This paper examines how writing samples produced by middle school students reveal their emerging academic identities through their rhetorical choices in writing. Analyses of two texts produced by each student revealed students' implicit understandings of the requirements of academic voice. Through comparisons of each student's texts, strategies…

Concluded that compulsory writing generally increased the writing apprehension of college freshmen enrolled in the basic composition course. (DD)

Examines the differences in quality ratings that 20 teachers in each of three high school curricular areas gave samples of written argument by college freshmen and investigates the relationship between the three groups of quality ratings and eight syntactic and mechanics-of-writing variables. (FL)

Reports a study of teachers' and writers' interpretations of scenario assignments. Finds that, among the three groups tested (graduate students trained to teach rhetoric, academically successful undergraduate students trained as tutors, and entering freshmen) experienced writers' interpretations adhered most closely to the interpretive community's…

Focuses on the writing instruction which the 1977 NCTE Achievement Award- winning students had received, concluding that writing frequency, type of assigned writing topics, and class size affect writing instruction and that successful writers are dedicated readers. (DD)

Describes the development of a domain-referenced system intended to both describe and classify current writing assignments and to create composition assignments. (HOD)