Analysis of 24 sets of journal entries, drafts, and revisions of papers written by college students in literature/composition courses suggested three stages in the process of reading and writing about literature. In the progressive stage, which is based on theories of transactional literary analysis, brief writing exercises, such as journal…

Each written by a classroom teacher and based on the experience of that teacher working with his or her students, the articles in this collection are an extension of the Bay Area Writing Project assumptions. Many contain samples of writing done by students in response to the writing tasks described. After a preamble that discusses what is already…

Three studies were conducted to investigate the development of the ability of individuals of varying ages to use macrorules for paraphrasing expository text. Macrorules were defined as the general rules of deletion, superordination, selection, and invention that underlie comprehension of prose. In the first study, 18 fifth grade, 16 seventh grade,…

Two studies were designed to investigate the age at which students adapt expository writing to meet the needs of different audiences. In the first study, students in grades four, eight, twelve, and at university level wrote descriptions of geometric figures that would enable someone unfamiliar with a figure to draw it. For all grades, realistic…

Noting that college-level critical thinking instruction is now an interdisciplinary movement coordinating such fields as English, rhetoric, philosophy, and developmental psychology, this digest surveys the history of critical thinking studies in these converging disciplines and argues that literature study preeminently encompasses the mental…