Professional speakers often use simple mental recipes to organize impromptu talks. The author taught these recipes to his high school composition students and used a timed trial format to give them practice in rapidly outlining their thoughts on a given topic. Thirteen of these recipes are provided. (SJL)

The writing assignments developed for a course in expository writing intended for gifted eighth grade students are described in this paper. The first assignment described is a causal analysis essay that required the students to examine events from their lives or from newspaper articles and analyze the causes of the actions involved. The paper…

A flexible writing curriculum meets varied student levels and goals by basing courses on students' own written work. Activities in this type of curriculum include: prewriting activities, first drafts, peer critiques, instructor feedback, worksheet handouts, and second drafts. (Author/CB)