Nuts and 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.