I flee from the No Fear paraphrase series, for example, and am vindicated in this by recent research on the ways […]

Book Review: The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life by Dinty W. Moore by Gary Enns The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life. By Dinty W. Moore. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2012. 152 pp. Available at Amazon.com: $9.42 hardcover; $8.95 digital. http://amzn.com/1614290075 The paradox of a good inspirational wisdom book is that […]

Read the sample features below… Editor: Sean Stratton Columns Editor’s Note President’s Message TYCA Report Point of View One Good Idea Features “Getting off the Carbon Box: Genuine Argument on Climate Change” Kathleen O’Brien, American River College “Book Review: The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life by Dinty W. Moore” Gary Enns “Framing the […]

How do we engage students in genuine argumentation on serious issues that shape their futures?  If we care deeply about these issues ourselves, how do we keep an objective stance so students can search for the truth  without trying to argue the instructor’s stance?  What if the evidence on the issue is so compelling on […]

by Michael Bryant – Spring 2014. “Those of us who teach composition spend inordinate amounts of time poring over written documents composed by many students who would rather not be writing at all. We craft comments that might somehow be helpful to students whose main goal is to complete the required assignment with the least amount of discomfort possible. In the midst of each compositional assessment, we search for the vibrant phrase or the original thought that helps make the effort of both writer and reader seem relevant.”

by Lois Ann Abraham – Spring 2014. “Like many college English instructors, I often assign Kate Chopin’s famous 1893 ‘The Story of an Hour’ in my literature and creative writing classes. Besides being a classic, it has the non-literary virtue of being short, only 1107 words, so students can read it in class on a day when they are handing in a major writing project.”