The author lists and discusses nine patterns of errors that students in an inner city secondary English class exhibited during a six week writing skills development session. (Author/RK)

The prewriting strategies of guided imagery, brainstorming, clustering, freewriting, and oral activities, are described. It is suggested that teachers utilize these strategies to help students become competent in each stage of the writing process. Ten writing resources are listed. (MBR)

The authors contend that because sentence-combining exercises provide students with disciplined writing practice without the sometimes paralyzing pressure to be "creative," they are probably the most basic and useful means of preparing students for writing original compositions. Presented is a sentence-combining exercise. (KC)

Proposes use of criteria-based scales, which prescribe levels of writing performance for a particular mode of discourse, as a way to teach and test student writing skills. Pre- and posttesting, teaching for the test utilizing the criteria-based scale, and why this method is successful are also discussed. (MBR)