Describes a qualitative study of the practices of 12 teachers as they used writing activities in the classrooms. Presents examples of integration of writing and subject matter. (SR)

Reports on a study that examines the planning and revising of ninth-grade coauthors to determine how collaborative writing socializes and impacts the writing process. Finds that the students' writing processes tended to resemble those of more expert writers--planning, composing, and revising collapsed into a truly recursive process. (TB)

Describes a writing assignment designed to help students with the frequently strange and foreboding job of writing a poem. Discusses how one student and the teacher worked through the assignment. (RS)

Outlines a text-based, interactionist approach toward writing and written communication. A brief analysis of the working drafts and revisions of a first-year college student's essay is offered to illustrate how key textual features function reflexively to establish and sustain the evolving but mutually held rational grounds of school writing and…

Investigates English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students' native literacy-learning experiences, via written learning autobiographies of 26 students from at least eight different countries. Discusses writing instruction in students' native languages; most satisfying writing assessment in their native languages; and differences between writing in…

Investigates a gender-related issue raised by a 1990 study of 40 11th-grade writing students. Discusses what problems are posed by and what possible solutions there are to the tendency in young women writers--more pronounced than in their male counterparts--to please the teacher and meet his or her rhetorical expectations at the expense of…

Reviews a study examining the influence of rhetorical specification in writing prompts on the writing quality of 7th-, 9th-, and 11th-grade students, and college freshmen. Analyzes the main and interactive effects of topic, purpose, and audience on writing quality. Indicates that students use different kinds of rhetorical information at different…

Examines naturally occurring one-to-one writing conference conversations between a ninth grade English teacher and three students. Considers composing processes that appear to be privileged in the conference context when different students are learning to write. Suggests a broadened model of effective writing conference instruction. (MG)

Intended for both beginning and experienced teachers at the secondary and college levels as well as teacher educators and assessment teams, this book reviews strengths and weaknesses of the major types of writing assessment, both for large-scale evaluations and for the individual classroom. The book includes: practical examples, applications, and…

A study was conducted to determine whether manipulating the classroom environment to be either apprehension producing (AP) or apprehension reducing (AR) could significantly change the level of students' dispositional writing apprehension. Five student teachers and one secondary education supervisor volunteered to participate in the experiment and…