Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

Both writing and critical thinking are based in context; students write and think best about subjects in which they are knowledgeable. Neither can therefore be regarded as a generic basic skill. Linear conceptions of learning which permeate both informal and formal views of education, writing, and critical thinking set students up for failure. Standards of correctness in writing vary genre to genre, discipline to discipline. Knowledge, writing, and thinking are socially constructed; in the academic situation they are socially constructed by disciplines. A good writing program reflects the different kinds of writing that students do in the disciplines. Teaching writing in the disciplines requires consideration of the following guidelines: novice writers need explicit instruction in what it means to write in particular disciplines; most students do not reach a voice that is fully socialized in the discipline, and therefore teachers must decide which disciplinary conventions constitute thinking in the discipline in question and which do not; students who do become socialized into a discipline need to be pushed toward the meta-cognitive stance that characterizes critical thinking; and once students have become socialized into one or more disciplines, they can then make use of explicit instruction in the abstract grammar that governs the texts they have learned to produce. (Contains 33 references.) (IAH)

1Boy Crusoe

By Allan Eric

Also published as" A Yankee Crusoe" . A 15 year old hard working and studious farm boy finds the lure of adventure on the seas as a merchant seaman more than he can resist. This is his story. " I was born in a little town in the State of Maine, near the close of the Civil War. My boyhood life did not differ materially from that of the average farmer's son in the remote country districts of New England--except, perhaps, that I read more and thought more. Hard work on the rugged soil, two terms each year in the little yellow country schoolhouse, a day's fishing now and then filled the early years of my life full to over-flowing. " What he gets is enough excitement and adventure to overflow his wildest dreams. How he experiences disaster and uses his wits and knowledge to overcome every problem makes for a great read. - Summary by Phil Chenevert