Invites a different look at metaphorical abstraction in hopes of raising realizations about language processes, writing processes, and the mental activities involved in both. (RL)

Intended for junior high and high school writing instructors, this booklet provides prewriting activities designed to help students master the thinking strategies essential to effective written communication. The first portion of the booklet discusses theory and research on the role of thinking strategies in writing and gives an overview of the…

Theory and practice, especially in education and more particularly about the composition process, stand in a dialectical relationship to one another, otherwise practice gets gimmicky and theory becomes dogmatic. The role of theory is to define purposes, figure out why something works so it can be repeated, give perspective, and free teachers from…

Focusing on synthesis--the ability to recognize and create new ideas that subsume and relate to others--as one of the most sophisticated skills writers can attain, the articles in this journal present many ideas for teaching synthesis and a number of classroom approaches that combine the study of English with other fields. The following titles and…

Four twelfth-grade students of "distinct" personality types participated in a study of relationships between composing processes and use of cognitive strategies, of relationships between personality type and cognitive functioning, and of the effects of these interrelationships on composing. Personality profiles were drawn based on responses to the…

Explains how journal writing, taught with some direction, can guide students' writing and provide them with a sense of self-discovery. (HOD)

Investigates how writers plan to produce discourse for different purposes--to report, to generalize, to persuade--as well as how writers plan for sentence level units of language. To learn about planning, an observational measure of pause time was used. (HOD)

Describes a writing assignment that has been used with high school students, college freshmen, and graduate students to help them more adequately understand their own composing processes. Argues that heuristic methods are extremely powerful teaching tools and that teachers should learn the theory on which they are based. (TJ)

Examines recent research that uses protocol analysis to determine the cognitive processes used by writers in planning their work. (FL)

The act of essay writing itself can serve to formulate thought and shape ideas. In the English as a Second Language classroom, this translates into an approach which places composition revision in a central position between content and written form. This approach more closely reflects the writing process. (Author/PJM)

An effective model for analyzing revision processes in writing needs to synthesize what research has shown about the process, the strategies involved, and what is known about students' revision strategies. Development of such a model also requires recognizing that (1) a relationship exists between reading and writing in the revision process, (2)…

A cognitive approach to the interrelation of writing and reading assumes that production and comprehension of written text depend upon cognitive and affective schemata used in concert by a writer or reader to produce or encode, store, and retrieve text information. Both comprehending and composing are basic, complex, interactive processes with…

Investigates the similarities and differences in cognitive processing during reading and writing activities as reported in the think-aloud protocols of an above-average and a below-average student. Concludes that the above-average student reported more behaviors and more behaviors that facilitated meaning-making than the below-average student. (RS)

This article describes the Cognitive Strategy in Writing program (originally intended for elementary-age students), and adaptation and application of the social constructivist approach with seven junior high and high school students with learning disabilities. Pretest-posttest assessment indicated dramatic improvements in overall quality and…

Argues that literacy development should focus on thinking and speaking skills so that students can critically evaluate the oral and written rhetoric in their daily lives and become more articulate and lucid communicators. (HOD)