"I admire this tape for the helpful glimpse it gives of an approach to teaching writing that is powerful and too little explored." -Peter Elbow

"The Living Voice Moves: Story Workshop approaches to the Expository Essay"

This videotape shows dramatically the way in which students in a Story Workshop class identify and use the speaking/writing concept of voice to develop their expository essays. Focusing on three student writers in a Prose Forms class taught by Randall Albers at Columbia College Chicago, it presents the main elements of the Story Workshop approach as they occur in classes at all levels, from basic to advanced--oral reading of literary models, oral telling and development of strong subject matter, in-class writing, read-back of in-class writing, oral reading of essay drafts, recall and comment, and teacher coachings. It concludes with interviews by Betty Shiflett in which the three students discuss their insights into the process of writing their essays.

"Story From First Impulse to Final Draft:
Betty Shiflett Conducts a Story Workshop Take-A-Place Class"

This videotape presents the basic principles and techniques of oral and written exercises that draw upon the relationship between strongly felt content and imaginative problem-solving leading to compelling stories. It uses actual footage from a fiction writing workshop taught by Betty Shiflett at Columbia College Chicago to illustrate the theory and practice of a central in-class activity used in Story Workshop classes at all levels-Take-A-Place. The progress of three students is followed over a semester from first image impulse in the Take-A-Place activity through various drafts exploring techniques related to voice, image, point of view, sense of address and audience, dramatic character interaction, and structure. The tape concludes with interviews conducted by Randall Albers of the students featured in the tape, discussing their writing process in and out of class.