This paper explicates and compares theories of composition that use heuristic or problem solving procedures in order to determine what can logically be expected from the application of a particular heuristic during the composing process. The heuristic models examined include E. P. J. Corbett's selection from the classical topics; R. Young, A. L.…

Argues that knowing something about students' cognitive strategies can help teachers to match their teaching to their learning. Reports on a study that investigated students' cognitive strategies. (FL)

A study compared and evaluated alternative theoretical models of the relationship of learning to read and learning to write at beginning and advanced levels of reading development. The reading dimensions of the three models included word analysis, vocabulary, and sentence and passage comprehension components. The writing dimensions included…

A taxonomy of revision changes was developed and applied to 18 case studies of writers' revisions. Subjects were six inexperienced student-writers, six advanced student-writers, and six expert adult-writers. The primary distinction of the taxonomy was between surface (formal and meaning-preserving) revisions and text-base (microstructure and…

A study investigated one dimension of metacognition--the knowledge of cognition--in first language (L1) and second language (L2) writing. Subjects were 20 students (10 L1 and 10 L2) in a first level college writing course. A questionnaire elicited subjects' definitions of good writing, their notions of the constituent features of the writing…

Despite substantial research on children's literacy performance outside school, relatively few studies have examined the classroom context of writing development, and even fewer have considered the relationship between general classroom discourse and writing. This paper presents an ecological framework for studying the relation between classroom…

Provides a model of the rhetorical problem, based on the study of writing as a problem-solving cognitive process; describes three major differences between good and poor writers revealed by a protocol analysis study. (DD)

A three-year study examined the efficacy of microcomputers in the teaching of writing in the regular school classroom and combined experimental and observational methods to develop a model of effective application of computers to the eighth-grade writing skills situation. Divided into control, mixed, and experimental classes, 281 students in six…