Elbow, Peter. Writing With Power:

Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA. 1998. Print. This book speaks to those who wish to write as a career or a hobby. It discusses issues people may come across which is common in writing, where one may struggle with words or even putting together sentences. Elbow emphasizes the importance of writing activities to improve good writing skills. This book is written using the cookbook approach which can be suitable for those who are beginners in writing to those who are more experienced. This book offers its readers much techniques in writing which can be used from writing short stories, to anything.

Elbow, Peter. Writing without Teachers. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, USA. 1998. Print. This book discusses the 'freewriting technique' which the author has made popular. He talks about writing as something which is growing and that moves through stages. The first stage is to generate words before a writer can continue to "grow" a piece of writing and move through the subsequent stages. Elbow stresses in this section that it is crucial to write as much as possible because the more a writer writes, not only does he have more to work with, but he also has more to throw away, allowing him to keep moving through the growing stages of writing. The second metaphor is to see writing as cooking, letting ideas simmer and bubble until they are ready to be used. In this metaphor, Elbow stresses interaction, particularly between writing and summarization. Essentially, the writing lets his ideas simmer until he can use them to interact with his writing. Elbow suggests that writers spend sufficient time writing as well as stopping completely and reflecting on what the big picture is adding up to mean.

Fu, Dangling. My Trouble is My English: Asian Students and the American Dream. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann-Boynton/Cook Publishers. 1995. Print. This book is written by a Laotian author who discusses the challenges of academic life in high school. This is set in the United States and is about four non-native English speakers as well as their struggles in literacy. In coming to the United States for graduate study, Danling Fu, a teacher of English in her native China, experienced dissonance between her expectations and those of her Master's program in English. Instead of personalized discussions about the intrinsic meaning of the text and its relevance to life, emphasis was placed on detail, on form, on structure, on elements of composition, on discrete aspects of the literature, on assuming the objective, academic voice. She felt alienated, confused, "helpless, incapable, and defeated" (p.5). In her doctoral program in education, she experienced reading and writing as connections to her own life and to others, grew in her understanding and found her own voice. Her experience is paralleled in this ethnographic study of the acquisition of literacy in English by four Laotian siblings.

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications. 1986. Print. This book is a collection of 66 little lessons on writing. Goldberg believes there must be discipline in writers' habits. You should have a set time to write every day and stick to it. To motivate herself, the author made a goal to fill a notebook every month. There is no instruction on what to write. The important thing is to write and write. You may write three pages of worthless paragraphs. But in the end, you'll find a good sentence in that mess that is the beginning of something big. Both Goldberg and her colleague Anne Lamott have made this point. Writing Down the Bones is an ideal starting point for beginning writers. Like a person starting a diet, a new writer has no regimen. it's hard to the dieter to jog the first day. In time, it gets easier until it is part of the normal routine like brushing teeth or something. In this book, Goldberg gets potential writers in to their own mental regimen, by telling them they must set time to write every day and make it part of their schedule.

Heilbrun, G. Carolyn. Writing a Woman's Life (Ballantine Reader's Circle). New York, NY: Ballantine Books. 1989. Print. With subtlety and great eloquence, Carolyn Heilbrun shows how, throughout the centuries, those who write about women's lives -- biographers andautobiographers -- have suppressed the truth of the female experience, in order to make the "written life" conform to the expectations of what that life should be. Heilbrun also examines literature's silence on such vital topics as friendship between women, the female physical experience, and the richness that often imbues a women's later years. Recommended reading for everyone, especially women and writers. An important, quick and concise presentation of the stories women tell of themselves and others, both autobiographical and biographical, and how they need to be re-invented away from the masculine molds historically given to women. What women need is a new way of thinking and writing, outside of the structures ingrained by a man's world. Heilbrun gives some background, some examples, and a lightweight structure on which to build a place in which women can claim Themselves as separate from the Other which has always defined them.

Paloff, M. Rena, and Keith Pratt. Assessing the Online Learner: Resources and Strategies for Faculty. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons. 2008. Print. This book is written for those contemplating distance learning, or even simply supplementing a traditional course with online activities. Clearly written with a focus on the pedagogical rather than the technological aspects of online learning, this teaching guide offers specific advice for any number of situations and practical applications of online activities applicable to any course. The focus is constructivist in nature - learner centered - and there are numerous suggestions for incorporating collaborative learning in distance education, hence the title choice. The authors even define dialogue and discussion, stressing why both are necessities in collaborative learning environments. Dialogue focuses more on learners being open to restructuring their mental models while discussion seems more like a game of ping pong, a volley of views between people. The authors stress how both are necessary for collaborative learning, and there are many examples showing how online learning can be used to focus on issues of Bloom's Taxonomy, something often missing from lecture-based courses. This is the kind of book you'll read and reread often. The authors share their extensive background in online education, both as educators and students, in the beginning of the book. Their extensive research prior to their writing is clearly evident from the references included throughout the text and the examples from various courses besides their own. They set the tone and purpose by providing a brief glimpse of the origins of online learning in their own lives. Having been students as well as educators, these two draw on considerable experiences to establish their authority in this field. Throughout the book, Drs. Palloff and Pratt bring in specific examples from their own classes to illustrate what has worked and how they structured classes, as well as student responses/reactions. There are specific examples of syllabi which readers can adopt in part or whole. Graphics illustrate how the online courses look, and the brief mention of course management applications clearly shows the authors are less concerned with the technical applications than with the learning resulting from the course. Online learning, as noted by Drs. Palloff & Pratt, is about learning, not technology. This is unquestionably written for educators.

Romano, Tom. Writing with Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres. Boynton/Cook. 1995. Print. In Writing With Passion: Life Stories, Multiple Genres, Tom Romano reveals his teaching pedagogy and overall teaching philosophy with the reader, and does not impose these ideas, rather he presents what he believes is successful in his own classroom, and develops an environment of collaboration as opposed to an all knowing master educator. All content found within each chapter revolves around the central idea of passion. If no joy, pain, excitement, or tension is felt, from a philosophical standpoint, is that a life to live? Grammar, syntax, spelling, while they are all of utmost importance in any academic setting, they are not critical in all writing. What is critical, of greatest importance, the very life-blood of writing itself, is the development and cultivation of personal voice, "the heart" of literacy (xi). Releasing the students of stringent rules, although temporarily, also releases their voice in their writing. Notably, Romano is able to present lesson plans woven within striking narratives and stories. Reading a lesson activity he endorses, which consists of writing a "short piece of fiction... incorporat[ing] details of research," I found myself immersed in a story created by his daughter, then a senior in high school (8). Romano tells us that his daughter, Mariana, had gathered research on Romano's parents, and the story of how they immigrated to the United States in the early 1900's. However, Mariana gathered facts, and from those cold facts, she wove a beautiful fictional account of the first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty from a crowded boat, the fighting amongst Romano's uncles, and the essence of a family starting a new life together. The story was filled with factual accuracy, while fictional, and vividly rich with images and characters that she and her father could picture with accurate detail. Romano tells us how Mariana finished the story with a young member of the family holding a roughly cut, wooden pony, and how when she gently finished the tale as he was in tears