Contends that composition studies risks a detrimental borrowing of prestige from science, a borrowing that is not only potentially misleading but also too limiting if it draws attention away from the broad spectrum of considerations inherent in composition studies. (RAE)

Uses a model of the writing process to analyze the writing of a 13-year-old boy and to shed further light on writing as process rather than product. (RL)

Prompted by a concern for the appropriateness of the modes of discourse as a teaching device and in an attempt to elaborate on the registers of writing required of undergraduate students, case studies were made of six college instructors--two each from biology, English, and sociology. The six teachers were interviewed on two occasions, from 1.5 to…

Using data from a study that examined the writing of basic skills and regular college freshman students on three separate tasks, this paper discusses the effect that translating a generalized task into one that engages personal commitment by the writer has on the cognitive strategies employed to respond to that task. After a discussion of the…

Provides discussion and critical analysis of the "dog days" of part-time writing instructors in today's academic world. Compares student writing and teacher evaluation of that writing at vastly different colleges at which the same instructor taught. Considers how teacher attitudes are swayed by institutional setting. (HB)

When students write syntheses in response to a rhetorical task, does the rhetorical nature of the task exert some special influence on the students' composing processes? How do these processes differ? Three case studies, quantitative analyses of papers written by seventeen undergraduates, and a tentative model of a synthesizing process address…

A research project designed to determine what is important to a freshman college student in writing and learning to write is described in this paper. The first section of the paper provides background information for the project, which involved collaboration between the researcher and a student. The second section describes data gathering…

This book profiles 12 writing centers that function effectively on their college and university campuses. Following an introduction that provides an overview and suggests ways the book can be used, the centers are examined in detail in the following chapters: (1) "A Multiservice Writing Lab in a Multiversity: The Purdue University Writing…

This book is designed to provide elementary school teachers with information, suggestions, and models for using writing in the social studies, from early primary to middle grades. There are four major chapters to the book. Chapter I is titled "Research on the Teaching of Writing." The articles in this first section move from a survey of research…

Provides a case study analysis of two high school teachers' responses to a particular set of writing tasks and suggests an analytical tool that may be used to explore teachers' responses to change. (HOD)

Identifies student misunderstanding of teacher criticism and a lack of context for that criticism as problems in composition classes. Describes how an instructor provided taped comments on student papers to make criticisms clearer to students. Details how the procedure was used in guiding one student's successive drafts. (SG)

An "authentic dialogue" is presented consisting of two case studies that describe how a process learning teacher became a co-learner with her students through the teaching method of natural learning. Two middle school students, a 13-year-old boy named Josh who dashes off his assignments with whirlwind nonchalance and a fourth-grade girl named…

Case studies of six college freshmen enrolled in freshman composition courses that used sequenced assignments addressed to the same topic all term were used to investigate how students define revision, how their teachers define it, and what is important about the differences in these definitions. The students possessed a common theory of revision…

A full-scale case study of a college freshman writing course was conducted that made inferences about the course, its direction, and design and described its apparent influence on the students. The study, which is described in this report, addressed: (1) instructional influences, (2) student performances, (3) instructors' and students' perceptions…

This 1992 yearbook presents the following 26 articles: "Tensions between Numbers and Knowing: A Study of Changes in Assessment during Implementation of Literature-Based Reading Instruction" (P. L. Scharer); "Story Reading in Daycare: A Help or a Hindrance?" (F. K. Hurley); "Preservice Teachers' Reminiscences of Positive and Negative Reading…