The use of a Jonathan Schwartz essay as a prose model to teach writing lends itself appropriately to classroom discussions on various aspects of autobiography and general narrative design. Such use has proved to be particularly helpful with young writers because of its deceptively simple style and language and its use of a variety of sophisticated…

The author believes the essay is a good instrument for giving students practice in reading, thinking, and writing, and describes a model for scoring student essays. When using the model, judges ranked essays in similar order, thus allowing essay writing to become a reliable tool for developing basic skills. (KC)

The synthesis of four instructional models for argumentative writing--the Toulmin, Hiduke, Winder, and Crebbe-Debate approaches--with basic discourse theory produces a practical and positive method of teaching college students to write effective persuasive essays. A battery of questions based on a modified communication triangle--subject…

One technique for teaching college-level report writing consists of an essay that students use as a model for their own writing. This model, in turn, contains guidelines for composing a short essay, from title and subheadings to sentence and paragraph structure, word selection, errors to avoid, and revision. (MSE)

The articles in this journal issue present a variety of teaching methods to enhance writing instruction. The titles of the articles and their authors are as follows: (1) "Writing for Real World Audiences in the Classroom?" (James P. Beck); (2) "Copycatting: Learning to Write by Imitating" (Mary Ann Stemper); (3) "The…