This article argues that the goal of an educator is to help students realize they can be effective writers by giving them the ability to demonstrate their skills. Scene writing can make writing seem less like a chore and more like an opportunity to express ideas. As students write scenes that include both dialogue and action, they gain a deeper…

Whether novice or experienced, writers must come to terms with the daunting task of filling up a blank page, or screen, in an effort to produce writing. Student writers are no different. They enter teachers' classes having confronted similar difficulties with discovering what it is they want to say. In seeking to help students, they devote…

For students, writing is too frequently a matter of going through the motions, perhaps no truer than with the traditional academic essay. Although there are many culprits for this disengagement, one is surely an over-emphasis on form--and particularly set form--to the detriment of content. When form becomes formula, planning is stultified, losing…

Discusses four stages through which writers pass during prewriting. Offers ways of helping students pass through these stages so that they can begin to organize their writing more effectively. (RL)

Describes different types of prewriting activities such as "brainwriting," visual synectics, and relational algorithms. (JL)

Describes nine prewriting activities using supermarket tabloids as the model for producing a newspaper on mythology. (RS)

Notes that many preservice teacher education students in a composition methods course confess they did not prewrite seriously in middle and high school, and that many did not prewrite at all. Introduces a technical writer who spends 80% of his writing time in prewriting activities alone. Discusses strategies to help students realize the value and…

Describes various revising operations that allow students to genuinely re-see their work in order to revise effectively. (CRH)

Suggests that perception is most vigorous and thus most amenable to organization when guided by teaching that places creativity before communication. (MM)

Discusses a method for involving students in topics so that research evolves from a desire to know. Describes using response group discussion about real life problems to find topics, freewriting loops, and class presentation before and during research. Reports positive atmosphere and interest. (JG)

Describes interactive computer software programs that develop prewriting, word processing, and revising skills. (MM)