Objects assembled in nonrepresentational fashion from tinker toy pieces are the starting point for a technical description writing assignment designed to increase the students' awareness of audience while at the same time giving them practice in description, analysis, and active judgment. Having been separated into two groups, each facing a…

Evaluates the use of meditation as a basis for a descriptive writing assignment in advanced composition. (MS)

A study examined two questions: Do students include more information or present it more concisely and explicitly when speaking or writing? and, Does language show different thematic relationships (through syntax or diction) depending upon the mode? Twenty-four community college students viewed one of two brief films and responded orally or in…

Describes a pedagogical approach to teaching composition, based on research indicating that inexperienced writers have undeveloped composing processes. Presents a sample lesson for describing an item that gives technical writing students knowledge of how they write and introduces them to strategies for mastering the composing process. (HTH)

An 11-step process may be used by freshman composition students to help them write effective prose in a series of clear steps. The steps are: (1) select a topic (for the first assignment, usually a place about which students have strong feelings and vivid remembrances), (2) individually brainstorm the topic, (3) categorize the details that have…

Students in college basic writing courses need to consider their own written language and to compare it with other students' work before they can develop a sense of the symbolic relationship between language and experience. Because of a lack of previous writing experience, basic writers have no sense that the "facts" about which they…