Another way that mainstream education — K-12 and higher — does not teach language arts/writing/English, yet …

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20090323/FEAT/303239939/0/FRONTPAGE

English literacy education that higher education has little or nothing to do with:

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/164/story/436262.html

In a New York Times op-ed today, Hirsch criticizes reading comprehension tests as barking up the wrong tree. Is he on to something?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/opinion/23hirsch.html?_r=1&hp

Here’s a report of a report on plagiarism given at a recent American Chemical Society meeting.  One scientist quoted blames “not enough writing” at the undergraduate level for problems with graduate students plagiarizing.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090322154413.htm

This long article is the result of an investigation into an essay mill, from the point of view of a student/customer. Interesting!

http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=cKgdcqSn8JnwjYnY8vYk5mq9sg5fNpff

This story makes a stong case for electronic portfolios as learning devices across the curriculu, among other things. How many schools are doing anything like this?

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3668/electronic-portfolios-a-path-to-the-future-of-learning

Here’s a report of a session at CCCC where researchers offered new data to suggest a degree of unreliability in Turnitin.com’s identification of plagiarism in student writing:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/13/detect

This piece from the Chronicle offers a new view of the place of Wikipedia in the writing classroom.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/12/cummings

This column prods Barack Obama on his pronoun usage:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/opinion/24oconner.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

The first story linked here has a local (Western Pa.) slant, but it also provides a quick overview of Kathleen Yancey’s new report on “Writing in the 21st Century.”  The second link is to an editorial that takes a kind of “old school” skeptical stance toward the report.  The third is to a .pdf version of the report.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09054/951056-298.stm

http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/1225472.html

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Press/Yancey_final.pdf