A World in Crisis

The author, a college composition teacher, recognizes we are living in a time of global crisis, fighting battles on two fronts. On the one hand, we are living in a period that sees us exposed to COVID-19, a pandemic that is threatening lives across the globe with no apparent end in sight. Then we have the social injustice that is racism rearing its vile and ugly head, resulting in the highlighting of the Black Lives Matter movement. Believing that freshman composition teachers are ideally positioned to encourage students to share their views on the crises that we are currently living through, this author uses a student-centered-book-writing pedagogy and asks her students to write a book on what they are burning to tell the world about COVID-19 or the Black Lives Matter movement. In this article, the author shares excerpts of her freshman composition students' writings and briefly discusses her student-centered-book-writing pedagogy.

Analysis of Teacher-written Corrective Feedback in Second Language Writing Pedagogy in Secondary Schools, Bulilima, Zimbabwe

This study investigated the teachers’ practice on written corrective feedback as well as the students’ response to it in a bid to find practical solutions to the problem of low performance in English composition writing at “O” Level in Zimbabwe. The study sought to find out the nature of corrective feedback that “O” Level students get from their composition teachers and how these students respond to it. In this qualitative research, seven informants (“O” Level students) were interviewed; the researchers used a semi-structured interview schedule to address them and their English exercise books were also analyzed using a document analysis guide designed by the researchers. The study concluded that the composition teacher marked the compositions thoroughly highlighting most of the errors for students’ benefit. The teacher’s focus on feedback was in line with the syllabus demands. The teacher also satisfied the Feed Up, Feed Back and the Feed Forward types of effective feedback. She had strength on mark allocation which acted as student guide to their stance in composition writing. However, although the students largely benefited from the teacher’s corrective written feedback as well as the oral feedback, some of them failed to get the maximum benefit because they could not understand the correction codes. It is therefore imperative for composition teachers to provide students with a correction code elaboration whenever using a marking correction code.

Tavener, John Kenneth (1944–2013)

John Tavener was an English composer. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where his composition teachers were Lennox Berkeley and David Lumsdaine. His earliest success was with the cantata The Whale, first performed at the inaugural concert of the London Sinfonietta in 1968. This was followed by Celtic Requiem in 1969. Both works were recorded on the Beatles’ Apple label. Tavener began teaching at Trinity College in 1969. Tavener was extremely prolific. Among his most significant compositions of the following decades are ÚltimosRitos (1972), the opera Thérèse (1973–76), Akhmatova: Requiem (1979–80), Ikon of Light (1984), Orthodox Vigil Service (1984), and Akathist of Thanksgiving (1986–87). The huge unexpected success of The Protecting Veil for solo cello and orchestra (1987) brought his music to the attention of a wider audience than ever before. Subsequent large-scale works of significance are Resurrection (1989), Apocalypse (1993), Fall and Resurrection (1997), Total Eclipse (1999), The Veil of the Temple (2001), Laila (2004), Sollemnitas in ConceptioneImmaculataBeataeMariaeVirginis (2006) and Requiem (2007). Tavener was knighted in the 2000 honours list.

Aharonián, Coriún (1940--)

Coriún Aharonián was born in Montevideo, Uruguay on August 4, 1940. His parents, Nubar Aharonián and Victoria Kharputlián, arrived in Uruguay in 1927 and 1928, part of the massive exodus of Armenians due to the genocide at the hands of the Turkish government at the beginning of the twentieth century. Aharonián’s early interest in music was supported by his family, and as a five-year old he began studying piano with Adela Herrera-Lerena, which lasted until 1959. From 1955–1957 and 1966–1969, he studied with the Uruguayan composer Héctor Tosar. Between 1964 and 1966 he worked on his musicological formation with Lauro Ayestarán. Aharonián received a fellowship to study at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires in 1969–1970, but before the end of 1969 he postponed the fellowship and traveled to Europe to further his studies. With funding from the French government, he studied at the conservatory of Paris and at the Groupe de Recherche Musicale (GRM) between 1969 and 1970. With the help of another scholarship, this time from the Italian government, he studied in Venice with Luigi Nono (1924-1990). Aharonián attended the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt in 1970 and 1974. He received lessons from several composers such as Gerardo Gandini (1936-2013), Vinko Globokar (1934–), György Ligeti (1923-2005), Gordon Mumma (1935–), Folke Rabe (1935–), Christian Wolff (1934–) and Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001). With regard to his composition teachers, the strongest influences came from Héctor Tosar and Luigi Nono.

Explicit ESL/EFL Reading-writing Connection: An Issue to Explore in ESL/EFL Settings

This paper tries to explore the explicit relationship between reading and writing from ESL/EFL perspectives. The reading-writing connection has long been established in language literacy. Yet, this paper specifically focuses on the usefulness and effectiveness as well as the need for the explicit connection between the two language skills in ESL/EFL settings. It compares between Arabic rhetoric and English rhetoric as two opposite language systems. This paper tries to relate some issues in natural settings in Saudi Arabia in relation to the status of reading and writing in real classrooms and writing teachers’ strategies. Finally, the paper explores the composition teachers’ role and knowledge in making this explicit connection significant to ESL learners of writing. This paper cites some examples that the author experienced in reading and writing courses when he was an EFL student enrolled in English department.

Scaffolding Agency and Responsibility in Cloud-Based Collaborative Writing

Although most students regularly interact online for social reasons, many are uncomfortable collaborating for academic work, even work utilizing familiar cloud technology. Because collaborative writing in digital spaces is becoming commonplace in work and academic environments, composition teachers must help students to recognize their individual agency within group work and to develop strategies for a shared writing process. How can we scaffold online writing experiences so that our students' ability to collaborate emerges as a strategic and still-developing part of the learning process? In this chapter we discuss strategies for scaffolding a collaborative writing process using Google Docs in the composition classroom. We describe four sample activities appropriate for undergraduate writing courses: anonymous invention, group annotated bibliographies, group agendas and project plans, and peer review. We suggest best practices for developing individual agency and shared responsibility for group writing in the cloud.

Scaffolding Agency and Responsibility in Cloud-Based Collaborative Writing

Although most students regularly interact online for social reasons, many are uncomfortable collaborating for academic work, even work utilizing familiar cloud technology. Because collaborative writing in digital spaces is becoming commonplace in work and academic environments, composition teachers must help students to recognize their individual agency within group work and to develop strategies for a shared writing process. How can we scaffold online writing experiences so that our students' ability to collaborate emerges as a strategic and still-developing part of the learning process? In this chapter we discuss strategies for scaffolding a collaborative writing process using Google Docs in the composition classroom. We describe four sample activities appropriate for undergraduate writing courses: anonymous invention, group annotated bibliographies, group agendas and project plans, and peer review. We suggest best practices for developing individual agency and shared responsibility for group writing in the cloud.