Good writers don't wing it--they have a plethora of skills. They list, picture, circle, strategize and revise to make language come alive. They know what to use and when. Like ace athletes, they are highly trained, well-versed in the techniques found in this lively book. "Writing Workouts" provides a method for instruction that gives…

Describes how to conduct timed writing exercises which extend into proofreading, correcting, and paragraphing exercises. (RH)

Presents writing as a form of dialog and the paragraph as a unit of implied dialog. (MM)

Suggests an exercise to be used in a creative writing class to help students learn the various techniques available for characterization. (TJ)

Describes a teaching sequence in which students are taught to write as if they were readers and read as if they were the writers. (HOD)

Summarizes a method for teaching composition that allows for practice in straight composition, the opportunity for self-expression, and the getting of feedback by asking students to write a paragraph in response to a specific question about the text for the week and a second paragraph of reaction to the text. (TJ)

Explains an exercise in which logical relationships are isolated in order to help students discover how to choose their material for paragraphs. (TJ)

Describes a simple structuring device for teaching paragraphing skills which focuses the student's attention on the subject of the paragraph and a specific interest in the subject. Outlines how to use the method for showing basic writers how to proceed to longer compositions. (HB)

Describes a method of writing about literature in which "major detail sentences" (sentences which make generalizations about the point of the paragraph) help students combine their observations and the facts of the story into an analytical form. (MM)

Presents and discusses a descriptive paragraph useful for teaching composition students how rhetorical fragments work in writing and why sentence fragments do not. (HTH)

Proposes a formula for helping students learn to write paragraphs by requiring highly disciplined and limited material and sentences until students have acquired skills that permit more variety. (TJ)

The "controlling statement," a method of teaching students to write in an organized and efficient manner, consists of three basic parts: the idea, the viewpoint, and the key terms. Once introduced to students, these three parts can be easily used throughout the year (or years) to refer to basic areas within the composition process. This method of…

When the literature and the research results on sentence combining are analyzed, they seem to provide an expanded meaning of sentence combining and reasons for its effects on the writing of some students. Gains in syntactic maturity alone do not explain why sentence combining affects positively the writing of some students, nor does the fact that…

Suggests that teaching students to achieve coherence involves teaching them what it means to plan and to move up and down a hierarchy of abstraction as well as teaching them to build cohesive links into their writing. Describes a program for teaching coherence. (RL)

Argues that generative rhetoric can lead technical writing students to produce more effective and better developed business reports. (TJ)