Displays student work in "portrait exercises"--writing designed to give students a feel for characterization and to prepare them for future writing. (RL)

Describes how the four traditional kinds of writing (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) are used in advertising and suggests ways that advertising and the four modes may be used to teach composition. (DD)

Suggests ways to help students revise their written compositions by teaching them to "see" their work again. (DF)

Notes that emphasizing word choice is important in freshman composition classes. (MKM)

Describes the use of Tarot cards to help students achieve clarity in descriptive writing and learn how to interpret symbols. (TJ)

Presents a method that enables students to become aware of nonverbal communication and to incorporate it into their descriptive writing. (TJ)

Designed to combine the science and the art of teaching composition, this series of assignments encourages junior high and high school writing students to explore tone, original visual images, point of view, and other literary techniques. One assignment asks students to write a number of paragraphs alternately using sarcasm, humor, melancholy, and…

Presents a descriptive exercise, also useful for technical writing, that provides a real reader and a strong sense of the nature of descriptive writing. Students are given sketches of an art piece that they must describe for a museum for identification. (HTH)

Recommends that teachers look for and value the freshness, naivete, humor, and wisdom in children's writing. Samples of children's writing are provided to illustrate these traits. (AEA)

Recommends a series of sense exploration exercises to help students develop more adequate descriptive writing. (TJ)

THE FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TEXT OF THIS DOCUMENT: LEVEL: High school and college. AUTHOR'S COMMENT: I used this mini-unit to initiate the class in working effectively as a peer group. Moreover, the task I assigned demands that students develop an awareness of their audience's needs by providing an immediate and concrete response. THE APPROACH: (1)…

An activity unit for teaching students to identify and use imagery in writing is presented. Instructions to the teacher for introducing the unit are given along with a list of student objectives and definitions of imagery terms. The activities, some of which involve using locally available audiovisual media, include four introductory activities,…

Group activities in the classroom can be a useful way to explore various standard rhetorical patterns. For descriptive writing, students can select and write about unsigned collages made by classmates. The writer can try to find a unifying theme that characterizes the artist's personality. A narrative component can be added to descriptive writing…

Discusses the philosophy of publishing high school student writings in "English Journal," and calls for submissions. Prints a student short story, analyzes its merits, suggests ways to use it for teaching, and approaches to revision. (JG)

Intended for high school composition instructors, this book resolves the seeming contradiction between creative, expressive writing and formal exposition and argumentation by presenting a teaching method that treats creative writing as a necessary--if not sufficient--cause for exposition. The first two chapters describe a sequence of short fiction…