Nuts & Bolts: A Practical Guide to Teaching College Composition

In Nuts & Bolts, editor Thomas Newkirk details the evolution of the University of New Hampshire's writing program, drawing heavily from the oral culture -- or "lore" -- of the program. Then seven experienced practitioners contribute chapters dealing with the issues that beginning writing teachers often struggle with:

• How can I sequence a writing course?
• How can in-class writing exercises develop writing
• What is the place of reading in a writing course?
• What is my role in writing conferences?
• How can I help students self-evaluate?
• How do I teach editing?
• How should I grade?

Nuts & Bolts deals with these questions in a lucid, jargon-free, and specific way. While filled with examples of student work and classroom exercises, it is more than a sampler of things that "work." Each contributor is careful to show how classroom work comes out of careful thinking about course objectives; readers are invited to eavesdrop on this decision making process.

An unabashedly practical book, Nuts & Bolts will be the single most useful book a college writing teacher could own.

Thomas Newkirks most recent books with Heinemann are Holding Onto Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones (2009) and Teaching the Neglected "R" (2007, coedited with Richard Kent). His Misreading Masculinity (2004) was cited by Instructor Magazine as one of the most significant books for teachers in the past decade. A former teacher of at-risk high school students in Boston, Tom is Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire, the former director of its freshman English program, and the director and founder of its New Hampshire Literacy Institutes. He has studied literacy learning at a variety of educational levels-from preschool to college. His other Heinemann and Boynton/Cook titles include the NCTE David H. Russell Award winning Performance of Self in Student Writing (Boynton/Cook, 1997), Taking Stock: The Writing Process Movement in the 90s (Boynton/Cook, 1994, coedited with Lad Tobin), and Nuts & Bolts: A Practical Guide to Teaching College Composition (Boynton/Cook, 1993). In addition, Tom is coeditor (with Lisa Miller) of The Essential Don Murray, which gathers the most important insights about writing and teaching writing from "America's Greatest Writing Teacher." Thomas Newkirk has been named the 2010 recipient of the Gary Lindberg Award for his outstanding contributions as a faculty member of the University of New Hampshire. Read the Award Announcement